Evidence Against Chance and Necessity (Also Known As Darwinism) is Evidence for Design

Joseph,

Human reproduction does not require ideal conditions. Unless “ideal” is a wide and varied concept.

Nevertheless, it does appear that non-living matter can have offspring. madsen

madsen, Human reproduction does not require ideal conditions. Unless "ideal" is a wide and varied concept. Joseph

iconofid, EVERY time we have observed CSI and knew the cause it has ALWAYS been via agency involvement- ALWAYS. Now if we ever observe CSI arising without agency involvement then you will have a point. As for chemical reactions- great- just show us that chemical reactions can string together functional macro-molecules. Joseph

Icon: 1] The ultimate origin of FSCI is an origins question. 2] The origin of instances of FSCI where we may observe it, is an empirical one. And,t eh answer is: intelligence. 3] Since FSCI is about functional information that sits in very large configuration spaces, finding it by non-directed contingency is inherently very hard to do, indeed, credibly will exhaust the probabilistic resources of our observed universe. 4] Polymers can form long chains indeed, but for those chains to be code-bearing and to work together in complex information processing algorithmic systems is a matter of extremely high contingency and functionality. [We are dealing not with orderly sequence complexity or random sequence complexity but with functional sequence complexity.] 5] On empirically massively supported induction, FSCI traces to intelligence, i.e it manifests purposefully directed contingency. that may not sit comfortably with evolutionary materialist views of origins, but it has this weighty merit: it is empirically warranted, massively so, independent of one's worldviews. 6] So much so, tha tit would be wise to adjust one's worldview to comport with that instead of asking for stochastic miracles while imposing Lewontinan a priorism to question-beggingly exclude the obvious and empirically well supported alternative, as in:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [NY review of Books, 1997. Now made "official" by NAS, NSTA, NCSE, judge Jones et al]

GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Joseph quoting iconofid: "And I repeat, for the umpteenth time, FSCI cannot be a prerequisite for its own existence." Joseph: "Why not? Just saying it doesn’t make it so." Because if so, it could not exist, obviously. I.D. is not an explanatory theory for the existence of FSCI. Joseph: "The question of FCSI/ CSI/ SC is one of ORIGINS." So what are the origins of FCSI, CSI, and SC. Can you answer without invoking an agency that would require them? I suggest "chemical reactions". iconofid

Joseph,

Actually there were two and one aided the other in its replication. And even then it was only under ideal conditions.

True, but the same could be said about human reproduction. madsen

The RNA enzymes that Joyce and Lincoln are working with are categorized as nonliving, but are able to reproduce themselves.

Actually there were two and one aided the other in its replication. And even then it was only under ideal conditions. Joseph

Joseph,

What does that mean, exactly? Can non-living matter have offspring?

I would say if we were talking about a "complex" organism such as a mammal, then it's sure to have parents in the usual sense. On the other hand, there could be borderline cases. The RNA enzymes that Joyce and Lincoln are working with are categorized as nonliving, but are able to reproduce themselves. madsen

madsen:

I would conclude that if you show me a particular organism, then it’s probably a safe bet that it is the offspring of parent(s).

What does that mean, exactly? Can non-living matter have offspring? Joseph

Joseph,

madsen, It has been all of the world’s experience that only life begets life. What do you conclude from that?

I would conclude that if you show me a particular organism, then it's probably a safe bet that it is the offspring of parent(s). I honestly don't know what I would think in your revised bulldozer scenario. That's a very difficult but interesting question. madsen

kairofocus, In that case we run a targeted search to replace the "m" with a space thereby turning "malice" into " alice"... Joseph

madsen, It has been all of the world's experience that only life begets life. What do you conclude from that? What would happen if you didn't have any experience with machines and machine shops. You lived in the Amazon Rain Forrest and never seen anything but the flora and fauna of your area. One day while hunting you came across a clearing- an area that was full of trees just last moon. In that clearing is a bulldozer... That is another scenario to play with. Joseph

Joseph: You might be right too. But, we must bear in mind that there may be malice afoot too. G kairosfocus

madsen: Re:My experience is that bulldozers are designed and built by intelligent beings. Therefore I concluded the alien bulldozer had the same origin. Now, we reason thusly:

My experience is that bulldozers [instantiations of FSCI and/or irreducible complexity] are designed and built by intelligent beings. Therefore I concluded the alien bulldozer [manifestations of same in the heart of the cell] had the same origin. [On inference to best explanation.]

GEM of TKI kairosfocus

DonaldM,

But I think we’ve beat this poor horse to death!

