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

_{Gil Dodgen

March 15, 2009

Intelligent Design}

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In another thread, poster madsen presented the following challenge:

I’m holding out hope that the next post will concern positive evidence for ID rather than more critiques of Darwin.

In mathematics there is a method of proof called “proof by contradiction.” The logic behind this proof is the following: Establish two possible alternatives. Assume that one of the alternatives is true, and prove it to be logically contradictory. A superb example of proof by contradiction is Euclid’s (circa 300 BC) proof that the number of primes is infinite.

Let’s apply the method of proof by contradiction to the chance-and-necessity versus design debate.

Of course, this is not a mathematical model, but there are some very illuminating similarities. 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.

Comments

jerry #49,
We have madsen, BL Harville, Seversky, David Kellogg diverting the discussion from the original idea and Kris misstating it. It is obvious what is being attempted.
If you feel that I've diverted the discussion or mischaracterized your argument, please explain my error.madsen_{March 16, 2009
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Gil
Therefore P is not the largest prime (the contradiction), and this proves that there are infinitely many primes. Euclid was a clever fellow.
Sometime within the past 6 months or so I recall reading a report that a team of researchers (French I think) had discovered the largest known prime number...somethink like 100 digits long (can't recall the exact details). I guess amongst mathematicians and computer whizzes, there a certain level of prestige and braggin' rights associated with being the team that owns the discovery of the largest known prime. Wonder how long this team keeps the top spot!DonaldM_{March 16, 2009
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David Kellogg:
The problem is not incredulity as such but the emptiness of the ID claim. There’s nothing other than incredulity (and — usually — previously held religious commitments) leading to a design view.
The greatest puzzle facing evolutionists is the origin of life itself. In order to refute ID, you have to make a strong case that life could have emerged from non-living matter as a result of undirected natural processes (abiogenesis). However, abiogenesis faces formidable scientific problems. See the articles at this link: http://www.trueorigin.org/camplist.asp#origin I can't mathematically demonstrate that abiogenesis is scientifically impossible, although the papers cited in the above link make a strong prima facie case that it is unlikely, even over a long time period. However, the lack of a rigorous mathematical proof that abiogenesis is impossible does not entail that it is scientifically possible. Even if you could shoot down all the arguments in the papers on abiogenesis which I linked to above, it would still be wrong to conclude that abiogenesis is scientifically possible. The proper scientific attitude would then be one of pure agnosticism. For the fact is, we simply don't know how life originated. In the meantime, one simple rule of thumb for assessing how close scientists are to resolving these problems is to ask them when they think the riddle of life's origin will be solved. How many more years do we have to wait? If the year envisaged by scientists when the riddle is finally solved keeps receding, then this is a pretty good sign that scientists are talking hot air. When I was a child, the science books I read exuded confidence that the riddle of life's origin was close to being solved, in the wake of the Urey-Miller experiment. Now, the solution appears to be decades or even centuries away. What does that tell you?vjtorley_{March 16, 2009
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David Kellog
DonaldM, the problem is one of definition. Behe asked for something that most evolutionary biologists would say exists in spades. But every paper cited was dismissed by Behe as not describing the evolution in sufficient detail, or with all the steps covered. Since every step can be divided into further substeps, I submit that no paper ever will have a chance of meeting Behe’s criteria because he can keep asking for greater specificity and detail. Then he can crow behind the firewall of his comment-free Amazon blog about how his critiques are devastating.
TO which specific papers do you refer? Every single such citation that has ever been made has either been irrelevant to the question (how did evolution actually produce this complex biochemical system) or been of the variety of "we know we can walk from LA to Japan because we disovered the Hawaiin Islands". Hence all the hoopla over the TTSS as a "possible" evolutionary step towards a full blown baceterial flagellum. Even more telling, though, in the "absence of evidence" department is that when Darwinists have the opportunity to make these citations in published research papers, they seem to not have them. Two notable examples. First, is the (in)famous Avida study reported by Lenski et.al. from Mich. State. In their paper The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features what is notable by is absence is any citation or reference to a detailed research study that mirrors in the biological world what they are trying to show happened in the computer model. If such biological evidence were known, all they had to do was point to it as evidence for the efficacy of their computer model. They didn't. A second example is the review article by Pallen and Matzke, From The Origin of Species to the origin of bacterial flagella. The abstact reads:
In the recent Dover trial, and elsewhere, the 'Intelligent Design' movement has championed the bacterial flagellum as an irreducibly complex system that, it is claimed, could not have evolved through natural selection. Here we explore the arguments in favour of viewing bacterial flagella as evolved, rather than designed, entities. We dismiss the need for any great conceptual leaps in creating a model of flagellar evolution and speculate as to how an experimental programme focused on this topic might look.
