Posted on 07/16/2013 11:44:20 AM PDT by Heartlander
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.
Thought I would give you a ping so you can tell us how the entropy notion goes nowhere ...
I'm willing to admit that I may be lagging behind where you are in thinking about this stuff. But to me, that question is unanswerable. What does "probability" mean without some idea of what "improbable" would look like? We live in a universe that operates according to certain physical laws, including those that permit life. In our experience, the probability that a universe will operate under those laws and constraints is 100%. By what extrinsic standard can we assign any other probability?
"Life would be impossible without carbon and yet because of the precise requirements for its existence, the carbon atom should be very rare."
And they are. According to this article about scientists using supercomputers to model the shape of the "Hoyle nucleus," only about 1 in 2,500 nuclei "relax" into their stable carbon-12 configuration. But there are lots of these nuclei being formed inside stars, and lots of star, and lots of times. So despite the low probabilit of any one collision producing a carbon-12 molecule, we nevertheless end up with lots and lots of carbon molecules.
I also acknowledge that I don't completely understand this whole resonance thing. But from what I've been rading, Overman overstates (see what I did there?) the case when he says "the resonance of the carbon nucleus is precisely the right resonance to enable the components to hold together rather than disperse. This resonance perfectly matches the combined resonance of..." The numbers I've seen suggest that "is close enough to work" is more accurate than "perfectly matches." I also can't find out whether a carbon nucleus has only this one resonance or multiple resonances--a couple of things I've read suggest the latter. If so, still more accurate would be "one of the carbon nucleus's resonances is close enough to that of the oxygen atom to enable them to hold together." (It's a little hard to tell exactly which process Overman is talking about--in your quote, he goes from talking about the collision of helium atoms to make carbon to some combination of carbon and oxygen atoms and then back to the helium atoms.)
It also seems to me that one could reverse the question: if a superintellect has been monkeying with physical laws in order to produce life, why rely on a process with only a 1/2,500 chance of success? Why involve a molecule that only lasts for 10^-17 seconds? I also don't follow this: "Reversing the observed process of dissipation, the Second Law of Thermodynamics requires a beginning and a very highly ordered beginning (one with low entropy). If the Big Bang is regarded as only a big, impressive accident, there is no explanation why the Big Bang produced a universe with such a high degree of order." First he says the universe's beginning must be highly ordered, then he says there's no reason the universe's beginning should produce a universe with a high degree of order. Those two statements sound like they contradict each other, to me.
It's also worth noting that Penrose's conclusion was that the universe continually expands,gets all swallowed up in black holes (maximum entropy), and then explodes again in another Big Bang. Apparently he thought that cyclical process was enough to explain the 1/10^300 probability he estimated.
Some of your questions put me in mind of someone standing in a city at the mouth of a river, marveling that the river happens to be right where the city needs it. I know that's a shallow analogy. But the physical laws and constants of the universe are what they are. We know they can happen because they have happened and do happen. If they didn't happen, we wouldn't be here to wonder about them. So I still doubt we can really answer the question of whether the universe--everything we can know and measure--was designed to be that way or just happens to be that way.
And yeah, just some more thoughts. Thanks for sticking with it.
Oh, and P.S. to Texas Songwriter: I started to reply to your thoughtful post as well, but I'm afraid I don't have enough time.
Yes, I believe so.
If a person has "faith" in the idea that we live in a random, chancy universe, I would describe that situation as a very "low-quality" belief. For it doesn't really explain anything.
But what if that's the truth? What if there really is no ultimate explanation? Note that I'm not claiming that's the case. But wouldn't that make it a high-quality belief, if it corresponded to actual Reality?
For as rational beings, we have access to an order that transcends the purely natural.
A long time ago I read a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind--you've probably heard of it--that postulated that ancient people (but recent enough to be recognizable) got input from the right hemispheres of their brains in the form of auditory hallucinations that they interpreted as messages from the gods. To them, in other words, it appeared to be access to an order that transcended the natural. But to us, with what we know about the brain, it has an entirely natural explanation. I'm not as confident as you that the access we think we have to transcendent orders (and yes, I've experienced it) are not natural phenomena we just don't have the knowledge to explain yet.
Seems like the evos are the ones without the understanding of the 2nd Law themselves.
