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]

Neither the arrogant Lenin, nor for that matter any Darwinian Humanists, can actually live according to the reductionism of the animistic-determistic they publicly profess. For if in fact they are nothing more than a soulless, mindless aggregate of matter (materialism) or a soulless body accompanied by an impersonal intelligence hovering somewhere in the unseen realm (postmodern pantheism), then there is no ‘chooser,’ no ‘me, myself, and I.’ This means that though there be a body, there is no one home, so to speak.

betty boop, as I recall, once quipped [paraphrased] that the very scientists who believe physical reality is strongly determined, that there is no "ghost in the machine" - nevertheless do not decline the honors and awards offered to them with the remark that the subject acheivements were the involuntary consequence the physical brain inside their skulls, that their identities are merely epiphenomens, secondary phenomenons which can cause nothing to happen.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights!

[Alamo-Girl]

The epistemelogical foundation of the purely naturalistic view point is indistinguishable from the one that asserts the creationist view. In both cases, we start with a presupposition that controls the identification and qualification of evidence.

Precisely so.

At the root, both statements "Nature did it" and "God did it" cut off the investigation prematurely - all the more so as a presupposition.

Thank you oh so very much for your outstanding essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

[Alamo-Girl]

Cannot we see that here Szostak is "begging the question?" If the natural world conducted itself according to Szostak's own personal will, then surely his statement would be correct. The point is, the statement is incorrect, because the natural world is not subject to Szostak's personal will. It is what it is, independently of Szostak's desires for it. He wants the universe to be intelligible on his terms. Evidently he has yet to consider that it may not be intelligible on his terms. In which case, he has a choice: He can be either a scientist or an ideologue.

Very well said, dearest sister in Christ!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your beautiful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

Where you and I disagree is concerning the question of where "meaning" ultimately resides. Evidently, you want the world itself to be "meaningful."

And it is — to the rational mind. That is to say, "meaning" resides, not in the world directly, but in the human mind only.

I very strongly agree.

The letter in my mailbox has no meaning until I read it.

And even then, the meaning is very much in my own mind. I may not even be able to describe how meaningful it was to me.

By the way, in the Shannon model information occurs when the receiver is informed - the receiver moves from a before state of uncertainty to an after state. But whether the message was meaningful is, like the letter, in the mind of the receiver.

[Alamo-Girl]

Inadequate conceptions of time seem to be a major problem for the natural sciences nowadays.

So very true.

It is probably human nature (a limitation of vision and mind) to think of time as an absolute and linear - even when we are aware of relativity and the possibility of additional dimensions of time.

But God's Name is I Am. So the more we focus on Him, the more we hallow His Name, the more aware we can become of time, eternity and timelessness.

[Alamo-Girl]

One key term that has not been defined is randomness. To me, a person who uses the term "randomness" is simply making a confession that there's something going on that he doesn't understand. For as Alamo-Girl has pointed out on several occasions, we cannot say whether something is random unless we know what the "system is" in which it participates. To say that such and such is "random" is tantamount to saying we don't know what the "system is."

Truly, it would be much better if they simply said "unpredictable."

The term "random" suggests that they know what the system is. And the number and types of dimensions are both unknown and unknowable.

Thank you so much for your excellent insights, dearest sister in Christ!

[GodGunsGuts]

==The letter in my mailbox has no meaning until I read it.

Not exactly. The message has no meaning for YOU until you have read it. Tell me, if a sparrow falls to the ground and you weren’t there to see it...

Matthew 10:29

[spirited irish]

By way of the West’s acceptance of Darwinism-—which opened the door wide to the return of neopagan materialism and pantheism-—the West has almost completely returned to the way of thinking-—though revamped and modernized-— that held sway prior to Jesus Christ.

Nature-—whether large bodies such as planets or materialism’s unseen energy-—was divine and all things spiritual were endowments of Nature. The anthropomorphization of nature had the effect of endowing nature with mind, will, and conscience-—deeply flawed though it was.

