42
I haven’t waded in to the comments on Jim Manzi’s series of evolution posts, so I hope this isn’t repetitive with stuff that’s been said there; and I haven’t read Bob Wright’s book (nor plan to; I’ve got this trilogy to tackle right now), but I think Jim’s defense of his own position against Matt Steinglass here rather misses the thrust of his post. (You can follow the whole chain so far starting with that link.) So I’m going to wade in myself on the question now.
1. We have to distinguish between factual and hermeneutical claims. Factual claims are claims about the nature and operation of reality: “how” things work, not “why.” Darwin’s theory, which is the basis of all modern biology, makes factual claims: that the various forms of life we observe on earth today came to be via the operation of natural selection on populations of organisms that experience random variation. The question, “does life have a purpose” or “are we put here for a reason” is not really a factual question; it’s a hermeneutical one, an interpretive one. The same factual claims could, potentially, sustain different hermeneutical claims. Scientists do, sometimes, noodle about with hermeneutical claims because they turn out to have factual claims buried in them, in which case they may be investigated scientifically. But if there are no such claims buried in them, then the questions aren’t really scientific.
2. I’m not 100% clear on whether Jim is making a factual or a hermeneutical claim. He presses several times on the question of randomness. “Random” is, indeed, a funny word. (Personal anecdotal aside: my first task at my first job on Wall Street was to organize regular lunches with the staff for the CEO. “The company’s now too big for me to really get to know everyone personally through normal business interactions,” he said, “so I want to meet on a monthly basis with random groups of staff to stay in touch with everyone and with all the different parts of the firm.” I asked if, rather that “random,” didn’t he really mean “mixed” groups of staff. That won me a gold star. Took a few more years to realize that, on Wall Street, you’re not competing for gold stars – you’re competing for money.) But I think the way he is using it nothing – with the possible exception of events on the quantum level – is truly random. That’s not the way we use the word normally, and I wonder whether Jim’s argument could be reduced to the statement “nothing is actually random if you believe God is behind everything.”
In any event, mutations are, in the sense that we normally use the word, random. In fact, I think they are random at least to some extent in the way that Jim means it – that is to say, they are caused by quantum mechanical events that are in principle unpredictable (because the underlying reality is actual uncertain rather than merely unknowable) rather than merely practically unpredictable (because so complex and chaotic as to be beyond human powers of calculation, even with the application of all currently engineerable technology).
Some people have also tried to make that claim that the selection process itself may be guided – that, basically, some overseeing intelligence could be determining who survives and prospers and who dies without reproducing, and thereby guiding evolution. I don’t think Jim is making that claim, but I don’t see how, in principle, it’s any different from the claim that some overarching intelligence is guiding the process of mutation. In either case, if there’s a factual claim here – that something other than chance is guiding either the mutations or the selection – that claim can, in principle, be tested. To take an overly simple example: suppose one believed that the overarching intelligence had set up the universe as a genetic algorithm to produce blue algae. You would expect some evidence of that preference – say, that mutations in green algae to produce blue offspring were more common than the other way around. In the absence of any such evidence, you’d say that, in fact, the overarching intelligence (if any) doesn’t appear to prefer either color of algae. In other words, if random mutation plus natural selection accounts for the facts, there’s scientific reason (Occam’s Razor and all that) to reject any other force in operation. And, in that case, Jim is reduced to saying that what appears to be random – and what is indistinguishable scientifically from randomness – is, in fact, caused by an overarching intelligence. This is akin to the claim that, if it were not for God, the strong and weak nuclear forces would not function, and therefore the universe would have no structure whatsoever. You can perfectly well believe that, but it’s not the kind of claim that will generate much interesting discussion.
3. With hermeneutical claims, the question that arises is not truth but persuasiveness. You can’t prove that the strong nuclear force would not operate without God standing behind it – and you can’t prove that it would operate. You can’t really argue about it. But you can talk about why you do or don’t find such a claim persuasive. The Anthropic Principle and the Many Worlds Hypothesis are competing hermeneutical frameworks for “answering” the question of why we live in a universe with intelligent life as opposed to one without intelligent life. The first interpretation, in effect, says that our intelligence is the first as well as the ultimate cause; our very existence and ability to observe the universe “caused” the primordial wave-function collapse that led to there being a universe to observe; we’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. The second says that, no, there’s nothing special about us; we’re here because we’re here but there are other “here”-s, equally real, where we are not, because we aren’t; everything that could ever be, is, somewhere. These are hermeneutical rather than factual claims, because they cannot, in principle, be tested. So I’d say they aren’t science. But people have passionate opinions about them nonetheless.
So the real question is whether Darwin’s theory radically undermined the persuasiveness of the idea that we are the pinnacle of creation – an idea that comes up again and again in the Abrahamic religions. And I think you’d have to argue that it does, for three reasons: first, because the idea of a natural heirarchy no longer is persuasive; second, because the mechanism of natural selection is repugnant to our usual conception of the Abrahamic God; and third, because if evolution is the mechanism of creation, then creation has not come to an end. Let’s take these in order.
The account of creation in Genesis, and the understanding of the natural order in Aristotle, alike partake of the idea of a natural heirarchy in which lower organisms are followed by higher organisms. But the modern scientific account differs. There are any number of species as young or younger than human beings. Evolution is not the story of an ascending ladder; it’s the story of a branching tree; and everything living is at the top. This doesn’t prove we aren’t the aim of creation. But it undermines the persuasiveness of the idea because what seemed to be supporting evidence from the natural world turns out not to be supportive at all.
To take the second point: the problem of natural evil is core for all the Abrahamic faiths, and each tradition has produced multiple answers. But natural selection implicates natural evil in the process of creation. We exist because we are the result of a struggle for survival. God created us by pitting our ancestors against each other in a (literally) genocidal struggle. Genghis Khan was the most successful man in history in evolutionary terms – he would appear to be the favored of God. But his creed is very far from the creed articulated in Amos, or the the gospels. Now, I don’t want to overstate the point. As I already said, the problem of evil is an old one, not a new one raised by Darwin. But I do think the problem is raised to a much higher level if we go from “natural evil is part of creation” to “natural evil is the core mechanism of creation.”
