How does Bernoulli's Theorem refute evolution? More curiously, how does Pascal's Theorem refute evolution?
Posted on 08/20/2002 2:15:59 PM PDT by restornu
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." (Origin of Species, 6th ed. (1988), p. 154) – Darwin
It’s understandable that there exists a theological debate among differing religious views. After all, religious understanding and belief derives its momentum from faith-driven exercises rather than hard empirical evidence. But one would expect scientific debate to avoid such quibbles and disagreements in light of their own scientific method, which does derive its momentum from hard empirical evidence. Unfortunately, science is overseen by humans, and the same biases, institutionalized thinking, and raw power involved with any human venture are also present in science.
One debate, looming large on the horizon, pits the “high priests” of evolution against the proponents of “intelligent design.” In this article I examine Intelligent Design and its claims against evolution.
Intelligent Design
In 1802, William Paley penned his famous pocketwatch analogy. To wit, if we find a pocketwatch in the desert we assume that some human hand was involved and that the watch did not materialize through some blind natural process. The analogy here is that the complexity of nature points to an intelligent designing force.
This was the prevailing scientific view until Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859. The evidence that Darwin asserted took the scientific community by storm and evolution has been the prevailing modus operandi since that day.
Evolutionary biology teaches that all biological complexity is “the result of material mechanisms.” In short, evolution claims that all things came into existence by means of natural selection and mutation, in minute “baby steps” of progression over millions of years. Organisms adapt for conditions adding to their functionality piece by piece until we are what we are today.
We should note here that no one doubts natural selection as a robust scientific theory. For example, a desert fox has developed longer ears over time to help expel heat from his body. If this were all that evolution purports, everyone would go home happy. Instead the debate turns on Darwin’s theory that all species evolved from a handful of previous species. Intelligent Design is a growing scientific movement that challenges Darwin and his naturalistic legacy.
Intelligent Design derives its impetus from systems that are “irreducibly complex.” Here’s a common analogy that’s used to explain the theory.
An everyday example of an irreducibly complex system is the humble mousetrap. It consists of (1) a flat wooden platform or base; (2) a metal hammer, which crushes the mouse; (3) a spring with extended ends to power the hammer; (4) a catch that releases the spring; and (5) a metal bar that connects to the catch and holds the hammer back. You can't catch a mouse with just a platform, then add a spring and catch a few more mice, then add a holding bar and catch a few more. All the pieces have to be in place before you catch any mice.[1]
According to evolution, you should be able to reduce every biological system, piece by piece, down to its beginning. Evolution then could not be the scientific origin of the mouse trap, there must have been some intelligent hand involved. As Darwin admits in our opening quote, if you can demonstrate a complex biological system along the same line of reasoning, then his theory would break down.
Bacterium Flagellum
The question then is this: Are there biological systems that exhibit such complexity? One prominent example is that of bacterium flagellum. Bacterium flagellum are whip-like appendages that move bacteria throughout our body. These flagellum work very much like a motor; each has a rotor, a stator, O-rings, bushings, and a drive shaft. They are powered by the combination of 50 different proteins. These proteins exist independently within the human body and come together to power the flagellum. Take one of these proteins away, and the flagellum fails to operate. The mathematical probability of these 50 proteins coming together under the theory of evolution is so outrageous as to almost insist that there was some higher power involved.
Plasmids
Plasmids are circular pieces of DNA that can easily be exchanged among bacteria. Plasmids can also confer antibiotic resistance. When one bacterium releases a plasmid, another can absorb it, information from the Plasmid is infused from one into the other. The problem begins when we ask "where did the bacterium that released the plasmid information in turn derive it?" Any evolutionary explanation will be circular reasoning and insufficient to explain the matter.
