The AP Model and Shannon Theory Show the Incompleteness of Darwin’s ToE

self | January 26, 2009 | Jean F. Drew

[betty boop]

The AP Model and Shannon Theory Show the Incompleteness of Darwin’s ToE

By Jean F. Drew

“The commonly cited case for intelligent design appeals to: (a) the irreducible complexity of (b) some aspects of life. But complex arguments invite complex refutations (valid or otherwise), and the claim that only some aspects of life are irreducibly complex implies that others are not, and so the average person remains unconvinced. Here I use another principle—autopoiesis (self-making)—to show that all aspects of life lie beyond the reach of naturalistic explanations. Autopoiesis provides a compelling case for intelligent design in three stages: (i) autopoiesis is universal in all living things, which makes it a pre-requisite for life, not an end product of natural selection; (ii) the inversely-causal, information-driven, structured hierarchy of autopoiesis is not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry; and (iii) there is an unbridgeable abyss between the dirty, mass-action chemistry of the natural environmental and the perfectly-pure, single-molecule precision of biochemistry.”

So begins Alex Williams’ seminal article, Life’s Irreducible Structure — Autopoiesis, Part 1. In the article, Williams seeks to show that all living organisms are constituted by a five-level structured hierarchy that cannot be wholly accounted for in terms of naturalistic explanation. Rather, Williams’ model places primary emphasis on the successful transmission and communication of relevant biological information.

Note here that, so far, science has not identified any naturalistic source for “information” within the universe, biological or otherwise. And yet it appears that living organisms remain living only so long as they are “successfully communicating” information. When that process stops, the organism dies; i.e., becomes subject to the second law of thermodynamics — the consequences of which the now-deceased organism had managed to optimally distance itself from while alive.

Evidently Williams finds Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity arguments insufficiently general to explain biological complexity and organization, and so seeks a different explanation to generically characterize the living organism. Yet his proposed autopoietic model — of the “self-making,” i.e., self-maintaining or self-organizing and therefore living system — itself happens to be irreducibly complex. That is to say, on Williams’ model, any biological organism from microbe to man must be understood as a complete, functioning “whole,” transcending in the most profound way any definition of a particular organism as the “mere” sum of its constituting “material” parts.

Further, the idea of the “whole” must come prior to an understanding of the nature and function of the constituting parts. Williams terms this idea of the “whole” as inversely causal meta-information; as such, it is what determines the relations and organization of all the parts that constitute that “whole” of the living organism — a biological system in nature.

Just one further word before we turn to Williams’ autopoietic model. To begin with the supposition of “wholeness” flies in the face of methodological naturalism, the currently favored model of scientific investigation, and arguably the heart of Darwinist evolutionary theory. For methodological naturalism is classical and mechanistic (i.e., “Newtonian”) in its basic presuppositions: Among other things, it requires that all causation be “local.” Given this requirement, it makes sense to regard the “whole is merely the sum of its parts” as a valid statement — those parts being given to human understanding as the objects of direct observation of material events. The presumption here is that, given enough time, the piling up of the parts (i.e., of the “material events”) will eventually give you the description of the whole. Meanwhile, we all should just be patient. For centuries if need be, as a collaborator once suggested to me (in regard to abiogenesis. See more below).

Yet subsequent to classical physics came the astonishing revelations of relativity and quantum theory, both of which point to “non-local” causation. The transmission of information across widely spatially-separated regions (from the point of view of the biological organism as an extended body in time) so as to have causative effect in the emergence of biological life and its functions is decidedly a “non-local” phenomenon. Indeed, non-local causation seems ubiquitous, all-pervasive in the living state of biological organisms, as we shall see in what follows.

Williams’ Autopoietic Model
Williams lays out the five-level, autopoietic hierarchy specifying the living system this way (parenthetical notes added):

(i) components with perfectly pure composition (i.e., pure elements)
(ii) components with highly specific structure (i.e., molecules)
(iii) components that are functionally integrated (i.e., components work cooperatively toward achieving a purpose or goal)
(iv) comprehensively regulated information-driven processes (DNA, RNA)
(v) inversely-causal meta-informational strategies for individual and species survival (we’ll get to this in a minute)

Pictorially, the model lays out like this:

Figure 1 summarizes the five-level, hierarchical specification of any living organism, microbe to man. But how do we get a handle on what this hierarchy actually means?

An interesting way to look at the problem, it seems to me, is to look at the available potential “information content” of each of the five “levels” or “manifolds” of the hierarchy.

You’ll note that Figure 1 depicts an ascending arrow on the left labeled “complexity.” For our present purposes, we’ll define this as “algorithmic complexity,” understood as a function that maximally yields “information content.” If we can find complexity measures to plug into the model, we might gain additional insight thereby.