As for the third point: it is very difficult to believe we are the pinnacle of creation if creation is perpetually unfinished. New species are still coming into being, and old ones are, of course, going extinct (at an increasing rate, thanks to us). We are shaping the evolution of the world’s creatures through our own actions upon the environment – and we ourselves are also still evolving. Moreover, as Steinglass points out, some of our own creations are now “interesting” enough that one can plausibly wonder whether they, rather than we, are the real “object” of creation. Abrahamic time is linear: a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Creation began, and then ended; history then began, and will eventually end. The Big Bang theory was applauded by the Vatican precisely because it gave apparent empirical support to this conception of time, as against the Steady State theory that appeared to undermine it. Darwin’s theory does the opposite: creation is ongoing, not finished. And if it is not finished, it is very difficult to say with confidence that we know we are its object.
Bob Wright’s book, as I understand it, attempts to address at least some of the points above, and particularly attempts to “turn” the last one, making ongoing evolution a reason to believe in a purpose or guiding intelligence to the universe rather than an obstacle to such belief. It’s hard for me to comment on the persuasiveness of his argument given that I haven’t read the book. But I wouldn’t come to the book well-disposed towards the idea that, for example, the decline of intra-species violence among humans over time is evidence that of a guiding intelligence behind the universe. I’m just not that much of a progressive optimist.
4. Before moving on to my conclusion, I should point out that I’ve been very careful to talk about the Abrahamic God or Abrahamic religion rather than religion in general. I think Darwin’s theory is far more compatible with the Hindu understanding of reality than it is with the Jewish, Christian or Muslim understanding. But this is not really an argument with Hindus. Coyne’s big argument is with the idea of human beings as the special object of divine concern, and the special purpose of divine creation. And those are not central concepts to Hindu religion – indeed, I’d argue that both contentions are not merely foreign but actively denied.
And there certainly are voices within the Abrahamic traditions that have grappled with these very same questions, and sometimes in ways that I find highly persuasive. My favorite book of the Bible includes the following passage:
Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.
Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.
He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.
But I think anyone honest would argue that the Book of Job cuts very much against the grain of most of the Bible – and, indeed, this passage all but directly says that we are not the pinnacle or object of creation; God is at least as interested and pleased with Leviathan and Behemoth as He is with us.
5. To conclude: if I understand the gist of Jim’s argument, it’s this. Genetic algorithms are a very efficient way of reaching a solution in certain cases, as proven by their use by software engineers to solve a variety of problems that are otherwise intractable. Therefore, it’s plausible to believe that God is, in fact, using a genetic algorithm to produce His desired solution – which we, presumptuously, think is us. Even if God is not “determining” the timing of mutations (which I would argue are truly random inasmuch as they are caused by events at the quantum level like the timing of decay of uranium atoms or the precise path of cosmic rays), He did create the “space” which structures the selection process – the physical universe itself. The original conditions of the universe may have been very precisely calibrated to produce precisely our world, and precisely the evolutionary path that unfolded thereon, precisely to produce beings that could pursue the purpose for which the universe was created. Darwin’s theory does not, therefore, preclude believing in a God or who created the universe with a purpose, a purpose related to us.
This is, once again, a hermeneutical claim, not an empirical one. And so the question is whether it is persuasive, not whether it is provably true or false. I could point out that, in the lab, people use genetic algorithms to solve problems that are otherwise intractable; in Jim’s hypothetical, God is doing the opposite, solving the intractable problem of what original conditions are necessary to result in human evolution in order to create human beings by means of a genetic algorithm, in which case the question must be asked why He bothered (or, put a different way, it throws the question of the place of natural evil in the process of creation into high relief). I could also point out that the role of mass extinctions in evolution – for example, the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs and 95% of the other species on earth – raise real questions about the plausibility of the claim that the initial conditions were set up efficiently to lead to our evolution. But I think a better approach is to turn to parody.
Jim is not the first author to posit that we are part of a complex algorithm related to the purpose of the universe. As no doubt all our readers know, there is an answer to life, the universe, and everything. We just don’t like it. It’s the title of this post.
As no doubt our readers are also aware, human beings are not, in fact, the supreme life form on earth. The second-most-advanced life forms are the dolphins. The most advanced are the mice, who created the earth to be a giant algorithm working over billions of years to work out the question to which the inexplicable answer to life the universe and everything corresponds.
The program was running along quite well, until the earth was unexpectedly hit by the “B” ark of the Golgafrinchans. Not having been part of the original design of the algorithm, their presence no doubt ruined any chance that Earth would be the source for the question to the answer to life, the universe and everything. But it hardly matters as before the algorithm could complete its operation the Earth was destroyed by Vogons building a hyperspace bypass in the path of which our planet unfortunately lay.
Douglas Adams’ account of creation is a lot more persuasive than the mythology of the Pastafarians. Is it more persuasive than Jim’s posited concept of evolution as a genetic algorithm with a defined goal, the concept which, I think, it is parodying? You make the call.
Why think humanity’s status as “the pinnacle of creation” is a matter of natural theology? Yes, if it is part of our specially revealed theology, then it’d better be compatible with our natural theology.
As far as I can tell, Jim has attempted to show that it is compatible.
BTW, as of right now, we are the present pinnacle of life on Earth, in the Aristotelian sense, right? We have a rational soul, right? Either uniquely or to a unique degree.
— ED · Sep 9, 01:41 PM · #
Given Jim’s response when I raised the issue of the meaning of “random” in his last thread (he referred me back to the original post in this argument, which I had already read and which contains the same ambiguity), I’m inclined to think that he simply isn’t grasping the distinction. But you’ve outlined the problem more clearly than I did, so maybe he’ll catch on this time.
— Grunthos · Sep 9, 01:53 PM · #
I think Jim makes a factual claim, but not the one you imagine. He is saying that evolutionary science cannot make hermeneutical claims about the origin of life and the universe.
I take issue with all three of your reasons as to why evolution is persuasive against an anthropic universe.
1.) Just because evolution continues to act does not mean we are not its end. In fact, in an ever changing environment such as Earth, evolution would be necessary to maintain our ascendancy. Humans continue to adapt, as do the various species on which we depend for resources. If we, or if too many of our codependent species, were to stop evolving, we would perish.
