hysterical Darwinites panic

The theory of evolution is a tottering house of ideological cards that is more about cherished mythology than honest intellectual endeavor. Evolutionists treat their cherished theory like a fragile object of veneration and worship--and so it is. Panic is a sure sign of intellectual insecurity, and evolutionists have every reason to be insecure, for their theory is falling apart.

The latest evidence of this panic comes in a controversy that followed a highly specialized article published in an even more specialized scientific journal. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, wrote an article accepted for publication in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The article, entitled "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories," was published after three independent judges deemed it worthy and ready for publication. The use of such judges is standard operating procedure among "peer-reviewed" academic journals, and is considered the gold standard for academic publication.

The readership for such a journal is incredibly small, and the Biological Society of Washington does not commonly come to the attention of the nation's journalists and the general public. Nevertheless, soon after Dr. Meyer's article appeared, the self-appointed protectors of Darwinism went into full apoplexy. Internet websites and scientific newsletters came alive with outrage and embarrassment, for Dr. Meyer's article suggested that evolution just might not be the best explanation for the development of life forms. The ensuing controversy was greater than might be expected if Dr. Meyer had argued that the world is flat or that hot is cold.

Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, told The Scientist that Dr. Meyer's article came to her attention when members of the Biological Society of Washington contacted her office. "Many members of the society were stunned about the article," she told The Scientist, and she described the article as "recycled material quite common in the intelligent design community." Dr. Scott, a well known and ardent defender of evolutionary theory, called Dr. Meyer's article "substandard science" and argued that the article should never have been published in any scientific journal.

Within days, the Biological Society of Washington, intimidated by the response of the evolutionary defenders, released a statement apologizing for the publication of the article. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the society's governing council claimed that the article "was published without the prior knowledge of the council." The statement went on to declare: "We have met and determined that all of us would have deemed this paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings." The society's president, Roy W. McDiarmid, a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, blamed the article's publication on the journal's previous editor, Richard Sternberg, who now serves as a fellow at the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institute of Health. "My conclusion on this," McDiarmid said, "was that it was a really bad judgment call on the editor's part."

What is it about Dr. Stephen Meyer's paper that has caused such an uproar? Meyer, who holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, argued in his paper that the contemporary form of evolutionary theory now dominant in the academy, known as "Neo-Darwinism," fails to account for the development of higher life forms and the complexity of living organisms. Pointing to what evolutionists identify as the "Cambrian explosion," Meyer argued that "the geologically sudden appearance of many new animal body plans" cannot be accounted for by Darwinian theory, "neo" or otherwise.

Accepting the scientific claim that the Cambrian explosion took place "about 530 million years ago," Meyer went on to explain that the "remarkable jump in the specified complexity or 'complex specified information' [CSI] of the biological world" cannot be explained by evolutionary theory.

The heart of Dr. Meyer's argument is found in this scientifically-loaded passage: "Neo-Darwinism seeks to explain the origin of new information, form, and structure as a result of selection acting on randomly arising variation at a very low level within the biological hierarchy, mainly, within the genetic text. Yet the major morphological innovations depend on a specificity of arrangement at a much higher level of the organizational hierarchy, a level that DNA alone does not determine. Yet if DNA is not wholly responsible for body plan morphogenesis, then DNA sequences can mutate indefinitely, without regard to realistic probabilistic limits, and still not produce a new body plan. Thus, the mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations in DNA cannot in principle generate novel body plans, including those that first arose in the Cambrian explosion."

In simpler terms, the mechanism of natural selection, central to evolutionary theory, cannot possibly account for the development of so many varied and complex life forms simply by mutations in DNA. Rather, some conscious design--thus requiring a Designer--is necessary to explain the emergence of these life forms.

