There has been a great deal of controversy recently regarding the theory of structuralism, which has been defended by Dr. Michael Denton in his new book, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis and attacked by Professor Larry Moran over at his Sandwalk blog (see here, here, here and here). Evolution News and Views has several articles defending Dr. Denton’s views (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Let me say at the outset that I have not yet read Dr. Denton’s latest book, which has been reviewed by Barry Arrington here. Rather than reviewing Dr. Denton’s work, my aim in today’s post is to summarize its central thesis, discuss its significance for how scientists should do biology, and evaluate what I see as the most telling criticisms of the theory of structuralism made by Professor Larry Moran, before offering a few tentative suggestions of my own as to how these criticisms might be addressed. (NOTE: Any green bolding below is my own – VJT.)
What is Structuralism?
Denton defines structuralism in his 2013 BIO-Complexity paper, The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selectionism as “the concept that the basic forms of the natural world—the Types—are immanent in nature, and determined by a set of special natural biological laws, the so called ‘laws of form’.” Denton elaborates:
According to the structuralist paradigm, a significant fraction of the order of life is the result of basic physical constraints arising out of the fundamental properties of matter — more specifically biological matter. These constraints limit the way organisms are built to a few basic designs; these include the deep homologies, for example the pentadactyl limb, and the basic body plans of the major phyla. The recurring patterns and persistence of these designs implies that many of life’s basic forms arise in the same way as that of other natural forms such as crystals or atoms — from the self-organization of matter — and are thus genuine universals. Structuralists adhere therefore to a strictly “non-selectionist, non-historicist” view of the biological world…
The notion of a lawful biology, where all the major types are part of the world order no less than inorganic forms, naturally lent itself to teleological speculation. This is nowhere more apparent than in the views of Louis Agassiz, who saw the Types as ideas in the mind of God [2: ch. 4], and saw the whole taxonomic system as part of God’s grand plan of creation…
It is important to stress that structuralism therefore implies that organic order is a mix of two completely different types of order, generated by two different causal mechanisms: a primal order generated by natural law, and a secondary adaptive order imposed by environmental constraints (by natural selection according to Darwinists, by Lamarckian mechanisms and by intelligent design according to current design theorists)…
If the homologies are lawful aspects of the world order, no less than atoms or crystals, then just as for atoms or crystals, there should exist a set of laws, “Laws of Biological Form” [33: pp. 4–10; 34; 35], which would provide a rational and lawful account of the diversity of organic forms, analogous to the laws of chemistry or the laws of crystallography, which account rationally for the diversity of chemical compounds and crystals, and which allow for a rational deductive derivation of all possible chemical compounds or crystals…
The structuralist conception of life, and especially of an ascending hierarchy of taxa of ever widening comprehensiveness as an immanent feature of nature, was close to the classic Aristotelian world view [39: pp. 94–95], but it was based on the facts, not on a philosophical a priori...
…[I]n every case (to the author’s knowledge), bottom-up genetic explanations fail to account for homologous patterns, thus presenting a major challenge to the entire functionalist project, and by default providing powerful support for the alternative structuralist view — that these patterns are self-organizing emergent forms arising spontaneously from the properties of particular categories of biological matter…
…Functionalism demands preformism (a detailed blueprint specifying the final form), while structuralism implies epigenesis (emergent form based on self-organizational principles apart from any blueprint)…
…[T]he observation that is the most supportive of the structuralist claim that homologies are emergent, robust, self-organizing natural forms, is the fact that the same homologous structure may arise in different ways, involving different genes and genetic pathways in different species [98; 99]. To take a classic example, the early embryos of all vertebrates are very similar at the post-gastrula stage when the vertebrate body plan is first apparent, but the developmental processes and pathways that lead to this homologous stage differ markedly in different classes.
The real significance of Denton’s thesis
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Portrait of English anatomist and palaeontologist Richard Owen with the skull of a crocodile. Albumen print from wet collodion on glass negative, 1856. Image courtesy of Maull & Polyblank and Wikipedia.
Denton elucidates the significance of his structuralist thesis in his post, Nature’s Dis-Continuum: Why Structural Explanations Win Hands Down. In a nutshell, if structuralism is correct, then essentialism holds true in the biological world, after all. Nature is not a continuum, as Darwinists have long maintained; rather, living things belong to clearly identifiable types. As Denton puts it:
There is no evidence to support the Darwinian claim that the biological world is a functional continuum where it is possible to move from the base of the trunk to all the most peripheral branches in tiny incremental adaptive steps.
On the contrary, all of the evidence as reviewed in the first six chapters of Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis implies that nature is a discontinuum. The tree is a discontinuous system of distinct Types characterized by sudden and saltational transitions and sudden origins of taxa-defining novelties and homologs, exactly as I claimed in Evolution thirty years ago. The claim has weathered well!
The grand river of life that has flowed on earth over the past four billion years has not meandered slowly and steadily across some flat and featureless landscape, but tumbled constantly through a rugged landscape over endless cataracts and rapids. No matter how unfashionable, no matter how at odds with current thinking in evolutionary biology, there is no empirical evidence for believing that organic nature is any less discontinuous than the inorganic realm. There is not the slightest reason for believing that the major homologs were achieved gradually via functional continuums. It is only the a priori demands of Darwinian causation that have imposed continuity on a basically discontinuous reality.
No matter how “unacceptable,” the notion that the organic world consists of a finite set of distinct Types, which have been successively actualized during the evolutionary history of life on earth, satisfies the facts far better that its Darwinian rival.
Denton’s typological view, which is heavily influenced by the thinking of the great Victorian biologist Richard Owen (pictured above), is anathema to evolutionary biologists, whatever their stripe.
Problems with Denton’s thesis
I’ve been reading through the various posts on structuralism over at Evolution News and Views, as well as Professor Larry Moran’s posts critiquing structuralism (see here, here, here and here). In several of his posts, Moran accuses Dr. Denton of setting up a “strawman” in his characterization of the modern evolutionary view, and of “ignoring one of the most common views in evolutionary biology” – namely, that many of the structures we observe in Nature (e.g. the pentadactyl limb) are the result of historical accident, rather than natural selection. Indeed, evolutionary biologists readily admit that “the history of life is not just the product of natural selection.”
To be fair to Denton, however, it could be argued that he is not particularly concerned with what modern evolutionary biologists think, but with setting forth two rival explanations of the basic forms that we observe in living things: the structuralist view that they are embedded in organisms, and the functionalist view that they serve some adaptive purpose. Denton characterizes the functionalist view by deliberately highlighting the contrasts between it and the structuralist view. Now, if Denton wishes to delineate structuralism from functionalism in this manner, that’s perfectly valid for pedagogical purposes, so long as he does not imply that modern-day biologists regard functionalism as anything like a complete explanation of biological forms. As Professor Moran points out, they don’t, and what’s more, they haven’t done so for many decades. It is a great pity, then, that in a recent post, Denton makes a sweeping generalization about contemporary biologists which is plainly incorrect: “All Darwinists, and hence the great majority of evolutionary biologists, are functionalist by definition, as all evolution according to classical Darwinism comes about from cumulative selection to meet functional ends.” That statement is not an accurate reflection of how modern biologists explain the complex designs found in Nature.
Personally, I think that Denton would have done better to contrast structuralism with both functionalism and the “historical accident” view now espoused by a large number of biologists. In reality, what we have are three rival explanations of biological forms, rather than two. I have to say that Professor Moran makes quite a few telling arguments against structuralism in his recent posts (see above). Accordingly, I’ve put together a short list of what I see as Moran’s strongest criticisms of structuralism.
1. The theory of structuralism is too animal-centric, and cannot be applied to bacteria, which comprise the vast majority of living organisms.
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Animals occupy a tiny twig on the tree of life. Image courtesy of Tim Vickers and Wikipedia. Eukaryotes are colored red, archaea green and bacteria blue.
In a recent post titled, What is “structuralism”? (February 2, 2016), Professor Moran writes:
“One of the problems with structuralist explanations is that they are very animal-centric... “It’s easy to think of deterministic forms when your view is limited to vertebrates and other animals but it’s much harder to defend structuralism when you’re comparing bumblebees and mushrooms.”