2.) This
is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, the only qualifier for whether an organism is evolutionarily successful is whether it breeds, not how often, or how much it prevents another from breeding. The key to evolution is “survival of the fittest,” not “dominion of the fittest over the less fit.” Lions and gazelle are considered equally fit if they both continue to propagate, and the same goes for Genghis and his subjects. Second, even if we were to generously redefine “evolutionary” as “dominion of the fittest,” Genghis is of course still dead, and his descendants, once rulers of most of Eurasia, are now confined to a landlocked desert nation between two world powers who believe it to be too unimportant to bother with. Georgia and Taiwan merit more attention than backwater Mongolia. Genghis Khan and his people are not “fit” in any of these senses.
All of this is to show that nature hasn’t much to tell us about Abrahamic morality. It didn’t take Darwin for people to want to emulate the lion and scorn its prey. “Dominion of the fittest” was an obvious ethic for many peoples, and if that didn’t shake people from Abrahamic morality millennia ago, then Darwin offers no new challenges to that morality.
3.) See my response to point 1. Also, if there are other contenders for who is the pinnacle of evolution, I haven’t heard of them speaking up. I suppose the dolphins and lab mice could just be coy, a la Adams, but that doesn’t seem to pass your test of persuasiveness.
— Blar · Sep 9, 02:24 PM · #
I was also going to issue a tedious nitpick, which I suppose deserves to be sequestered to its own comment anyway. “42” is not the answer to the Life, the Universe, and Everything. It is the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question. Finding the Ultimate Answer was easy; finding the Ultimate Question is a problem even the cleverest lab mice have yet to discover.
— Blar · Sep 9, 02:27 PM · #
Blar: I think you misunderstand why I say that Genghis Khan was the most successful man in history. He is considered to have more direct lineal descendants than any other known historical individual. The point is not dominion of his descendants; the point is that his genes are more widely spread than anyone else we know. Which is pretty much what the definition of evolutionary success is, since genes are what selection operates on.
As for your and ED’s point about us being the only intelligent (or most intelligent) life forms: we can certainly consider ourselves to be the best for any reason we choose. The question is whether there’s anything about the natural order of the universe that seems to suggest we’re right. What we understand about evolution makes it much more difficult to say that anything about the natural order of the universe supports our own view that we’re awesome.
In ED’s terms, I’d say that Jim has not proven that a natural theology compatible with the scientific facts is also compatible with revealed theology, but rather that you can still hold to that revealed theology if you jettison the idea of natural theology, and basically say that whatever we learn about the nature of the universe from science has no bearing on our understanding of our purpose. Which I agree with, but which I think is not very interesting and basically concedes to his antagonists pretty much everything they want.
— Noah Millman · Sep 9, 02:44 PM · #
Re: Blar’s nitpick: from page 161 of the paperback:
— Noah Millman · Sep 9, 03:04 PM · #
A magnificent summary of the arguments. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I knew there would be a pay-off for slogging through Manzi’s and Coyne’s rather tedious squabble. This is it.
My theory was that Manzi and Coyne were each making a very narrow, obscure argument that was buried in double and triple negatives and deeply nested parenthetical sub-clauses. Buried so deeply that, when one of them forgot to close a parenthesis or missed a ‘not’, they lost track of what they were arguing about several episodes ago. I think you cleared everything up nicely.
If Manzi did have a point it was this
> He is saying that evolutionary science cannot make hermeneutical claims about the origin of life and the universe.
but if so, I’ll agree with you again and note that if a claim is immune to both reason and experience it is a spectacularly uninteresting claim.
— Kevin Lawrence · Sep 9, 03:24 PM · #
This was very interesting reading. However, I think you’ve defined the Anthropic Principle and the Many Worlds Hypothesis (actually, we would normally say “Interpretation” rather than “Hypothesis”) in a less than conventional fashion. I don’t think it makes any difference to your argument, but for completeness and clarity here’s how physicists engaged in anthropic research (such as it exists) would define terms.
Anthropic Principle:
The universe must be consistent with our existence.So, this is obviously true, extracting content involves going a little further. One imagines a multiverse containing many (possibly an infinitely many) different universes and asserts that we only find ourselves amongst the subset of universes that permit the existence of observers. For this to work, one needs a large ensemble of possible universes that are physically realised – we have strong theoretical reasons to believe this happens. Incidentally, there other definitions of the Anthropic Principle that are somewhat closer to the definition you used (they often carry the prefix “Strong”, “Participatory”, “Final” or “Ultimate”), but in so far as it’s discussed in the mainstream (ish) literature, I think the use I’ve outlined here (the so-called “Weak Anthropic Principle”) is the most common.
Many Worlds:
Interpretation of quantum mechanics due to Everett and popularised by the extraordinarily brilliant Bryce deWitt. Says that measurement does “collapse” the wavefunction, but rather clarifies what branch of the wavefunction we’re in. More prosaically, everything happens in disconnected parts of the the wavefunction of the universe. As it turns out this is functionally equivalent to asserting the universe is infinitely big, with many disconnected regions that are similar to our little pocket, but with different configurations of particles. I.e. one can fold the Many Worlds of quantum mechanics into the multiverse.
On rereading, not sure how clear this all is. Can clarify details if anyone’s interested.
— drcripptic · Sep 9, 03:30 PM · #
The kind inquiry involved in natural theology and the kind of inquiry involved in modern science are different kinds of inquiry. And they aren’t in competition in some sort of zero sum game. Traditional natural theology is not predicated on the failure of natural science, even if certain peculiar modern versions (e.g. Paley) were.
That modern science fails to uncover teleology is a forgone conclusion, because modern science as modern science brackets the matter of teleology. (Perhaps unless it drastically fails according to its own lights.) This bracketing was for strategic reasons that have paid off. We can all be thankful.
But, according to traditional natural theology, even if we achieved an ideal gapless account of nature in the way of modern science, natural theology would still have its place. Why? Because natural theology begins with nature as changeable, not with nature as gap ridden, or as changeable in this way rather than that.