In the remainder of his paper, Meyer attacks the intellectual inadequacies of evolutionary theory and argues for what is now known as the "design Hypothesis." As he argued, "Conscious and rational agents have, as a part of their powers of purposive intelligence, the capacity to design information-rich parts and to organize those parts into functional information-rich systems and hierarchies." As he went on to assert, "We know of no other causal entity or process that has this capacity." In other words, the development of the multitude of higher life forms found on the planet can be explained only by the guidance of a rational agent--a Designer--whose plan is evident in the design.

Meyer's article was enough to cause hysteria in the evolutionists' camp. Knowing that their theory lacks intellectual credibility, the evolutionists respond by raising the volume, offering the equivalent of scientific shrieks and screams whenever their cherished theory is criticized--much less in one of their own cherished journals. As Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Discovery Institute explained, "Instead of addressing the paper's argument or inviting counterarguments or rebuttal, the society has resorted to affirming what amounts to a doctrinal statement in an effort to stifle scientific debate. They're trying to stop scientific discussion before it even starts."

When the Biological Society of Washington issued its embarrassing apology for publishing the paper, the organization pledged that arguments for Intelligent Design "will not be addressed in future issues of the Proceedings," regardless of whether the paper passes peer review.

From the perspective of panicked evolutionists, the Intelligent Design movement represents a formidable adversary and a constant irritant. The defenders of Intelligent Design are undermining evolutionary theory at multiple levels, and they refuse to go away. The panicked evolutionists respond with name-calling, labeling Intelligent Design proponents as "creationists," thereby hoping to prevent any scientific debate before it starts.

Intelligent Design is not tantamount to the biblical doctrine of creation. Theologically, Intelligent Design falls far short of requiring any affirmation of the doctrine of creation as revealed in the Bible. Nevertheless, it is a useful and important intellectual tool, and a scientific movement with great promise. The real significance of Intelligent Design theory and its related movement is the success with which it undermines the materialistic and naturalistic worldview central to the theory of evolution.

For the Christian believer, the Bible presents the compelling and authoritative case for God's creation of the cosmos. Specifically, the Bible provides us with the ultimate truth concerning human origins and the special creation of human beings as the creatures made in God's own image. Thus, though we believe in more than Intelligent Design, we certainly do not believe in less. We should celebrate the confusion and consternation now so evident among the evolutionists. Dr. Stephen Meyer's article--and the controversy it has spawned--has caught evolutionary scientists with their intellectual pants down.

I don’t find this at all remarkable. There is something about human nature that just demands there should be some ultimate principle to explain and validate the physical laws and the evolution of the universe, and then demands to know what it is. The great interest in developing a GUT or a TOE demonstrates this.

I’m curious if a Law or Process could actually be called a ‘Law’ or a ‘Process’ if one attributes either to mindlessness? I realize this question is simplistic on the surface but so are the naturalistic answers… i.e.… “They are natural ‘laws’ and ‘processes’ because they are from nature”… “They are just a result of a mindless universe and ‘laws’ and ‘processes’ must emerge regardless”… or… “What a stupid question because you cannot relate ‘laws’ or ‘processes’ from intelligence to the natural”… (This is the common answer)

Honestly, if someone used our pre-existing laws and processes to make some novel design – what would this prove other than the laws and processes we live under allow novel designs? Must we still assume that they ultimately came from mindlessness and assume that the purely mindless mechanisms resulted and caused – the universe, DNA, consciousness, and our own (somewhat) intelligently designed laws and processes that we use to govern ourselves…

Now although; selection, survival, fitness, etc. can be anthropomorphized – I do not believe the same can be said of natural ‘laws and processes’ because they ‘must’ be used initially and regardless to set things in motion… I would actually go on the record as saying that both a law and a process invoke teleology as I do not see how either could ‘ultimately’ be a result of mindlessness and still be observed. A law and a process require information transfer and instructions to be carried out toward an end and from a beginning.

If someone asserts a TOE without a teleological shoe, it will be stubbed.
– Heartlander’s Law

Thank you for your reply!