Eukaryotic Cells
Michael Behe, one of the major proponents of intelligent design explains another example:
Another example of irreducible complexity is the system that allows proteins to reach the appropriate subcellular compartments. In the eukaryotic cell there are a number of places where specialized tasks, such as digestion of nutrients and excretion of wastes, take place. Proteins are synthesized outside these compartments and can reach their proper destinations only with the help of "signal" chemicals that turn other reactions on and off at the appropriate times. This constant, regulated traffic flow in the cell comprises another remarkably complex, irreducible system. All parts must function in synchrony or the system breaks down. [2]
Blood Clotting
The system that prevents our blood from clotting is yet another example. Blood clotting consists of a complex cascade of enzymes and cofactors which must be in place to work. The evolutionist’s rebuttal to this is that blood clotting experiments on mice have removed certain enzymes successfully. The Intelligent Design (ID) response is that the mice in the experiment were detrimentally affected by the reduced enzymes; which flies in the face of another evolutionary postulate: the mutated change in an organism must benefit the organism (survival of the fittest after all).
People, Places and Theories
There are a number of prominent players currently working on ID. Here are a few bios and links that you can peruse:
Philip E. Johnson, is a graduate of Harward and the University of Chicago. He was a law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren and has taught law for over twenty years at the University of California at Berkeley.
Johnson's most prominent contribution has been Darwin on Trial which examines Evolution from a standpoint of sound reasoning and scientific support.
Michael Behe received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978, is a professor of biological sciences at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University. His current research involves the roles of design and natural selection in building protein structure. His book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution is available in paperback (Touchstone Books, 1998).
Behe is one of primary proponents of ID. His book has been the focus of many of the evolutionist’s rebuttal. Behe has been lambasted and harangued for his viewpoints and his responses are mostly ignored by peer publications. Hmm… sounds like a familiar brick wall.
William A. Dembski, holds Ph.D.'s in mathematics and philosophy, is an associate research professor at Baylor University and a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute in Seattle. His books include The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). links
Dembski is known as the Isaac Newton of ID. He has taken informational mathematics to calculate the probability of irreducibly complex biological systems. He has also brought an historical perspective to the movement demonstrating how evolution failed to adequately dismiss British natural theology.
Jonathan Wells received two Ph.D.'s, one in molecular and cell biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and one in religious studies from Yale University. He has worked as a postdoctoral research biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and has taught biology at California State University, Hayward. Wells is also the author of Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong (Regnery Publishing, 2000).
Wells’ book has approached ID from an attack vantage point. He details 10 major flaws within evolution and shows how many supposed supports of evolution are nearly fraudulent but are still taught in our schools. Wells has been at the front of a debate in Ohio which is considering whether or not to allow ID to be taught as an alternative to evolution.
Conclusion
We should note that Intelligent Design is a theory just like Evolution is a theory. The debate between the parties is raging on and may eventaully reach a fervent pitch. Currently, several school boards across the country are examing its validity to determine if they should allow it to be taught in schools. Intelligent Design is an exciting venture for us to examine. In the coming months I will report on several books, theories and debates on the issue.
1. Intelligent Design a special report reprinted from Natural History magazine http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html#behe/miller
2. Ibid.
Awesome argument that carries the day. We use the data at hand to extract a representative sample. If we're told the data at hand is incomplete, then it is incomplete for anyone and for anyone's theory.
That's why it is, imho, best to deal with the observable, the testable, and the historically recorded. If there is a disconnect between the observed and the theoretical, then it's only honest to say that there's a disconnect.
(Aside: Pasteur's observations concluded that "spontaneous generation" was an impossibility.)
You present a false presentation of the argument. The true argument lies in the assertion that complexity cannot arise spontaneously. If life on our particular earth could not have arisen except through design, then how did the designers arise?
Moving the origin of the designers back in time doesn't help, since the earth has been around for a large fraction of the age of the universe.
Moving the designers to some distant planet doesn't solve the problem of their origin.
ID is stealth creationism because it requires complex life to be made by an unmade creator. The designer cannot be a living (biological) being.
That was my complete statement. I don't post it because I think you left any significant part out. I simply want to make a point.
I truly am NOT a libertarian. And I truly AM a conservative. At some point, I get to assert my own affiliations and my own beliefs. Others are free to dissect them and say "Y is close to Z, therefore there are many traits of Z present." That's their right. They can analyze and dissect all day long....but I'm not a libertarian.
Likewise, the fact that a "Designer" has to be accounted for doesn't make me a "creationist."
It seems to me that you really DON'T have to find the identity of the designer for a designer to have brought about life on earth.