Fortunately, algorithmic complexity measures have been obtained for certain levels of the hierarchy; i.e., Level (i) and Levels (iv) and possibly Level (v). For the latter two, the measures were taken with respect to the living human being. Figure 1 can thus be expanded as follows:

Notes to Figure 2:

¹ Gregory Chaitin: “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.”

On this basis, Chaitin has pointed out that the complexity we observe in living systems cannot be accounted for on the basis of the chemical and physical laws alone, owing to the paucity of their information content.

² George Gilder: “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 250 x 10¹⁵ operations.)

A Word about Abiogenesis
Darwin’s evolutionary theory does not deal with the origin of life. It takes life for granted, and then asks how it speciates. Moreover, the theory does not elaborate a description of the constitution of the individual living organism, such as Williams’ irreducibly complex/autopoietic (“IC/AP”) model proposes.

It’s important to recognize that neither Darwin’s theory, nor Williams’ model, deals with the origin of life. It seems to me that evolution theory and ID are not necessarily mutually-exclusive. One deals with the species level, the other the biological structure of living individuals, the “building blocks” of species, as it were.

Yet there is tremendous hostility towards intelligent design on the part of many orthodox evolutionary biologists, which has gotten so bad in recent times that the more doctrinaire Darwinists have run to the courts for “protection” of their cherished beliefs (and interests personal and institutional), insisting that ID “is not science.” Judges are not scientists; in general they are ill-equipped to make judgments “on the merits” of scientific controversies. Yet they render judgments all the same, with profound implications for how science is to be taught. I fail to see how this redounds to the benefit of scientific progress.

If science is defined as materialist and naturalist in its fundamental presuppositions — the currently-favored methodological naturalism — then ID does not meet the test of “what is science?” For it does not restrict itself to the material, the physical, but extends its model to information science, which is immaterial. The problem for Darwinists seems to be that there is no known source of biological information within Nature as classically understood (i.e., as fundamentally Newtonian — materialist and mechanistic in three dimensions).

The problem of abiogenesis goes straight to the heart of this issue. Abiogensis is a hypothesis holding that life spontaneously arises from inert, non-living matter under as-yet unknown conditions. Although evolution theory does not deal with the problem of the origin of life, many evolutionary biologists are intrigued by the problem, and want to deal with it in a manner consistent with Darwinian methods; i.e., the presuppositions of methodological naturalism, boosted by random mutation and natural selection. That is, to assume that life “emerges” from the “bottom-up” — from resources available at Levels (i) and (ii) of the IC/AP model.

There have been numerous experiments, most of which have taken the form of laboratory simulations of “lightning strikes” on a properly prepared chemical “soup” (e.g., Urey, Miller, et al.). At least one such experiment managed to produce amino acids — fundamental building blocks of life (at the (ii) level of Williams’ hierarchy). But amino acids are not life. On Williams’ model, to be “life,” they’d need to have achieved at least the threshold of Level (iii).

For it is the presence of “functionally-integrated components” that makes life possible, that sustains the living organism in its very first “duty”: That it will, along the entire extension of its complete biological make-up (whether simple or highly complex), globally organize its component systems in such a way as to maximally maintain the total organism’s “distance” from thermodynamic entropy. An “organism” that couldn’t do that wouldn’t last as an “organism” for very long.

And so in order for the materialist interpretation of abiogenesis to be true, the “chemical soup” experimental model would have to demonstrate how inorganic matter manages to “exempt” itself from one of the two most fundamental laws of Nature: the second law of thermodynamics.

From cells on up through species, all biological organisms — by virtue of their participation in Levels (i) and (ii) — are subject to the second law right from creation. Indeed, they are subject to it throughout their life spans. A friend points out that the second law is a big arguing point for Macroevolutionists, who try to argue that the second law is irrelevent, i.e., doesn’t apply to living systems, because “it only applies to closed systems and not to open ones.” Thus they say that living systems in nature are “open” systems. But what this line of reasoning does not tell us is what such systems are “open” to.

And yet we know that every cell is subject to the second law — simply by needing to fuel itself, it subjects itself to the effects of entropy, otherwise known as heat death. And although it can and does stave off such effects for a while, doing so requires the cell or species constantly to deal with maintaining distance from entropy in all its living functional components, organized globally. Entropy plays a big part in all life — from cells to completed species.

When the successful communication of meta-information begins to slow down and break down, cells and species then begin to succumb to the effects of entropy, to which they have been subjected all their entire life. This is because they can no longer combat, or stay ahead of the “entropy curve,” due to inefficient communication processes and, thus, degradation of the maintenance procedures communicated to the cells via the meta-information system that is specific to each particular biological entity and to each particular species. After all, any species description is necessarily an informed description.