My post at 1773 goes into my assertions in more detail, but wrt your point concerning open systems, from the first link:

I have a comment concerning your sidebar with Right Wing Professor. What you are seeing in the refrigerator is akin to the point I was trying to make about molecular machines.

If one only looks at thermodynamic entropy there appears to be a clear violation in biological systems characterized by life itself and its emergence (autonomy, semiosis, order or complexification, etc.)

betty boop once used a thought experiment to demonstrate the difference between life, non-life and death. She said to take a live albatross, a 12 lb cannonball and a dead albatross to the Leaning Tower of Pisa and toss them over the side. The difference becomes obvious. Non-life and death are subject to thermodynamic entropy et al in one fashion - and life, in another.

To put it in mathematical terms, Shannon-Weaver to be exact, life is characterized by successful communications. In Shannon parlance that is the reduction of uncertainty in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. Actually, Shannon used the term “entropy” instead of “uncertainty” – but we avoid that around here because it can be confusing.

The bottom line is that as long as the molecular machinery is successfully communicating, there is life. When the successful communication stops, the organism is dead. There is no life where there is no successful communication.

In the Shannon model, information is not the message – it is the action. The DNA is as good dead as alive. The elements in the Shannon-Weaver model are source, message, encoder, channel, noise, decoder, receiver. All of these exist in molecular machines.

This is not hype. It is an important area of cancer and drug research.

So just like the refrigerator is a machine designed to do something which seems to defy the 2nd Law yet nevertheless pays the tab for doing it – the molecular machine also does something which seems to defy the 2nd Law and yet pays the tab for doing it. For each bit of information gained in a molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state, energy is dissipated into the local surroundings.

Here’s the key, though and the thing which points to Intelligent Design. The refrigerator was designed and built by man. Life occurs in nature.

So the question that we ought to be asking is not about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but where did the information come from? What causes this successful communication?

To borrow a metaphor from Schutzenberger, its like the biologists and chemists are fumbling with their keys convinced that one of them will open the lock while the physicists and mathematicians are trying to tell them it is a combination lock.

The origin of information in biological systems is #2 on my list at post 1713.

You may have noticed the words "closed system" a couple of times above. Consider simply a black bucket of water initially at the same temperature as the air around it. If the bucket is placed in bright sunlight, it will absorb heat from the sun, as black things do. Now the water becomes warmer than the air around it, and the available energy has increased. Has entropy decreased? Has energy that was previously unavailable become available, in a closed system? No, this example is only an apparent violation of the second law. Because sunlight was admitted, the local system was not closed; the energy of sunlight was supplied from outside the local system. If we consider the larger system, including the sun, available energy has decreased and entropy has increased as required.

Your example here is somewhat unclear. It confuses some important distinctions. For example, your system is transient but moving toward equilibrium. Energy of the overall system is being dissipated. It does not capture the nonspontaneous processes related to the development of lifeforms. For example, if I had a gas that had energy flowing into the system from outside, I would not expect to see one volume of air at one temperature and the other volume of air at another temperature. The air would tend to mix together and the heat would flow through the colder wall. There would be a distribution of temperature within the fluid based on known laws. A finite element analysis of the fluid could be done to obtain the air temperature distribution if the boundary conditions are known over the given time. There is no apparent violation of the Second Law in your example, because the system is at nonequilibrium and the system is moving toward equilibrium as expected. The natural tendency (spontaneous process) is for the water to heat up due to the sunlight. A nonspontaneous process would be for ice to form on one side of the water due to the heat of the sun. Now if we had a solar collector connected to a Stirling heat engine that drives a Stirling cooler, we might see ice forming in the water. We have the thermodynamic mechanism that allows this nonspontaneous process: without the mechanism this will not happen.

The notion of the thermodynamic mechanism has relation to Dembski's conservation of information and applies to open systems.

