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Darwin's Doubt
Townhall ^ | July 09, 2013 | Frank Turek

Posted on 07/16/2013 11:44:20 AM PDT by Heartlander

Darwin’s Doubt

Darwin’s Doubt, the brand new New York Times bestseller by Cambridge-trained Ph.D., Stephen Meyer, is creating a major scientific controversy. Darwinists don’t like it.

Meyer writes about the complex history of new life forms in an easy to understand narrative style. He takes the reader on a journey from Darwin to today while trying to discover the best explanation for how the first groups of animals arose. He shows, quite persuasively, that Darwinian mechanisms don’t have the power to do the job.

Using the same investigative forensic approach Darwin used over 150 years ago, Meyer investigates the central doubt Darwin had about his own theory. Namely, that the fossil record did not contain the rainbow of intermediate forms that his theory of gradual evolutionary change required. However, Darwin predicted that future discoveries would confirm his theory.

Meyer points out that they haven’t. We’ve thoroughly searched the fossil record since Darwin and confirmed what Darwin originally saw himself: the discontinuous, abrupt appearance of the first forms of complex animal life. In fact, paleontologists now think that roughly 20 of the 28 animal phyla (representing distinct animal “body plans”) found in the fossil record appear abruptly without ancestors in a dramatic geological event called the Cambrian Explosion.

And additional discoveries since Darwin have made it even worse for his theory. Darwin didn’t know about DNA or the digital information it contains that makes life possible. He couldn’t have appreciated, therefore, that building new forms of animal life would require millions of new characters of precisely sequenced code—that the Cambrian explosion was a massive explosion of new information.

For modern neo-Darwinism to survive, there must be an unguided natural mechanism that can create the genetic information and then add to it massively, accurately and within the time allowed by the fossil record. Is there such a mechanism?

The answer to that question is the key to Meyer’s theory and entire book. Meyer shows that the standard “neo-Darwinian” mechanism of mutation and natural selection mechanism lacks the creative power to produce the information necessary to produce new forms of animal life. He also reviews the various post-Darwinian speculations that evolutionary biologists themselves are now proposing to replace the crumbling Darwinian edifice. None survive scrutiny. Not only is there no known natural mechanism that can create the new information required for new life forms, there is no known natural mechanism that can create the genetic code for the first life either (which was the subject of Meyer’s previous book Signature in the Cell).

When Meyer suggests that an intelligent designer is the best explanation for the evidence at hand, critics accuse him of being anti-scientific and endangering sexual freedom everywhere (OK, they don’t explicitly state that last part). They also claim that Meyer commits the God of the gaps fallacy.

But he does not. As Meyer points out, he’s not interpreting the evidence based on what we don’t know, but what we do know. The geologically sudden appearance of fully formed animals and millions of lines of genetic information point to intelligence. That is, we don’t just lack a materialistic explanation for the origin of information. We have positive evidence from our uniform and repeated experience that another kind of cause—namely, intelligence or mind—is capable of producing digital information. Thus, he argues that the explosion of information in the Cambrian period provides evidence of this kind of cause acting in the history of animal life. (Much like any sentence written by one of Meyer’s critics is positive evidence for an intelligent being).

This inference from the data is no different than the inference archaeologists made when they discovered the Rosetta Stone. It wasn’t a “gap” in their knowledge about natural forces that led them to that conclusion, but the positive knowledge that inscriptions require intelligent inscribers.

Of course, any critic could refute Meyer’s entire thesis by demonstrating how natural forces or mechanisms can generate the genetic information necessary to build the first life and then massive new amounts of genetic information necessary for new forms of animal life. But they can’t and hardly try without assuming what they are trying to prove (see Chapter 11). Instead, critics attempt to smear Meyer by claiming he’s doing “pseudo science” or not doing science at all.

Well, if Meyer isn’t, doing science, then neither was Darwin (or any Darwinist today). Meyer is using the same forensic or historical scientific method that Darwin himself used. That’s all that can be used. Since these are historical questions, a scientist can’t go into the lab to repeat and observe the origin and history of life. Scientists must evaluate the clues left behind and then make an inference to the best explanation. Does our repeated experience tell us that natural mechanisms have the power to create the effects in question or is intelligence required?