The aim of this paper was to present a research roadmap of how researchers might go about building the detailed evolutionary model for the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. Had any such actual research study already existed, they surely would have cited it as an example. Again, notable by absence was any such reference. Behe wrote his book 13 years ago. To date his original claim of the absence of evidence still stands. There is not now extant any research study that presents a detailed, testable model of the evolutionary origins for any of the IC systems Behe described in his book. Not one. Zip, zero nada. All these claims that what has been cited are dismissed and thus Behe will never be satisfied are examples of Dembski's point of not engaging Behe's actual claims, but trying to dismiss them as "already solved", when in fact they are not. The absence of evidence is overwhelming! But you can prove me wrong by simply providing 1 such study. Since neither Lenski nor Pallen & Matzke cited any, perhaps you can succeed where they failed. Gil's point stands unrefuted!DonaldM_{March 16, 2009
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vjtorley, I didn't cite anything Gary Parker said. He is an example of an atheistic evolutionist who converted to Creation. Period, end of my point.Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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David:
It seems, though, that in the larger picture, and granting a mix of motivations in everybody, evolution convinces most of those in a position to judge (that is, Ph.D. biologists)
Most of which are devote atheists. And none of which can actually support their claims. Who has switched from ID to the blind wathmaker?Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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David
But every paper cited was dismissed by Behe as not describing the evolution in sufficient detail, or with all the steps covered.
All that has to be done is DEMONSTRATE that which is being debated. Start with a population or populations of non-flagellated bacteria and let them have at it. See if a flagellum arises. OR if scientists think that IC is an illusion all they have to do is show that in question is reducible. Take the bacterial flagellum. I have recently read two papers that discuss its alleged evolution. All that has to be done now is take some starting population without a flagellum of course- introduce genes as an artificial type of gene duplication- and see if one appears. In the absence of that a demonstration of any type of change driven by an accumulation of genetic accidents would help your case. And if you want to comment on what Behe says on Amazon feel free to do so on your blog. But be prepared to show us the power of an accumulation of genetic accidents. If you really want to shut him up that would really go a long way to doing just that.Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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vjtorley, I don't doubt Behe's sincerity. And in fact everybody says they're moved solely by evidence, while all of us have complex motivations. It seems, though, that in the larger picture, and granting a mix of motivations in everybody, evolution convinces most of those in a position to judge (that is, Ph.D. biologists) while ID (or creationism) convinces very few: and virtually all of those have previously existing religious commitments.David Kellogg_{March 16, 2009
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DonaldM, the problem is one of definition. Behe asked for something that most evolutionary biologists would say exists in spades. But every paper cited was dismissed by Behe as not describing the evolution in sufficient detail, or with all the steps covered. Since every step can be divided into further substeps, I submit that no paper ever will have a chance of meeting Behe's criteria because he can keep asking for greater specificity and detail. Then he can crow behind the firewall of his comment-free Amazon blog about how his critiques are devastating.David Kellogg_{March 16, 2009
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Joseph: I'd be careful of citing Dr. Gary Parker if I were you: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/closet.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/creation-conference.html http://www.holysmoke.org/icr7cult.htm David Kellogg Behe was raised as a Catholic, who was taught by the nuns at school that evolution was simply God's way of making the world. Hardly sounds like a guy with an axe to grind against evolution.vjtorley_{March 16, 2009
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David, It is YOUR logic that says Christianity = Creationist. You said:
Parker became a creationist after his religious conversion
I say the DATA- SCIENTIFIC DATA- led him to be a creationist. If you are correct then all Christians should be creationists. They are not so you stated something that is misleading.Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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This discussion reminds me of the old canard we often hear from the anti-ID side: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." But is tht even true and universal? Well, let's see. First a little background. Michael Behe first published Darwin's Black Box in 1996. One of the more controversial claims that Behe made in the book was
There has never been a meeting, or a book, or a paper on details of the evolution of complex biochemical system.
(Absence of evidence) (Behe, Michael, Darwin's Black Box, Simon and Schuster, pg 179) Later in the same chapter he wrote:
Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority. There is no publication in the scientific literature...that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system eithe did occur or even migh have occurred. There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations. Since no one knows molecular evolution evolution by direct experience, and since there is no authority on which to base these claims of knowledge, it can be truly said that...the assertion of Darwinian molecular evolution is merely bluster.