I can see TOTALLY non-religious people concluding that a "designer" guided the development of life on earth.
This comes up often, and it's a complete mischaracterication of Pasteur's work. I think that someone (or some website) is feeding you some really terrible information. Pasteur showed that bacteria are responsible for the life that was observed to spring from decayed matter. This is utterly unrelated to the "ultimate origin of life" issue. Some background material is HERE.
BTW, DO you know what Jesus said about the "origin of life?"
What? You're ashamed of your family?
The idea upon which the ID crowd hang their "theory" is that certain things could not come about naturally and were thus designed. They typically cite vertebrate blood clotting without realizing that biologists have already worked out the evolutionary steps of the clotting cascade (The Evolution of Vertebrate Blood Clotting) and discovered it is not irreducibly complex. IDers also claim the eye is too complex to have evolved naturally, but even Darwin showed how eyes evolve (How Could An Eye Evolve?). So, as you can see, as the knowledge base gets larger, the number of systems that appear to be "irreducibly complex" shrink. Would you like to lay odds that biologists will one day work out the evolution of every such system without recourse to inserting an Intelligent Designer in the process?
The wind blows where it wants to blow. You can hear the sound of it. But you do not know where it comes from, and you do not know where it goes. It is the same way with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
The above are words of Jesus.
What follows are are the words of Patrick Henry on the subject: (from The Life of Patrick Henry of Virginia by A. G. Arnold in 1854) "The rising greatness of our country...is greatly tarnished by the general prevalence of deism, which, with me, is but another name for vice and depravity....I hear it is said by the deists that I am one of their number; and indeed that some good people think I am no Christian. This thought gives me much more pain than the appellation of Tory (being called a traitor), because I think religion of infinitely higher importance than politics....Being a Christian...is a character which I prize far above all this world has or can boast."
There are, of course, absolutely zero demonstrable laboratory examples of Life spontaneously erupting from Non-Life anywhere in the history of science. Thus, much like the Law of Gravity, the Law of Biogenesis continues to enjoy absolute logical presumption over imaginative hypotheses about life spontaneously erupting from non-life.
Exceptionally Silly persons will continue to place a blind and uncritical Faith in various magical fantasies which suppose that life can mechanistically and spontaneously erupt from non-life; but of course, their unscientific fantasies are little better than a daydream -- certainly not to be confused with any kind of rational Thought.
Suppose I have a large, thin, spherical shell of matter, with a radius R0. The gravitational field of the shell is as per Newton's law outside the shell, and is zero inside the shell by symmetry.
Now let me collapse the shell to a smaller radius, R1. The act of collapse releases energy, which I can use to do work, or to generate mass according to m=E/c². The situation after the collapse differs from the situation before the collapse in that I have some new matter, and I've filled the region between R1 and R0 with a gravitational field (whereas before, the field in that region was zero). Since energy is conserved, we see that gravitational fields have a negative energy density.
Energy--and therefore mass--can always be created by filling space with gravitational fields (just as when you want more dirt, you dig a hole). This happens automatically in an expanding universe, but the expansion we see today is vanishingly small compared to the expansion that occurred during the inflationary phase. Essentially all of the matter we see in the universe was created then.
Have you ever read Patrick Henry's catechism of propaganda links presenting supposed 'debunking' of the solid facts of ID? - Is that flimsy crap religion, or what?
Shake the dust off of your sandals at his door, and move on to those who hold to a higher plane; we don't feed filet mignon to the hogs.
I can see TOTALLY non-religious people concluding that a "designer" guided the development of life on earth.
The identity of the alleged designer is irrelevent. But some key attributes must be asserted for any possible designer, such as whether the designer originated through evolution or through special creation.
Pushing evolution back in time or space does not argue against evolution as a process. It could be historically true that life on earth was designed by other beings, but the question of their origin remains.
No matter how you wiggle and squirm, if the process of evolution is asserted to be impossible or not historically correct, you are asserting special creation.
The ultimate cause of our existence is not addressed by science. Science only attempts to study processes. It is possible for a scientist to be religious, but it is rare for a science as a whole to ignore overwhelming evidence for a process.
How does Bernoulli's Theorem refute evolution? More curiously, how does Pascal's Theorem refute evolution?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.