— ED · Sep 9, 03:40 PM · #
There’s so much flawed thinking in this post, I’m not sure where to start. Some of the claims (like Darwinism is the “basis of all modern biology”) are totally false and have been refuted convincingly and frequently. Therefore, I won’t waste much time on them here (if you’re interested, you can visit my website).
Instead, I’ll focus on just one of Noah’s mealy-mouthed, confused statements.
He writes…
“With hermeneutical claims, the question that arises is not truth but persuasiveness…The Anthropic Principle and the Many Worlds Hypothesis are competing hermeneutical frameworks for “answering” the question of why we live in a universe with intelligent life as opposed to one without intelligent life…These are hermeneutical rather than factual claims, because they cannot, in principle, be tested.”
Umm, here’s a factual claim: The universe is real! Oh, here’s another one: There’s no evidence – zilch – of any universes besides this one. Therefore, the Anthropic Principle is superior to the Many Worlds Hypothesis because it deals with something factual (OUR universe) rather than something that is speculative (OTHER universes).
I apologize in advance for my arrogant tone, but I’m not sure how else to react when such sloppy thinking is articulated in such a casual way.
-TW
— Todd White · Sep 9, 03:42 PM · #
That’s a good point, and I didn’t realize that’s what you meant (I honestly hadn’t heard that claim about Genghis Khan). It still is immaterial to the question of what evolution tells us about morality. For example, species A is a bacteria found all over the world. Species B is a lichen that only grows within five degrees of the 38th southern parallel on west-facing cliffs in the Andes. Species A is more profligate, and Species B’s survivability is more tenuous, I suppose. But as long as both species continue to produce offspring, they are equal in terms of evolutionary success.
Stephen J. Gould made the same mistake as you in Full House, where he argued simultaneously that evolution is not goal-directed and that microbial organisms somehow “won” evolution. These claims are not compatible.
We are apparently the only species on earth capable of civilization, art, science, history, you name it. Any non-human analogues to these institutions are primitive by an astounding magnitude to ours. Nothing about the theory of evolution shakes this, in my mind.
I wasn’t being glib when I said I’d like to hear from the other contenders. The fact that we are the only species making the claim indicates to me that we are the only species capable of making the claim, which seems like an indication of specialness to me.
As for Adams, I guess it’s the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, which is to say neither of us were right. I still think I was more right! You imply that the Question is “What is the purpose to Life, the Universe, and Everything?” when as far as anyone in Adams’ world can guess, the Ultimate Question is no such thing.
— Blar · Sep 9, 03:49 PM · #
Is that true about Ghengis Khan? I suspect some sampling bias caused by Mongolian enthusiasm for genealogy. (Something I Did Not Know Yesterday: Mongolia banned surnames in a attempt to break tribal allegiance.)
We need less Ghengis and more Razib in this thread.
— Matt Frost · Sep 9, 04:00 PM · #
How good was Genghis Khan? Good in what way? He can be considered in many different ways.
We can consider him as a basic living thing.
We can consider him as sentient animal.
We can consider him as rational animal.
We can consider him as gardener.
We can consider him as cook.
We can consider him as warrior.
We can consider him as a “meat machine” aimed at carrying and proliferating its genes. (Evolutionary success, I suppose.)
He was probably all of these things, right?
But why in the world should we think that “evolutionary success” is the right way of consideration for answering the question: who’s the pinnacle of creation? We can consider him in this way if we like. But science doesn’t tell us this is the right way of consideration in view of the kind of question we’re asking. After all, the question is inherently teleological, so it isn’t a (modern) scientific question in the first place.
— ED · Sep 9, 04:07 PM · #
Um, no, they haven’t. The evolutionary model of random mutation and natural selection (which we don’t properly refer to as “Darwinism”, but as the “Modern Synthesis” of Darwinism and molecular genetics) is, very much, the basis of all modern biology. Darwin’s model is when biology stopped being nothing more than stamp collecting.
The kind of inquiry involved in science has a verifiable track record of successful generation of knowledge. No theology has the same.
— Chet · Sep 9, 04:30 PM · #
The point of the point, so to speak, was that a lot of people, Coyne included, believe that the theory of evolution disqualifies a creator god. This is the motivation behind both Intelligent Design and the evangelical atheism of people like Richard Dawkins. For people who are interested in both theology and science, and in showing that they are harmonious and not “in competition in some sort of zero sum game,” as ED says, then Jim’s argument is very interesting. and important
— Blar · Sep 9, 04:37 PM · #
Dawkins’s Swift (in Ancestor’s Tale?) addresses this claim quite well. According to the swift we can’t even fly so how can we call ourselves ‘best’?
— Kevin Lawrence · Sep 9, 04:38 PM · #
The question is: best at what?
— ED · Sep 9, 04:42 PM · #
Chet: You’re repeating talking points from your college biology professor. Please study this issue before using cliches. Even an honest Darwinist would admit that this claim is bogus.
For example, take the pro-Darwin Penn University Professor Dr. Phillip Skell, who wrote a Feb. 2009 article in Forbes magazine, The Dangers of Selling Evolution.
One quote from his article will suffice:
“Experimental biology has dramatically increased our understanding of the intricate workings within living organisms that account for their survival, showing how they continue to function despite the myriad assaults on them from their environments. These advances in knowledge are attributable to the development of new methodologies and instruments, unimaginable in the preceding centuries, applied to the investigation of living organisms. Crucial to all fruitful experiments in biology is their design, for which Darwin’s and Wallace’s principles apparently provide no guidance.”
To repeat: Darwinism offers “no guidance” to experimental biology.
I’ll also quote from Dr. Cornelius Hunter, who admittedly is a Darwin skeptic, but his quip is too good to ignore: “The only area of thought in which evolutionary studies has a significant role is evolutionary studies. One could fit into a thimble the important scientific advances made possible by evolution.”
-TW
— Todd White · Sep 9, 04:43 PM · #
Best at the things we’re best at, obviously. How marvelously convenient for us that we’ve decided to judge the evolutionary “race” on those exact terms! How convenient, indeed, that we have appointed ourselves as the judges!
— Chet · Sep 9, 04:45 PM · #
Yes. I understand that now, thanks. If Coyne made that point it was silly.