Yet another origin-of-life approach — the Wimmer abiogenesis experiment — is highly instructive. He managed to “create” a polio virus. He did so by introducing RNA information into a “cell-free juice,” and the polio virus spontaneously resulted.

Wimmer used actual DNA to synthesize polio RNA based on information about the polio virus RNA which is widely available, even on the internet. The RNA information was truly “pulled” from the DNA, which “resides” at the next-higher level. He could not synthesize RNA directly; he first had to synthesize the DNA from the raw information and then synthesize the polio RNA from the synthetic DNA.

Yet RNA information, like all information, is immaterial. In terms of the Williams’ hierarchy, clearly Wimmer had obtained an organism functioning at about Level (iii) — because it had sufficient information to propel it to that level, as “pulled” by the information available at the next-higher level where DNA information “resides” — Level (iv).

Unlike biological organisms expressing all five levels of the Williams model, the polio virus, though fully autonomous as an information processor (leading to its “successful communication” in Wimmer’s laboratory), somehow still doesn’t have everything it needs to be fully “autonomous” as a living being. A virus, for instance, is dependent on a living host in order to execute its own life program. As such, it is a sort of “quasi-life.” Shannon Information Theory helps us to clarify such distinctions.

Before we turn to Shannon, it’s worth mentioning that, according to H. H. Pattee and Luis Rocha, the issue of autonomy (and semiosis — the language and the ability to encode/decode messages) is a huge stumbling block to abiogenesis theory. For that kind of complexity to emerge by self-organizing theory, in the RNA world, the organism would have to involuntarily toggle back and forth between non-autonomous and autonomous modes, first to gather, and then to make use of information content as an autonomous living entity. The question then becomes: What tells it how and when to “toggle?” Further, it appears the source of the information content that can toggle non-life into life remains undisclosed.

Shannon Information Theory
The DNA of any individual life form is exactly the same whether the organism is dead or alive. And we know this, for DNA is widely used and proved reliable in forensic tests of decedents in criminal courts of law. And so we propose:

Information is that which distinguishes life from non-life/death.

Information, paraphrased as “successful communication,” is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. It is the action which facilitates any successfully completed communication. Thus Shannon’s model describes the universal “mechanism” of communication. That is, it distinguishes between the “content” of a message and its “conduit”: The model is indifferent to the actual message being communicated, which could be anything, from “Don’t forget to put your boots on today — it’s snowing,” to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The value or meaning of the message being transmitted has no bearing on the Shannon model, which is the same for all messages whatever. Pictorially, the Shannon communication conduit looks like this:

Information is further defined by its independence from physical determination:

“I came to see that the computer offers an insuperable obstacle to Darwinian materialism. In a computer, as information theory shows, the content is manifestly independent of its material substrate. No possible knowledge of a computer’s materials can yield any information whatsoever about the actual content of its computations. In the usual hierarchy of causation, they reflect the software or ‘source code’ used to program the device; and, like the design of the computer itself, the software is contrived by human intelligence.

“The failure of purely physical theories to describe or explain information reflects Shannon’s concept of entropy and his measure of ‘news.’ Information is defined by its independence from physical determination: If it is determined, it is predictable and thus by definition not information. Yet Darwinian science seemed to be reducing all nature to material causes.” — George Gilder, “Evolution and Me,” National Review, July 17, 2006, p. 29f.

Referring to the Shannon diagram above, we can interpret the various elements of the model in terms of biological utility, as follows:

Note the head, “noise.” Biologically speaking, with respect to the fully-integrated, five-leveled biological organism, “noise” in the channel might be introduced by certain biological “enigmas,” which broadly satisfy the requirements of Williams’ model and, thus, are living organisms. Shannon Information Theory describes such “enigmas” as follows:

Bacteria — typified by autonomous successful communication; bacteria are single-cell organisms. Because they are autonomous entities, communications follow the normal flow in Shannon theory — source, message, encoder/transmitter, channel, decoder/receiver. The bacteria’s messages are not “broadcast” to other nearby bacteria but are autonomous to the single-cell organism.

Bacterial Spores — typified by autonomous successful communication. Bacterial spores, such as anthrax, are like other bacteria except they can settle into a dormant state. Dormant bacterial spores begin regular successful communication under the Shannon model once an “interrupt” has occurred, for instance the presence of food. Anthrax, for instance, may lay dormant for years until breathed into a victim’s lungs, whereupon it actively begins its successful albeit destructive (to its host) communication, which often leads to the death of its host; i.e., the bacterium’s “food source.”