(Behe, pg 185-186) Darwinians were quick to jump all over this claim of the "absence of evidence" with references to the supposedly "Hundereds of studies" that did in fact exist, and which Behe simply overlooked. On careful examination, however, not a single one of the many such citations had anything to do with what Behe claimed was absent -- none were a detailed research study on the evolutionary origin of a complex biochemical system. The absence of evidence seemed all pervasive. In The Design Revolution, William Dembski made the following comments in a chapter entitled "The Significance of Michael Behe".
Behe's challenge has been so unsettling that many in the biological community find it easier to pretend his work has been discredited than actually engage it...And so a convenient fiction has emerged in which biologists continually reassure each other that Behe been refuted but either fail to provide an actual refutation or attack a caricature of Behe's case against Darwinian evolution.
(Dembski, William, The Design Revolution, IVP, Pg 291)Dembski goes to describe that Behe has made three points: a logical point, an empirical point and an explanatory point. The logical point is that
Certain biological artificial structures are provably inaccessible to a direct Darwinian pathway because they have property P(i.e., irreducible complexity). But certain biological structures also have property P, so they, too, must be inaccessible to a direct Darwinian pathway.
The empirical point is that no indirect Darwinian pathways are known. The absence of evidence continues to accure! All Darwinians claims to the contrary are so much bluster. The absence of evidence here, as Dembski points out is "pervasive and systemic". (Dembski, pg 296) That leads us to the explanatory point: do chance and/or necessity even have the explanatory resources to explain these complex biological systems. Dembski again, "...when it comes to irreducibly complex biochemical systems, there's no evidence that material mechanisms are causually adequate to bring them about." (Dembski, pg 297) On the basis of "causal adequacy", it appears that intelligent design is a better explanation. Thus, Gil's point in the OP is fully supported by the "systemic and pervasive" absence of evidence for the for causal adequacy of chance and/or necessity. In fact, I'd say Gil's point is overwhelmingly supported by the "absence of evidence".DonaldM_{March 16, 2009
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By the way, for those who are wondering, here is the proof by contradiction that there are infinitely many primes. We begin with the assertion that there are only two possibilities: the number of primes is either finite or infinite. Assume that the number of primes is finite, and that P is the largest prime. Multiply all primes less than or equal to P together (2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 11 x … x P), and add 1 to this number (call the result N). N is not divisible by any prime less than or equal to P, because such a division will always leave a remainder of 1. Therefore, N (which is larger than P) is either a prime itself, or is divisible by a prime larger than P. Therefore P is not the largest prime (the contradiction), and this proves that there are infinitely many primes. Euclid was a clever fellow.GilDodgen_{March 16, 2009
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Joseph, I know plenty of Christians who aren't creationists (in the big tent of Christianity). Scratch an evolutionist, you'll get all sorts of religious commitments and non-commitments. Scratch an ID supporter, though, you'll almost always get religion.David Kellogg_{March 16, 2009
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jerry [49], the original post offered no proof, mathematical or otherwise. It offered some assertions which were then presented as proof. It's hard to take seriously such an unserious post. In any event, science operates very rarely by logical proof. It usually works inductively and provisionally. And the best explanations for all the little events in biological history have been naturalistic. (Even ID supporteres agree with this when they say microevolution is fine.) The problem is not incredulity as such but the emptiness of the ID claim. There's nothing other than incredulity (and -- usually -- previously held religious commitments) leading to a design view.David Kellogg_{March 16, 2009
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David [50] By that "logic" all Christians should be Creationists. Yet the theory of evolution has and is being championed as "religion-neutral".Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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Joseph [44], Parker became a creationist after his religious conversion: http://www.icr.org/article/from-evolution-creation-personal-testimony/David Kellogg_{March 16, 2009
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We are witnessing StephenB axiom here. How the anti ID try to turn the debate away from the original ID. By the way it is not mathematics but logic that is being used. The post at #1 expressed it that way. We have madsen, BL Harville, Seversky, David Kellogg diverting the discussion from the original idea and Kris misstating it. It is obvious what is being attempted. What is the alternative to design? It is some form of naturalistic process using law and chance. If that is not true, then have a good explanation of what it could be rather than some pie in the sky wild idea. Quantum process would be under naturalistic processes even though some contend that this is the way someone from outside this universe controls events in it. But rather than discuss that, just assume quantum events are naturalistic.jerry_{March 16, 2009