— Kevin Lawrence · Sep 9, 04:46 PM · #
That’s not a “repetition” of what Dr. Skell said, and to say such a thing would be critically stupid.
Again – biology was stamp collecting before Darwin. After Darwin, biology became modellable. It became explainable. All modern biology – biology as a science of explanation, not simply of identification and classification – is a result of Darwinism.
The structure of DNA could not have been elucidated by Watson and Crick without knowing that it was the molecule of heredity – and why would anyone assume there was a mutable molecule of heredity except for Darwin? How then could the Human Genome Project have proceeded without the structure of DNA? How then could bioinformatics have developed as a field without the impetus of the Human Genome Project?
All biology is “evolutionary studies.” Nothing in biology makes sense except in an evolutionary framework. Why, do all organisms (with nearly no exceptions) use the same 22 left-handed amino acids? Why do all organisms (with nearly no exceptions) use the same codon-amino acid substitution rules? Why are homeodomains so conserved? Why does cladistics so closely and improbably track stratiography? Why is there a vitamin-c synthesis pseudogene in the middle of the human genome?
All unexplainable except in the light of Darwinism. But you don’t have to take my word for it:
“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” – Dr. Theodosius Dobzhansky
It really can’t be clearer. Only someone deeply ignorant of biology – or determined to make disingenuous claims in order to make a name for themselves as a provocateur – could claim otherwise.
— Chet · Sep 9, 05:02 PM · #
Chet: Repeating the same points over and over again isn’t going to make them true. No, biology was NOT stamp collecting before Darwin. For example, Grey’s Anatomy (the textbook, not the TV show) was published BEFORE Darwin.
You wrote, “The structure of DNA could not have been elucidated by Watson and Crick without knowing that it was the molecule of heredity – and why would anyone assume there was a mutable molecule of heredity except for Darwin?”
Again, this shows distortion and wishful thinking. The principles of genetic heredity were established by Gregor Mendel, NOT Darwin. In fact, Darwinists ignored Mendel’s work for decades because it was believed to contradict Father Darwin. For more, see the Wikipedia entry on Mendel.
You wrote, “Why do all organisms (with nearly no exceptions) use the same 22 left-handed amino acids?” You use this as evidence of Darwinism. Actually, this is evidence for the idea “common descent.” Common descent does not equal Darwinism. Dr. Michael Behe, for example, one of the strongest Darwin critics, supports Common Descent, for example.
But I’m glad that you raised the issue of amino acids. What is most interesting is not the physical substance of amino acids, but the information CONTAINED INSIDE the physical substance.
The best way to understand DNA is through Information Theory. DNA is a code. A language. To quote Bill Gates, “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”
The computer you’re using now wasn’t created by accident, was it?
No. It was created by design. Purposeful design.
-TW
— Todd White · Sep 9, 05:29 PM · #
Astounding. Todd has unwittingly exposed the intellectual deficit at the heart of intelligent design ideology: “living things are far, far more complex than anything that has ever been designed – therefore, living things were designed.”
— Chet · Sep 9, 08:16 PM · #
I was responding specifically to Noah’s claim that ToE shakes any confidence that are the pinnacle of creation, so your point isn’t really responsive to mine, but it’s worth remembering that we can fly. In space even!
Also, I don’t know of Dawkins parable, but it’s also worth reiterating: “According to the swift” is an entirely fanciful clause. No thought of consequence can actually be “according to the swift.” The swift is a very, very stupid bird who can’t even remember yesterday. This seems glib, but it reinforces my point that if there are other candidates for “most awesome species,” I would like to hear from them.
— Blar · Sep 9, 08:35 PM · #
Who’s “we”, kemosabe? I bet you’ve never in your life flown in space.
Again, it’s just anthrocentrism to suppose that the thought of the human is somehow superior to the flight of the swift, or the speed of the gazelle, or the innumerable biomass of the bacteria. It’s a convenient trick of self-dealing. Sure, I can have thoughts that Thermophilius never can (that is to say, any thoughts.) On the other hand, it’s beyond all human craft to survive unaided at the inhospitable depths of an oceanic thermal vent, which Tp does with ease.
And those are just the species we’re aware of.
It’s possible that we already have. The point being, it’s a big universe, and it’s the height of arrogance to suggest we’re the pinnacle of God’s creation when:
1) the true pinnacle, pas likely to be the descendants of grey parrots or dolphins as ours, may simply be a million years down the evolutionary pipe, and
2) we have no idea what living things may be as close as Epsilon Elandri; perhaps it’s the denizens of that planet who take top banana.
In the light of all that it’s a bit ridiculous to pretend that we’re the greatest of all possible shakes. A trilobite a billion years in the distant past would have had just as much cause to consider itself the pinnacle of creation; how absurd and stupid that seems to us, now. Try to be smarter than the trilobite, please?
— Chet · Sep 9, 09:06 PM · #
Chet,
In the words of Fred Hoyle (an esteemed astronomer): “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way [natural selection] is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”
Draw your own conclusions.
“Hoyle on Evolution,” Nature, Vol. 294, 12 November 1981, p. 105.)
— Todd White · Sep 9, 09:48 PM · #
Thanks, Todd! Case closed!
— Max Socol · Sep 10, 12:34 AM · #
Todd: The creation of information does not require intelligence. Information is only a specific arrangement of physical matter. Assigning meaning to that information requires intelligence.
For example, a star may emit certain colors of light at varying intensities, thus encoding information about the star. While it does takes an intelligence to interpret this light in order to determine what chemical elements are present in the star, I would hope that you would not count the star as intelligent simply because it produces information.
Also, please stop referring to biologists as “Darwinists.” Were Darwin transported to the present, he would not understand modern evolutionary biology (or, at least, he would need several semesters of molecular biology, organic chemistry, and many other subjects to catch up). Nobody calls physicists “Newtonians,” or “Einsteinians.” Nobody calls chemists “Lavoisierians” (and a good thing, too, since that’s a rather hideous looking word). This is for a good reason: today, our knowledge surpasses that of the great scientists of the past. Of course, Darwin didn’t know how heredity worked. Nobody did. So, scientists followed a lot of blind alleys until enough evidence was accumulated to establish our current understanding. This is common in science. Getting the answer right on the first try never happens.