Meyer writes, “Neo-Darwinism and the theory of intelligent design are not two different kinds of inquiry, as some critics have asserted. They are two different answers—formulated using a similar logic and method of reasoning—to the same question: ‘What caused biological forms and the appearance of design in the history of life?’”

The reason Darwinists and Meyer arrive at different answers is not because there’s a difference in their scientific methods, but because Meyer and other Intelligent Design proponents don’t limit themselves to materialistic causes. They are open to intelligent causes as well (just like archaeologists and crime scene investigators are).

So this is not a debate about evidence. Everyone is looking at the same evidence. This is a debate about how to interpret the evidence, and that involves philosophical commitments about what causes will be considered possible before looking at the evidence. If you philosophically rule out intelligent causes beforehand—as the Darwinists do—you will never arrive at the truth if an intelligent being actually is responsible.

Since all evidence needs to be interpreted, science doesn’t actually say anything—scientists do. So if certain self-appointed priests of science say that a particular theory is outside the bounds of their own scientific dogma, that doesn’t mean that the theory is false. The issue is truth—not whether something fits a materialistic definition of science.

I’m sure Darwinists will continue to throw primordial slime at Meyer and his colleagues. But that won’t make a dent in his observation that whenever we see information like that required to produce the Cambrian Explosion, intelligence is always the cause. In fact, I predict that when open-minded people read Darwin’s Doubt, they’ll see that Dr. Meyer makes a very intelligently designed case that intelligent design is actually true. It’s just too bad that many Darwinists aren’t open to that truth—they aren’t even open minded enough to doubt Darwin as much as Darwin himself was.


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Education; History; Science
KEYWORDS: darwin; darwinsdoubt; intelligentdesign; pages; stephenmeyer
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To: betty boop

“... seeking the Truth of Reality.” And so would any good Scientist admit, for they too are seeking the truth of reality, the how. Many of us seek the why, also, and the corollary, Whom. ‘To know Him is to be like Him.’


141 posted on 07/28/2013 2:08:19 PM PDT by MHGinTN (Being deceived can be cured.)
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To: betty boop
I hope that you do not think that somehow, I am engaged in the pursuit of a "proof" for the existence of God.

No, I don't think that. (And conversely, I hope you don't think I'm pursuing a proof for the nonexistence of God.)

At the same time, you have posted that

a living system — an "open" system — cannot "emerge" from a causally closed system as defined by physical, material, or mechanical presuppositions. Something else is required for life. And as increasingly recognized these days, that something else is information — which is not a tangible, material thing.

And my impression is that you contend that the information must have been supplied by an agent outside the system, which may not be a proof of God but is evidence for some First Cause. Right now, I'm just exploring whether the impossibility of a material basis for the emergence of life is necessarily as impossible as you've stated.

142 posted on 07/29/2013 9:59:56 AM PDT by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical; Alamo-Girl; MHGinTN; TXnMA; marron; YHAOS; metmom; hosepipe
No, I don't think that. (And conversely, I hope you don't think I'm pursuing a proof for the nonexistence of God.)

No, I don't think that!!!

You wrote, "...my impression is that you contend that the information must have been supplied by an agent outside the system, which may not be a proof of God but is evidence for some First Cause."

YES: I suspect that the information must have a cause "outside" the system, because I strongly doubt it could have arisen by "natural causes"; i.e., from "within" the system. But I'll keep an open mind if someone can show me why this isn't true.

And you nail me on "First Cause." Yep — I do believe that a First Cause very likely had to be involved. But here I'm thinking in Aristotelian terms.

You'll remember Aristotle's First Cause, a/k/a/ the Uncaused Cause, a/k/a/ the "Prime Mover." The reasoning goes like this: If the Universe had a Beginning — which if the Big Bang Theory is correct, it had — then logically, there could be nothing "before" it. This looks to me like an "ex nihilo" situation — a something that comes out of a nothing, or "No-thing."