Bacteria seem to be particularly recalcitrant to Michael Denton’s structuralist paradigm, since they cannot be readily classified into types or species. Microbiologists have been trying to sort them into species for over a hundred years, with little success. The discovery of lateral gene transfer in the last few decades has complicated the picture to such an extent that some biologists now propose giving up the attempt altogether. As Carl Woese and Nigel Goldenfeld (University of Urbana-Champaign, USA) put it in an oft-cited essay in Nature (“Biology’s Next Revolution,” vol. 445, 25 January 2007): “… the emerging picture of microbes as gene-swapping collectives demands a revision of such concepts as organisms, species and evolution. …. rather than discrete genomes, we see a continuum of genomic possibilities, which casts doubt on the validity of the concept of a ‘species’ when extended into the microbial realm.”
2. Denton’s structuralist theory ignores the role of chance in evolution, and fails to offer a criterion whereby we may distinguish non-adaptive structures that have arisen by pure chance from those that have arisen from “laws of form.”
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Professor Moran proposes that the zebra’s stripes may simply be “an evolutionary accident.” Image courtesy of Muhammad Mahdi Karim and Wikipedia.
Professor Moran agrees with Denton that many biological structures are clearly non-adaptive, but suggests that instead of being the product of unknown “laws of form,” they may simply be the result of chance – an explanation he accuses Denton of deliberately overlooking in his post, Michael Denton discovers non-adaptive evolution … attributes it to gods (February 13, 2016):
Readers of this blog will know that I’m a fan of Evolution by Accident…
This is the view of many modern evolutionary biologists. Their work and views have been reported frequently on Sandwalk over the past ten years but you can find it in all the evolutionary biology textbooks…
Over the years, we’ve discussed a number of specific cases that strongly suggest non-adaptive evolution… One of my favorite examples has been the shape of leaves…
Michael Denton recognizes how silly it is to attribute every feature to adaptation. This is, of course, a view that been around for a long time among evolutionary biologists and they have perfectly naturalistic, non-adaptive, explanations that have been published in thousands of scientific papers. Denton won’t acknowledge that. Most creationists won’t even admit that there are features that don’t appear to have been designed for functionality but here’s Denton showing them that they’ve been wrong for decades…
He assures them that their extreme Darwinian view of evolution is correct and the presence of non-functional features — like the shape of a maple leaf — is something that “evolution” can’t explain. Therefore, gods did it.
Moran contends that there is no reason to believe that chance could not have generated the non-adaptive designs in Nature:
“Over the years, we’ve discussed a number of specific cases that strongly suggest non-adaptive evolution. For example, the fact that the African rhinoceros has two horns while the Asian rhino has only one [Visible Mutations and Evolution by Natural Selection], or the stripes on different species of zebra [How did the zebra get its stripes? (again)].
“One of my favorite examples has been the shape of leaves. Is the difference between a cluster of five needles (white pine) and two needles (red pine) an example of selection and adaption or an accident? What about the shape of maple leaves? There are 128 species of maple (Acer spp.) and most of them have distinctly different leaves that vary in shape, color, and size. It’s rather silly, in this day and age, to attribute all of those differences to adaptation.”
(Michael Denton discovers non-adaptive evolution … attributes it to gods, February 13, 2016.)
Are the zebra’s stripes or the shape of different species of maple the product of hidden laws, or are they the result of chance? Moran defends the latter option in a 2015 post titled, How did the zebra get its stripes? (again), where he proposes that a chance mutation may explain the origin of zebras’ stripes, and that they serve no function whatsoever:
“After almost 100 years of speculation, nobody has come up with a good adaptive explanation of zebra stripes. They never consider the possibility that there may NOT be an adaptive explanation…
“The point is that the prominence of stripes on zebras may be due to a relatively minor mutation and may be nonadaptive. That’s a view that should at least be considered even if you don’t think it’s correct.”
Denton might respond that while chance might explain some of the non-adaptive designs found in Nature, it cannot explain them all. (As we’ll see below, Denton discusses the inadequacies of chance as an explanation, in his latest book.) However, Moran contends that Denton has failed to offer a criterion whereby one might distinguish a non-adaptive structure resulting from “laws of form” from one that arose by chance.
3. The fossil record contains what appear to be ancestral species, which don’t fall neatly into modern-day body types:
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Hyracotherium is now considered to have been ancestral not only to horses, but also to tapirs and rhinoceroses. Legend for molar tooth: dark=enamel; dotted=dentine; white=cement. Image courtesy of Mcy Jerry and Wikipedia.
In a recent post titled, Replaying life’s tape (February 11, 2016), Professor Moran approvingly quotes a passage from Stephen Jay Gould’s work, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Belknap Press, 2002, p. 1156), in which Gould tellingly observes that ancestral forms resist classification into modern categories:
“If a group of Martian paleontologists had visited earth during the Eocene epoch, they would have encountered two coexisting, and scarcely distinguishable species of the genus Hyracotherium. If they had then followed the subsequent history of the lineages, they would have watched one species differentiate into the clade of rhinoceroses and the other into the clade of horses. But if a modern commentator then concluded that horses and rhinos had existed as distinct designs in their modern form (lithe runners vs. horned behemoths) since the Eocene, we would laugh at such a silly confusion…”
4. Many of the forms which predominate today appear to have triumphed as a result of historical accident, rather than internal necessity:
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Kimberella quadrata, which appeared 555 million years ago, is the first bona fide fossil of a bilaterian: an animal with bilateral symmetry. Image courtesy of Aleksey Nagovitsyn, Arkhangelsk Regional Museum and Wikipedia.
In his post, Replaying life’s tape (February 11, 2016), Moran argues that the prevalence of this or that body plan in animals is largely the result of happenstance, rather than internal “laws of form.” The same goes for the genetic code found in all living things today, which is probably nothing more than a “frozen accident,” as Francis Crick hypothesized in his essay, The origin of the genetic code (Journal of Molecular Biology, 1968, 38:367-379). Finally, there’s no evidence of any built-in natural bias towards the evolution of intelligent life:
“What he [Gould – VJT] means is that just because the basic body plans of modern animals all evolved from a bilateran ancestor doesn’t mean that this pattern was preordained by the immutable laws of physics and chemistry. It could be an accident of history that was locked in by constraints on subsequent evolution (historical contingency) just as the genetic code may have been a ‘frozen accident.’…
“The point here is that the concept of unpredictability in the history of life is based not on wild speculation but on solid evidence from the fossil record and computer simulations and a firm understanding of modern evolutionary theory and history.
“If you replay the tape of life there’s a good chance that no intelligent life will evolve. There’s no evidence that the actual history was pre-determined by any fundamental laws of form and there’s certainly no evidence of purpose.”
(Replaying life’s tape, February 11, 2016.)
5. In any case, there’s nothing wrong with an explanation which appeals to contingent past events, as opposed to internal necessity:
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Ichthyostega, which appeared around 365 million years ago, had seven digits on each hind limb, while Acanthostega has eight. In his widely cited essay, Eight (or Fewer) Little Piggies, Stephen Jay Gould describes the tetrapod species of the Devonian period and concludes: “Five is not a canonical, or archetypal, number of digits for tetrapods–at least not in the primary sense of ‘present from the beginning.'” Pencil drawing, digital coloring, based on a reconstruction by Ahlberg, 2005. Image courtesy of Nobu Tamura and Wikipedia.
In his post, Replaying life’s tape (February 11, 2016), Professor Larry Moran warmly endorses Stephen Jay Gould’s argument (made in his essay, Eight (or Fewer) Little Piggies) that an explanation which appeals to contingent past events is not one whit inferior to an explanation which invokes laws of nature:
“Never apologize for an explanation that is “only” contingent and not ordained by invariant laws of nature — for contingent events have made our world and our lives. If you ever feel the slightest pull in that dubious direction, think of poor Heathcliff, who would have been spared so much agony if only he had stayed a few more minutes to eavesdrop upon the conversation of Catherine and Nelly (yes, the book wouldn’t have been as good, but consider the poor man’s soul). Think of Bill Buckner who would never again let Mookie Wilson’s easy grounder go through his legs–if only he could have another chance. Think of the alternative descendants of Ichthyostega, with only four fingers on each hand. Think of arithmetic with base eight, the difficulty of playing triple fugues on the piano, and the conversion of this essay into an illegible Roman tombstone, for how could I separate words withoutathumbtopressthespacebaronthistypewriter.”
In a nutshell, Gould’s (and Moran’s) contention is that the urge to explain biological forms in terms of laws reflects a psychological bias on our part: a preference for necessity over contingency.