And yes, Fred Hoyle was an esteemed astronomer.
— Mark H. · Sep 10, 12:41 AM · #
“The point of the point, so to speak, was that a lot of people, Coyne included, believe that the theory of evolution disqualifies a creator god”
Evolution dosen’t disqualify a creator god, it disqualifies the description of the creator god(s) given by most (all?) religions. So now people have ot rediefine their gods. That seems to me to be what Jim Manzi is doing, proposing a god(s) that is working at this very far remove. As Noah suggested, it doesn’t seem very god-like, but I guess it’s possible.
I do wonder about the value of a god that has only the remotest effect on one’s life. A god like Jim proposes would be nothing more than a curious fact of nature, like the coelecanth.
— cw · Sep 10, 01:31 AM · #
Todd,
Given infinite universes and infinite time, the probability of any given thing happening is one.
— Travis Mason-Bushman · Sep 10, 01:37 AM · #
Travis: You don’t have unlimited time. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. And the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
— Todd White · Sep 10, 01:58 AM · #
Mark H:
I don’t refer to “biologists” as “Darwinists.” I refer to Darwinists as “Darwinists.” There’s nothing unfair about calling those who advocate Darwinian theory “Darwinists.”
Also, I never said, “The creation of information requires intelligence,” as you claim. I said the creation of DNA (a biological software program) requires intelligence.
— Todd White · Sep 10, 02:05 AM · #
I draw the conclusion that while Fred Hoyle may be an esteemed astronomer he has no conception of how natural selection actually works.
And chemical reactions can occur thousands of times per second.
What you’re doing that’s unfair is unpacking the most useful conclusions of Darwinism from the term. Suddenly, to the creationist, common descent isn’t “Darwinism”, decent by modification isn’t “Darwinism”, random variation isn’t “Darwinism”, and so on. With everything useful re-defined out of “Darwinism”, it’s pretty easy to argue that it had no useful effect on the field of biology.
It’s a neat trick but a transparent one. Anyway, nobody’s a “Darwinist” anymore, and no one advocates “Darwinism.” We (that is to say, consensus biology) advocate the “Modern Synthesis”, like I said – the synthesis of Darwinian natural selective mechanisms with molecular genetics.
— Chet · Sep 10, 02:27 AM · #
Chet:
You wrote: “While Fred Hoyle may be an esteemed astronomer he has no conception of how natural selection actually works.”
Actually, he wrote a whole book on it. From Wikipedia: “In his book “Evolution from Space” (1982), [Hoyle] distanced himself completely from Darwinism. He stated that natural selection could not explain evolution.”
You wrote, “Chemical reactions can occur thousands of times per second.”
Yes. And none of them have produced life. Hence, the problem.
You also complain about my use of the word “Darwinist,” even though many evolutionary biologists call themselves “Darwinists.” Indeed, they wear it as a badge of honor.
Look: There has to be a verbal distinction between biologists who believe in Darwin’s theory and those who don’t. Using the term “Darwinist” (and “anti-Darwinist”) is the simplest and most accurate way to do that.
-TW
— Todd White · Sep 10, 02:40 AM · #
“I said the creation of DNA (a biological software program) requires intelligence.”
That is quite a statement if taken at face value. What evidence leads you to this conclusion?
— cw · Sep 10, 03:47 AM · #
CW:
Conveniently, Dr. Stephen Meyer just released a book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.
Of course, reading 624 pages is quite daunting. For a briefer summary summary of the arguments, I would recommend taking a look at George Gilder’s article in National Review, “Evolution and Me.”
One quote from the article: “Information is defined by its independence from physical determination… Like a sheet of paper or a series of magnetic points on a computer’s hard disk or the electrical domains in a random-access memory — or indeed all the undulations of the electromagnetic spectrum that bear information through air or wires in telecommunications — DNA is a neutral carrier of information, independent of its chemistry and physics….Wherever there is information, there is a preceding intelligence.”
http://www.signatureinthecell.com/
http://www.discovery.org/a/3631
— Todd White · Sep 10, 04:03 AM · #
Todd, that’s not evidence, that’s assertion. The thing that freaks people out about the TOE is precisely the fact that it shows a way for DNA to accumulate and change over time WITHOUT a controlling intelligence and then demonstrates it happening over and over again. Moths in sooty environment quickly turn black. People can actually go in and see the before and after genes. This very obviously happens without intelligent control. So if it can happen on a small scale then it seems very plausible that it can happen on the largest scale as well.
To challenge the TOE and all the evidence that supports it you have to come up with a lot more than the assertion that DNA is “information” and that information can only be created by intelligence. That’s the name of the game here. Your competing theory has to be more compelling than the theory you want to displace. To make your theory compelling you have to come up with some measurable proof. The TOE is still a theory but there are oceans of evidence to support it. If you want to compete you have to start bringing out the evidence.
— cw · Sep 10, 06:51 AM · #
The peppered moths you refer to demonstrate change WITHIN a species (that’s known as “microevolution”). It does not demonstrate how new species are created (that’s known as “macroevolution”). The distinction is critical. Darwin’s theory aspires to explan “macroevolution.” Of course, there’s a problem: There’s almost no evidence for his theory.
Regarding DNA, you wrote that Darwinism “show[s] a way for DNA to accumulate and change over time WITHOUT a controlling intelligence and then demonstrates it happening over and over again.” Sorry, I think even most Darwinists would admit that they have no workable theory on how DNA could have evolved through Darwinian mechanism. If you can come up with one, you might win the Nobel Prize!
You also wrote, “Your competing theory has to be more compelling than the theory you want to displace.” That’s fair. Of course, I’m confident my theory IS the more compelling one; in fact, I’m tempted to say (in my more arrogant moments) that anyone who objectivity looks at the entire body of evidence will agree with me.
Finally, you conclude, “If you want to compete you have to start bringing out the evidence.”
To that, I’ll smile and say: “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” You claim, “The TOE is still a theory but there are oceans of evidence to support it.” Very well then. Show show me that evidence.
— Todd White · Sep 10, 07:22 AM · #
Evidence for Macroevolution:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
—
“Sorry, I think even most Darwinists would admit that they have no workable theory on how DNA could have evolved through Darwinian mechanism.”