Yes, it looks like we'll have to agree to disagree for now. Thanks for the discussion. madsen

Joseph,

What prevents nature, operating freely, over many years, from cobbling together a bulldozer? Heck it is by far less complex than a living organism.

Well, my reasoning regarding the bulldozer's origin is not so much based on complexity as it is on analogy. My experience is that bulldozers are designed and built by intelligent beings. Therefore I concluded the alien bulldozer had the same origin. DonaldM insists that I must have drawn my conclusion based on the "specified complexity" of the machine, but I really don't think that's the case. I have no idea how to compute any measure of the specified complexity of a bulldozer or a living organism. Some informal notion of SC might have played a role in my reasoning, but I'm basing my conclusion more on the fact that I would recognize the overall structure and components (gears etc.) of the bulldozer which I take it would appear to be the product of a machine shop. All that being said, I would therefore conclude the bulldozer was constructed, as are 100% of bulldozers on earth. 0% have been cobbled together by nature, AFAIK.

That is the bald assertion anyway. However there isn’t any genetic evidence that would demonstrate that a bird could “evolve” from a non-bird.

This last statement could be true, but there are other kinds of evidence---so it's not exactly a bald assertion. I'm not sure what DonaldM's position is on the origin of birds. madsen

madsen

On the other hand, a bird is the product of a millions-of-years long process. I am not forced to posit its origin in a single step. Why is it not possible that this bird belongs to a sequence of organisms in which this “specified complexity” you refer to increased over time, and that at some point in the distant past, its remote ancestor’s specified complexity was below whatever threshold you use for inferring design?

You can posit whatever you like. What you can not do is demonstrate it, and that is the point of Gil's OP. The systemic, global failure of evolution to explain specified complexity in biological systems in terms of unguided chance and/or necessity is a negation and becomes confirmation of the alternative: intelligent design. That's the point. I don't know how else to say it or make it clear. But I think we've beat this poor horse to death! DonaldM

kairofocus, My PoV on destructive viruses and other destructive parasites is that they are the result of random effects on both them and us. IOW they may have very well been part of a good design at first and then things started to deteriorate. And that is why knowledge is so important- the point being is if we gain knowledge of how the design was supposed to be then perhaps we can divert it back to that point. Targeted search so to speak... Joseph

Joseph, re icon: I too have answered Icon on the status of viruses; which turn out to be more than passingly similar to the computer version of the same. So, the root design issue is the observed COMPUTER in the heart of the cell, for which the virus is in effect a hijacking program. [It seems too that some viruses are usable as injectors of DNA to reprogram organisms, as a design tool.] Computers manifest massive FSCI, and are unquestionably irreducibly complex. they are observed to be produced by design. So, it is reasonable on inference to best explanation, to see that the cell is the product of design. Clever design, too. in that context, the existence of destructive viruses is highly suggestive of a certain parable of wheat and tares sown by an enemy to disrupt. (For sci fi fans: Are viruses evidence of a primordial bio- war among the designer[s] and engineers of life on earth? GEM of TKI kairosfocus

iconofid: The question of FCSI/ CSI/ SC is one of ORIGINS. And until we can study the intelligent designer(s) we cannot even say that it/ they had an origin. Ya see ID is NOT about the designer(s). And you appear to be forcing it to be. Joseph

iconofid:

And, according to your own arguments, information rich systems do not require intelligent design.

My arguments say that information-rich systems cannot arise via nature, operating freely. And every information-rich system that had to have come about from scratch requires agency involvement. Joseph

iconofid:

Yet no-one answers my questions about functional proviruses. Is their FSCI chance or design?

I have already answered you. It takes science to answer that question. Research and time.

And I repeat, for the umpteenth time, FSCI cannot be a prerequisite for its own existence.

Why not? Just saying it doesn't make it so. Joseph

madsen:

As the bulldozer was clearly constructed from scratch in one step or generation, the only alternative to design is a tornado in a junkyard scenario, which is virtually impossible.

What prevents nature, operating freely, over many years, from cobbling together a bulldozer? Heck it is by far less complex than a living organism.

On the other hand, a bird is the product of a millions-of-years long process.

That is the bald assertion anyway. However there isn't any genetic evidence that would demonstrate that a bird could "evolve" from a non-bird. Joseph

David Kellogg:

I’m willing to accept that FCSI (or its scrambled variants) has a more or less stable meaning. However, it seems more to be a philosophical than a scientific term; in any event, the scientific community has utterly ignored it.