My response to Moran’s criticisms
I won’t presume to second-guess what Dr. Michael Denton would say in response to Professor Moran’s criticisms. At any rate, here’s how I would respond, if I were a structuralist:
1. How does structuralism account for bacteria?
If Denton is right, then it should be possible to classify bacteria fairly readily, in a natural fashion, on the basis of their structures, without considering their functions, their genes or their ancestry. But which structures? If Denton is right, then it should be possible to construct a taxonomy of bacteria, based purely on the different proteins and lipids they contain. In his 2013 BIO-Complexity paper, The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selectionism, Denton argues that proteins are bound by the same laws of form that govern structures such as the pentadactyl limb:
Protein folds represent one of the most remarkable cases where a set of physical rules determine the forms of an important class of complex molecular structures [35; 62; 63]. Intriguingly, the rules that generate the thousand-plus known protein folds have now been largely elucidated and remarkably they amount to a set of ‘laws of form’ of precisely the kind sought after by early 19th-century biologists (see above). These rules arise from higher-order packing constraints of alpha helices and beta sheets, and constrain possible protein forms to a small number of a few thousand structures [64]. In conformity with pre-Darwinian structuralism, the protein forms are analogous to a set of crystals [35]!
In the same paper, Denton adds that “[l]ipid membranes form a vast variety of tubes and vesicles, and various types of sheets” and he adds that in the case of lipids, “there is no doubt that the underlying form—layered stacks of bilayer lipid membranes—is primarily determined by purely physical law.”
While we’re on the subject of taxonomy, I should point out that there is no reason why the taxonomies produced by a structuralist analysis should match evolutionary trees. To take one instance: the Victorian biologist Richard Owen famously classified vertebrates into five classes (fish, amphibia, reptiles, birds and mammals) on anatomical grounds, but a cladist would say that all tetrapods are merely an off-shoot of fish, and that a mammal is more like a bony fish than a shark is. Common sense sides with Owen. The cladists are wrong; they simply don’t understand what true similarity really means.
2. How do we distinguish forms that have arisen by chance from those that have arisen from “laws of form”?
One way of distinguishing structures that have arisen by chance from those that have arisen from laws of form is to investigate how easily these structures can be modified. If the structures resist modification and revert to type, then it would appear that we are dealing with something deeply entrenched. Dr. Denton hints at this response in his 2013 BIO-Complexity paper, The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selectionism:
In addition to their remarkable abstract character, the other striking feature of the homologies is their great stability through millions of generations and in diverse phylogenetic lines. The pentadactyl limb, for example (see Figure 1), first emerged some 400 million years ago and has remained essentially invariant in all tetrapod lines ever since… The ‘concentric whorl plan’ of the Angiosperm flower has remained unchanged at least in the higher eudicot clade for 100 million years, since the late Cretaceous. The defining features of insects and even of the various insect subgroups such as the ants have also remained constant for millions of generations [29]. The abstract nature and deep invariance of the homologies and the Types is a fact, a simple straightforward biological fact.
As we have seen, Professor Moran accuses Denton of neglecting to consider the view that complex non-adaptive designs may be the result of chance, rather than laws of form. But as Dr. Ann Gauger points out in an ENV post titled, Reading Michael Denton’s Mind…and Getting It Wrong (February 18, 2016), Denton considers and rejects such a view in his book, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis:
The complexity of living systems is so great that there is now an almost universal consensus, as we saw in the discussion of ORFan genes, that the simplest of all biological novelties — a single functional gene sequence — cannot come about by chance mutations in a DNA sequence. And if an individual gene sequence is far too complex to be produced by chance, then the sudden origination of a morphological novelty like a feather, a limb, or even such a comparatively simple novelty as an enucleate red cell — all novelties vastly more complex than an individual functional gene sequence — is by any common-sense judgment far beyond the reach of any sort of undirected “chance” saltation.” [p. 226]
This is all well and good, but what about zebras’ stripes and the various shapes of maple leaves? Does Denton really wish to argue that these forms are beyond the reach of chance? Frankly, I doubt it.
I might add that even Denton’s contention that de novo genes could not have arisen by chance is highly controversial. As a rule, these genes tend to be very short, and they produce small proteins (75 aa or less) rather than the long-chain proteins found in all living things, which Dr. Douglas Axe has shown to be beyond the reach of chance. (Incidentally, there’s a very good article on the origin of the genes required for the appearance of feathers here: it seems to have occurred in two bursts, spaced over 100 million years apart.)
In short: Denton needs to engage in mathematical reasoning, if he wishes to clearly differentiate the biological forms that could be due to chance from those that could not.
3. What about ancestral forms that don’t neatly fall into modern-day categories?
Ancestral species are poorly preserved: all too often, we have only their hard parts (bones), which means that it is not always easy to tell which “body type” they belong to, as other distinguishing organs have not been preserved. Presumably, if we had more information, we could make such a determination more readily. We also need to bear in mind that ancestral forms may be hard to classify, simply because they pre-date the “types” that they subsequently gave rise to.
To take Gould’s example: Hyracotherium may defy easy categorization as a member of either the horse, tapir or rhinoceros “kind,” but nobody would mistake Mesohippus for an ancestor of the rhinoceros or tapir: it is unambiguously in the equine lineage, while Merychippus can be considered a “true horse.” I might add that while modern-day “types” are distinguished by several complex structures that they alone possess, there is nothing in Denton’s theory which requires that all of these distinguishing features had to have originated at the same time. Consequently, we should not be at all surprised if horses dating from the Oligocene epoch are considerably less “horsey” in their anatomical features than their modern-day descendants.
4. Don’t accidents in the history of life on Earth undermine structuralism?
Historical accidents (such as the Permian extinction) may decide which biological structures will eventually prevail in the history of life, but they cannot be successfully urged as an argument against the existence of structures per se. In any case, such extinction events may do no more than hasten a trend which was already in progress. It may have been an asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs (excluding birds), but according to some paleontologists, they would have eventually died out, anyway, and been replaced by other, more intelligent creatures.
5. Doesn’t the fossil record show that some forms triumphed by accident?
The case of the fossil amphibian Ichthyostega and its seven fingers is still a mystery, chiefly because scientists still don’t know why mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians all develop five fingers during their embryological development. For an up-to-date summary of what scientists currently know, I’d recommend Ed Yong’s highly informative article, How did you get five fingers?
In short: more work needs to be done. Also, we don’t know whether the seven-finger pattern would have been viable over the long term, in any case.
Unresolved tensions within Denton’s structuralist position
In his 2013 BIO-Complexity paper, The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selectionism, Denton defends the view that life’s basic designs are the product of laws of form, and that they are immanent in the world-order. If this view is correct, then these designs are the product of necessity, rather than contingency. At the same time, Denton wishes to argue that structuralism is fully compatible with Intelligent Design, and that the forms we find in Nature may have been chosen by the Creator for aesthetic reasons. But a choice, by definition, is contingent, whereas a law is necessary. “Laws of form” is an explanation of complexity that might appeal to an atheistic naturalist; creative choices, on the other hand, require a purposeful Agent.
The foregoing difficulty could be surmounted by pointing out that the laws of Nature are necessary only in a relative sense: as creatures, we are bound by them, but in an absolute sense, there is no reason why the universe we live in has to conform to these laws, rather than those laws. The fact that we live in a universe whose laws favor life still requires an explanation, and positing that the laws of Nature are the result of elegant fine-tuning of the laws of Nature by an all-wise Creator is the most rational explanation that we know of. (The “multiverse” fails as an explanation, for reasons I have discussed here.)
Even so, Denton’s claims about “laws of form” still runs counter to the arguments advanced by Dr. Stephen Meyer in his Book, Signature in the Cell, which argues on biochemical grounds that there are no “laws of form” that dictate the emergence of proteins – which is why the emergence of even one long-chain protein on the primordial Earth (let alone the 250-odd proteins required for a minimal cell) would have been tantamount to a miracle, requiring an Intelligent Agent to explain its occurrence.
Perhaps Denton could reply that these “laws of form” are higher-level laws, built into the nature of matter by an all-wise Creator. That may be so, but such a claim still requires evidence.
I would be remiss if I did not mention another difficulty with the notion that laws generate complex structures, pointed out many years ago by biochemist and Intelligent Design proponent, Professor Michael Behe, who remarked in a 1999 review of Paul Davies’ book, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life, that laws are low in information, while life is high in information. As Behe puts it: “laws cannot contain the recipe for life because laws are ‘information-poor’ while life is ‘information-rich.'”