Are you talking about how DNA changes over time or how it originally came to be? If the former, the answer has long been settled: mutation + recombination + genetic drift + natural selection. If the latter, then you are beyond the scope of evolutionary theory, which only describes what happens to living things through time, not how life or any of its components originated. In short, we don’t know how life—or DNA—began.
—
You’ve asserted again by quoting Dr. Meyer (“Wherever there is information, there is a preceding intelligence.”) that information requires intelligence. This is false. Reread my star example. Unless you believe that stars are intelligent, information does not require an intelligent source.
In any case, mutations have been observed to create information:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html
— Mark H. · Sep 10, 09:40 AM · #
“To that, I’ll smile and say: “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” You claim, “The TOE is still a theory but there are oceans of evidence to support it.” Very well then. Show show me that evidence.”
I rest my case.
— cw · Sep 10, 01:32 PM · #
Mark H: You asked, “Are you talking about how DNA changes over time or how it originally came to be?” I’m talking about how DNA came to be.
As to the issue pertaining to information/intelligence…I don’t think the star analogy works very well…You might need to explain it better…You wrote, “a star may emit certain colors of light at varying intensities, thus encoding information about the star. While it does takes an intelligence to interpret this light in order to determine what chemical elements are present in the star, I would hope that you would not count the star as intelligent simply because it produces information.”
It’s possible what we have here is a misunderstanding about the word “information.” It seems you’re using that word very broadly (by using your language, it’s tempting to say that every form of matter is “information,” and as such, yes, it would be silly to say “information is intelligent.”
I’m using the word “information” in a narrower and more philosophic sense. The purpose of DNA is to create life (and it’s good at that, so good, in fact, that we – as intelligent human beings – are not even close to being able to replicate it). That makes DNA “intelligent” in my mind. The fact that a star governed by the laws of physics and chemistry “emits color” doesn’t strike me as “intelligent” in the way DNA is.
— Todd White · Sep 10, 01:36 PM · #
CW: You wrote, “I rest my case.”
Dude, I just don’t want to waste my time on you. You don’t strike me as someone who is informed and knowledgeable on this issue. That’s why I said “show me your evidence first.” I want to see some initiative and analytical skills on your part. By responding “I rest my case” without giving me any of the evidence I requested, you have proven my point far better than I ever could.
— Todd White · Sep 10, 01:39 PM · #
Also, since I don’t see a way to have comments emailed to me, and I don’t feel like hitting the refresh button every 30 minutes, this will be my last post here. If you have any further comments or insults, post them on my webpage. Gracias and adios.
— Todd White · Sep 10, 02:02 PM · #
Ridiculous. Millions of them are ongoing right this moment, producing life in your own body.
Absurd. The unlikely concordinance between stratiography and cladistics, found at every level and across every species, is ample proof. Were that not enough there’s hundreds of observed instances of speciation – new species from old. Were even that not enough, the revolutionary field of bioinformatics has applied the incontrovertible science behind paternity/maternity testing to the entire tree of living organisms and proved, again, their evolutionary relationships.
“Macroevolution has not been observed” is a creationist canard, not a true statement. We’ve observed countless instances of it.
This is the same nonsense argument as before – “DNA is much more complicated than anything designed by intelligence – therefore it was designed by intelligence.” How can you possibly believe something so silly to be convincing?
— Chet · Sep 10, 04:02 PM · #
“I’m using the word “information” in a narrower and more philosophic sense. The purpose of DNA is to create life (and it’s good at that, so good, in fact, that we – as intelligent human beings – are not even close to being able to replicate it). That makes DNA “intelligent” in my mind.”
“That’s why I said “show me your evidence first.” I want to see some initiative and analytical skills on your part.”
I’m going to reopen my case so that I can close it one more time with an emphisis conveying a tone of gentle finality. Think of the sound your front door makes when you shut it concluding a brief visit from a pair of wandering Jehova’s Witnesses.
— cw · Sep 10, 04:20 PM · #
Do Jehovah’s Witnesses wander? I always assumed they were sent.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 10, 05:22 PM · #
Oh, what the heck. Normally I demurely bow out when things get this heated around here, but I feel like I’m pot-committed. So further up and further in!
@Chet.
Who says I won’t? More realistically, a few hundred humans have been in space, and no swifts ever have or ever will, unless we bring them aboard. Advantage: Humanity!
I agree that if we run into the Klingon Empire it will be interesting times for all kinds of philosophical reasons, but it was pretty clear I was talking about evolution on Earth. In other words, why couldn’t the goal of evolution on Earth be humanity, while the goal of evolution on Kronos be Klingonkind?
Of course it is! I’m arguing in favor of anthropocentrism! There’s more to it than that, as follows.
Except that a trilobite had no capacity for such consideration, no more than the swift, or gazelle, or profligate monera.
Consider this analogy. The town elders decide to hold a couples dance competition in some township. It’s open to the entire town, but only one couple shows up. They are pretty good, maybe not ideal, but the elders wouldn’t have any choice but to declare them the best dancers in town.
In another town, the elders declare a similar competition, but nobody shows. They can make no determination about who the best dancer is at all, because there is no one to make the case on their behalf.
In another town, they have never heard of dancing, and cannot even conceive of what dancing would be like. Not only can they make no determination who the best dancer is, but they cannot even hold the competition, for even the concept of the art of dancing is beyond their understanding.
It’s possible that in the first two towns, all the better dancers are just being coy, but that seems very unlikely if we are talking about terrestrial biology. It would have to mean that squirrels, or faeries, or mole-people, are capable of claiming that they are the pinnacle of evolution, but are choosing as a species to be quiet and humble about it.
In this game, it matters who shows up for the dance.
@cw
As I said in another post, religious thinkers have considered aspects of God far beyond the “God of the book” for ages before Darwin. Jim’s hypothetical concept of God is not new, broadly speaking, nor is it contingent on Darwin.
— Blar · Sep 10, 06:50 PM · #
more compatible with the Hindu understanding of reality than it is with the Jewish, Christian or Muslim understanding.
ummm….no, actually. As a Sufi I have no problem with science of any stripe. For meh, the quantum world is in perfect sync with maarifa.
