Thank God for Evolution: The Next Wave of Science and Theology

I've been reading Michael Dowd's Thank God for Evolution, and at the same time reading about what's going on at the Altenberg 16. It is pretty clear where the next wave of science and theology is going, and sadly, it looks like its going to be another 150 years of chasing our tail.

As is starting to be admitted, Darwinism got us nowhere. The point of Darwinism was to remove God entirely from the process of diversification of life, and perhaps even from Creation itself. The hope of Darwinism has always been the three pillars of natural selection:

* Heredity - traits get passed on * Overproduction - we have too many offspring * Variability - the traits that get passed on differ from their predecessors

The problem is that, in the normal case, these get you absolutely nowhere. In fact, this usually leads to a down-sloping of fitness, not an up-sloping. Darwinists have been starting to realize this fact, and have been desperately searching in vain for a new set of pillars to achieve natural selection nirvana.

The problem can be readily seen in the application of genetic algorithms to computer science. They are almost always used for tuning algorithms, not creating them. And, when they are creating algorithms, they are usually very simplistic (see what sorts of things Avida has been making, for instance).

The problem is that variability requires a direction for it to be productive. This is why natural selection can be useful in genetic algorithms for optimization - the optimization parameters focus the variability only on a limited set of parameters which are likely to be selected precisely because the programmer thought that they might be useful for evolving.

Added onto that, genetics has not given us any theory of form. That is, as far as we can tell, genetics says very little about the form of an animal. Hox genes may contribute some, but they are not the big picture for the form of animals. And, since the primary impetus for evolution is the fossil record (which are merely forms, not genes), if a theory doesn't explain the origin and evolution of form, it doesn't explain evolution.

So Darwinism/neo-Darwinism seems to have been a complete failure except for certain, limited circumstances. It certainly isn't sufficient for a theory of evolution.

The reason everyone liked Darwinism is because it supposedly gave design without a designer. Provided you had some self-copying system, natural selection would do the rest. Happenstance occurrences would shape the "code" which was transmitted, some of those changes would be lucky, and viola - we have adaptation and the ability to increase complexity without having the messiness of getting God involved.

However, since evolution without God has failed miserably (just like cosmology without God already failed in the early 20th century), science is looking for a way to at least shove God out of an interactive role in the universe.

The idea is that complex systems arise naturally through the interaction of certain types of pieces. That the whole of a system is more than its constituent parts, just like snowflakes and tornadoes. Thus, there doesn't need to be any sort of gradualism - things can just appear through self-organization.

* Require that the idea that evolution takes a long time to be abandoned entirely, or * Completely remove the theory of evolution from testability into the realm of magic

The reason for this is that if such evolution can be observed, it will be happening extremely quickly - perhaps immediately, and therefore the idea that this takes any amount of time will be completely wiped out. If we can't observe it, then the lack of proper environmental triggers will be blamed. Of course, we won't know what these are. But self-organization will be the magic word that will be sprinkled around instead of natural selection.

Of course, the idea that self-organized systems are actually organized has already been shown to be wrong. But let's not let that stop a new evolutionary theory.

So what does that have to do with God? Oh yes. What this means is that if we can't get rid of God, we can at least push God out of our daily business, and move His work to the origin of the universe. What happens is that the emergence of everything through self-organization is the way the universe is built so that these structures will occur. So physics itself will enable these structures to emerge, and therefore we can say that, no matter when a structure emerged, it was encoded in physics by God at the beginning of the universe. You can see this in the title of Conway-Morris's book - Life's Solution - Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe.

So, God did actually create, but we can rest assure that it was a long time ago. If God is doing anything today, it is only because the universe is a part of God, which means that we are God.

It also leaves people to weave hogwash theology based on whatever fairy tales the evolutionists are trying to tell, which is basically the content of Dowd's book. He even praises himself for it. So, basically, the new theological method will go like this:

1. Scientists make up stories about evolutionary emergence using rules that make less sense than the neo-Darwinian ones we just abandoned 2. A certain subset of these are published for the public in science magazines based on what science reporters find interesting 3. Theologians pick and choose which of the ones from step #2 can be woven into a sermon on something they think is a worthwhile message, and then claim authority from "the universe".

Note that it will be too much to ask theologians to actually verify that there is any evidence for the stories they find (hey, I heard a scientist say it, it must be true!), or to see if there are conflicting interpretations, or to *gasp* make criticisms of scientific arguments. No, instead, theology will simply become telling the "story" of the universe in a way that elicits a worthwhile response.

