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

[Alamo-Girl]

WHo can observe anything from all aspects?..
The arrogant may think they do..
The vain may be sure they do?..
and, the afraid may be afraid to admit they looked...

But the wise know they are pretty stupid..
For the more you know, the more you know of things you don't know..
Generating humility..

So very true, dear brother in Christ! Well said.

[Alamo-Girl]

Precious! Thank you so very much for sharing that!

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! Sounds like you and I are on the same path. Thank God!!!

[Alamo-Girl]

What a wonderful opportunity for them - and for you, too!

[Alamo-Girl]

But the fact still remains that scientific knowledge does not encompass the totality of human knowledge, or provide solutions to all human problems; let alone does it reach to wisdom.

Precisely so. And truly, Spiritual things cannot be discerned by the scientific method or conveyed by ordinary language.

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned.

But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ. - I Corinthians 2:6-16

As Jesus said:

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life. – John 6:63

To God be the glory!

[hosepipe]

Gee.. your life must keep getting better and better..
I'm such a sucker for little girls.. my grand daughters own me..

Yeah.. {cough} I'm rich too...
Somebody (up there) loves me.. I guess..

[metmom]

Since science is not in the meaning business, all it has to go on is the medium. It's awesomely good there. But the fact still remains that scientific knowledge does not encompass the totality of human knowledge, or provide solutions to all human problems; let alone does it reach to wisdom.

Well said.

A shortcoming that some would do well to recognize.

Science, via technology, has made human life infinity more comfortable and saved many lives, but that's all it can do. The why's and wherefore's will forever be beyond the reach of science, no matter how hard they try.

*Religion* deals with the rest of life and human needs which is why I fail to see the need by scientists to disparage it and try to prove (in cases like Dawkins) that it is nonsense and control it.

Scientists are quick enough to complain when anyone tries to have religion influence science.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

3. Origin of life.

Here. Here's some solid evolution science on that one:

Tetrakinetic Theory

The Origin of Life

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

It's odd; but the meaning of science is not something that can be elucidated on the basis of the currently prevailing scientific method, which presupposes the doctrine of naturalism. Meaning is not a "natural" phenomenon.

The prevailing scientific method is one based on the elimination of final causes. For example, see here. However, such a philosophic view is abnormal and contrary to human nature. People do talk the talk and insist that students be indoctrinated with such philosophy, but, like Pyrrho or Hume, they can't really believe it, and they don't, unless they are crazy. This artificial state of affairs can't really continue. There's only so much anti-human, anti-commonsense philosophy that people will swallow before barfing.

In regards to information and messages, it is interesting how the scholastic doctrine of "substance" suddenly reappears. A message of pure gibberish with high informational entropy has no "substance" to it. A compressed message that does have decodable meaning may be indistinguishable from gibberish formally or materially, but it has "substance" to it. The substance is real, though only the mind can detect it. And that is exactly the scholastic doctrine on substance (and probably Aristotle's too.)

[spirited irish]

betty wrote: The theory doesn’t require knowledge of the origin of biological life in order to study life as a changing process. In other words, the theory takes it for granted that life already exists; and then tells you how it “speciates” (changes over time, the source of biological novelty and diversity).

Spirited: There in a nutshell, is the ancient pagan(and modern) creation-mythos.

In their book, ‘The Hiram Key,’ evolutionary materialists Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas explain that ancient Egyptians, “believed that matter had always existed; to them it was illogical to think of a god making something out of absolutely nothing. Their view was that the world began when order came out of chaos, and that ever since there has been a battle between the forces of organization and disorder. (There was) a creative force within (chaos) that commanded order to begin. This latent power which was within the substance of the chaos did not know it existed; it was a probability...within the randomness of disorder.”

Paganism is like a coin whose two sides are materialism and pantheism, which itself subdivides into materialist-pantheism and idealistic-pantheism. The former is the pantheism of the Ionians and Stoics for example, while the latter is for example, Buddhist. All variants are types of animism (hylozoism), which speaks of an immanent life-force existing throughout nature. Pantheism generally (but not always) anthropomorphizes the force. Materialism on the other hand, is a more highly refined animism which most generally speaks of the life-force in terms of energy. The Egyptian Pharoah’s were materialists of this sort.

Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism and apocalyptic history are really nothing more than animism in disguise.

Hegel’s dialectics are also animism, but of the ideal variety.

Nietzsche was also an animist of the ideal variant.

Darwinism is also animism, but disguised as ‘science.’ The ineffable forces within Chance, Natural Selection, and Probability are examples of animism (hylozoism).

The evolutionary materialist must denounce the spiritual attributes of mind, reason, and conscience because hylozoism states that these properties belong to dialectical matter.