Iin + I machine [due to constrained boundary conditions} >= Iout

An example is a computer. The computer utilizes energy to perform nonspontaneous processes. It acts as a thermodynamic mechanism. There is an informational content related to the boundary conditions of the computer. Also, the user may add an input of information by, for example, programming the computer. The sum of information into the computer plus the information associated with the thermodynamic mechanism is less than the information out. Information consequently has a relation to thermodynamic entropy.

Concerning the thermodynamic mechanism: in nature there are some simple thermodynamic mechanisms. One example is a waterfall. The water is heated due to the fact that the kinetic energy (due to the falling water) is converted to thermal energy. The water experiences a slight rise in temperature. Other natural mechanisms are self-organizing systems. These systems are very limited and are constrained due to the physics of the system. We do not expect these systems to produce stone mosaics!

Thank you for your reply!

The problem with Dembski’s theory as with Manfred Eigen’s challenges to “information theory and molecular biology” is the very, very common misinterpretation of what information “is”.

In common-speak, information is the message. But that is inaccurate wrt to "information theory and molecular biology". Claude E. Shannon, the father of information theory describes information as the action, the successful communication, the reduction of uncertainty (entropy) in the receiver ---- not the message. In fact, the message is entirely beside the point which is the reason his theory is broadly applicable across many disciplines.

Here is the original Shannon theory: A Mathematical Theory of Communication

Schneider reduces it for us as follows:

Information is measured as the decrease in uncertainty of a receiver or molecular machine in going from the before state to the after state.

"In spite of this dependence on the coordinate system the entropy concept is as important in the continuous case as the discrete case. This is due to the fact that the derived concepts of information rate and channel capacity depend on the difference of two entropies and this difference does not depend on the coordinate frame, each of the two terms being changed by the same amount."

--- Claude Shannon, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Part III, section 20, number 3

Information is usually measured in bits per second or bits per molecular machine operation.

Geometrically speaking, it is best visualized as spheres – Shannon spheres – the collection of which would look like a gumball machine. A Glossary for Molecular Information Theory

In the Shannon-Weaver model, what Dembski and others call "information" is the "message" or "information content". Applying it to biological systems, that would put the focus on the DNA or RNA - whereas the actual dissipation of energy into the local surroundings (thermodynamics) is the consequence of the reduction of uncertainty or entropy - the communication (activity of state change).

The DNA and RNA are evidence of the semiosis, the encoding/decoding - the functional complexification in biological systems. That is a most significant area of investigation to be sure, but the greater mystery is the communication itself.

I posted the following to an earlier thread to help explain the difference:

Review of Yockey’s book

DNA as a message

In his book, Yockey uses communication theory to study the DNA-RNA-protein system in living organisms. Yockey uses the theory of communication systems not only as a metaphor, but also as a theory to describe, explain and predict phenomena in molecular biology. Here we have a communication system (telephone or CD player)

in the engineer's world:

Message in
source code

Encoder
Transmitter

channel

channel
code

Noise

channel

Decoder
Receiver

Message in
destination code

in the biological world:

genetic noise:
mutations

noise in
genetic code.
tRNA

Genetic message
in DNA

including
tRNA

transcription
into mRNA

channel

mRNA
code

channel

translation
into protein

Genetic message
in protein code

tRNA

independent channel (cytoplasma?)

(the independent channel is not in Yockey's book)

Continuing now with my comments…

The reviewer claims that there is no encoding process in the biological world. I believe Rocha would disagree with him. The reviewer claims that the biological world only decodes, that the genetic code is the decoder device. If it is not encoded, then why would there be any decoding...

But going back to the question of what we are looking for. It is a type of “complexity” in that we are seeking to find the source of the communication itself – in the above charts, the arrows which are connecting the boxes. The other part that we are seeking is the source for the semiosis – the language – the syntax – in the encoding and the decoding boxes. Or if one insists that no encoding has/is taking place, then the semiosis in the decoding box.