Which "scientific community" are you talking about? And what do they have that is rigorously defined? Joseph

PPPS: A common objection to say highlighting that in the heart of the cell, in and surrounding DNA we find a computer, is to point out that life forms reproduce. But in fact, von Neumann in the 1940's highlighted that automata could be self-replicating if they have a parts-manufacturing and assembly system, fed by a stored blueprint (and of course with suitable quality-control checks etc). that is precisely what we have discovered in the cell ever since 1953. We don't fully know how to do it ourselves today [especially the building of self-assembling, self-maintaining factories], but we see how it is in-principle possible. So, it turns out the cell embeds a more sophisticated computer than the one sitting on your lap or desktop. Ability to reproduce itself is a sign -- not of the power of blind chance and necessity to create function beyond what we can do at present -- but of more sophisticated design than we yet have achieved. kairosfocus

c --> Similarly, random polymers of large string length are as an overwhelming rule, non-functional: . . . wehfhaisdhbhwdgfuogu . . . d --> however, in the cell, many complex molecules [with C-atom chains of up to 100's or 1,000's] are very specifically manufactured, step by step by the cell's DNA- RNA- Ribosome- Enzyme system (including these molecules) based on stored codes and instructions in the DNA. these then work together to carry out the functions of life. And, fairly simple derangements of these molecules can very often be massively destructive to function. e --> In short, we are looking at islands of integrated functionality, in vast seas of non-functional configurations. f --> And, what works in one context, if displaced to another will usually not work. (Think about how you have to have the particular spare part for the particular model and year of your car. Not just any shock absorber or fuel filter or sparking plug will work in just any car. [I do wish there had been a bit more standardisation, though . . . sigh.) g --> In short, the FSCI concept -- functionally specific, complex information -- is very familiar from the world of engineering, and indeed entities that exhibit FSCI are routinely seen to be the products of design. h --> That is, FSCI, per massive empirical support, is a reliable sign of intelligent design. i --> This is supported as well by the search challenge in large configuration spaces. if a functioning item requires about 1,000 bits of information to specify it, then the number of possible configurations is 2^1,000 ~ 10^301. j --> This is about ten times the SQUARE of the number of quantum states of our observed universe across its reasonable lifespan, 10^150 states. So, the observed universe acting as a search engine, could not sample more than 1 in 10^150 of the3 possible configs. k --> What that means is this: at random configs are overwhelmingly likely to be non-functional. And, absent a "broadcast" that tells such non-functional configs the direction and/or distance to the nearest island of function, random walks in the config space are very unlikely indeed to find themselves on the shores of islands of function, before exhausting the search resources of our observed universe. l --> This is the reason why the Weasel program is set up to broadcast warmer/colder, to attract "nonsense" -- i.e. non-functional -- phrases to the target phrase. It is also why egvo mat advocates so desperately want to insulate theories of climbing up the gentler slopes of Mt improbable on Dr Moreau's Isle Improbable through differential functionality of competing populations, from the question of getting to the shores of the island in the first place. m --> But, evolution by random variation and natural selection is a hill-climbing theory, not a shore-finding theory. So, evolutionary materialism is in trouble to find a good explanation for the origin of life, and for the origin of body-plan level biodiversity. It works for trivial things like temporary lengthening of Galapagos Island Finch beaks, but fails to cogently address the origin and major diversification of life. n --> Why is that? ANS: The OOL -- on examination of the DNA of unicellular organisms -- credibly requires at least 600,000 bits of information, and the DNA increments for major body plans requires probably 10 - 100+ millions of bits. All of which has to be in place for first function to work, which is the baseline from which we can then see climbing up to the peaks of more or less optimal life functionality. o --> That is what prof Lewontin informs us they are NOT teaching our kids in bio classes, in high school or in college (in their self- confessed haste to get rid of what they despise: God- consciousness in our civilisation), and that is what the objectors to FSCI are so desperately opposed to and are ever so eager to distract our attention from. _______________ So, let's pose a little challenge to DK, et al: address a - o above, and show us where it fails on comparative difficulties, anchored by empirical evidence relevant to body plan diversity of life and OOL. Otherwise, your objections to FSCI and the wider design inference tied to it ever since Orgel raised he concept, are simply specious and/or distractive. GEM of TKI PS: The above is simply a summary of fairly easily accessible information, starting with the WACs and glossary above. PPS: Phil Toolkit 101 on comparative difficulties analysis. kairosfocus