Physicist David Snoke echoes this criticism in a laudatory review of Denton’s book, where he faults Denton’s theory of the origin of complex forms for its materialism – for although Denton’s structuralist theory sounds a lot like neo-Platonism, Denton insists that his theory of the origin of forms invokes purely physical processes:
Denton favors some version of “self-organization” along the lines promoted by Ilya Prigogene and Stuart Kaufmann. Somehow, internal physical forces conspire to create something completely new… …I am familiar with the physics of self-organization and pattern formation, and can say that despite the grand claims made for it, that line of research is nearly dead, and hopeless as a way of generating life…. Spontaneous pattern formation works for regular patterns like crystals and waves, but simply can’t carry the freight of generating the vast amounts of specified information in living organisms.
In his review, Snoke suggests that the variety of complex structures found in living things today may have been “pre-programmed in the very first living organism” – an intriguing proposal, but one which invites the question of how the information generating these structures was preserved over a four-billion-year period, long before these structures had even appeared on Earth.
Finally, a European philosopher whom I know points out some additional problems with Denton’s theory. First, Denton claims that the process whereby forms arise in Nature must be a saltationist one, but he never explains how the “laws of form” can generate the necessary leaps.
Second, Denton’s theory explains the emergence of shapes and geometrical structures, rather than the underlying Aristotelian forms which explain why these types of organisms have the propensities that they do. From an Aristotelian perspective, structuralism digs deeper than Darwinism, but still not deep enough. It does not fully explain the “types” we find in Nature.
For these reasons, my reaction to Denton’s structuralist theory is very much a “wait and see” reaction. It may yet prove itself, but we need to give it time. The theory undoubtedly contains some rich and deep insights, and its resurrection of essentialism will certainly be heartening for Intelligent Design proponents.
At this point, I shall stop and throw the discussion open to my readers. What do you think of Denton’s theory?
I think Denton’s theory is not a theory but a vague wishful speculation. Unknown forces????? When the forces become apparent, come back and maybe there will be a theory. (protein shapes may be a start but has its problems with mathematics.)
The value of Denton’s work is not any theoretical process flowing from the four basic forces of nature but a much more in depth criticism of the one alternative out there, the latest version of the modern synthesis. Moran’s criticism are halfhearted at best.
Because there is only one theory out there that has some traction, Denton’s analysis is just more nails in the coffin of the modern synthesis. Yes, there are historical accidents, yes there is no viable way to classify microbes, yes there are changes over time that lead to a different morphology. But all fall short of explaining the true novelties which are not Zebra stripes or leaf designs.
Denton’s main value will be to sharpen the criticism of the naturalistic paradigm. This is why he is dangerous to the establishment. They have no clothes and Denton is pointing it out. They may be forced to consider another alternative where some other force intervenes with the four basic forces. Now what could that other force be?
I highly recommend Snoke’s review. It is on another thread.
Hey, some unknown force modified my comment above and put in a link to Snoke’s review. I wonder what that force is? Could it be the force that Denton hints at in his books.
Moran’s Five Disputations:
1. The theory of structuralism is too animal-centric, and cannot be applied to bacteria, which comprise the vast majority of living organisms.
This is not a serious argument. Moran might just as well say that the “theory of structuralism” is too eukaryotic oriented, and not prokaryotic. Should we note we’re dealing with different domains here, a classification level above kingdoms?
2. Denton’s structuralist theory ignores the role of chance in evolution, and fails to offer a criterion whereby we may distinguish non-adaptive structures that have arisen by pure chance from those that have arisen from “laws of form.”
I wonder if he read the book. Denton’s argument stakes out this ground rather clearly. He says that the beaks of the Galapagos finches is a classic example of microevolution, and is fully Darwinian. But, this only serves to point out that this kind of plasticity is not found at the level of body plans. It is this very contrast Denton highlights, and which allows him to argue against “chance” processes. He says that if body-plans are contingent, then why are they conserved? Everything hinges on the fact that these “body-plans” are NON-ADAPTIVE. This is Denton’s key argument. Let Moran argue against that.
3. The fossil record contains what appear to be ancestral species, which don’t fall neatly into modern-day body types:
Ah, but the exception proves the rule. See #3 above, at the end.
4. Many of the forms which predominate today appear to have triumphed as a result of historical accident, rather than internal necessity:
How does Moran know this to be true, one way or the other? If, as Denton posits, there are constraints present as laws of structure which are responsible for these body-plans, then how do you distinguish this from “historical accident”? You can only know this if you were in possession of the the “laws of structure.” OTOH, Moran is not in possession of the “laws of structure,” so he, in fact, doesn’t know if his position is true or not. As he SAYS: “ Many forms . . . appear to [be] the result of historical accident.” This is his opinion; no more.
5. In any case, there’s nothing wrong with an explanation which appeals to contingent past events, as opposed to internal necessity:
. …… “Stephen Jay Gould describes the tetrapod species of the Devonian period and concludes: ‘Five is not a canonical, or archetypal, number of digits for tetrapods–at least not in the primary sense of ‘present from the beginning.’”
First, Gould’s statement, I suppose, refers to the fish/land animal transition. If we are to understand Gould as saying that there was some initial “experimenting” with the pentadactyl form at the beginning of this transition, then why don’t we see a similar “experimentation” at the transition from tetrapod to bird?
Second, there IS a problem with appeals to “contingent past events.” If these “contingent past events” have been “frozen” into a body plan, by what process did this occur? And why does this happen only at one level, and not a higher one? IOW, why hasn’t it happened again? Which is to say that Darwinism is completely dependent on plasticity, and “freezing” is just the opposite of that; so how do you explain it from a Darwinian perspective?
Denton would say: (1) These body plans are non-adaptive. So how can you possibly give an “adaptive” answer, which Darwin’s theory requires—a continuous series of functional, adaptive steps. (2) If it’s ‘adaptive’, then it should be ‘continous’, so where are the intermediates? Of course, this is the downfall of Darwinism: there ARE NO intermediates. There never will be. Can we move on please?
jerry:
I think Denton’s theory is not a theory but a vague wishful speculation. Unknown forces????? When the forces become apparent, come back and maybe there will be a theory. (protein shapes may be a start but has its problems with mathematics.)
Is it “wishful speculation” to point out that body-plans are “non-adaptive,” and, hence, completely contrary to Darwinian suppositions?
To think that the Cambrian Explosion took place by “chance” (which, of course, Darwin did not think–a fact that now undermines his theory), now, that is “wishful speculation.” And, it’s plain wrong.
jerry, you don’t seem immune to Darwinian hand-waving. I don’t understand why not.
How can a blueprint or a self-organizing principle come to be in the absence of a designing architect?
Punctuated structuralism.
SB:
How can a blueprint or a self-organizing principle come to be in the absence of a designing architect?
Maybe the same way the first designing architect came to be.
velikovskys,
Aquinas demonstrates why your possible explanation is actually quite impossible and even logically absurd.
Nagel appears to be a structural naturalist, like Denton, who would like to explain order on the basis of purely natural laws. But, information, as mentioned above, has blown that hypothesis out of the water.
Old army:
Aquinas demonstrates why your possible explanation is actually quite impossible and even logically absurd.
How so?
SB: How can a blueprint or a self-organizing principle come to be in the absence of a designing architect?
velikovskys:
The first designing architect cannot come to be. If it came to be, then something or someone would have had to precede it, which means that it wouldn’t be first. So my question persists:
How can a blueprint or a self-organizing principle come to be in the absence of a designing architect?
Pav,
That the body-plans are non adaptive is an observation not a theory. A great observation but not a theory. His theory to explain these non adaptive body plans is at best vague and he really cannot define the forces that would cause the specific body plans. Toying with protein folding might lead some place but then that begs the question of where the proteins came from.
I am immune to what ever their hand waving is when it does not make any difference. I pointed out that Denton has put some more nails in the coffin of Neo Darwinism. I might add much larger than normal nails.
However, given that, we somehow have to explain the unbelievable variety of life forms in the world and my guess is that Darwinian processes can account for a fair amount of it. I am willing to defend it somewhat for trivial but important outcomes but not for the creation of novelties which is beyond the capabilities of Darwinian processes. I am essentially repeating Behe’s argument from the Edge of Evolution. It may be by accident we got Zebra stripes, a trivial outcome, or it could be by natural selection if it is shown it has some adaptive value. But not the enucleation of the red blood cell which is a real novelty.
I like Snoke’s comment about “descent with saltation.” It explains the world we see. After the saltation, genetic processes can operate to increase variety.