The message which is being transmitted in the graphic is the DNA. It is often called “information” but that is not the kind of information we are looking for – we are looking for what is causing the reduction of uncertainity in the receiver – the Shannon information, successful communication. The DNA itself – like the chemicals themselves – is as good dead as alive. IOW, once that successful communications ends, the biological system is dead.

The story is often told that in the late 1940s, John von Neumann, a pioneer of the computer age, advised communication-theorist Claude E. Shannon to start using the term entropy when discussing information because "no one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage."

Your reaction to the alleged exchange above is instructive, WildTurkey. Where you see evidence of a cabal forming for the purpose of perpetrating a fraud on science, all I see is an inside joke shared by two great professional mathematicians. Still, the phrase “entropy…nobody understands it anyway” has a certain resonance.

So maybe we should just try to understand it? And especially it seems we need to understand how it works in living systems. Living systems are information-driven systems, and entropy is a key facilitator of this process. It turns out information and entropy are directly correlated terms: The more complex the (self-organizing) living system, the greater its need for information and, thus, the greater its need to accumulate high entropy.

To put this into perspective, Paul Davies [The Fifth Miracle, 1998] writes:

The laws of physics … are algorithmically very simple; they contain relatively little information. Consequently they cannot on their own be responsible for creating informational macromolecules … life cannot be “written into” the laws of physics…. Life works its magic not by bowing to the directionality of chemistry, but by circumventing what is chemically and thermodynamically “natural.” Of course, organisms must comply with the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws are only incidental to biology.”

Thus we have an apparent paradox: Living systems must simultaneously “circumvent” and “comply with” the laws of physics and chemistry. But the paradox dissolves when we see that it is by “paying their entropy debt” that living systems can do this. And pay it they must, for the balance equation of the second law — DS = 0 [note: that "D" really ought to be the Greek symbol, Delta, which refers to a probability distribution. But after all this time I still don't know how to make one in HTML. Guess i should go look it up. :^)] — requires it (which might be translated, for any given system of whatever type, as “the change in entropy equals zero”).

Rod Swenson explains the balance equation this way: Where any form of energy (e.g., mechanical, chemical, electrical, or energy in the form of heat) is out of equilibrium with its surroundings, “a potential exists that the world acts spontaneously to minimize.”

In other words, you can’t just look at a “thermodynamic object” as if it were somehow discrete, isolatable from its environment. The point of the second law is to predict the behavior of a system precisely in the context of its physical environment, an environment that ultimately extends to the entire universe. For the second law of thermodynamics, like the first, is a universal law. Yet unlike the first, the second law is not time-reversible. The “arrow of time” moves inexorably in only one direction, towards the future. Along the way (so to speak), it is the nature of entropy to inexorably increase, DS > 0. Speaking globally, were entropy to “max out,” the result would be a universe in thermal equilibrium, a world in a state of maximum disorder in which nothing above the particle level would exist. Applied to the case of an individual living system, the result would be “heat death”: It would cease to live.

It has been said that the first law of thermodynamics — the law of energy conservation — unifies all real-world processes, and expresses the underlying symmetry principle of the natural world. As such, it is the law of “that which does not change.” The second law, on the other hand, is the law of “that which changes.” Hold that thought for now (we’ll return to it shortly), and let’s look at the thermodynamic behavior of a simple self-organizing system and see what we can figure out.

I propose we look at Bernard cells. You’ll recall earlier I said that the Boltzmann hypothesis of the second law has been broadly understood as a law of disorder. In effect, as Swenson notes, he reduced the second law “to the stochastic collisions of mechanical particles, or a law of probability.” Apparently, Boltzmann reasoned that in a world of mechanically colliding particles, disordered states would be the most probable. Swenson writes of Boltzmann’s view, “There are so many more possible disordered states than ordered ones that a system will almost always be found either in the state of maximum disorder, the macrostate with the greatest number of accessible microstates such as a gas in a box at equilibrium, or moving towards it. A dynamically ordered state, one with molecules moving ‘at the same speed and in the same direction,’ said Boltzmann, ‘is the most improbable case conceivable … an infinitely improbable configuration of energy’.”