With the higher thinking of Plato, and then later through Christian scholars, mind, will, and conscience were liberated from nature, and nature was dedivinized.

The ‘isms’ that emerged out of the Franco-Germanic Enlightenment (ie., positivism, materialism, socialism, Darwinism,etc) redivinized nature and re-embedded the spiritual within it. Hence mind, will, and conscience are no longer endowments of man but of Divine Nature.

It’s in this light that gobbledygook (betty’s excellent description) such as determinism (and its variants), the triune brain theory, all variants of Darwinism, terms such as ‘fully caused and determined,’ and so forth come into focus.

Another word for all of this is gnosticism, the term employed by Voegelin. Though ultimately pantheist, it is also the great beast of heresy that disguises itself as many other things, such as Liberal Christianity.

Tertullian said of gnosticism that it spreads confusion and outright chaos. He also warned that unless we take it upon ourselves to understand and analyze it that we will mosty definitely fall victim to it. As we have.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

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.

He gets this attitude from Monism. We hear similar rhetoric today from evolutionists. They are also selling Monism. The difference is that Osborn and Loeb knew they were selling Monism. The evolutionists of today are mostly clueless about the origin of the ideologies that they so vehemently insist must be taught to unsuspecting people.

The Mechanistic Conception of Life, Jacques Loeb

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.

Yes, but Popper was himself a crackpot and his philosophy of science has done incalculable damage to people's brains, in my opinion. Here's some anti-Popper:

Four Modern Irrationalists, David Stove.

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

Well, the "stories" are probably ultimately the same, but as time goes on, they get more complex and more deeply buried under technical mumbo-jumbo. As soon as one story is trashed or refuted, a new one forms which is more difficult to analyze. So it gives more "life" to the fairytales, perhaps a few years worth or a decade worth. And when that one dies, another one comes along. In all of this, it is interesting to note that evolutionists seem not to remember the history of any of it. Whoever talks about the great evolutionists of yore? Does anyone mention Romanes and his biology of consciousness and the human soul? Or Huxley and his Bathybius? Or Haeckel and his life-from-crystals? It's like these guys never existed, in a sense. Who quotes Julian Huxley, except to ridicule and expose him as the totalitarian charlatan that he was? The old generation of Darwinians die off and nobody really gives a damn what they said. We have to listen to the new generation exclusively. They have the real truth, so we are told. Bah, where in science do you see the great scientists of the past (supposedly great, in this case) stricken from the obelisk this way?

There's a reason why. It's because evolutionists don't want people to know anything about the history of evolution or the history of evolution scientists. It's better forgotten, so that the old Monist fairytales can be recycled, along with other evils. Here look at this:

Creation by Evolution

Read the one on the evolution of amoebas: Can We See Evolution Occurring? How come all that proof of evolution right-before-your-eyes was forgotten? And does it not sound exactly like the more modern incarnation of the same fairytale, e.g., evolution of fruit-flies, bacteria, ring species, and so on?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

One more point: though proud Darwinians deny possession, they are in reality unwittingly confessing to their own ‘possession’ by unseen forces or energies within the unseen realm. Pride goes before a fall.

According to Darwinians (and marxists) either genes make you do everything you do, or the environment makes you do what you do, or a combination of both. Forget free will. And so a Darwinian may indeed believe he is possessed by not one, but thousands of little demons he calls "genes", and not only that but invisible non-corporeal devils called memes as well. It may be a little different for a marxist, who says that historical forces determine what sort of pizza you will choose to eat tomorrow. Solzhenitsyn said that "nature vs nurture" were two sides of the same materialistic coin. We should reject this false dichotomy. It is one of the many wearisome controversies forced on people by Darwinians, marxists, and other ismatic loons.