But really, we can know nothing by way of science that can "verify" or "falsify" this. Indeed, the first few milliseconds after the Big Bang, science doesn't even "work": There is no Planck Time, no Planck Length; science is simply inoperable under conditions where space and time haven't even kicked in yet.

So we can't even get back to the Beginning, let alone conjecture what "preceded" it — which if it was in fact the Beginning, nothing did.

And then, don't forget the Singularity. I think all the "initial conditions" of an evolutionary universe were specified there, all at once. This Singularity may well contain the "information," or "instruction set," that guides universal evolution, and orders it.

Well, that's how I'm thinking through these issues. FWIW.

HHTVL, I got a reply from my friend, AG. It was totally lovely. I'd share it with you instantly; but then recalled I hadn't asked his permission to do that.

So I wrote back and asked for permission!

If he gives it — I expect he will — I'll send it right along to you.

Best wishes to my gracious correspondent, HHTVL!

143 posted on 07/29/2013 1:10:12 PM PDT by betty boop
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To: Texas Songwriter
I saw the same video you saw.

I didn't see a "video." I have a PhD in physics, and although I am no longer a practitioner, I keep my hand in avocationally. You are correct that we will agree to disagree. But your arguments are with Vilenkin and not with me. He does not make the extrapolated claims for the theorem that Christian Apologists do.

144 posted on 08/03/2013 2:24:42 PM PDT by FredZarguna (They Old School. We New School. We don't read cursive in New School. My Generation. We retahded, sir)
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To: betty boop
Kahre's Law is simply this: Physical systems cannot produce more information at their output than was present at their input.

I hope this will further clarify matters.

It would, if it were true. But it isn't; it is objectively false as stated. The correct statement is: CLOSED Physical systems cannot produce more information at their output than was present at their input.

It is nothing more than an information theory version of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and does not represent anything new.

145 posted on 08/03/2013 2:35:13 PM PDT by FredZarguna (They Old School. We New School. We don't read cursive in New School. My Generation. We retahded, sir)
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To: FredZarguna; Alamo-Girl; TXnMA; MHGinTN
The correct statement is: CLOSED Physical systems cannot produce more information at their output than was present at their input.

Please give an example of an OPEN physical system?

Also, it has been remarked that there is no known "natural" cause of information. What do you make of a statement like that? How would you contradict it if you think it incorrect?

Must go out to tend to "elder care" this afternoon. But I'll be back later.

146 posted on 08/04/2013 10:26:19 AM PDT by betty boop
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To: betty boop

“Please give an example of an OPEN physical system.”

The Earth, for one. Energy, in the form of sunlight and starlight and radiation, comes in continuously; additional material arrives in the form of meteorites and cosmic dust by the tens of thousands of tons per year.


147 posted on 08/04/2013 10:34:58 AM PDT by VietVet (I am old enough to know who I am and what I believe, and I 'm not inclined to apologize for any of)
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To: betty boop

The jello you are seeking to nail to the wall will switch from a local system to the system that is the known universe as it suits the rejection agenda. The truth of it is that neither side has all the data possible so neither side has sufficient data to prove an ultimate claim thus both sides are based on faith not proof.


148 posted on 08/04/2013 10:46:00 AM PDT by MHGinTN (Being deceived can be cured.)
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To: betty boop
Your body is an example of an open physical system.

So is the Earth.

In information systems to which entropic proofs apply, computer networks (the network proper) is a closed system, whereas computers themselves generally are not (because they are connected to both sinks and sources of information.)

When you make the claim that entropy must increase, you must be talking about either a) the entire universe or b) a system which cannot effectively lose or gain energy from outside. There is no requirement in physics that the entropy of open systems must always increase. It is in fact quite typically the case that the entropy on one side of an open system decreases.

Also, it has been remarked that there is no known "natural" cause of information. What do you make of a statement like that?

It is objectively false.

How would you contradict it if you think it incorrect?