Yet a living system is a highly complex, self-organizing system — meaning that, at minimum, it requires molecules to “move together and in the same direction.” Thus the “Boltzmann regime” does not appear to be applicable to such cases. At bottom, a living system is not a mechanistic one. And the “end-directedness” of a living system — to organize, maintain, and conserve life — runs exactly counter to the “end-directedness” of the second law: maximum disorder, extinction of potentials, “heat death.”

The Bernard cell presents an instructive case. For it demonstrates a state in which gangs of molecules move together and in the same direction — that is, it is an organized, some say self-organized system, provided it has an energy (heat) source above a certain critical threshold. Clearly, a Bernard cell does not behave like Boltzmann’s “gas in a box.”

Let me try to describe Claude Bernard’s experiment. It consists of a circular dish holding a viscous liquid in between a uniform heat source below and the cooler ambient air “above.” The difference between the temperature “below” and the temperature “above” constitutes a potential called thermodynamic Force F, whose magnitude is determined by the difference between the two temperatures; i.e., between the “source” (the heat source below) and the “sink” (the ambient air). The heat gradient between the heat source below and the sink above is what constitutes the potential which, once the heating temperature reaches a certain minimum threshold, becomes sufficient to motivate flows within the system that take the form of Bernard cells. We observe the development of an ordered flow that moves hot fluid up from the bottom of the dish through the center up to the top surface where it is cooled by the air, then moves it down the sides where it pulls in more potential as it moves across the bottom again, then rises through the center again, and the cycle repeats. If the heating temperature of the source falls below the minimum threshold, this activity ceases, and “the Boltzmann regime” takes over.

If all this sounds really complicated, well you might say that any cook who has ever made a gravy, or a sauce béchamel, has observed this experiment in its gross aspect. It’s called: boiling.

The take-away from Bernard’s experiment is that any ordered flow must function to increase the rate of entropy production of the system-plus-environment, pulling in sufficient resources and then dissipating them, thus satisfying the balance equation of the second law. As Heraclitus might put it, that which persists does so as the result of ceaseless change.

Schroedinger makes this explicit; for he says that living systems must produce entropy (minimize potentials) at a sufficient rate to compensate for their own internal ordering (which can be measured as distance from equilibrium) — which is what preserves the system in its particular form — thus to satisfy the second law’s balance equation.

To put this matter very, very crudely, for a thing to “be what it is,” it has to lose all potential for being “anything else.” Entropy is that which dissipates the unneeded potentials. Thus, the more complex and ordered a system is, the more entropy it requires. And this is the reason why people say that living systems “must pay their entropy debt.”

In living systems, entropy — the dissipation of potentials — generally takes the form of heat radiated out to the external environment.

So, what does any of this have to do with “Shannon entropy?” Shannon entropy is a term for a quantity isolated in Shannon’s theory of information. I understand the term to refer in a directly analogous way to thermodynamic entropy in terms of its function or role. We might say it refers to potential information that is not selected upon the successful communication of a message, “success” being defined as “the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver” that moves the living system from a before state to the after state best serving biological interests. And analogously to the case of thermodynamic entropy, the more “decisions” the living system makes (which are what reduce uncertainty in the system), the more Shannon entropy there has to be. All the “paths” not taken are “dissipated”; that is, they have no force.

At least that’s what the situation looks like to me. Call it a “hypothesis,” and then anyone who wants to falsify it can take a stab at it. I’m keenly interested in entertaining other views of the matter.

Sorry to be so long in replying, but I'm simply buried in work these days. And am so behind in answering my correspondance that i am on the brink of despair. Thanks for writing, WildTurkey.

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