I don’t think that’s true. Biologists already accept that living things exist and evolve within the constraints of chemical and physical laws. If Denton is correct that would just add another set of higher order constraints.
If they disagree with Denton’s claims its because there is no evidence for those claims and they run counter to our current understanding.
SB:
The first designing architect cannot come to be. If it came to be, then something or someone would have had to precede it, which means that it wouldn’t be first. So my question persists:
How can a blueprint or a self-organizing principle come to be in the absence of a designing architect?</
Deus ex machina.
StephenB:
It is certainly true that design cannot come about using purely stochastic methods. However, and this is where I somewhat disagree with the ID hypothesis, it does not mean that design is impossible without full intelligence. All that is required for design, IMO, is the existence of sufficiently complex nonstochastic search methods.
For example, a search method that only seeks order and beauty (both of which are spiritual concepts) is bound to discover/create intelligent mechanisms and even lifeforms. This is important, IMO, because intelligence requires a physical mechanism. Creative intelligence requires both a creative mechanism and conscious/spiritual guidance.
Conclusion: There has to be a way to break the infinite regress problem. I think that the solution is to start with sufficiently complex nonstochastic search methods that are not originally intelligent but good enough to eventually stumble upon interesting designs. Such designs can be intelligent and can be used for more sophisticated searches. I conclude that intelligent design originates in the spiritual realm.
jerry:
Thanks for the clarification. I at first thought we were a long ways apart; but, from what you’ve said it appears we’re fairly close.
I rather suspect that we will uncover, as time goes on, some kinds of internal mechanisms of change. This falls, I believe, under the umbrella of Shapiro NGE (natural genetic engineering). My hunch is that it will be: 1. natural; 2. saltational, and 3. be directly related to internal mechanisms of the cell and genome (“internal constraints”).
What we now see as “adaptive,” is not, IMO, “chance”-driven. Behe’s EofE severely limits what “evolution” can do. Shapiro’s view, fully including epigenetics as it does, will, I believe, demonstrate that internally established mechanisms will account for much/most of the adaptions we see. Darwinism–as a theory of ‘chance’ variations–will be relegated to having very little to say about biology.
As to Snoke’s “descent with saltation,” I, along with Bill Dembski and others, have been saying that for a long time.
In the end—let’s face it, disappointing as it may be–we’re going to end up with “saltations,” and you can either say that this ‘saltational gap’ is spanned by “chance” (Darwinism, Neutral Drift), or via intelligent agency. The most logical answer is ‘intelligent agency’; but, there will be those who see it differently.
Ultimately, I believe that science will discover that the cell/genome phenomena operates as a “quantum computer.” The cell will be shown to have all the hallmarks of what humans will devise as a QC. Then, Darwinists will be in the position of saying that this incredibly complex and sophisticated thing we call a “quantum computer” happened to develop through ‘chance’ mechanisms. Talk about “faith.”
jerry:
“That the body-plans are non adaptive is an observation not a theory. A great observation but not a theory. His theory to explain these non adaptive body plans is at best vague and he really cannot define the forces that would cause the specific body plans. ”
I should have responded to this more fully. I was in a big hurry at the time.
Denton wants to take us back to Owens and the structuralist position. IOW, he feels, and I concur, that the presence of non-adaptive body plans is completely unexplained by Darwinian thought, thus invalidating it. While Darwinism is true around the edges, at heart, it is fundamentally flawed.
When facts disprove theory, it’s time for the theory to get thrown out. The structuralist position relies, yes, on internal constraints, something that is hidden from the eye. But Darwinism is the same thing.
When Darwin explains natural selection versus artificial selection, he basically is saying that NS scrutinizes a life form to a much greater degree than humans. IOW, what NS “sees,” humans cannot “see.” How is this any different than the supposed invisibility of “internal structures”? We, at least “see” some basis for “internal constraints”. Body-plans, constant for hundreds of millions of years, offer evidence of such “constraints.” OTOH, artificial breeders created “dogs.” How come NS, if it can “see” what humans cannot, was unable to bring this about?
These are just logical propositions. Darwinism can’t supply answers to these straight-forward queries. All we get is “Darwinese,” high-sounding jargon that at heart is completely void of any real content.
All the verbiage Darwinists bloviate with is no more than “hand-waving.” I don’t buy their hand-waving.
SB: How can a blueprint or a self-organizing principle come to be in the absence of a designing architect?
velikovskys
A machine cannot be the first organizing principle.
mapou
It is precisely because an infinite regress is impossible that an intelligent agent is required as the first cause of everything. Nothing else can play that role–not a law, not a machine, not a process.
Only an orderer can bring order into existence. Disorder cannot play that role. A cause cannot give what it does not have to give.
Pav,
My guess after reading your posts over the years, is that we differ very little on what we believe on evolution. My favorite speculation is various saltation events with genetics, epigenetics, the environment and chance leading to a large variety of life forms on the planet. The important thing was getting the ecologies right and that most interventions were for this reason.
Denton has done nothing to dispel this speculation. But it is a speculation and I am willing to be persuaded otherwise.
StephenB @ 19
What is the use of such statements ? It contributes nothing to the progress in any field.
StephenB:
I agree. What I disagree with is the claim by ID enthusiasts and proponents that the original orderer must be intelligent. The original or initial orderer only needs to be nonstochastic: it can just look for order and/or beauty.
Intelligence is necessarily one of the physical mechanisms created by the orderer(s). It cannot have a prior existence. And with the help of intelligence as a tool, the orderer(s) can design even more complex artifacts. There must be a directed evolution from primitive ordered systems to conscious but limited intelligent systems and finally, to more advanced or intelligently designed systems.
Intelligence is a causal/physical mechanism. This is undeniable, IMO. It, too, must be created. This means is cannot precede the creation of mechanisms. Therefore, something else must precede intelligence. That something, the orderer(s), necessarily exists in the spiritual realm.
The accident idea is indeed a retreat from the failure of historical evolution to explain things. They keep retreating under modern investigation.
Who has done a head count? It seems to me most evolutionists don;’t stress accidents. It certainly is not a part of what the public is taught.
ZEBRA STRIPES!!!
This is a accident?1. NOPE. Its case in point for why evolution doesn’t make sense.
The Zebra’s stripes are CLEARLY a important feature for a historic herd running creature to avoid predators picking them out while at the zebras heels.
Its a marginal protection. Its not the running away that protects the zebras. its the danger to a predator for missing a correct lunge.
By the way horses everywhere in the Asian wild show stripes sometimes in the lower legs. A memory of their past. Not just African horses.
Accidents to explain the glory of biology is just a last gasp.
denton makes the killer knockout blow that structures dominate biology and not selection on chance mutations.
Nature insists on laws of form . Its the law.
Not a chaos as evolution should have if it happened.
Who ordered the orderer?
Seversky:
Nobody. The orderers just are because they are abstract entities which can neither be created nor destroyed. Here’s how it works, in my view. We exist in a Yin-yang reality. Everything comes in opposite/complementary pairs. This means that reality consists of two opposite and complementary realms as explained below.
1. Physical realm. In this realm, entities can be created and destroyed. Examples are electrons, neutrons, photons, etc. They are the created physical entities. They, too, must come in complementary-opposite pairs, which explains the supersymmetry of the universe.
2. Spiritual realm. In this realm, entities can neither be created nor destroyed. They just are. This is the realm of the orderers, creators (constructors), destructors, consciousness, love, hate, order, beauty, etc. They are the creator spiritual entities.
As an aside, I hypothesize that consciousness continually creates and destroys certain physical entities in the brain, entities which are probably associated with electrical activity in certain synapses. This is how, I surmise, our spirits interact with the brain and give us our conscious sensations.
mapou
The original orderer must, indeed, be an intelligent agent. It can be nothing else.
The original orderer, which created matter from nothing, was, and must be, a pure spirit. Obviously, matter cannot create matter. That same pure spirit is the source of both order and beauty, just as it is the source of love, truth, and unity. If it were not so, there would be no beauty to search for.
Intelligence is not a physical mechanism. It is a non-physical capacity to arrange matter for a purpose.
It must have a prior existence. Intelligence can only come from intelligence. Matter has no intelligence and cannot, therefore, be the cause of intelligence.
To be sure, human intelligence must be created, but the infinite intelligence that Created the universe cannot be created. It is the Creator of all things, including matter and human intelligence.
Yes, I agree.
SB: Only an orderer can bring order into existence. Disorder cannot play that role. A cause cannot give what it does not have to give.