Our converation began partly because you wondered where all the evos went. This comment might explain some of it. First of all, we're talking about the preconditions for life and how or whether the universe might be set up to encourage its development. As has been pointed out several times, evolution starts after life begins. So evolution has nothing to do with the 2nd Law in the context we're talking about it in. But nevertheless, metmom decided it gave her the opportunity for a driveby slam at "evos." It's kind of aggravating--almost enough to make one not want to get involved in what otherwise might be a pleasant discussion.
Even evolution itself defies the 2nd Law.
OF course evolution includes abiogenesis. That first living organism had to develop from something. It didn’t just pop into existence.
Somewhere, some time it had to cross that line between non-living and living matter. It’s all part of the same continuum of a process of increasing complexity.
To arbitrarily determine that *evolution* begins only once that increasing level of complexity arrives at a self-replicating stage and ignore the rest before that is intellectually dishonest.
And still, the continuation of that life process is unexplained. There is still the increasing level of complexity to be maintained in opposition to the 2nd Law.
What exactly, is it then which works in violation of the 2nd Law? What is the mechanism which overcomes it? What is the source of the work being done to accomplish that?
And when it did, it could start to evolve. Not before that.
To arbitrarily determine that *evolution* begins only once that increasing level of complexity arrives at a self-replicating stage and ignore the rest before that is intellectually dishonest.
Sez you.
There is still the increasing level of complexity to be maintained in opposition to the 2nd Law.
Come on, you've been around these threads long enough to know that doesn't hold water. The 2nd Law applies to closed systems, or whole systems. The Earth is not a closed system. Adult humans are more complex than the two cells they grow from. Trees are more complex than seeds. We see increasing levels of complexity happening around us every day.
Or, for that matter, your own field. If the Earth were an isolated system with increasing entropy, we wouldn't have weather. What is the source of the work being done to spin up a hurricane?
So what is the mechanism which is bring order into the system?
Simply pouring energy into it in and of itself accomplishes nothing.
Something has to be doing the work.
In plants, I think the answer would be photosynthesis. I animals, I guess it's enzymes, the bloodstream, and a bunch of cell-level processes. I can't answer a lot more exactly since I'm not a specialist in the field.
But anyway, you’ve changed the subject. I replied to your assertion that evolution violated the 2nd Law by pointing out that living things increase in complexity every day. You asked what mechanism made that happen. Does that mean you acknowledge that increasing complexity in living things doesn’t violate the 2nd after all?
Betty states it correctly...."For it doesn't really explain anything." It seems we need to understand what is meant by faith. First, faith and reason are not hostile to each other. Faith, it seems to me, requires notia(an understanding), assensus (assent of the intellect to the truth), and fiducia (trust). Trust is based upon understanding, knowledge and assent to truth. Belief rests on belief that. Trust, it seems to me, is what we intellectually assent to. Belief rests on that trust. Another way to consider these matters for the Christian is Romans 10:14, "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him unless they hear, and how shall they hear without a preacher? In the final analysis, Faith in Christ depends on one coming to Him as a little child. But, scientism is not ordered by the Christian faith. Scientism has its basis in presuppositional assumptions (their faith). So, how do we try to come to know the truth? Well, we must examine what is truth. Knowledge is defined as warranted true belief. One may live in Denver and say, "It is raining in Nairobi". That is a fact statement. The person has never been to Nairobi, or talked to anyone living there, nor have any meteorological data regarding it raining. But, that Denverite says he knows it is raining there. He has no justification or warrant to understand that his statement is true, but he makes the claim. That is not knowledge. It is a belief. It may or may not be true.
So how do we investigate for truth? How do we investigate for a metaphysical truth? Answer: The same way science examines...by First Principles, observation, philosophical considerations, induction, and application of a method or experiment.
So, when you say high-quality belief (I am unclear as to exactly what that is) seems to be perhaps descriptive, but not epistemic in explanation.
Reality? This is the subject of a book in-and-of itself, so I will not go into this other than to say, REALITY, is that which corresponds to the way things are.
