Posted on 03/07/2008 4:40:38 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Since writing my book "Irreligion" and some of my recent Who's Counting columns, I've received a large number of e-mails from subscribers to creation science (who have recently christened themselves intelligent design theorists). Some of the notes have been polite, some vituperative, but almost all question "how order and complexity can arise out of nothing."
Since they can imagine no way for this to happen, they conclude there must be an intelligent designer, a God. (They leave aside the prior question of how He arose.)
My canned answer to them about biological order talks a bit about evolution, but they often dismiss that source of order for religious reasons or because of a misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics.
(See Complexity and Intelligent Design for my Who's Counting discussion of biological and economic order and complexity arising out of very simple programs.)
Because the seemingly inexplicable arising of order seems to be so critical to so many, however, I've decided to list here a few other sources for naturally occurring order in physics, math, and biology. Of course, order, complexity, entropy, randomness and related notions are clearly and utterly impossible to describe and disentangle in a column like this, but the examples below from "Irreligion" hint at some of the abstract ideas relevant to the arising of what has been called "order for free."
Necessarily Some Order
Let me begin by noting that even about the seemingly completely disordered, we can always say something. No universe could be completely random at all levels of analysis.
In physics, this idea is illustrated by the kinetic theory of gases. There an assumption of disorder on one formal level of analysis, the random movement of gas molecules, leads to a kind of order on a higher level, the relations among variables such as temperature, pressure and volume known as the gas laws. The law-like relations follow from the lower-level randomness and a few other minimal assumptions. (This bit of physics does not mean that life has evolved simply by chance, a common mischaracterization of evolution.)
In addition to the various laws of large numbers studied in statistics, a notion that manifests a different aspect of this idea is statistician Persi Diaconis' remark that if you look at a big enough population long enough, then "almost any damn thing will happen."
Ramsey Order
A more profound version of this line of thought can be traced back to British mathematician Frank Ramsey, who proved a strange theorem. It stated that if you have a sufficiently large set of geometric points and every pair of them is connected by either a red line or a green line (but not by both), then no matter how you color the lines, there will always be a large subset of the original set with a special property. Either every pair of the subset's members will be connected by a red line or every pair of the subset's members will be connected by a green line.
If, for example, you want to be certain of having at least three points all connected by red lines or at least three points all connected by green lines, you will need at least six points. (The answer is not as obvious as it may seem, but the proof isn't difficult.)
For you to be certain that you will have four points, every pair of which is connected by a red line, or four points, every pair of which is connected by a green line, you will need 18 points, and for you to be certain that there will be five points with this property, you will need -- it's not known exactly - between 43 and 55. With enough points, you will inevitably find unicolored islands of order as big as you want, no matter how you color the lines.
A whole mathematical subdiscipline has grown up devoted to proving theorems of this same general form: How big does a set have to be so that there will always be some subset of a given size that it will constitute an island of order of some sort?
Ramsey-type theorems may even be part of the explanation (along, of course, with Diaconis' dictum) for some of the equidistant letter sequences that constitute the bible codes. Any sufficiently long sequence of symbols, especially one written in the restricted vocabulary of ancient Hebrew, is going to contain subsequences that appear meaningful.
Self-Organization and Order
Finally, of more direct relevance to evolution and the origin of living complexity is the work of Stuart Kauffman. In his book, "At Home in the Universe," he discusses what he has termed the aforementioned notion of "order for free."
Motivated by the idea of hundreds of genes in a genome turning on and off other genes and the order and pattern that nevertheless exist, Kauffman asks us to consider a large collection of 10,000 light bulbs, each bulb having inputs from two other bulbs in the collection.
Assume that you connect these bulbs at random, that a clock ticks off one-second intervals, and that at each tick each bulb either goes on or off according to some arbitrarily selected rule. For some bulbs, the rule might be to go off at any instant unless both inputs are on the previous instant. For others it might be to go on at any instant if at least one of the inputs is off the previous instant. Given the random connections and random assignment of rules, it would be natural to expect the collection of bulbs to flicker chaotically with no apparent pattern.
What happens, however, is that very soon one observes order for free, more or less stable cycles of light configurations, different ones for different initial conditions. Kauffman proposes that some phenomenon of this sort supplements or accentuates the effects of natural selection.
Although there is certainly no need for yet another argument against the seemingly ineradicable silliness of "creation science," these light bulb experiments and the unexpected order that occurs so naturally in them do seem to provide one.
In any case, order for free and apparent complexity greater than we might naively expect are no basis for believing in God as traditionally defined. Of course, we can always redefine God to be an inevitable island of order or some sort of emergent mathematical entity. If we do that, the above considerations can be taken as indicating that such a pattern will necessarily exist, but that's hardly what people mean by God.
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John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University, is the author of the best-sellers "Innumeracy" and "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper," as well as of the just-released "Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why The Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up " His "Who's Counting?" column on ABCNEWS.com appears the first weekend of every month.
Progress was so rapid at first, following Galileo et al., that many assumed it could all be figured out eventually. But then some of those philosophers took a closer look and next thing you know there were two groups: one group decided to ignore the problems and keep going with the science and the other group, about a dozen people and their millions of students, decided to become lawyers.
Pascal's Wager
1...You live as though God exists.
If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.
2...You live as though God does not exist.
If God exists, the text is unspecified, but it could be implied that you go to limbo, purgatory, or hell: your loss is either null or infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing
Put that in you thinking pipe and smoke it bud!