Me-Think
It is basic logic that a cause cannot give what it does not have to give. Without logic, it is impossible to think clearly. If one cannot think clearly, he cannot interpret evidence in a rational way.
StephenB @26,
I disagree with some of your points but it’s past my bedtime. I’ll see if I can make time tomorrow.
Seversky
The orderer did not come into existence. The orderer, better known as God, has always existed. Only someone who has always existed can create time/space/matter, which as we know, did come into existence. Only someone who has the capacity to order things can bring order to the cosmos.
Hi Seversky,
Who programmed the programmer?
#29 StephenB
I can understand how you find this explanation satisfying, enlightening and sustaining. I will not attack it.
But I, personally, find it extremely unsatisfying and, again my opinion, unscientific. Perhaps I get that partially from my mother. When I was very little and I asked lots and lots of questions she always tried to explain things mechanistically. She (almost) never resorted to ‘just because’. And she never, ever told me to stop asking questions.
And I think our difference reactions to your view is part of the deep-down split between ID proponents and those that favour unguided explanations.
Just a thought, no need to comment.
StephenB @ 27
True
This doesn’t follow logically.If something exist in spiritual realm (you agree @ 26 that orderer(s) exist in such realm), it cannot create matter because if spiritual realm is different from matter, or if matter was not an emergent property of spiritual realm, matter can’t be created. If Spiritual realm is composed -in part – of matter or if matter is emergent property of spiritual realm, then matter always existed.
Jerad:
ID has a testable methodology and unguided explanations do not. That is the difference between science and nonsense.
StephenB wrote:
As someone who has studied the brain and artificial intelligence for the last two decades, I can tell you that you are most certainly mistaken. There is no question that intelligence is a function of the brain, a causal mechanism. This has been shown over and over in the last 100 years. Causality only exists in the physical world. As a result, both intelligence and life originated by the actions of nonstochastic ordering/creative entities in the spiritual realm.
By the way, this is my last comment in this thread because I suspect that I am arguing with a doctrinarian or Christian fundamentalist. Darwinists/materialists and Christian fundamentalists share a common trait: they are dogmatists to a fault. Good luck.
SB: To be sure, human intelligence must be created, but the infinite intelligence that Created the universe cannot be created. It is the Creator of all things, including matter and human intelligence.
Me__Think
We know matter didn’t always exist. It was, therefore, brought into existence by something other than matter. So the question is this: What other kind of thing could cause matter to come into existence. It cannot be an impersonal or immaterial law of some kind because a law cannot decide to create or not create. A law can only do what it does over and over again. A law has no creative capacity. Thus, only a personal, non-material (spiritual) Creator that exists outside of time can bring matter (and time) into existence. Since matter or an impersonal law cannot produce human intelligence, only a non-material. personal, spiritual being can do it. It is only because spirit is different than matter that it can bring matter into existence from nothing. Being different from matter, it cannot be, as you suggest, “composed–in part–of matter.”
SB:The orderer did not come into existence. The orderer, better known as God, has always existed. Only someone who has always existed can create time/space/matter, which as we know, did come into existence. Only someone who has the capacity to order things can bring order to the cosmos.
ellazimm
Recall that I made an argument. Arguments do not need feelings of satisfaction to be legitimate.
It wasn’t a scientific argument. It was a philosophical argument. Note that I didn’t appeal to data or measure anything. There are some things that we can figure out by just using our minds.
Recall that I didn’t say “just because.” I provided an argument based on the fact that effects do not occur in the absence of sufficient causes.
From my perspective, it appears that those who disagree with me do so because they think science is the only way to arrive at the truth.
I appreciate your thoughts.
Human intelligence is obviously an interplay between consciousness and the brain. Just damage your brain (physically or chemically) and see what happens to your ability to reason.
SB: Intelligence is not a physical mechanism. It is a non-physical capacity to arrange matter for a purpose.
mapou
You are laboring under the burden of many unexamined assumptions. That a material organ called the brain is necessary for thinking does not, in any way, indicate that it is sufficient for thinking. I would argue that a non-material faculty of intellect is also required.
Nor is it the case that a Supernatural intelligence needs a material brain to think or act. Indeed, I have already shown why that cannot be the case. The first cause cannot be material. If you would like to argue against it, feel free to do so.
No one has ever proven that “causality exists only in the material world.” That is a philosophical claim that you cannot defend.
Ad hominem arguments do not persuade.
mike 1962
That there is an “interplay” shows that two things are involved, namely the mind and brain. No one questions the role of the human brain in thinking. I am challenging the claim that an immaterial mind is not needed.
How thoughts and ideas are processed is one thing. Where they find their origin is something else entirely. Thoughts and ideas have no weight and are not extended in space. Matter (the brain) cannot produce non matter–that is–matter cannot bring immaterial thoughts into existence. It is more reasonable to say that immaterial thoughts originate in immaterial minds and are processed, to some extent, through a material brain.
A brief comment about laws. Laws are not continuous, but discontinuous. If I said some objects fall when you drop them, others float, and others do a little dance, then you when not have a law. Laws have the form: A–>B, “event A implies observation B”. Then if I say “not-B”, I immediately known “then not-A”.
This division into two categories, or Aristotle’s Law of the Excluded Middle is what makes laws “laws” and not “rules of thumb”. Okay, so when Denton talks about “laws of form”, he is saying something about forms being digital, all or nothing, without a continuous gray scale. Eg. “the pentadactyl law” holds for animals, and we don’t find 0-fingers or 1-fingered animals or 3 1/2 fingered animals. Digits are digital.
Now suppose I am building an electronic model of an organism, and I say “let frequencies of oscillation correspond to digits”. My circuit is designed to oscillate at any frequency I want, how then would I force the system to have five, and only five frequencies of oscillation? Well, I could have a computer (e.g. digital information), use a look-up table. This look-up table could be anything, three frequencies, five, or eight frequencies. Then the fact of a “law” would require that everybody uses the same lookup table–which of course is an arbitrary “digital” answer, a frozen accident, a lazy programmer.
Or we could put an analog circuit into the electronic design (non-digital), that collects echoes from its environment and reamplifies them (feedback). Now of all the possible feedback frequencies, the designer could chose five frequencies that have higher “gain”, higher amplification. So no matter what noise I feed into the simulation, it always responds with five frequencies. In this 2nd case, there’s a more subtle “law of form” at work, which uses feedback to convert a continuous variable into a “digital” variable.
The feedback may look innocuous. It might have come about because of unavoidable microphone pickup, where the mike was intended for some other purpose. The point is, no matter what other reason was found for the existence of the microphone, its feedback forced the system into stable (digital) modes. So then “feedback” is the source of the “law of form”, and Denton is correct, there is a “structuralism” in electronic circuits resulting from unavoidable feedback in the circuits. Each feedback having its own form, intereractions of feedback leading to multiple forms.
So structuralism is a poorly defined attempt to get at some of these intrinsic feedback loops made possible by the new-found (as in appearance of complex life) sensory and adaptive capabilities.
Mapou
Decades of studying don’t settle things,. Evolutionists say that and its worthless.
Intelligence has nothing to do with the brain except in the use of the memory. There is no reason to see the brain as the origin of smarts. the soul concept explains it better and the REAL memory operation.
Thats why AI can never exist. no soul.
Byers,
I swear. Sometimes, I’m ashamed to be counted among Christians. Some of you people are the reason that Darwinism and materialism have flourished as much as they have. AI not only already exists, it is getting better all the time. Check this out:
Atlas, the Next Generation
Most of you can expect to see fully intelligent (albeit, unconscious) machines in your lifetime. They will replace humans in almost every job: lawyers, doctors, CEOs, astronauts, engineers, teachers, secretaries, cooks, nurses, maids, waiters, babysitters, farmers, soldiers, etc.
I say ‘almost’ because intelligent machines will have no sense of the beautiful. They will only recognize that humans like certain types of patterns and call them beautiful.
Finally, unless the world changes its evil ways drastically, we will use intelligent machines to annihilate one another. We live in interesting times.
People should read Asimov’s “Foundation and Earth.” He explored this problem between a civilization that accepted the work of robots and the civilization that got rid of them.
He couldn’t answer the question at the end of the book as to where humans must go to flourish. However, he makes the point at the end that using robots is a dead end for humans.
“Byers,
I swear. Sometimes, I’m ashamed to be counted among Christians. Some of you people are the reason that Darwinism and materialism have flourished as much as they have. AI not only already exists, it is getting better all the time. Check this out:”
Mapou,
I don’t think anybody in the right frame of mind considers Byers as an example of a Christian.