Welcome to the new world of theology. We're just going to make up crap that sounds good and then justify it by calling it scientific and relating it to something we read in Popular Science. Be ready.

“So, God did actually create, but we can rest assure that it was a long time ago. If God is doing anything today, it is only because the universe is a part of God, which means that we are God.”

We are God, says the writer. Same goal as Darwin/Neo-Darwin, and it brings you no farther than where Darwin/neo-Darwin would get you. In all cases, man wanted to be God, and in the end, declares himself to be God.

I'm sympathetic to some of the author's overall argument. But this argument is not very strong. He criticizes Genetic Algorithms because they are used for "tuning." But that's what Genetic Algorithms do--they are just optimizers. It's kind of like criticizing a car for only transporting people.

The author should instead look at the Genetic Programming and the NEAT algorithms. Try Banzhaf, Genetic Programming: An Introduction and search for NEAT on the Internet. Both algorithms evolve structure AND tune the structure and do so quite successfully.

He should also look at the Q-beta replicase experiments in biology (probably from the 60's). There is an extensive description of the Q-Beta-Replicase experiments in Banzhaf, cited above.

In all of these situations, there's a lot more going on than just tuning the parameters.

I also don't know where the author gets the claim that the fitness slope is usually downward with natural selection. At least in the computer simulation world, which the author relies on when he refers to Genetic Algorithms, that is manifestly false. Thousands of peer reviewed publications say otherwise.

I believe that God created the universe and Man. But I also believe that God created a universe in which evolution is a force within that universe. So, as I said, I am sympathetic to the author's argument. But I know a little something about evolutionary computation and I can tell you the author's argument in that regard is a thin reed indeed.

Best scientific answers coalesce when one can observe, measure, replicate by experiment, and compute formulas for a phenomenon. Examinations for many physical events have not reached this four-fold rationality.

One example is String Theory, or the “theory of everything”; everything for atomic, micro-processes. Elegant mathematical models utilize eleven dimensions to unify gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear strong and weak forces. Here is computation without experiment, measurement, or observation. Niels Bohr would say, “Yes, yes you have the mathematics. But does it make sense?” Notable critics say scientists utilize mathematics, but inadvertently venture into philosophy or religion. Rigorous debate continues.

At the other extreme is Darwinism, where all is observation. Rigorous measurements and experiments require 1,000 to 10,000 times recorded history. Scientists contemplate observed phenomenon, and decide evolution explains everything. Yet evolution does fail computational testing with Thermodynamics covering macro-processes in open systems. Natural processes, required by natural selection, create increased disorder and release energy. Even huge net energy inputs result in Katrina, and not the Brooklyn Bridge absent intentionality. All debate prohibited.

Darwinist advocates contend arguments against require the intrusion of God. Yet good theologians of desert religions would say a god hedged in by observation, measurement, experiment, and computation ends up equivalent to the golden calf the Israelites constructed in the wilderness. Their God can only be found by mystical, faith encounter. Investigation requires intrusion by scientists equivalent to the theoretical physicists of String Theory, who neither tremble before, nor reach for religious heresy.

Can you give a more specific reference to the NEAT algorithms?

"I also don't know where the author gets the claim that the fitness slope is usually downward with natural selection."

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say (I wasn't very clear). The fitness slope is downward if you take an arbitrary system, mutate it, and select it. Most cases of natural selection on computers is done where the selection of parameters for mutation is non-arbitrary, and that's why it works - the parameters were distinctly designed for that.

In biology, natural selection can work because mutations are not random, but instead are directed by cellular processes to be in locations that are biologically meaningful. And so, you can get improvements because they are designed to restrict mutation/selection to specific areas of the genome.

If instead, you randomly mutated the genome, and then did selection, the large-scale result of what you were doing would be to degrade the organism over time, even with natural selection acting (the term for this is genetic load).

Is evolution a force within the universe? Sure. But it is largely a guided force - that is, it follows certain preconceived patterns which are implemented by specific mechanisms in the cell. For an example of one of these mechanisms, see Barbara Wright's A Biochemical Mechanism for Nonrandom Mutations and Evolution (this was the lead-off paper for what has been a very successful research program over the last decade - just look for "Wright BE[Author]" in pubmed).

Anyway, please send me a more specific reference on NEAT, as I can't find what you are referring to.

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