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David from #35, I suppose you have been proven to be very selective when you evaluated the reasons for the dissent from evolution. Thank you Joseph. I could add Michael Denton to the list of initial dissenters. At the point of writing "Evolution a theory in crisis" he was an agnostic ...evaluating the evidence like a "true skeptic". Maybe, if you like, you can take the list of evolutionary dissenters (on the Discovery Institute's site" and study those scientist's convictions. I am sure you will find a plethora of diverse views and opinions that only share a very fundamental criticism of Darwinian evolution. To conclude you should consider yourselves warned about the dangers of stereotyping.mullerpr_{March 16, 2009
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KRiS in #40, You should excuse me if I thought that, if I did not state my observation about your arguments, then I would be disingenuous in the follow up arguments where I gave you the opportunity to redeem yourself, and thereby proving me wrong. The only conclusion that I can draw from you being offended is that criticism does not sit well with you. I have taken your criticism about what you perceived as disrespectful from my arguments to hart and will act accordingly to rectify it. First in this regards, accept my apologies for making you feel not respected, belief me, I usually do not make conversation with people I disrespect, it is just not worth it. Then I have to close by pointing out that I am not that interested in the power of my arguments as I am in the power of yours or others. All my conversation with you can testify to this conviction. So regardless of your position, you should still expect me to comment on what is obvious from your arguments... I will even go out of my way to point out some strengths in your arguments when I come across them. P.S. Remember we are just having fun on our virtual soap boxes.mullerpr_{March 16, 2009
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this biology thread suffers from a lack of biology. in the science of biology, we are in the business of hypothesis testing. you make a hypothesis, perform an experiment and test the data from the experiment against a null hypothesis. if you reject the null hypothesis, then you accept the alternative hypothesis (the one you were testing). If you fail to reject the null, then you accept the null. these null hypotheses take the form of a random distribution of data. so when you test your hypothesis, you are testing against the hypothesis that your data are randomly distributed. ID advocates seem to want ID to be the null hypothesis, but this is absurd. let's say an evo biologist tests the hypothesis that a hox gene is highly conserved among animals. the null hypothesis is that its distribution is random. he finds that it is found in zebras and canaries but nowhere else. thus, he fails to reject the null hypothesis. what does this mean? that his hypothesis was not supported.that's it. now let's say an ID advocate wants to do the same thing. he has to form a hypothesis and test it against a null. he can't simply say "my hypthesis was the null in the Darwinist's test", unless his hypothesis is that the data would be randomly distributed. and if this was his hypothesis, he would have to carefully describe the logic that led him to this hypothesis. so, what would his hypothesis be, and what would be the logic behind it?Khan_{March 16, 2009
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Dave, If religion makes on switch why hasn't Ken Miller switched? Why does the NCSE go through great pains to ensure the public that the ToE is compatible with religion?Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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Anthony Flew- was an atheist now he accepts ID because of the DATA!Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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Dr Gary Parker Atheistic evolutionist switched to Creation!Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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Oops "accepted" They all ACCEPTED the theory of evolution before the began looking more closely at the data.Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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DK
Behe, Wells, and Kenyon all had previously existing (maybe in the case of Kenyon there was a conversion involved) religious commitments
They ALL excepted thne theory of evolution until they bagan looking more closely at the data.
Wells is hardly a good example of someone who embraced ID because of the evidence.
He said he changes sides because of the data.
He admitted in print that he went to graduate school with the purpose of destroying Darwinism for religious reasons.
Darwinism and evolutionism are religions. Worsipping eons of time and mother nature counts as being religious.Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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Wells is hardly a good example of someone who embraced ID because of the evidence. He admitted in print that he went to graduate school with the purpose of destroying Darwinism for religious reasons.David Kellogg_{March 16, 2009
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mullerpr Your attitude is so disrespectful that I believe I will simply ignore your posts from now on. Feel free to interpret this as "You're too smart for me, and I'm afraid of engaging in real debate with you" if it helps.KRiS_Censored_{March 16, 2009
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Joseph, Behe, Wells, and Kenyon all had previously existing (maybe in the case of Kenyon there was a conversion involved) religious commitments.David Kellogg_{March 16, 2009
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KRiS:
Again, the confusion arises from the mistaken idea that “evidence against unguided processes” is the same as “lack of evidence for unguided processes”. They are not equivalent.
Who said they were equivalent? If there isn't any evidence one way or the other then all positions must be mentioned/ discussed as possibilities. Or we say "we don't know". However "we don't know" in today's society means "we don't know but we know it wasn't via an intelligent designer."Joseph_{March 16, 2009
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