Mycoplasmas — typified as an autonomous bacterial model parasite successfully communicating. Mycoplasmas are akin to bacteria except they lack an outer membrane and so often attach to other cells, whereby they may cause such events as, for instance, the disease pneumonia. In the Shannon model, mycoplasmas are considered “autonomous” in that the communications are often restricted to the mycoplasma itself; e.g., self-reproduction. But because they also act like a parasite, they might alter the host’s properties and thus result in malfunctions in the autonomous communication of the host by, for instance, interfering with the channel.

Mimivirus — typified as an autonomous virus model parasite successfully communicating. Mimiviruses are gigantic viruses. They are viruses because they are parasites to their host, relying on the host for protein engineering. But the mimiviruses (unlike regular viruses) apparently do not need to be a parasite, and thus they are “autonomous” with regard to the Shannon model. But like the mycoplasmas, the presence of mimiviruses can alter properties of the host and thereby result in malfunctions in the autonomous communications of the host by, for instance, interfering with the channel.

Viroids — typified as non-autonomous virus-like noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication. Viroids have no protein coat. They are single strands of RNA that lack the protein coat of regular viruses. They are noise in the channel under the Shannon model; i.e., messages only that are not communicated autonomously within the viroids themselves. They can also be seen as “broadcast” messages, because viroids may cause their own message (RNA) to be introduced into the host.

Viruses — typified as non-autonomous virus noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication. Viruses feed genetic data to the host. They are strands of DNA or RNA that have a protein coat. Viruses are parasites to the host, relying on the host for communication; e.g., reproduction. In the Shannon model, viruses are either noise or broadcasts that are not autonomous in the virus and appear as noise messages to the host. It is possible that, unlike the polio virus which is destructive, there may be some viruses (and viroids) whose messages cause a beneficial adaptation in the host.

Prions — typified as non-autonomous protein noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication (protein crystallization). Prions are protein molecules that have neither DNA nor RNA. Currently, prions are the suspected cause of bovine spongiform encephalopathy — Mad Cow Disease. In the Shannon model, prions would be incoherent in the channel because they have no discernable message; that is, neither DNA nor RNA. Thus the prion would lead to channel or decoding malfunctions.

So far there is no known origin for information (successful communication) in space/time. This should be visualized as activity represented by the arrows on the above illustration. Possible origins include a universal vacuum field, harmonics, geometry.

Shannon’s mathematical theory of communications applied to molecular biology shows genuine promise of having some significant implications for the theory of natural selection in explaining the rise of information (successful communication), autonomy, and semiosis (language, encoding/decoding). — S. Venable, J. Drew, “Shannon Information and Complex Systems Theory,” Don’t Let Science Get You Down, Timothy, Lulu Press, 2006, p. 207f.

It seems worthwhile to note here that, under Shannon’s model, the thermodynamic “tab” is paid when the “molecular machine” goes from the before state to the after state. At that moment, it dissipates heat into the surroundings. Level (v) meta-information successfully communicated to the organism provides it with strategies to counter and compensate for local thermodynamic effects. Ultimately, when the organism reaches a state in which it is no longer successfully communicating, the entropy tab must be paid by ordinary means. And so eventually, the living organism dies.

Putting Williams’ IC/AP Model into Context
So far, the autopoietic model — though it provides an excellent description of the information flows necessary to establish and maintain an organism in a “living state” — seems to be a bit of an abstraction. Indeed, in order to be fully understood, the model needs to be placed into the context in which it occurs — that is, in Nature.

Each living entity as described by the model is a part and participant in a far greater “whole.” Niels Bohr put it this way: “A scientific analysis of parts cannot disclose the actual character of a living organism because that organism exists only in relation to the whole of biological life.” Including the species-specific meta-information unique to any particular species, which also controls and dictates how the entire biological system works as a “whole”; i.e., at the global level. And arguably, not only in relation to the entirety of biological life, but to the physical forces of nature, to inorganic entities, and to other biological beings, including the “enigmas” described above, which appear to be a sort of “quasi-life.” For even though they may be autonomous communicators, some of these “quasi-life” examples suggest an organic state that is somehow not “sufficiently informed” to stand on its own; i.e., they exemplify a state that needs to latch onto a fully-functioning biological entity in order to complete their own “program” for life — the very definition of a parasite.

The single most telling point that Williams’ model makes is that information is vital to the living state; that it flows “downward” from the “top” of his model — Level (v), meta-information — and not from the “bottom” of the model flowing “upwards” by the incremental means characterizing Levels (i) and (ii) — not to mention orthodox Darwinist expectation. On this model, Levels (i) and (ii) “do not know how to fit themselves” into the “biological picture.” For that, they need the information available at Levels (iii) to (v).