Onlookers: It is instructive to remind ourselves of the original post by Gil: ______________ >>There are two options: 1) design (foresight and planning), and 2) the materialistic laws of physics, chemistry, and probability – which are purported to have produced all biological phenomena, from the information-processing machinery of the cell to the human mind. Option 2) might have been believable in the 19th century, when it was thought that life was fundamentally simple, but it is completely unsupportable in light of modern science. The preponderance of scientific evidence and mathematical analysis weighs overwhelming in support of design, as a proof by contradiction. Let us not hear about “self-organization.” Sodium chloride forms salt crystals, and water freezes into snowflakes, but salt crystals and snowflakes contain no information (other than that about how the molecules mechanically interact as they coalesce), and they certainly don’t form information-processing machinery. Of course, there is always the possibility that there is a third option, besides design versus chance and necessity, but I’d like to hear it. In the meantime, logic, evidence, and mathematics weigh heavily on the side of design, as a proof by contradiction.>> ______________ Now, what Gil is driving at is that we are looking at how the best of alternative explanations is warranted, in a situation where mathematico- deductive proof by contradiction is not applicable. In such a setting, once we have a list of relevant major alternatives and are able to show, comparison by comparison, that one is inferior (on factual adequacy, coherence and explanatory power), then the champion emerges as the best [current] explanation. In turn, if that explanation is empirically tested and reliable, we usually have high confidence in it. (But, we must recognise that what is accepted on the preponderance of the evidence is subject to onward defeat by a new challenger. That is how Q-theory and relativity prevailed over the beautiful Newtonian system a hundred or so years ago. And, today, it is why the evolutionary materialist paradigm is in deep trouble.) In fact, that is NORMALLY how science works: comparative difficulties of empirically anchored theories and models. But in a world of Lewontinian a priori materialism being imposed on life origins science, this process is being censored in our day, censored because of a strong preference for the materialistic worldview among those who dominate the institutions of science and education:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [NY Review of Books, 1997. Subsequently, thanks to the NAS, NSTA, NCSE, ACLU, judge Jones etc, this is increasingly an official, censoring dogma.]

This is important backdrop for understanding why it is so many on one side of the current design issue find FSCI so trivially easy a concept to grasp and to exemplify, and why those on the other side either find it all but impossible to understand, or so strongly object to it, that hey are more or less willing to accept any argument that rejects the FSCI concept and what it points to. Worse, precisely because origins of life science exists in a worldviews loaded context, deep passions and major philosophical controversies are implicated or linked as well. but in fact, the core FSCI idea is quite simple, as Orgel identified in 1973:

Living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity. [ L.E. Orgel, 1973. The Origins of Life. New York: John Wiley, p. 189.]

a --> We can empirically identify and contrast (i) the specified, complex, functionally integrated organisation of the DNA, RNA, protein etc molecules in living cells, from (ii) the mechanical forces- induced, information- poor order of crystals, and also (iii) from the non-informative stochastic complexity of random mixtures of polymers. b --> Thus, we see that crystals are non-complex. [Crystal structure is in essence a repeating block: . . . SOSOSOSOSOSO . . . ] [ . . . ] kairosfocus

The preceding comment got killed because the system had logged me off and most of it was saved in a text program. The references above relate to what we call FSCI or information that is complex and specifies something else which is functional and complex. One place on the internet compared this process to the Central Dogma in biology which is the transcription and translation process and made the comment that the Central Dogma operates in life in language and computer software. It is the same process. Not all these articles above relate specifically to the whole process but include bits and pieces of it and more than one go into how to measure the complexity. jerry