With reference to your last paragraph you seem to equate the brain with mind or any mental event. They are not the same entity, though they are always proximately associated. Your last sentence is worth repeating, "I'm not as confident as you that the access we think we have to transcendent orders (and yes, I've experienced it) are not natural phenomena we just don't have the knowledge to explain yet". Here, you arrive at the point of Betty, met mom, and myself. This is that you have faith that we do not yet have the knowledge to explain things, YET. This is your, and all metaphysical naturalists, article of faith. This is your presupposition. It is not warranted truth. Speculation, yes. Hopeful expectation, yes.
Somebody ping me when they come up with the experiment that will test the existence of God.
I’ll raise you one.
Someone ping me when they come up with an experiment that will test the existence of love.
After all, for all those who reject being able to test for the supernatural (or extra natural), love is something that exists in this present world that all humans experience.
That ought to make it much easier to test for than God.
I will put you on the ping list. However, as I said we investigate Truth with the essentially the same forensic tools used by science, presuppositional acceptance of Uniformitarianism, First Principles, Observation, Induction. Man will never abductively prove the Existence of God. :However, we do see evidence of God. We have discussed those issues at great lenght over the past 15-18 years (i don' t know how long I have haunted FR) that I have been on Free Republic.
If one comes to God he must come in faith. If one comes to scientism he must come in faith.
I was responding to Betty Boop's statement,
The point is: In what does any given person believe? And how closely does it dovetail with, or correspond with, the actual Reality that we commonly perceive, in which we actually exist?....If a person has "faith" in the idea that we live in a random, chancy universe, I would describe that situation as a very "low-quality" belief. For it doesn't really explain anything.It seemed to me that if someone had "faith" in the idea that we lived in a chancy universe, and if we did in fact live in a chancy universe, then that belief would correspond with actual Reality. In which case it does not make sense to me to label it a low-quality belief just because it doesn't explain anything--there's nothing to explain!
Here, you arrive at the point of Betty, met mom, and myself. This is that you have faith that we do not yet have the knowledge to explain things, YET. This is your, and all metaphysical naturalists, article of faith.
Respectfully, I think you're wrong. What I said was that I wasn't sure that we know everything we need to know about the laws of nature in order to confidently label some things as transcending those laws. That is not at all the same thing as saying I'm sure we will eventually know enough about the laws of nature to rule out the transcendent.
But your leap to that conclusion has suggested to me one of the problems in communication here. You (and perhaps betty boop and metmom, though they haven't confirmed that you speak for them) have placed your faith (in Christ?) in a central role in your life. It underlies your perception and interpretation of the world. So you assume that everyone else must have faith in something occupying a similar role in their life. And if their interpretation of the world differs from yours, you assume it must be due to whatever you've decided their faith is. But those are incorrect assumptions piled on top of incorrect assumptions.
Actually, as I read TS's posts, he does speak for me.
That said, you are partially correct. I have put my faith in Christ. However, that is not the reason why I believe that everyone puts their faith in something.
Everyone DOES put their faith in something. It's not a matter of *if* they have faith, but what their faith is in.
Everyone has something they consider to be reliable and trustworthy, reliable and trustworthy enough to influence their decision making and life choices. To hang their hat on, so to speak.
For some it's religion, for some it's science, for some it's themselves, whatever. There is a belief in the system or object as being of inherent value and constancy, enough to feel that they can count on it to be dependable for the future.
False dichotomies were never a very good tool for investiingating Truth.
But, Dear Sister, as you are aware, one of the reasons I eschewed that one final course in biology (and went full-out on chemistry) was that there was no way that I could see that Darwinian evolution can possibly work.
Worse, in four years, I had not been presented with a single shred of credible evidence that it had ever worked.
So, I remain, a physical chemist, forever one advanced genetics course shy of another BS -- in biology. And, I'm right where the science led me!
Believing that science works requires faith that the system works and leads one to the truth.
And considering the track record science has it's pretty shaky ground. True today and disproved tomorrow is more the byword.
Presuming that there is an objective standard of truth is faith.
Presuming that there is an objective standard of truth that can be reached by some mechanism developed by man is faith.
Presuming that one has reached that objective standard of truth requires faith.
How does the scientist even know when they're reached the *truth* of a matter?
It reminds me of the Scripture penned 2,000 years ago.... "always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth".
So, what is truth and how do you know when you've attained it?
What’s the track record of finding Truth by peddling FUD?
tl typical answer avoidance duly noted.
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