Many questions relevant to our exploration of the fundaments of biology have not been touched on in this article — e.g., what is the meaning of “emergence?” What is the manner in which “complexification” takes place in nature? What do we mean by “open” and “closed” systems? What do we mean by “self-ordered” or “self-organizing” systems in nature? (And what does the prefix “self” mean with respect to such questions?)

But since we’re out of time, we won’t be dealing with such problems here and now, though I hope we may return to them later. Instead, I’ll leave you, dear reader, with yet another depiction of Figure 1, this time elaborated to show the total context in which the irreducibly complex, autopoietic model is embedded:

Note the model now sits, not only with respect to its natural environment, but also with respect to the quantum domain of pure potentiality, and also with respect to a (proposed) extra-mundane source of biological information.

I think for the biological sciences to actually progress, a model such as Williams’ IC/AP model is worthy of serious consideration. Remember, Darwin’s theory is wholly classical, meaning dimensionally limited to 3-space, to local, mechanical, largely force-field-driven material causation. Relativity and quantum theory have both moved well beyond those precincts. It’s time for the Darwinian theory of evolution to “catch up” with the current state of scientific knowledge — and especially with the implications of information science.

©2009 Jean F. Drew

[spirited irish]

hosepipe said, “WRONG.. the wreckage is because of socialism not gnostism..
Jesus never used the word or even the meme of heresy..
Heresy is a mental construct of the Sheep Pens..(John ch 10)..

Spirited: Paul tells us that ultimately, there are but two spiritual foundations on which every religion throughout time and around the world are based. He describes these two foundations like this, “Either you will worship and serve creation, or you will worship and serve the living Creator of creation.

The latter is of course, the worldview foundation on which Christendom and later on America were based. The former is monism, which like a coin has two sides: materialism and pantheism. On that foundation rest all ‘pagan-monist’ worldview systems and their subsequent civilizations.

One of the most fundamental answers supplied by worldview is to the question: “What is man?” Depending on the answer, there will arise a moral, cultural, and socio-economic system.

As we look around our world we can’t help but notice the utter misery under which very large numbers of people live in animist-pantheist civilizations, like India, for example. Symbolically, India’s civilization is pyramid shaped with the smallest, highest caste at the top and in descending order,the lowest, largest castes occupying perhaps the lower half or more. This dreadful system exists because the pantheist view of man is so debased.

Socialism-communism is in reality, a pyramid shaped cultural, socio-economic system based on an equally—if not more so— debased view of man-—a neo-pagan/gnostic view of man.

On an ideological level we say the wreckage is because of socialism. But at the deepest level of meaning, the cause of the wreckage is spiritual-—spiritual disease. And the descriptive word used to describe and categorize this spiritual disease is gnosticism.

[Diamond]

I see Dawkins is trying to use there model to argue against the designer

Which he can never seem to to do without using inappropriate teleological language, like comparing DNA to a computer code:

‘In a message that is totally free of redundancy, after there’s been an error there is no means of reconstructing what was intended. Computer codes often incorporate deliberately redundant ‘parity bits’ to aid in error detection. DNA, too, has various error-correcting procedures which depend upon redundancy. ...'

Dawkins is apparently able to leap gigantic logical chasms in a single bound. Just once I would like to him explain exactly how he gets 'error-detection' and "error correction" where there is NO TARGET; "what was intended" where there is NO INTENT; and 'codes' where there is NO CODER.

He can't even discuss these things without using the language of design. If teleological language were profanity, every other word of Dawkins would be bleeped out.

Cordially,

[Diamond]

I see Dawkins is trying to use there model to argue against the designer

Which he can never seem to to do without using inappropriate teleological language, like comparing DNA to a computer code:

‘In a message that is totally free of redundancy, after there’s been an error there is no means of reconstructing what was intended. Computer codes often incorporate deliberately redundant ‘parity bits’ to aid in error detection. DNA, too, has various error-correcting procedures which depend upon redundancy. ...'

Dawkins is apparently able to leap gigantic logical chasms in a single bound. Just once I would like to him explain exactly how he gets 'error-detection' and "error correction" where there is NO TARGET; "what was intended" where there is NO INTENT; and 'codes' where there is NO CODER.

He can't even discuss these things without using the language of design. If teleological language were profanity, every other word of Dawkins would be bleeped out.

Cordially,

[hosepipe]

[ On an ideological level we say the wreckage is because of socialism. But at the deepest level of meaning, the cause of the wreckage is spiritual-—spiritual disease. And the descriptive word used to describe and categorize this spiritual disease is gnosticism. ]

One must be careful of ones "knowing" a deeper "knowing"..
Cause they might not know as much as they think they do..
Most parents of children eventually learn this.. some do not..
The parents that do not, think they have the smartest kids..