Modernitys’ Pied Piper, Evolutionary Humanism, entranced its followers with impossible visions of something new and better. It called this wonderful vision Progress. But Truth reveals the ugly lie: Progress, as it turns out, really means regress-—a turning back to paganism and its superstitions.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Darwinism is also animism, but disguised as ‘science.’ The ineffable forces within Chance, Natural Selection, and Probability are examples of animism (hylozoism).

Here, you'll find this interesting:

Haeckel and Natural-Scientific Materialism , V. I. Lenin.

[hosepipe]

Indeed; Animism is a religious cartoon.. story-boarding some tale of magic.. Where the operators become some form of animal operating as human.. or humans operating as some form of animal.. Animism is a Cargo Cult carrying a cargo as a statement.. an answer to "the Story"..

Religion must carry a Yarn.. which is the cartoon of Cargo worship.. Literally all religion is some form of animism.. Judaism(in the bible) has thoughly proved religion does not work.. Buddhism/Hinduism adds to the experiment.. and natural materialism completes the circle..

Fortunately Jesus came to make ALL religion obsolete, AND DID. (ex: John ch 10, Rom 8)
Jesus however did preach evolution.. He said, "You MUST be born again"..
If you are not born again then you are living a cartoon that is animistic in nature..
Humans must evolve metaphorically maybe even literally..

Animism mocks God with Satans gospel.. "Eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and you will be like God".. (Gen ch 1-4).. The source of all religion..

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the links!

Jeepers, but the author is a devoted acolyte of Darwin - beginning the second essay with his profession of faith that the theory of evolution is a physical law above the physical "laws" of Newton, i.e. that gravity is merely an "agent" of evolution. Talk about a horse/cart error and zero consideration of geometric physics - though he could be excused because relativity may not have been in currency in his day.

He is quite the story teller - then again historical sciences are story telling, e.g. archeology, anthropology, Egyptology. Indeed, scientific theories are stories - ditto for political ideology, etc.

Sir Karl Popper famously criticized Marx and Freud because their theories were unfalsifiable. And I suspect the same should be said of many if not most story tellers. But one day science, technology and reality (both physical and most importantly, Spiritual) will catch up with their spin.

In this case for instance, Osborn bets the abiogenesis farm on energy. And in the 1950's Urey/Miller went down that path simulating lightning strikes. They had some success in creating amino acids that way but their experiments went no further.

About the same time, Crick/Watson discovered DNA - the message of living biological organisms - but neither they nor Urey/Miller understood the full import to molecular biology of information theory, founded on Claude Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications (1948.)

Although "information theory and molecular biology" has been used successfully in both cancer and pharmaceutical research - it wasn't evidenced until the Wimmer experiment in approximately 2002 (bootstrapping polio from a message, e.g. off the internet) the relevance of information (successful communication) to any theory of abiogenesis.

And on this thread, Szostak is touted as being on the leading edge of abiogenesis experiments. And what is his focus but the same "information theory and molecular biology."

HHMI: Jack Szostak

We are interested in applying directed evolution to nonstandard nucleic acids, as a way of asking whether life could have evolved using genetic polymers other than RNA. TNA (threose nucleic acid) is a particularly interesting nucleic acid synthesized by Albert Eschenmoser's group (Scripps Research Institute) in a search for possible progenitors of RNA. The sugar-phosphate backbone of TNA uses the four-carbon sugar threose, which might have been easier to come by prebiotically than the ribose of RNA. Despite the one-atom-shorter sugar-phosphate backbone repeat unit, TNA oligonucleotides can base-pair with themselves and with RNA and DNA. We have recently devised an approach to the enzymatic synthesis of TNA libraries, and experiments aimed at the in vitro evolution of TNA aptamers and catalysts are in progress.

The origin of information (successful communications) in the universe will no doubt remain an open question no matter what abiogenesis theories might become a paradigm to biologists. Simply put, Shannon's theory is mathematics, a universal that would be applicable to any form of life anywhere in the universe, e.g. artificial intelligence on earth, non "carbon based" life in the cosmos.

And of course the origin of (biological) life is directly hinged to that question - and requires an origin for autonomy and semiosis (language) as well because the message in information theory requires both sender and receiver as well as encoding and decoding. And in the theoretical prebiotic "soup" without autonomy, the message is a broadcast and the soup remains a soup.

Evidently, Szostak is aware of this and trying to address these points at once in his experiments:

We have recently begun to study the properties of membrane vesicles built from simple amphiphilic molecules such as fatty acids. Such vesicles are models for the compartment boundaries of primitive cells. Since the first cells had no biochemical machinery to mediate the growth and division of their membrane boundaries, there must be purely physical and chemical processes that allow membrane vesicles to grow and divide. Our goal is to find out what those processes could be. Growth turns out to be relatively simple, and Pier Luigi Luisi's lab (then at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich) has shown that fatty acid vesicles can grow by incorporating additional fatty acid supplied in the form of micelles. By combining that process with a procedure for division that forces large vesicles through small pores, we have demonstrated multiple generations of vesicle growth and division. We are currently exploring alternative division processes that might be more prebiotically realistic.