David, Here is a start Functional information and the emergence of biocomplexity "Hazen RM, Griffen PL, Carothers JM, Szostak JW (2007). Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104: 8574–8581." Measuring the functional sequence complexity of proteins Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling Kirk K Durston1 , David KY Chiu2 , David L Abel3 and Jack T Trevors, 2007 http://www.tbiomed.com/content/4/1/47 Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information. Abel DL, Trevors JT: Theoretical biology & medical modelling 2005, 2:29. Molecular messages Szostaka, JW Nature (2003) 423:689. Functional proteins from a random sequence library Keefe, AD, Szostaka, JW Nature (2001) 410:715-718. The evolutionary origin of complex features. Lenski, Richard E. Ofria, Charles Pennock, Robert T. Adami, Christoph Source: Nature; 5/8/2003, Vol. 423 Issue 6936, p139-144, Information theory in molecular biology Christoph Adami Physics of Life Reviews 1 (2004) 3-22 Information theory, evolution and the origin of life. Yockey HP: Information Sciences 2002, 141:219-225. The following is an excerpt from the Adami article. DNA is a code, and codes do not reveal information from sequence alone. Optimal codes, e.g., are such that the encoded sequences cannot be compressed any further (Cover and Thomas, 1991). While DNA is not optimal (there are some correlations between symbols along the sequence), it is nearly so. The same seems to hold true for proteins: a random protein would have log2 (20) = 4.32 bits of entropy per site (or 1 mer, the entropy of a random monomer introduced above), while the actual entropy is somewhat lower due to biases in the overall abundance (leucine is over three times as abundant as tyrosine, for example), and due to pair and triplet correlations. Depending on the data set used, the protein entropy per site is between 2.5 (Strait and Dewey, 1996) and 4.17 bits (Weiss et al., 2000), or between 0.6 and 0.97 mers. Indeed, it seems that protein sequences can only be compressed by about 1% (Weiss et al. 2000). This is a pretty good code! But this entropy per symbol only allows us to quantify our uncertainty about the sequence identity, but it will not reveal to us the function of the genes. If this is all that information theory could do, we would have to agree with the critics that information theory is nearly useless in molecular biology. Yet, I have promised that information theory is relevant, and I shall presently point out how. First of all, let us return to the concept of information. How should we decide whether or not potential information (a.k.a entropy) is in actuality information, i.e., whether it is shared with another variable? The key to information lies in its use to make predictions about other systems. Only in reference to another ensemble can entropy become information, i.e., be promoted from useless to useful, from potential to actual. Information therefore is clearly not stored within a sequence, but rather in the correlations between the sequence and what it describes, or what it corresponds to. What do biomolecular sequences correspond to? What is the meaning of a genomic sequence, what information does it represent? This depends, quite naturally, on what environment the sequence is to be interpreted within. According to the arguments advanced here, no sequence has an intrinsic meaning, but only a relative (or conditional) one with respect to an environment. jerry

Onlookers: Re ICON, DK et al on FSCI. (I will simply note in passing, that DK in recent days has been a lot more ad hominemistic than he is willing to acknowledge above, and has used such to divert issues form the merits.) 1 --> FSCI is "a simple description in a nutshell," and it has several feasible metrics, the simplest of which is quite familiar: functionally specific bits (especially if more than 500 - 1,000 are present) -- the same sort that are at work on your PC screen's pixels. (As was a specific example in the WACs and Glossary as excerpted. [I begin to get the impression that some objectors are not reading what they object to . . . which would begin to sound like, sad to have to say, willful obtuseness ] ) 2 --> The second major example provided is contextually responsive English language ASCII text, of more than 143 characters. Again, functionally specific bits beyond a threshold where random walk searches will be maximally unlikely to be successful. All, as has been repeated ad nauseum here at UD; and just as routinely brushed aside in the haste to make immaterial dismissive claims, e.g. just now: we don''t like the writing style. (NB: in this sort of field, the rule of thumb is: expect to read unfamiliar technical material through three times to figure it out initially. More, if you have conceptual blocks because of worldview commitments that are being challenged. My always linked has a bit of a 101 on basics of info theory, with the H-metric explained, and tied to statistical thermodynamics. And yes, there is a conceptual link,as Harry Robertson nicely elaborates.) 3 --> As has already been linked, the more technical form, FSC, has been explicated in technical details in the recent peer-reviewed literature, complete with a table of 35 published measurements. (Did the objectors even bother to simply click on the link to substantiate that his is a mere matter of brute fact (no need for any deep "understanding")? Seems, not: which part of "table 1, in a peer-reviewed 2007 journal article by Durston et al, lists 35 measured values of functional sequence complexity for proteins and related molecules" do you not understand; why? [Cf. 156 above.] ) 4 --> As to the attempt to insist that FSCI is a matter of cirular argument, kindly note that empirical facts and their descriptive summary cannot be circular: FSCI is observable [cf examples as cited and linked], and its known source -- per empirical observation -- is equally a well- established fact. 5 --> Inductive generalisation, likewise, is a standard move of scientific thought. In short, we are simply observing that like causes like: for empirical reasons and for reasons of isolation of islands of function in configuration spaces of sufficient complexity [1,000+ bits . . . ]. _____________ ICON, DK et al: Take the above five points; and see you in the morning to see if the selective hyperskepticism fever has broken the good way . . . (If it doesn't, the prognosis -- not just personal, but civilisational -- is not good.) GEM of TKI kairosfocus