[CottShop]

[[The parents that do not, think they have the smartest kids.. ]]

Ah but in my parent’s case, they were spot on right...

[[The parents that do not, think they have the most handsome kids.. ]]

Again. spot on right...

My little world is very warm and fuzzy...

[CottShop]

[[Dawkins is apparently able to leap gigantic logical chasms in a single bound.]]

So isn’t Ken Miller- infact, they apparently compete to see who can make the longest chasm leaps.

[[Which he can never seem to to do without using inappropriate teleological language, like comparing DNA to a computer code:]]

Miller also has to always appeal to designed preassembled models in order to twist and manipulate his hypothesis’ when tryign to describe how somethign liek IC blood clotting ‘could arise naturally’.

Even Nat Geo has to leap incredible chasms when ‘describing’ how species evilved- My assessment of hte hsow last night showed they left out HUGE chunks of informaiton, deceitfully leavign the audience in the dark about the FACTS real implicaitons and interpretations. The show that followed ‘When whales walked’ was even worse when it came to huge chasm-like gaps- infact biological impossibilities that simply took common descent for granted.

[hosepipe]

[ Ah but in my parent’s case, they were spot on right... ]

LoL... Mee Too... {cleaning glasses} me too..

[YHAOS]

”It was during the initial Trotsky-Lenin-Stalin regime that Nassene teachings were forcefully implemented. Divore and abortion were made easily attainable, the traditional family was forcefully attacked and almost destroyed, millions of children became wards of the ‘Mother-Father State,’ attacks were launched against the Biblical two-sex dichotomy with the intention of making androgyny the ‘new-norm.’ Churches and cathedrals were blasphemed, some became temples of atheism, and thousands of clergy were crucified-—literally.”

A Once and Future. Both history and the shape of things to come.

Rather spooky considering the number of your post,

[CottShop]

Molecular biologist Michael Denton, writing as a non-creationist skeptic of Darwinian evolution, explains what is involved:

Perhaps in no other area of modern biology is the challenge posed by the extreme complexity and ingenuity of biological adaptations more apparent than in the fascinating new molecular world of the cell… To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.

Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which—a functional protein or gene—is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man? Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced artifacts appear clumsy…

It would be an illusion to think that what we are aware of at present is any more than a fraction of the full extent of biological design. In practically every field of fundamental biological research ever-increasing levels of design and complexity are being revealed at an ever-accelerating rate.[13]

For natural selection (differential reproduction) to start, there must be at least one self-reproducing entity. But as shown above, the production of even the simplest cell is beyond the reach of undirected chemical reactions. So it’s not surprising that Teaching about Evolution omits any discussion of the origin of life... [TRUEORIGIN]

Cracks knuckles and waits for the 'Blah blah blah he quote mined' comments- when I really only posted this particular quote to point out, and give a visual of, how incredibly complex even a 'simple cell' really is, and to make hte point that even at the molecular level, there are intricacies and complexities far far beyond what we imagined which all take a higher level of metainfo to control, and simpyl can't come from simple chemicals.- thought it was just a neat statement that gives soem kind of idea just how intrictely connected and complex everythign really is, even right down to the 'simplest' examples in life. One htne begins to wonder if the 'simplest' is this complicated and itnerdependent, just how many billions of years are needed for even this 'simplistic' evolution to occure and accumulate such info? Let alone trillions of higher and higher complxities as species supposedly evolved via mistakes?

[Alamo-Girl]

Humans basic arrogance can/could assume all things happens on a scale of fleshly reality..

That is the most common error IMHO: that that which is physical is all that there is, i.e. the extent of "reality."

[Alamo-Girl]

Its a wonderful thing.. Pure genius actually.. After fully being sorted and convinced indoctrinated and settled, comfortable and relaxed in a sheep pen.. denying their selection(choice) would be hard to do..

At the root, it answers the question "who did you believe?"

[CottShop]

Let’s not forget htough that the spirit listeth where it will- There may be many pens within pens, and people may have become comfortable i ntheir own pens, but the psirit works where it will- We each have a unique calling and are placed where we are for specific purposes that are not immediately obvious to us.

[Alamo-Girl]

The further I read- the more profound this issue becomes- This evaluation on the part of hte sender really, very strongly, indicates, once again, that an intelligent agent causation foreknew the reciever woudl need an ‘intelligent’ sender which could anticipate how hte reciever would receive the message, and how it would react- ie: It doesn’t just simpyl send hte message, it also takes into account how hte receiver will interprete the message, and what actions the receiver will likely take when the message is received.

Precisely so!

This is the point that betty boop and I keep trying to drive home on threads involving "information theory and molecular biology."

Shannon's theory is about communications. It involves all of the elements: message, sender, encoding, channel, noise, decoding and receiver.