Besides, as Jesus said himself that not everyone claiming to be his follower is necessary a Christian. Only the one who actually follows his example as closely as possible by doing the works of what being a Christian is required.
J-Mac:
In that case, you’re not a Christian either. I say this because I know for a fact that no human being can follow Jesus’s example. All one needs to be a Christian, as the scriptures clearly indicate, is to believe that God loves us dearly and died for our sins that we may be resurrected in the last day and have eternal life. Anything else is self-righteousness or some self-serving church racket, IMO.
Indeed, if anyone believes he or she needs some cockamamie church, pastor or priest for his or her salvation, he or she is already doomed.
Just saying.
mapou
You appear to have contradicted yourself. If causality only exists in the physical world, how can an entity in the spiritual realm cause life and intelligence to exist?
StephenB:
I hypothesise, based a strong belief that Yin-Yang is the basis of reality, that there are two realms, the physical realm and the spiritual realm. I further hypothesise that change (causality) can only occur in the physical realm and that the spiritual realm just is. That is to say, it cannot change and nothing in it can be created or destroyed. In other words, there is no causality in the spiritual realm. Causality is a physical phenomenon.
In this model, the only change that can be performed by certain creative spiritual entities only happens in the physical realm.
The above is why I believe that most Christian philosophers are out to lunch. All this talk about God being a purely spiritual, infinite being is nonsense. IMO, God has a living physical body just like every other creature. Furthermore, God’s body did not always exist according to the scriptures. We are told that Yahweh said that was the first. He is also called the “ancient of days” in several places. Nobody can be ancient unless one used to be young.
Although it is still evolving, my worldview has changed tremendously over the years. I think I have arrived at a plausible understanding. But everybody must perform his or her own research (search and you shall find). Good luck to you on your research.
“All one needs to be a Christian, as the scriptures clearly indicate, is to believe that God loves us dearly and died for our sins that we may be resurrected in the last day and have eternal life.”
Isn’t this what Byers also believes? What makes you so ashamed of him then?
J-Mac:
My understanding is that Byers is a Christian fundamentalist who worships the Bible is the inerrant word of God. This makes him an idolater, IMO. The Bible is one of many books that one should use to search for the truth and it is certainly not infallible. In fact, it’s loaded with nonsense.
Byers believes he already knows the truth and that the earth and the universe is a few thousand years old, among other crap. He also frequently rails against homosexuals and such. My understanding is that everybody who has faith in God is forgiven and has already received the gift of eternal life. It does not matter if you’re a liar, murderer, homosexual, prostitute, gangbanger or what not.
Mapou
According to the Christian Scriptures, God is a pure spirit. Matter did not exist until He created it. That means that God did not create in the physical realm, He brought the physical realm into existence.
In terms of the Christian world-view, God is not a creature: God is the Creator. A creature is something that is made. God, as a pure (and eternal) spirit was not made. That same pure spirit created the human being, which is a composite of spirit (soul, intellect, will) and matter (body, brain). The intellect is a spiritual faculty for thinking just as the will is a spiritual faculty for willing. Only the spiritual aspect of man can love, think, and make moral decisions. Yes, the brain, as a physical organ, is involved, but it is not the source of thoughts or sentiments. That is why God’s spirit can illuminate and inspire our spirit.
Even if the spiritual component was immune from being changed, it would not follow that it could not change other things. A human’s spiritual mind cannot build a house, but it can create a vision for the finished product. Thus, it is an agent (and a cause) of change. But it doesn’t end there. Angels, as well as God, can physically move things even though they are pure spirits. The human spirit does not have that kind of natural power.
It is true that God the Son, as pure spirit, took on human flesh in time/space/history in order to save mankind. However, God, as God, is outside of time. That is why God the Father and God the Holy Spirit do not have bodies. It is not God’s nature to have a body. Unlike the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Son, by virtue of the incarnation, now has two natures, Divine and human.
In that context, “ancient” means eternal.
I have the same good wishes for you.
It may not matter if you were once that way, but it does matter if you remain that way.
I should have taken my own advice and not continue in this thread. I hate sounding like a preacher man. See you guys around.
“My understanding is that everybody who has faith in God is forgiven and has already received the gift of eternal life. It does not matter if you’re a liar, murderer, homosexual, prostitute, gangbanger or what not.”
I hope you don’t mind me asking where this understanding of yours came from? What is it based on?
BTW: I don’t think it is worth wasting anybody’s time to try to comprehend what Byers thinks and believes. We would have to begin with trying to comprehend what he is actually trying to say. I don’t know about you, but I absolutely don’t understand what he is trying to convey and asking additional questions makes things worst.
For about 6 months now, I’ve been ignoring his comments and although Larry Moran banned him a while ago at sandwalk, I think he still uses him as an example of “creationists’ stupidity”. I totally agree.
Mapou
Your equation for salvation is accurate. I don’t rail at gays but indeed insust they are in the wrong if active. There is a gay aggresion against civilization.
Your ideas about robots tacking over human jobs is crazy wrong. They are not thinking beings but primitive memory machines. Your kist of jobs not wanted by future humans is off the wall.
Never mind these high positions. Just prove they can do a low position.
AI is impossible. id these jobs need intelligence as opposed to mere memorization then we can count on them staying humanoid and not android.
After studying the information in the article I have to say the Theory of Intelligent Design (I defend) is very structuralist. In that case the all-knowing all-powerful behavior that creates life is from the “behavior of matter”, which never needs to guess what actions to take and exists everywhere and in every living thing. This is in a way more than intelligent behavior, and becomes what we see through our microscopes and telescopes.
What I see Larry saying is that scientifically speaking “structuralism” does not argue for ex-nihilo type creation or philosophically speaking “suspends natural laws” therefore those who are are being “IDiots”.
Skipping over the last 30 posts, I simply want to add something to what I posted earlier.
I’m reading through Denton as we speak. The nub of Denton’s argument is this: the biological structures we see associated with body plans are non-adaptive. Hence, Darwin’s theory cannot explain them. Hence, Darwinism reigns in an extremely limited domain.
The counterargument to Denton’s claim is that, indeed, adaptive gradualism (=Darwinism) can explain these ‘structures.’
Meyers’ argument, via Darwin’s Doubt, is that the emergence of so many different body plans in so short of time (=Cambrian Explosion), that ‘adaptive gradualism’ can in no way explain them.
This is THE argument. Logic should prevail. But, in the end, biases will likely win out. At least for the short run. Mounting evidence contra Darwinism, however, points inevitably in the direction of a new “extended” synthesis. I.e., neo-Darwinism will be shuttled to the one side, where it belongs.
PaV says,
No. The counterargument is; yes, strict Darwinism cannot explain everything in evolution. That’s why strict Darwinism was abandoned about 45 years ago. That’s why modern evolutionary biologists are quite comfortable explaining non-adaptive evolution using naturalistic explanations.
This raises an interesting question. Why don’t IDiots know this?
Moran:
Again Larry proves to be willfully ignorant. No one cares about drift because drift is not a creative force. No one says that ATP synthase just drifted into existence. That is because there is no difference between that and magic. Natural selection is supposed to offer that magic bullet via a stepwise process to construct such a system.
Why don’t IDiots know this?
Because UD has only been around for a fraction of that time and most ID critics we see argue for Darwindiddit therefore ID is false.
But now we’re happy to have you here. 🙂
Strange question. Well, maybe idiots may not know this but those who are knowledgeable about ID certainly know it. It has been discussed on UD several times.
There is no naturalistic theory though that can explain novelties. If you have one let us know what it is. Examples would help too. Denton could use your help too since he doesn’t have a theory either that would explain novelties. Are you and he in the same boat on this?
Moran:
Moran, like all materialists and Darwinists, is severely math challenged. The combinatorial explosion defecates on your naturalistic explanations, every single one of them.
Larry Moran:
45 years ago? You mean right about the time that Motoo Kimura presented his Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution?
Would you like to read my copy of his book? Just asking.
May I quote him?