First, as to Adam and the Fall and inherited sin. Evolution, historical research, and scientific criticism have disposed of Adam. Adam was a myth. Hardly any educated Christians now regard him as an historic person. But -- no Adam, no Fall; no Fall, no Atonement; no Atonement, no Saviour. Accepting Evolution, how can we believe in a Fall? When did man fall? Was it before he ceased to be a monkey, or after? Was it when he was a tree man, or later? Was it in the Stone Age, or the Bronze Age, or in the Age of Iron? There never was any "Fall." Evolution proves a long, slow rise. And if there never was a Fall, why should there be any Atonement? Christians accepting the theory of evolution have to believe that God allowed the sun to form out of the nebula, and the earth to form from the sun. That He allowed man to develop slowly from the speck of protoplasm in the sea. That at some period of man's gradual evolution from the brute, God found man guilty of some sin, and cursed him. That some thousands of years later God sent His only Son down upon the earth to save man from Hell. But Evolution shows man to be, even now, an imperfect creature, an unfinished work, a building still undergoing alterations, an animal still evolving... (pg. 124)

Are we to believe that the God who created all this boundless universe got so angry with the children of the apes that He condemned them all to Hell for two score centuries, and then could only appease His rage by sending His own Son to be nailed upon a cross ? Do you believe that? Can you believe it? No. As I said before, if the theory of evolution be true, there was nothing to atone for, and nobody to atone. Man has never sifined against God. In fact, the whole of this old Christian doctrine is a mass of error. There was no creation. There was no Fall. There was no Atonement. There was no Adam, and no Eve, and no Eden, and no Devil, and no Hell. (pg. 125)

For whereas the Christian theory of free will and personal responsibility results in established ignorance and injustice, with no visible remedies beyond personal denunciation, the prison, and a few coals and blankets, the Determinist method would result in the abolition of lords and burglars, of slums and palaces, of caste and snobbery. There would be no ignorance and no poverty left in the world. That is because the Determinist understands human nature, and the Christian does not. It is because the Determinist understands morality, and the Christian does not. For the Determinist looks for the cause of wrong-doing in the environment of the wrong-doer. While the Christian puts all the wrongs which society perpetrates against the individual, and all the wrongs which the individual perpetrates against his fellows down to an imaginary "free will." (pg. 142--144)

Robert Blatchford

[Alamo-Girl]

me: ==The letter in my mailbox has no meaning until I read it.

you: Not exactly. The message has no meaning for YOU until you have read it. Tell me, if a sparrow falls to the ground and you weren’t there to see it... Matthew 10:29

Indeed, I should not have personalized it. It should have been:

The letter in a mailbox has no meaning until it is read.

But this does not equate to the Father's knowing every sparrow that falls to the ground.

God's Name is I AM. He sees "all that there is" all at once. A thing is true because He says it.

Meaning to men is not in the same league with meaning to God.

For my thoughts [are] not your thoughts, neither [are] your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. – Isaiah 55:8-9

I think a better example of your point would be the philosophical question whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one is there to hear it.

I say that it does. Sound or pressure waves physically exist apart from the ability of anyone to hear them. Nevertheless, like the unopened letter in the mailbox, the pressure waves don't have meaning until they are perceived.

For instance, one of the fascinating observations of the MAXIMA, BOOMERANG, and DASI collaboration on the measurement of the cosmic background radiation is that sound - or pressure waves - are recorded in the CMB at the moment photons decoupled from electrons, protons, and neutrons - atoms formed and light went its way. Emphasis mine:

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. - Genesis 1:3

No mortal was there to hear it when it happened. Nevertheless, it happened. The pressure waves are still there. Only recently have we been able to perceive them.

And indeed, that observation was meaningful to me as an observer - but I cannot say whether or not it was meaningful to you or anyone else.

Moreover, there is striking difference between physical sound (or words) and spiritual sound (or words.) The people Christ is addressing below were physically hearing Him but they could not Spiritually hear Him:

Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. – John 8:43

The words of God are spirit and life. The words of men are neither spirit nor life.

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

So therefore it is not enough for a man to know the Scriptures - he must also know the power of God (Jesus Christ) to hear the words of God:

Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. – Matthew 22:29

And so Truth is hidden in plain view.

Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, and [their] ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with [their] eyes, and hear with [their] ears, and should understand with [their] heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed [are] your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. – Matthew 13:13-16

And so again I say, that letter in the mailbox - the Bible in the motel room - the galaxies in the telescope - the DNA molecule in the microscope - and most importantly, Spiritual Truth - do not have "meaning" until they are perceived. And even then, the meaning is in the "eye of the beholder."

To God be the glory!

[Alamo-Girl]

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

I will leave most the reply to betty boop as this is her expertise and she is particularly knowledgeable of Plato and Voegelin.

But I would add one general observation – that it has always been the tendency of man to reduce “all that there is” to his own terms as if he is the center of it.

Even in a physical sense, when he is aware of his place on a worldline in warped space/time (relativity) he nevertheless uses terms such as “time” as if it were absolute and somehow he the center of the universe.

But the humble man can detach himself and look and see.

The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is. - Albert Einstein, “My Credo,” presented to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, in Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, ed., London: Simon & Schuster, 1993, page 262.

Egocentricity – which I aver is at the heart of Gnosticism - is even more apparent in man’s seemingly unending attempts to anthropomorphize God into a small 'god' his puny, mortal mind can comprehend.

The archeological record is full of evidence that man carves out figures in wood or stone, declaring that they are “god” and falling down to worship them.

It is as if man has some egocentric need to be able to touch the divine, to bring God down to his terms - or worse, to subordinate God to his own will.

We see the same phenomenon as mortal men declaring themselves to be divine are able to gather followings and worse, continue their devotion for generations.

And we can see it as man proliferates extra-Scriptural doctrines and traditions trying to make the words of God sensible to himself or accepting of his desire to behave in the way he wants to behave.

Worse, men tend to add to the words of God – or ignore many of them – in the quest.

Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish [ought] from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. – Deuteronomy 4:2

And so, from my view, this Gnosticism in its many forms is rooted in egocentricity, i.e. pride:

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, [saying], Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. – Psalms 2:1-5

To God be the glory!

[Diamond]

For whereas the Christian theory of free will and personal responsibility results in established ignorance and injustice, with no visible remedies beyond personal denunciation, the prison, and a few coals and blankets, the Determinist method would result in the abolition of lords and burglars, of slums and palaces, of caste and snobbery. There would be no ignorance and no poverty left in the world. That is because the Determinist understands human nature, and the Christian does not. It is because the Determinist understands morality, and the Christian does not. For the Determinist looks for the cause of wrong-doing in the environment of the wrong-doer. While the Christian puts all the wrongs which society perpetrates against the individual, and all the wrongs which the individual perpetrates against his fellows down to an imaginary "free will." (pg. 142--144)

Robert Blatchford

Scary stuff - insufferable moralizing atheist alert.

Cordially,

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your insights and thank you for the links!

However, I dismiss David Stove out of hand. I could hardly take his criticism of Karl Popper seriously when the same man thinks that women (I am one) are intellectually inferior to men, i.e. he can hardly be rational on an individual man when he is irrational about men altogether.

Well, the "stories" are probably ultimately the same, but as time goes on, they get more complex and more deeply buried under technical mumbo-jumbo. As soon as one story is trashed or refuted, a new one forms which is more difficult to analyze. So it gives more "life" to the fairytales, perhaps a few years worth or a decade worth. And when that one dies, another one comes along. In all of this, it is interesting to note that evolutionists seem not to remember the history of any of it.

Indeed. The most damning episode had to be eugenics.

No doubt animal husbandry - breeding animals for specific traits - was prima facie evidence making Darwin's theory more intellectually acceptable at the time.

But that coin had two sides - whereas it strengthened the theory, it also strengthened the political or ideological desire to improve men by breeding or prevention of breeding.

And to a great extent eugenics continues today under the politically correct name of "family planning." Sarah Palin's decision not to abort her Down Syndrome son was seen as a bad decision by many liberals who want to improve men from womb to tomb (nanny state.)