Neither do my ashkenazai friends have any problems. ;)
The I AM NOT A MONKEY argument is the exclusive provenance of evangelical xians and their apologists.
— matoko_chan · Sep 10, 07:34 PM · #
I agree with Chet. It is so “arrogant” to consider “ourselves” the “best” when we can’t even “photosynthesize” or live as long as most “trees,” let alone climb walls like the “noble” gecko, or divide like the “regal” amoeba.
How can they stand our obnoxious claims of “entitlement” and “rightful” superiority? No wonder all things would try to kill us if they knew us like the endangered tiger does, as the inflamed infection that we are.
There is a clear hierarchy in “nature:” the more numerous, smaller “organisms” and deathless (immortal!) “viruses” “rule” “us” all.
“They” don’t need “fantastic” “fables” like “dignity” and “meaning” to be the “best,” they just “are.” “Humanity” will never be at “peace” and “harmony” with the “world” until it comes to “recognize” that they are “meant” to serve these objectively superior “lifeforms.”
And, “fortunately” for the “world,” the “progress” of our “knowledge” brings us ever closer to the day that “we” will finally stop trying to “distinguish” “ourselves” by accumulating “power” and finding our non-existent “purpose.”
Then “men” will lay down their arms, stop uttering their vain “words,” cease their constant building, and endless war against “nature” and accept their “natural” “duty” to sustain the “flourishing” of those “who” were here first and will remain long after “us.”
Darwin was an important stepping stone toward this “liberating” “wisdom,” but not as fundamental and essential as we like to think in the big picture.
Plenty of “enlightened” “people” throughout History, without the benefit of Darwinian biology have recognized Chet’s inkling of our “insignificance” and “hubristic” insistence on the “existence” of “fantasies” like “right,” “wrong,” “high,” “low,” “life,” “death,” “good,” “bad,” “ugly,” “beautiful,” “rational,” “irrational,” “correct,” “incorrect.”
Some of “us” have already begun turning away from caring about “stupid,” inefficient, useless “humanity,” and its “nonsensical” imagined “concepts” like “freedom,” “rights,” and “compassion,” and now turn toward our only true “fulfillment,” “duty,” and “reward” of feeding our “masters” in “true” humility.
You can always “choose” “serenity” and join “us.” It doesn’t take a website or bickering, just the “tranquil” acceptance of “everything,” without all your projected “delusions.”
— Father Nurture · Sep 10, 09:01 PM · #
Contact me for instruction on the use of quote marks. Only $19.95 if you act now. I can also help you refinance your mortgage.
— cw · Sep 10, 10:49 PM · #
On the other hand – every swift can fly. The vast majority of humans never will (not even on an airplane.)
That’s really not clear at all. Manzi has repeatedly conflated “Earth” and “universe”, to the point of interpreting Coyne as having meant the latter when he said the former.
Again, it’s not at all clear that “ability to think itself the center of the universe” is so obviously a much better quality than “flight.” Please allow me to modify your analogy to try to illustrate what I’m getting at:
Imagine that your dance judges set out to find the best dancers in the land, but they announce no contest nor audition; they simply travel from place to place and observe people dancing. Some are professional ballerinas, some are couples at dance parties doing the latest steps, some are jazz dancers pretending to be trees, some are just goofy teenagers lost in their iPod, unaware they’re being watched.
At the end of these wanderings, the judges compare notes and conclude who the best dancers in the land are – themselves! Without having ever danced a step, they conclude that they were the only ones with the capacity and ability to contemplate dance, to contemplate who was best at dancing. They certainly didn’t see any of the other dancers doing it, and clearly, to contemplate and judge dance is a higher, more complex activity than dancing.
Somehow, I doubt you’d agree, but then you turn around and place conceit as a far more important and significant activity than, say, flight or being able to hold your breath for 2 hours at a time. (Further I think one need only study a cat to discern that the human capacity for self-centered reflection is by no means unique or superior.)
I think it matters, quite a bit, that you’ve chosen to hold the “dance” on terms that only humans can meet. It really gets to the point of how ridiculous the whole thing is. It’s really, profoundly ridiculous (especially in the light of evolution) to try to hold up humanity as the “best” of anything.
— Chet · Sep 10, 11:31 PM · #
That’s a pretty good test of my argument. I don’t think it holds though. Remember that the analogy is between “who can dance the best” vs. “who can best make the case for their own awesomeness.” In this case, the judges wouldn’t be able to find any other dancers at all!
I should have added that another possibility for my analogy is that there is no competition, and that the sole couple dancing in the town square is delusional. It’s a definite weakness in my analogy. But the question was put forth “why should we believe that we are special?” I offered some commonly given reasons. It was only then that Kevin Lawrence offered the fable of the swift, to say, in effect, “but other species can dance too!” So if we assume that the competition is real, then it was my intent to show that only humans can really compete.
Can humans “compete” on behalf of other species? I suppose, but I would have two responses: One, we should then put it up to an open vote. Two, the talents of the other species (birds can fly, cheetahs can run, plants can turn solar energy into fuel) are fairly narrow in their application. By contrast, the human talents of civilization, art, science, history, and what have you, are so broad in their application that they can actually reasonably replicate many of the talents of other species. We can’t fly like the swift or run like the cheetah, but we can build and ride vehicles that can surpass them both. We can build devices that can harness solar power much as plants are able. We can’t ever match the kingdom of monera for biomass, but our memory, intelligence, and capacity for organization means that we can reshape our environment such that our relative lack of biomass isn’t an issue.
Thanks to humanity’s unique talents, not only do I feel comfortable saying that we are the best at some things, but that we have the potential to be the best at nearly everything.
— Blar · Sep 11, 01:27 PM · #
Not at all. Apparently you missed it, but there are ample people in my analogy who dance not to make the case that they’re the best at it, but just because they like to do it.
And I thought I refuted this. Our ability to consider ourselves the Best Species Evar may be unique, but many other species have unique abilities that we lack – survival at extremes of pressure and temperature, hibernation, etc. – and there’s nothing immediately obvious about the idea that the capacity for conceit trumps all the rest.
— Chet · Sep 12, 12:27 AM · #