We note also that accumulation of very slightly deleterious mutants by random drift is essentially equivalent to the deterioration of the environment, and definitely adaptive gene substitutions must occur from time to time to save the species from extinction. [This doesn’t sound too good for neutral drift, does it?] I have to emphasize again that the above argument does not mean tat adaptive changes do not occur at the level of information macromolecules. On the contrary, the marvelous function of molecular machineries on which life depends must be the products of positive Darwinian selection. [Heavens, we just can’t seem to get rid of Darwinian mechanisms, can we?] However, most of the molecules that we are studying now, such as hemoglobins, cytochrome c, tansfer RNA, etc, must have had their essential designs perfected very far in the past; the changes thereafter have been mostly variations on the the theme.[p. 115]
Maybe I’m reading Kimura wrong here, but it sure looks like he’s saying that the proteins we deal with were built up via Darwinian mechanisms over an extended period of time, and that all that neutral drift accomplishes is but “variations on the theme”: IOW, “molecular evolution,” in contrast to ‘biological’ evolution.
Simply put: neutral drift doesn’t have the ‘firepower’ to explain the “structures” we see in animals.
I’m afraid you’re not ‘out of the woods’ here.
PaV says,
Yes. That was one of many books and scientific publications that appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Collectively they gave rise to an increased emphasis on non-adaptive mechanisms in evolution. By the time of the Spandrels paper in 1979, most knowledgeable evolutionary biologists knew that Denton’s current statements would misrepresent the views of knowledgeable scientists.
Since then, we have plenty of examples of structures that appear non-adaptive and, therefore, do NOT require a strict Darwinian explanation as Denton claims. I gave you the example of the shapes of leaves on maple trees and the number of digits on vertebrate appendages. There are plenty of others but that’s sufficient to make the point ….
IT IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE IN 2016 THAT THE NATURALISTIC EVOLUTION OF STRUCTURE REQUIRES A STRICT DARWINIAN INTERPRETATION.
So, why do IDiots not know this? Why does Denton appear to not know this? Is he ignorant of modern evolutionary theory or is he lying to you?
You may want to quibble about the correctness of modern evolutionary biology—in fact you just did—but that’s not the point. The very fact that you admit that modern evolutionary biologist do have non-adaptive explanations of structure (whether correct or not) puts you at odds with Denton who denies that they even exist and therefore doesn’t have to refute them.
LoL! @ Larry Moran- Please tell us how to test the claim that drift produced the shapes of leaves and the number of digits. Even if you add natural selection to drift you still can’t test the claim.
And if an explanation is incorrect or untestable then how is it an explanation? Denton is right as just-so stories do not belong in science and as such do not exist. So Denton does not have to refute that which is not part of science. Duh.
Moran,
Nobody cares that Darwinists added yet more non-explanations to a failed pseudoscientific theory 45 years ago. Except you, apparently. It is still the same pile of crap with just more crap added to the top.
Mapou- You forget that even non-explanations are explanations if they somehow support evolutionism. 🙄
Larry:
We’re worlds apart. I don’t think that naturalistic explanations exist for non-adaptive structures. Can it, and does it, allow for “variations on the theme”? Yes.
For there to be any possibility at all of random drift/neutral drift arriving at such structures would require boatloads full of non-functional (“junk”) DNA to tinker with. I am sure that this is the reason you so oppose ENCODE. But I think you’ve booked a ticket on the Titanic.
Time will hopefully sort all these things out. In the meantime, I’m in Denton’s camp.
PaV says,
Then you are just dead wrong. Read,
Lukeš, J., Archibald, J. M., Keeling, P. J., Doolittle, W. F., and Gray, M. W. (2011) How a neutral evolutionary ratchet can build cellular complexity. IUBMB life, 63(7), 528-537. [doi: 10.1002/iub.489/epdf]
Lynch, M. (2007) The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(Suppl 1), 8597-8604. [doi: 10.1073/pnas.0702207104]
Nei, M. (2005) Selectionism and neutralism in molecular evolution. Molecular biology and evolution, 22(12), 2318-2342. [doi: 10.1093/molbev/msi242]
There’s plenty more where they came from.
I understand (barely) why you might dispute these non-adaptive explanations of phenotypic evolution but to deny that they even exist makes you look like an IDiot.
The first paper is a post hoc, ad hoc explanation based on the assumption of evolutionism and the fact that natural selection is powerless to explain the systems on its own. This has not been actually demonstrated.
But they do have a testable concept. They just need to be able to test it.
Larry:
As Virgil pointed out, the first paper leaves a lot to desire. Here’s the summary:
Complex cellular machines and processes are commonly believed to be products of selection, and it is typically understood to be the job of evolutionary biologists to show how selective advantage can account for each step in their origin and subsequent growth in complexity. Here, we describe how complex machines might instead evolve in the absence of positive selection through a process of ‘‘presuppression,’’ first termed constructive neutral evolution (CNE) more than a decade ago. If an autonomously functioning cellular component acquires mutations that make it dependent for function on another, preexisting component or process, and if there are multiple ways in which such dependence may arise, then dependence inevitably will arise and reversal to independence is unlikely. Thus, CNE is a unidirectional evolutionary ratchet leading to complexity, if complexity is equated with the number of components or steps necessary to carry out a cellular process. CNE can explain ‘‘functions’’ that seem to make little sense in terms of cellular economy, like RNA editing or splicing, but it may also contribute to the complexity of machines with clear benefit to the cell, like the ribosome, and to organismal complexity overall. We suggest that CNE-based evolutionary scenarios are in these and other cases less forced than the selectionist or adaptationist narratives that are generally told.
“If”, “may”, “might”. Wiggle words. And the end result? The “suggestion” that this basically CNE is “less forced” than adaptationist narratives. So they give us a ‘new’ narrative.
“If” I had a billion dollars, then I would be rich. But I don’t; so I’m not.
I looked at CNE some time back and did not find anything there that I thought was of real substance. I guess this is the latest go-around.
Larry, bottom line, the only thing that would make me believe in a process that is presented as being “stepwise” would be the presence of intermediates: fossil intermediates, and extant examples of intermediacy–and not examples at a species level like similar beetles. I suppose something could be proposed that I thought powerful enough to have a shot at explaining the degree of complexity that nature contains, but as things stand now I have no idea where such a proposal would come from. With the gaps that do exist and are known, one either says with Darwin that small, simple steps have actually spanned the gap but we no longer see them (although the fossil record is rather complete and the intermediates are not known), or, as with Denton, one says that the built in logic of natural forces involve ‘internal constraints’ that have brought these higher taxonomic structures about, or, which seems most plausible, one posits the involvement of an intelligent being. As you know, I vote for the latter.
Larry,
I started looking at Nei’s paper. It looks interesting. But I’m under the weather right now, so I’m deferring my reading of it. Hope you understand.
PaV, out of curiosity I was wondering where you heard or read that the “fossil record is rather complete”. As someone who knows how much much much more work needs to be done I find that misinformation to be insulting, very disturbing.
Gary:
I don’t consider the fossil record to be “complete” at all. There are large gaps. Per Gould: punctuated equilibria. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression, and thanks for allowing me to correct that wrong impression.
What I meant to say was that we are now in a place in time where we can contradict Darwin’s assumption that the fossil record is “not complete,” and hence the possibility remains that all the needed intermediates will somewhere now be found. Denton addresses the issue of the fossil record and makes clear that when it comes to the “structures” which define higher taxa, there is no lead up to them, as, for example, with the feather, limbs of the tetrapod, amniotic sac, etc.
So, I meant that the fossil record is “complete” only in the sense that we’ve scoured the planet and haven’t found a fossil record prior to the Cambrian–this was Darwin’s expectation.
PaV to be more precise you said:
We’ve “scoured the planet” my arse!
The truth is that you and the rest of the “IDiots” are too busy with your religious agendas to even care about what has so far been found.
The fossil evidence is exactly what was predicted by the Theory of Intelligent Design that I defend. But who in the ID movement should care about ID science either right? To hell with all science, even all you are responsible for presenting. Just smother it too under bullshit then let your self-righteousness condone all your sins.
And by the way ID theory also predicts there was no MULTICELLULAR INTELLIGENCE until just before the Cambrian, which explains why you did not find anything like that existing before then. Duh?
GaryGaulin:
Speaking of “arses,” no one needs your arrogant rants here. Take it somewhere else.
You accuse IDers of having “religious agendas,” which is completely inaccurate given that ATHEISTS hold the ID position, while you, OTOH, have an obvious agenda.
PaV scolds:
I admit that all concerned have agendas of one kind or another. In fact intelligence itself is proving to be inherently totally control-freak in behavior, therefore we might as well embrace our thoughts of world domination of one thing or another in a forum like this one where that is encouraged.
Without our normally dividing up over whatever can be hypothesized to rant over science would go nowhere. We need and deserve each other. It’s the scientific method.