"Useless eaters" and all that - and of course the logical next step, euthanasia and genetic engineering.

Same game plan as Hitler, different targets and methods, but the same objective.

[hosepipe]

[ And so again I say, that letter in the mailbox - the Bible in the motel room - the galaxies in the telescope - the DNA molecule in the microscope - and most importantly, Spiritual Truth - do not have "meaning" until they are perceived. And even then, the meaning is in the "eye of the beholder." ]

Ah! so true.. whatever the observer "sees" and then perceives.. and sometimes "spins".. is "the observed truth"..

The wisdom of the sheep pen is pure brilliance.. (John ch 10).. i.e. holding pens
The peace of Ps 23 is transcendant.. of spin..
The real "no spin zone"...

The wisdom of Jesus leaving the Holy Spirit to vet perception is genius..
You see with your eyes or you see with your spirit..

The third eye painted on the forehead by Hindus is such a cartoon..
Better the Holy Spirit to see(perceive) for you..

[GodGunsGuts]

==The letter in a mailbox has no meaning until it is read.

The point I am trying to make is that it HAS been read. God “read” the letter before it was even written. And let’s not forget about the person who wrote it. Things have meaning whether we understand or witness them or not. If God knows ALL things, then every THING has meaning. To my mind, this understanding should be part of what Christians mean by objective reality. And the job of science should to discover this preexisting meaning. Science is diminished to the extent that it abandons this mission.

I’m off to church. God bless!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for your wonderful post, dear brother in Christ!

The wisdom of Jesus leaving the Holy Spirit to vet perception is genius.. You see with your eyes or you see with your spirit..

The third eye painted on the forehead by Hindus is such a cartoon.. Better the Holy Spirit to see(perceive) for you..

Precisely so.

[GodGunsGuts]

PS I have a feeling this is at least part of the reason why so many scientists have such a huge problem with God. They want all the glory for their “discoveries.” They frown on the idea that everything they will ever discover is already known by God. And the idea that any given scientific discovery must necessarily glorify God (as the author and the creator of both the discovery and the discoverer) puts them in a worse mood still.

[Alamo-Girl]

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

Truly, God is omniscient. He alone sees "all that there is" all at once.

For that reason, I aver "objective Truth" is known only to Him.

And further, I aver that all we can know about objective truth is what we individually receive from God the Father's revelations in (a) the Person of Jesus Christ, (b) the Person of the Holy Spirit, (c) Scripture, and (d) Creation both spiritual and physical.

Left to his own devices, man in search of objective truth is like one of the blind men trying to describe the elephant in the famous Saxe poem.

[Alamo-Girl]

I have a feeling this is at least part of the reason why so many scientists have such a huge problem with God. They want all the glory for their “discoveries.” They frown on the idea that everything they will ever discover is already known by God. And the idea that any given scientific discovery must necessarily glorify God (as the author and the creator of both the discovery and the discoverer) puts them in a worse mood still.

Indeed, and not scientists alone.

Mathematicians (and by extension, physicists) are notorious for it.

The one school says the math exists and the mathematician comes along and discovers it. For instance, pi was discovered not invented. This school looks "beyond" - it wants to know why there is something instead of nothing at all.

The other school says the mathematician invents the math to describe what he perceives. It is concerned with the here and now and is content with the "anthropic principle" - origins, beginnings and endings are irrelevant.

In my view, the latter school is very egocentric.

The first, btw, is called the Platonist paradigm of math, the latter, the Aristotlean paradigm.

The two worldviews are irreconcilable - Plato and Aristotle couldn't settle it, Gödel and Einstein couldn't settle it, and today Penrose and Hawking can't settle it.

And by the numbers, there are more of the egocentric Aristotlean paradigm than of the Platonist paradigm.

I find this very odd indeed because every time a mathematician uses a variable in a formula, he testifies to its universality. The only rationale for the Aristotlean paradigm to a mathematician that I can see is pride. And I find that sad.