Wouldn’t a “creator” or “designer” had to have arisen from nothing at some point? Or did he/she themselves have a creator - if so, where did he/she come from? And if one argues that a “designer” is timeless and had no beginning, you are admitting there are eternal things, so why not save a step and say the universe itself (certainly less complex than whoever “designed” it) is itself eternal and didn’t require designing? The easiest answer to all this mess: most people desperately want there to be a higher intellegence (mostly because they want to survive death), and look for ways to justify it. Which is fine and good - but it’s not science.
I’m by no means a mathematician and the light bulb experiment as explained is not really clear but it seems to me that the author is suggesting that order can come from randomness? However in his light bulb experiment, he begins with a clock that ticks off very ordered one-second increments.
bttt
If you can answer that question, I have to imagine you’d be rich. I’ve had some interesting arguments with atheists and antitheists (usually the latter) on this subject.
Personally, I think the “spontaneous creation of matter from nothing” idea is considerably less sound than the idea that God created everything from nothing. The “Big Bang” theory, for example, strikes me as being incredibly illogical. It also posits that all the matter in our known universe (and beyond, no doubt) existed before. Why is this? There’s no good reason for that. Furthermore, where did that matter come from? Why would it come from anything?
It’s one thing that a mathemetician would focus on issues of order in the universe. But his science can’t even replicate disorder— there is no such thing as a truly random number generator that doesn’t take as input some naturally random quantity. Until science can explain randomness, what hope is there that it can explain order?
There are different kinds of order, and random also has different and contrary meanings. We can probably get this topic organized but we will have to focus our efforts considerably beyond the common gut feel kind of understanding.
Yawn
I didn’t say it was science. My point is that the “scientific” explanation for the beginning of the universe is not science either. The scheme you just elaborated essentially assumes that the “universe” is, in one way or another, God.
Some people choose to put their faith into the idea that the origin of matter is random and, by consequence, everything that we think, say, and do is of no consequence at all. Others choose to believe that this life - our lives - have a purpose. What you believe is up to you.
Instances of spontaneous self-organizing order are legion in nature.
Here's an image of TD12, which would become Katrina:
Katrina at Category 5:
>
A heck of a lot more order in the second, of course. And it occured through generally understood physical processes (not all the details are nailed down, of course.)
It is not clear to me that Dr. Paulos fully understands the problem. For example:
> Let me begin by noting that even about the seemingly completely disordered, we can always say something. No universe could be completely random at all levels of analysis.
The issue is not some random pattern, such as predominance of color magenta or funky fractals. The issue is a very particular complexity that allows human life forms to develop.
> Kauffman asks us to consider a large collection of 10,000 light bulbs, each bulb having inputs from two other bulbs in the collection.
Who arranged the light bulbs?
Ok, let’s try this again without the sarcasm. Genes do not turn themselves on and off. That is done by other cellular molecules (proteins and non-coding RNA) which are precisely controlled by other molecules and chemical conditions. These molecules are expressed (generated) from DNA (genes). To generate these molecules both the DNA and the molecules must be present and the molecular and chemical conditions have to be exactly right. Otherwise it just does not happen. Evolutionists do attempt to explain this chicken-and-egg problem by proposing an existence of “RNA World” where all molecular players were RNA. Since RNA degrades if you look at it cross-eye, no actual evidence of this “RNA World” will ever be found. This makes for a rather convenient hypothesis.
It seems that evolutionists are able to make arguments only by ignoring the real life complexity of the Universe and Biology or by proposing un-testable hypothesis.
The problem here is the attempt to rationalize or understand God and his creations. We have finite minds and will never understand Him and the infinite.
Neither is what *science* is doing in regards to origins actually science. All *scientists* are doing is stopping at the first unknown. It's no different. It's just a matter of how far back you go.
Saying that creationists have to explain where God came from to validate their position yet not feeling obligated to explain where the universe came from is hypocritical. That's putting a burden of proof on creationists that scientists are not willing to put on themselves.
Did you ever read Wolfram’s book? It is very thick but full of pictures. He shows that complexity is nearly unavoidable once there are just a couple lines of code in your generating program. He said the program for the universe might run to five lines of code. Kind of interesting.
Well, there's an understatement if I ever heard one.
Hurricane and eye development can be modeled fairly well on computers; as with anything in science, there’s still a lot unknown about the details of why storms intensify and weaken, etc.
Obviously the scientists should have just thrown up their hands and said “Gee, God must be doing it!” and not even bothered to study the organization of hurricanes in the first place.
I checked Wolfram’s book out and flipped through it.
Good. I think that was his main point, that complexity is the natural state of things. Nature, left to its own devices will generate more and more of it until it runs out of space.
This line of reasoning does not support any specific deity, and is equally weighty making any substitution that you wish.
For example:
1...You live as though Leprechauns exists.
If Leprechauns exists, you can get a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: your gain is infinite.
If Leprechauns do not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.
2...You live as though Leprechauns do not exist.
If Leprechauns exist, they can torment you on your visits to Ireland, and they will never share their gold with the unbelieving likes of you: your loss is measured in pounds and pounds of gold.
If Leprechauns do not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.
Is this line of reasoning sufficient for me to start looking in the dells for the “wee people”? Substitute any other mythical creature that has the supposed powers of reward and punishment, Vishnu, Thor, Odin, Jupiter and run it again.
It supports ALL of them equally well, and since many of the named mythical beings are mutually exclusive, by extension, it supports NONE of them.
That’s how it’s smoked in a properly functioning “thinking pipe”.
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