Here he is trying to simulate the spontaneous rise of an undirected, meaningless pre-cursor "message" in lieu of a coherent message fragment, i.e. the RNA. And to affect the message, Szostak proposes the spontaneous rise of autonomy in montmorillonite clay. Notably, I do not see him addressing the Pattee/Rocha concern: Rocha's theory began with an RNA world - message fragments floating around with a (to become) biological thing toggling back and forth between non-autonomous and autonomous to gather and then use those message fragments.

Szostak's model will eventually have to come to terms with this need to gather (non-autonomous) messages while not losing the ability to toggle back to being autonomous.

And here:

One fundamental question that we are attempting to address through RNA aptamer selections is the relationship between information content and biochemical function. It seems intuitively obvious that more information should be required to specify or encode a structure that does a better job at performing some function, such as binding a target molecule. We have recently provided the first quantitative demonstration of such a relationship. We approached the problem by isolating a set of distinct aptamers, all of which bind the same target (GTP), but with a wide range of affinities. Our results show that the high-affinity aptamers are much more structurally complex than the low-affinity aptamers. By measuring the amount of information that is required to specify each structure, we were able to show that, on average, it takes about 10 bits of additional information to encode structures that are 10-fold better at binding GTP. Our current work is aimed at understanding the underlying physical basis for the observed relationship between information and function.

BTW, for the proposed montmorillonite clay to be prebiotically realistic for the rise of autonomy - then it should be likewise realistic for the same event today. IOW, if that is the case then we ought to be able to observe abiogenesis - or at least autonomy and precursor messages in montmorillonite clay today.

Obviously, Osborn's story is obsolete. And Szostak's story may end up becoming obsolete as well.

But that's what science does: a theory is a story which only has value to the extent it is falsifiable (Popper.)

The more a theory (e.g. relativity) survives attempts to falsify it, the more confidence we can have in the theory. But to the author of the articles you linked, the theory rarely is elevated to the status of a physical law (e.g. the second law of thermodynamics.) Though indeed, in some disciplines - particularly historical disciplines like evolution biology - the theory is elevated (wrongly in my view) to the status of a paradigm. For them, it may as well be "holy writ."

[CottShop]

[[Indeed, the remarks regarding homochirality in his article strongly suggest that such molecules are already “prepped” in a special way for life.]]

The origins of life macroevolutionists will deny this, claiming it still ‘could have happened’ by chance (and we;ll get soem long-winded drawn out ‘explanation’ of how al lthe right elements ‘could have’ aligned themselves and seperated themselves from the wrong types, so that nature could ‘do it’s magic’

Of course, we’ll not get an ‘explanation’ as to how these molecules were purified before they miraculously aligned themselves, and seperated themselves before the whole ‘natural process’ began

[[Yet this does not appear to affect the teleological status of meta-information: Because it points to purposes, goals, in nature, we can speak of it as meaningful.]]

I can appreciate scientists wishing to opine strictly with scientific responses, but my goodness- when enough information points to intent, design, and intelligent assembly, it simply becomes silly trying to further the arguement on a purely scientific/Naturalistic level.

For instance, if I and several peopel were to uncover 1000 intricately carved urns which had symbols and wording on them in a consistent maner fro mvase to vase, two lines of forensic hypothesising could be taken- one natural including causation, the other intelligent causation.

I could argue that naturem given enough time, ‘could have’ formed these urns in a purely natural manner- making hte case for just one urn- I could hsow that tremendous winds worked the clay into hollowed out vessels, while at hte same time the clay was rolling around, it somehow managed to result in ‘primitive’ symbols markings, and that bird droppings hitting hte vessels, resulted in ‘primitive’ look-alike symbols on the outside of the urn. I could then argue that a cataclysmic heating event solified the clay, and the result was a ‘proto urn’. I could point to events in nature that ‘under hte right circumstances’ produce ‘similiar looking’ hollowed out vessels of clay, and clai mthat since lower levels of ‘information and ‘assembly’ exist, then it can’t be argued that hogher levels of informaiton and examples of IC in 1000 uncovered urns are infact IC.

However, since there is an abundance of ID and IC invovled in the 1000 urns, it would be silly to try to argue that nature did all this by some uncontrolled forces of nature, so we MUST then argue both the scientific evidence AND the implications, just as forensic science must argue for intelligent causation vs unintelligent causation when examining a crime scene or scene of investigation.