I would point to my own brain, which like the trees and stars, is a part of nature.

149 posted on 08/04/2013 8:08:43 PM PDT by FredZarguna (They Old School. We New School. We don't read cursive in New School. My Generation. We retahded, sir)
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To: betty boop
Because space/time is finite, when the universe is the subject - it is closed.
150 posted on 08/04/2013 8:19:16 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl; FredZarguna; albionin; TXnMA; VietVet; MHGinTN; marron; Zionist Conspirator; xzins; ...
Because space/time is finite, when the universe is the subject — it is closed.

That was the "big picture" I was trying to get at, looking at the universe as a single, unified system. At this level of observation, it looks to me like it's a closed system, for the reasons you give, dearest sister in Christ.

At this level of description, running imaginatively backward in time, eventually we have to grapple with the "ex nihilo" condition ... by virtue of which there are no sinks or sources that the universe as a material system can be open to.

Unless its Source is God.

But that's not a scientific statement and thus is not credible with some of our correspondents.

Thank you so very much for writing, dearest sister in Christ!

151 posted on 08/05/2013 9:29:25 AM PDT by betty boop
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To: FredZarguna; Alamo-Girl; TXnMA; Ha Ha Thats Very Logical; MHGinTN; marron; YHAOS; hosepipe; ...
I would point to my own brain, which like the trees and stars, is a part of nature.

Why do you believe it is "objectively false" that there is (as I suggested) "no known 'natural' cause of information?" If all of nature — the natural world — supposedly "supervenes on the physical" and/or material, how does such an intangible, immaterial, yet utterly necessary thing as information come about in the first place?

Is my inference correct that you regard your brain as a "natural" cause of information? Which would seem to entail the idea (if you are a materialist or physicalist) that mental processes — and mind itself — are caused by atomic activity in the brain? That mind is merely the epiphenomenon of physico-chemical brain activity, to which it reduces, and nothing more?

And yet as British biologist J. B. S. Haldane remarked (1927): “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”

You wrote:

In information systems to which entropic proofs apply, computer networks (the network proper) is a closed system, whereas computers themselves generally are not (because they are connected to both sinks and sources of information.)

While your observation may be true, it completely overlooks a highly inconvenient question: Where did the information come from that was needed to build the computer and program its operations in the first place? Did the atoms of which it is composed do all this?

Such questions might strike you as simply dumb or tendentious. But really, all I'm doing by asking them is trying to figure out what your beliefs are....

Here's the situation as I see it:

No evolutionary theory can succeed without confronting the cell and the word. In each of the some 300 trillion cells in every human body, the words of life churn almost flawlessly through our flesh and nervous system at a speed that utterly dwarfs the data rates of all the world’s supercomputers. For example, just to assemble some 500 amino-acid units into each of the trillions of complex hemoglobin molecules that transfer oxygen from the lungs to bodily tissues takes a total of some 250 peta operations per second. (The word “peta” refers to the number ten to the 15th power — so this tiny process requires 250x1015 operations.) — George Gilder, "Evolution and Me," 2006.

And that's just one process. An astronomical number (from our perspective) of other processes are also occurring simultaneously, all of which must act together to preserve an organic system in a living state. Are we to suppose that "clever atoms" are responsible for the organizational information indispensable for achieving his result?

We started out quibbling about whether Kahre's Law applies to "open" systems in nature, or only to the "closed" ones. [Please allow me to correct a mistake I made; I realized it was a mistake from reviewing an old article I wrote on this subject, back in 2005: The "law" under question here isn't Kahre's, it's Ashby's.] You suggested this "law" of information theory applies only to closed systems. Which I tend to associate with non-living systems in nature, though that may not be technically accurate.

It seems evident (to me anyway) that biology cannot be reduced simply to physics ("matter in its motions" as described by the physicochemical laws, given initial and boundary conditions), leading to "random" mutations whose fitness value will be "rewarded" or punished by the environment — since the genetic, algorithmic, and symbolic information content of living organisms is much greater than the information content of the physical laws. Biology "uses" physics and chemistry, but does not reduce to physics and chemistry. "More" is needed; and that "more" is information.