Under the Shannon model, information is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the receiver (or molecular machine) as it goes from a before state to an after state. It is the successful communication, not any particular element of it.

Dawkins - and ever so many others - want to cherry-pick from Shannon's model and decree what information "is." When we let them to get away with it, they change the focus of the debate to one of the elements - typically the message itself.

But when a person realizes the full import of Shannon's model to molecular biology - he will surely understand (as evidenced in Diamond's excerpt) - that all of the elements have to be there at the same point in time for communications to occur. And even then, it takes an event - like a desire arising in the sender to inform the receiver of something - to initiate a communication.

A message, sender, receiver, coding system (language, semiosis) or channel just sitting there does not accomplish a communication.

By some initiation event the sender has a message to transmit in order to reduce uncertainty in the receiver. It is purposeful. It is teleological per se.

Truly, the receiver must be prepared to receive the message, both must speak the same language (encoding/decoding) - and the medium (channel) of the transmission must be autonomous to the communication (that sender, that receiver) to cope with the noise.

BTW, betty boop and I have categorized the initiation events to these three types: 1) interrupt, something happens in the environment - like food to an anthrax spore, or the movement of a mouse on a PC, 2) cycle, an interval of time, a pinging or rhythm like a heart beat, and most importantly, 3) an act of will - such as a bird choosing to fly away when released from the top of a building (instead of unwillingly going "splat".)

Certainly, the Shannon model - being mathematics could care less the meaning of the message. For instance, the formula for the area of a rectangle doesn't change with the size or composition of it.

But of a truth, meaning is the point of the communication to both sender and receiver! Communications is purposeful.

The likes of Dawkins get tunnel-visioned on the information content of the received message. And no doubt atheism and naturalism deny purpose in nature as an article of faith. But the point of Shannon is that all the elements must be there, at the same time - and there must be an initiation.

It is also obvious that any "thing" which cannot communicate is not alive - and that any "thing" which can no longer communicate is dead.

When some of us Christians see Shannon's theory applied to molecular biology it is obvious that life could not emerge by happenstance, i.e. without God. It is also obvious that life need not be restricted to the physical, i.e. spiritual life, we are dead and alive with Christ in God (Col 3:3)

[Alamo-Girl]

We each have a unique calling and are placed where we are for specific purposes that are not immediately obvious to us.

So very true. I would that every Christian would be ever aware of that. Perhaps then there would be less yelling over the fences.

Praise God!!!

[hosepipe]

[ "who did you believe?" ]

True.. some minds imagine things other minds do not..
What the mind imagines or conceives of can limit what you believe..
-or- enlarge what the spirit can merge with..

Ideas or concepts seem to radiate from the imagination..
from images of what is possible.. probable.. or practical..

How much we need the Holy Spirit with visions of greater things..
Could be the imagination is spiritual not fleshly..
With spiritual images of spiritual things..

[Alamo-Girl]

I don't see imagination as physical either - though no doubt there are some who use their (non-physical) imagination to construct a (non-physical) "second reality" - which is based on their (non-physical) hope that the physical is all that there is. Ironic, eh?!

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!

[betty boop]

The likes of Dawkins get tunnel-visioned on the information content of the received message. And no doubt atheism and naturalism deny purpose in nature as an article of faith. But the point of Shannon is that all the elements must be there, at the same time — and there must be an initiation.

In short, biological functions (which are by definition purposeful, in that the function exists to secure a biological end or goal) that depend on successful communication of information (which seems to be all biological functions, including those at the level of single-celled entities) cannot be the product of an evolutionary development based on random mutation/natural selection (i.e., a gradualist, step-by-step process). Rather, evolutionary development is “drawn” from an information source, e.g., Williams’ concept of inversely-causal meta-information. If there is an information source, then it follows that its “information” is purposeful.

And yet the natural sciences nowadays refuse to grapple with teleology, with the idea that nature is “purposeful.” Here’s an interesting observation that helps provide perspective from a(n) (in)famous scientist whose name is associated with the ID “movement”:

Centuries ago nascent modern science took a crucial step. Breaking at last with the old Aristotelian thinking, it would no longer consider nebulous “final causes” in its explanations. Whether the ultimate purpose of, say, a mountain was to display the grandeur of God or something else could not be decided by an investigation of nature. Henceforth such questions would be relegated to philosophy or theology. Science would deliberately confine itself to issues about the mechanics of nature, and ignore issues of purpose. What a horse or a river or star is “for” would trouble science no longer.

At the time it seemed like a prudent course of action. Yet the simplistic division of labor was doomed from the start, because some parts of nature quite clearly are “for” identifiable things. Science wished to explain the mechanics of nature apart from purpose, but especially in biology the mechanics themselves often cannot be understood apart from purpose. The “function” of a mountain may not be decidable, but the function of a wing surely is. The purpose of a horse might be obscure, but the purpose of a horse’s eye is not.

