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.
Atheists claim the need to avoid fear of death is what motivates the faithful. But why do they not acknowledge the motivation to love goodness? Logic dictates that love of goodness is at least as plausible an explanation as fear of death. In truth, it’s a far more prevalent motivation.
I wonder whether we can infer anything about the thinking of atheists, from their silence on this point.
“Listen to ‘If you can read this, I can prove God exists’ by Perry Marshall”
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.htm
Can you provide some cites in the Scripture that states that the universe had a beginning?
And can you cite some scientific statements showing where scientists had concluded that the universe always existed?
“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?”
That would seem to violate the very science non-believers use to claim a creator doesn’t exists, that through natural forces there’s a cause and effect for everything, a beginning and an end.
Perry Marshall points out the difference between pattern and design, discussing the concept of intent and directionality of information flow.
Atheists hoping to refute Marshall’s argument don’t have a prayer.
DNA has “written” orderly encoded information. Information doesn’t come about on its own, it always comes from an intelligent source. How can anyone explain DNA and its encoded information as coming about by random chance which the theory of evolution holds to? It would be theoretically impossible for DNA to develop over and over again until it transmitted and carried the information just right so that there weren’t any abnormalities or deformities in it for each organism. In which case you could ask, which came first the cell or the DNA? Answer: You have to have both at the exact same time.
“Can you provide some cites in the Scripture that states that the universe had a beginning?”
Gotta look up those verses.
“And can you cite some scientific statements showing where scientists had concluded that the universe always existed?”
Einstein himself added the *cosmological constant* to his formulas in a vain attempt to discredit the notion that the universe had a beginning and to *prove* the steady state theory that was the scientific consensus of the day. He finally had to take it out when Hubble’s observations showed redshift that indicated that the universe was expanding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant
http://super.colorado.edu/~michaele/Lambda/blund.html
I will continue to look at new research on the origins of life but even biology has moved well beyond that which I studied many years ago. Hopefully I will not offend if I say, I know not from where my ancestors came but I trust that my faith will take me to the real truth.
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Yes, the Big Bang theory had not been developed or understood then.
But if you’re trying to argue that Creationistists always believed in the Big Bang, and scientiests always believed they had proof of a universe that always existed, you might be giving credence to the thought of alternate universes.
I’m afraid we’re each living in a different one, and it’s kind of weird that we can be on the same internet forum.
First verse in the Bible.
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
II Tim 1:9 who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,
Heb 1:10He also says, "In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.
II Peter 3:4They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."
The rest are Jesus speaking.
Matt 19:4 "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,'
Matt 19:8Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.
Matthew 24:21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.
Mark 10:6"But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'
Mark 13:9because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again.
Luke 11:50Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world,
There are lots more verses throughout the Bible dealing with that.
FWIW, The observable universe is anything but orderly. Even with a small telescope one can see the remnants of stellar and even galactic collisions.
LOL!
Placemarker ... sheesh.
All of those refer directly or indirectly to the creation of the earth.
I’m talking about the universe.
A single phrase about the “heavens and the earth” doesn’t cut it. Heavens can mean anything at cloud level or beyond.
Instead of adjusting the theory to fit the evidence, he adjusted the evidence to fit the theory. Not a very honorable thing for a man of his caliber to do. It was only when Hubble showed the redshift that supported Einstein's equations were correct without the cosmological constant, that he took them out and called it the biggest mistake of his life.
I would daresay that creationists also believed in alternate universes way ahead of scientists, but when they're called *the heavens* and *heaven* and *hell*, they instantly lose credibility with the enlightened elite. Same with extra-terrestrials. Call them *angels* and *demons* and you're nothing but a nutjob. But we're actually spending money on SETI. Give it *scientific* terms, and it gains respectibility.
*Before the beginning of time* cuts it.
Doesn’t science teach that space and time came into existence together?
There’s way more Scripture about different levels of *heavens*. It’s the name they used at the time. Just because it doesn’t fit with 21st century, English speaking America, doesn’t mean the words don’t mean the same thing.
They were speaking of what they could see and know. We’re not much better off except that we can see somewhat further, more of the same thing.
Man, you’re really stretching it. The phrase “before the beginning of time” is so allegorical. It means “always” much more than it means Big Bang theory.
Look, I grew up in a very religous family. I went to 16 years of private religiously-based schools before going on to graduate school. I know this stuff.
You are not going to be able to convince me that mainstream religion believed in an actual temporal beginning to the universe.
And even if you could, where was God before then? And what was he doing?
‘the forces of entropy’ ...? Man, you lost me for sure with that one. Time has three variable expressions. Moving from one to the next more complex expression is all that’s required for there to be what we define as entropy. Likewise, moving from linear to planar spatial expression is all that is needed to express entropy as we define it. This all happens because siad ‘be’. Where do you get any ‘force of entropy’ in that phase shift?
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