Chaitin pointed out that the laws of physics have very low information content, since their algorithmic complexity can be characterized by a computer program fewer than a thousand characters in length. In 2004, in a private communication to a colleague, Chaitin wrote: “My paper on physics was never published, only as an IBM report. In it I took: Newton’s laws, Maxwell’s laws, the Schrödinger equation, and Einstein’s field equations for curved spacetime near a black hole, and solved them numerically, giving ‘motion-picture’ solutions. The programs, which were written in an obsolete computer programming language APL2 at roughly the level of Mathematica, were all about half a page long, which is amazingly simple.”

How does the complexity of living organisms increase if its main driver is the physicochemical laws, estimated to have an algorithmic complexity of only 103 bits? Certainly, the observed flow of environmental information is enormous, and tellingly, it is morphological information. But what is the source of the enormous environmental information flow?

Now Ashby’s Law (Ashby, 1962) states that “The variety of outputs of any deterministic physical system cannot be greater than the variety of inputs; the information of output cannot exceed the information already present in the input.” In accordance, Kahre’s “Law of Diminishing Information” reads: Compared to direct reception, an intermediary can only decrease the amount of information (Kahre, 2002, 14). Moreover, it is a widely held view nowadays that the chain of physical causes forms a closed circle. The hypothesis of the causal closure of the physical (Cameron, 2000, 244) maintains (roughly) “that for any event E that has a cause we can cite a physical cause, P, for its happening, and that citing P explains why E happened”. Therefore, not only Ashby’s and Kahre’s laws but the causal closure thesis is in conflict with the complexity measures found in physics and in biology. Now if the algorithmic complexity of one human brain is already around I1~1015–1017 bits, the information paradox consists in the fact that the information content of physics is I(physics)~103 bits while that of the whole living kingdom is ... I(biology)~1015–1017 bits. Taking into account also that physics is hopelessly far from being able to cope with the task to govern even one human person’s biological activity ~2*1021 bits per second, it becomes clear that at present, modern cosmological models’ algorithmic complexity is much less than the above obtained complexity measures characterizing life. — A. Grandpierre, "Complexity Measures and Life’s Algorithmic Complexity," 2005.

Lots of questions, my friend. Your thoughts?
152 posted on 08/05/2013 2:01:58 PM PDT by betty boop
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To: betty boop

INFORMATION... where does it come from.. looking for the ultimate source..
The infinite question... a very sticky question like fly paper..

Even parsed with lawyerly tricks still sticks its head up to say “HI!”..
Its Poison to hip shot judgements, and mealy mouthed diversions..
Its like a toddler that says WHY?... and then WHY? and then WHY?...

It even defeats long screeds that make you forget what the original question WAS...
***


153 posted on 08/05/2013 7:33:45 PM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: betty boop
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

Truly, space/time does not pre-exist but is created as the universe expands. There was a beginning of real space and real time.

No physical cosmology theology obviates creation ex nihilo - and only Tegmark's Level IV cosmology is closed.

154 posted on 08/05/2013 8:39:22 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: betty boop
Thank you so much for your outstanding essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

The excerpts are also very informative!

There is no known origin for information [Shannon, successful communication] in the universe. Ditto for space/time, inertia, autonomy, etc.

Indeed, discussions of abiogenesis often arrive at the observation that a successful answer to to the origin of information also answers the origin of life. (Pattee, Yockey, Rocha, et al)

155 posted on 08/07/2013 8:41:13 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: YHAOS; metmom

yes, and furthermore, liberals are irrational and oddly anti-intelligence.


156 posted on 08/21/2013 9:55:38 PM PDT by tpanther (Science was, is and will forever be a small subset of God's creation.)
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To: tpanther; metmom
liberals are irrational and oddly anti-intelligence.

Precisely. Hence, the manifestation of intellectual poverty.

157 posted on 08/22/2013 11:14:25 AM PDT by YHAOS
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