Of course we’re not talking static objects, but dynamic living systems which are subject to manipulation via mutaitons, however, once again, it all breaks down into the base points of informaiton, and whether this can arise naturally, and if not, then there is only one other alternative, intelligent causation- so again, it is not a case of ‘going beyond science’ to argue intelligent causation, but rather it is a mandatory arguement for intelligent causation when there is enough evidence to suggest this, and I beleive the evidence of informaiton, especially metainformation, is a very strong arguemtn for hte need for intelligent causation, and should NOT be excluded, and that doing so would infact be as unscientific as my argument that the 1000 clay urns must be naturally caused. Arguing from a purely naturalistic viewpoint in such matters renders the arguement, in the face of overwhelming evidnece to the contrary, unscientific. It makes such arguemtns pure apologetics.

[CottShop]

[[Here he is trying to simulate the spontaneous rise of an undirected, meaningless pre-cursor “message” in lieu of a coherent message fragment, i.e. the RNA. And to affect the message, Szostak proposes the spontaneous rise of autonomy in montmorillonite clay.]]

This is al lwell and good, but once this low level informaiton arises- He is not going to be able to demonstrate higher level metainformation arising in the clay- he can’t. There simply is not a source for the higher level metainfo available to the lower level in nature- He’ll have to make hte arguement that htis higher level metainfo is somehow capable of arising from this lower level info over billions of years as it supposedly progressed via mistakes and as this lower level somehow managed to beat all the odds and impossibilities and law breaking processes while it was locked away in it’s clay coccoon.

Here again is just another attempt to take pre-existing ID/IC already established, and deconstructing it, and inventing intelligently designed ‘natural processes’ that defy natural, biological, mathematical and chemical laws, and claiming that since ‘lower levels of assembly exist, then higher levels can’t be argued as IC’. Of course they won’t be able to show that any of hteir intelligently designed, carefully controlled, and carefully directed ‘natural processes’ ever occured in nature, but they’ll be quick to attack IC in this manner when they invent their intelligently designed, natural law violating process of simple construciton of lower level info assembly.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear spirited irish!

[Alamo-Girl]

Fortunately Jesus came to make ALL religion obsolete, AND DID. (ex: John ch 10, Rom 8) Jesus however did preach evolution.. He said, "You MUST be born again"..

If you are not born again then you are living a cartoon that is animistic in nature.. Humans must evolve metaphorically maybe even literally..

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

[Alamo-Girl]

For instance, if I and several peopel were to uncover 1000 intricately carved urns which had symbols and wording on them in a consistent maner fro mvase to vase, two lines of forensic hypothesising could be taken- one natural including causation, the other intelligent causation.

I could argue that naturem given enough time, ‘could have’ formed these urns in a purely natural manner-

Truly, the plentitude argument (anything that can happen, did) is crucial to atheism. That space/time is finite destroys that argument.

Thank you for sharing your insights, dear CottShop!

[Alamo-Girl]

This is al lwell and good, but once this low level informaiton arises- He is not going to be able to demonstrate higher level metainformation arising in the clay- he can’t.

Precisely so. But he is not concerning himself with such things - he is merely trying to demonstrate that a particular abiogenesis story is feasible. No doubt "true believers" will extrapolate from such a success (if it happens) that ipso facto all the other stories (e.g. complexification) are therefore also feasible. But they were already "tree believers" anyway.

Nevertheless, we know that even though a particular event may have been feasible it doesn't mean that it actually happened. For Elizabeth Taylor to have forsaken her beauty, wealth and career and have fallen in love with hosepipe may have been feasible, but it didn't happen. Isn't that right, hosepipe?

The big question is whether others would be influenced by the true believer's "spin" on whatever he accomplishes (if he does.)

Like Wimmer, he begins with a message albeit a tiny fragment. So he stacks the deck in his favor. I find his work interesting but not illuminating and nowhere near as significant as Crick/Watson or Wimmer.

As they say, the proof is in the pudding - or in his case, the montmorillonite clay. For if the phenomenon was widespread enough in montmorillonite clay in a prebiotic world to bootstrap life from non-life in sufficient numbers to account for what we see in the time frame involved - it should be there still today.

Even so, as you suggest, he doesn't lay a glove on inversely causal information (successful communication) in biological life - or temporal non-locality (as I prefer to call the phenomenon.)

For newly arriving lurkers, the term refers to the organism becoming informed of something that hasn't happened yet, e.g. the need to do maintenance or repair.

[hosepipe]

[ For Elizabeth Taylor to have forsaken her beauty, wealth and career and have fallen in love with hosepipe may have been feasible, but it didn't happen. Isn't that right, hosepipe? ]

LoL... True.. its true Taylor when young was serious eye candy.. If she would have shown me the slightest attention it would have scared me to death.. I fantasize about Ann Coulter(I'm a sinner) these days.. but living with her would/could be a kind of HELL.. God forbid you make her mad.. She would verbally slice and dice you.. and worse tell you the truth..