Biologists of course realized this. Only when Darwin seemed to provide a non-purposive explanation for apparent purpose could life itself be accommodated within the new framework. Biology was the last scientific discipline to come fully under the sway of non-Aristotelian, mechanistic thinking. Subsequently biologists continued to think and speak of aspects of life in terms of purpose, but only with the (usually implicit) understanding that is was merely apparent purpose. Although over the years many scientists acting as individuals concluded that purpose was real, “official” biology self-consciously restricted itself to considering only non-purposive explanations for the origin of the apparently purposeful systems of life.

I argue that this state of affairs is no longer tenable. Although for convenience humans may carve up intellectual pursuits into various academic disciplines, reality is not obliged to respect such boundaries. In order to come to grips with the real world — in order to arrive at true explanations — rationality demands that we abjure artificial distinctions when their usefulness appears to have reached its limit. Rather, in proposing explanations for nature we must use all of the data and all of the experience we have available. The end result of stubborn adherence to a simplistic division of nature into discoverable mechanics and undiscoverable purpose, I say, is nothing less than the official divorce of science from reason.
— Michael Behe, “When Science Renounces a Facet of Reason,” Divine Action and Natural Selection, Singapore: World Scientific, 2009, p. 709f Emphasis added.

Thus Darwinists say purpose [teleology] in nature is only apparent, not real. Just as Dawkins says, when having to account for the obvious presence of design in nature, that this is not really design, but merely apparent design; he terms entities displaying this (to him fictional) quality as “designoids.”

Just a couple observations. It is only by denying all consideration of teleology in physical nature that can man be “fully integrated” into the Darwinian biological picture. Of course, the denial of teleology in nature also means that man as a part of nature cannot be a self-conscious, goal-directed, intelligent actor in nature. And thus an extraordinarily important distinction regarding the actuality of the human person is lost thereby. And with it any recognition, let alone justification, of human free will.

The thought has occurred to me that the “real battle” between Darwinian evolution theory and ID is not being conducted on the grounds the Darwinists allege. They have skewed the debate by asserting that what ID is really all about is religious proselytization under the cover of science by those nefarious IDers, who are really only Bible-thumping, right-wing Christian fundamentalist kooks trying to smuggle Creationism (i.e., God) into the science classroom.

It's funny that folks who would say that purpose in nature is only illusory could be so very confident about the definiteness and actuality of purpose they ascribe to their "adversaries," i.e., anyone who advances the proposition that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific hypothesis. (As if Darwinists never have purposes of their own.)

But I think the “real battle” is about whether final causes ought to be reintroduced into scientific thinking or not. Obviously, the Darwinists are saying “absolutely not.” The IDers are saying, “if you don’t, science becomes increasingly irrational and counterproductive.”

One last thought, re: “initiation” of biological messages. I thought Fr. Coyne’s discussion of the distinctions between “creation” and “origin” (quoted in an earlier post of mine) provides an excellent framework under which to consider this aspect of the problem. As you’ll recall, Coyne does not regard “creation” as having been only a one-time, start-up event that got the whole universe going “in the beginning,” but as the on-going universal requirement of biological existence itself. In other words, existent things are such only because they are constantly participating in Being. That is, biological life is contingent on Being — which is divine. Christians would call this: Divine Providence. I’ll say no more about this here, but just offer it as “food for thought.”

Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your excellent essay/post!

[hosepipe]

Yes.. the irony is pregnant..
Both can be real, denying one sphere as improbable between corporeal vs. non corporeal.. must have an agenda..

[betty boop]

What the mind imagines or conceives of can limit what you believe.

On the other hand, there is the view that what the mind can imaginatively conceive may well constitute a possibility for nature.

Sigh. These problems are so ticklish: Human experience testifies to the validity of both statements. So then each would be "true" in some way, some context.... Certainly I don't see a necessary "either/or situation" here.

What I do see is that some relation between mind and world obtains in nature. The details of this mystery have yet to be unraveled.

[hosepipe]

[ What I do see is that some relation between mind and world obtains in nature. The details of this mystery have yet to be unraveled. ]

Human sensory organs may not be able to gauge reality correctly.. except in the lesser/lower dimensions.. Could be there is much more to "see" and "hear" and even "feel" than the human body can experience.. The human experience seems to be so lineal.. even two dimensional..

If we cannot deal with a two dimensional experience or even three dimensional one.. greater dimensions might not be appreciated.. The human experience might be a test.. a test of the spirit not of the flesh.. The vet "us" for future deeds/tasks..