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Fallacy 4: Natural Phenomena Mean Randomness-"For some reason many people, not just creationists, seem to think that if something is natural, then it must also be random (in the sense of being undirected and therefore, in the minds of those with a misunderstanding or ignorance of natural selection, clearly not designed). This is the basis for one of the most persistent fallacies of creationism: that evolution cannot be true because it purports to explain complexity in the biological world by means of random accidents."-Before I continue, David, dhw, does any of this pertain to your views? I don't want to waste valuable time. ---Matt

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

3997 views

Fallacy 4: Natural Phenomena Mean Randomness
> 
> "For some reason many people, not just creationists, seem to think that if something is natural, then it must also be random (in the sense of being undirected and therefore, in the minds of those with a misunderstanding or ignorance of natural selection, clearly not designed). This is the basis for one of the most persistent fallacies of creationism: that evolution cannot be true because it purports to explain complexity in the biological world by means of random accidents."
> 
> Before I continue, David, dhw, does any of this pertain to your views? I don't want to waste valuable time. -
In my analysis evolution happened. What we are debating or arguing is the methodology by which evolution goes from simple to complex. I cannot believe that what we see, in ourselves, for example, is simply the result of a series of random contingent events. Yes, I understand that any single unexpected event can appear against seemingly enormous odds. But the size of the series of such events is so enormous that odds for randomness become unreasonable. Life, with all its recognized complexity appeared in 800 million years from the establishment of a planet, and about 400 million years after the temperature dropped to extremophile levels. All the odds I have seen calculated favor my contention: DNA is coded for advancing complexity and evolution. Therefore there is a universal intelligence. Where does the information in DNA come from? Have any of us ever seen a code developed randomly? Randomness in this situation demands absolute faith.

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Fallacy 4: Natural Phenomena Mean Randomness
> > 
> > "For some reason many people, not just creationists, seem to think that if something is natural, then it must also be random (in the sense of being undirected and therefore, in the minds of those with a misunderstanding or ignorance of natural selection, clearly not designed). This is the basis for one of the most persistent fallacies of creationism: that evolution cannot be true because it purports to explain complexity in the biological world by means of random accidents."
> > 
> > Before I continue, David, dhw, does any of this pertain to your views? I don't want to waste valuable time. 
> 
> 
> In my analysis evolution happened. What we are debating or arguing is the methodology by which evolution goes from simple to complex. I cannot believe that what we see, in ourselves, for example, is simply the result of a series of random contingent events. Yes, I understand that any single unexpected event can appear against seemingly enormous odds. But the size of the series of such events is so enormous that odds for randomness become unreasonable. Life, with all its recognized complexity appeared in 800 million years from the establishment of a planet, and about 400 million years after the temperature dropped to extremophile levels. All the odds I have seen calculated favor my contention: DNA is coded for advancing complexity and evolution. Therefore there is a universal intelligence. Where does the information in DNA come from? Have any of us ever seen a code developed randomly? Randomness in this situation demands absolute faith.-I'll grab pigliucci's argument when I get home--because he argues that what you call "random" isn't random at all. What I'd like to discuss at the moment, is what I talked about in the Quantum thread. -One of the conservation laws that exist is one of information; in our universe, information in systems is conserved. It is possible to build a program that as its output, outputs other small programs at random. -If we use the English language as an example, think of how much complexity surrounds such a very simple structure.-All sentences have a subject and predicate, and the basic logic of sentences, using AND, OR,or NOT, give an insane number of useful statements. How many useful small statements can we create? If we exchange random letters for random words, how many of them will be useful, especially when you don't have to be precise? "this OR that" is interchangeable for example. A Shakespearean play might be amazingly complex, but it is ultimately nothing less than repetitions of the same basic informational structure over and over and over again. How is life any different?-In Lloyd's book, he shows how beginning from that quantum soup, all the physical structure in the universe can be created by simply using NOT. While his explanation doesn't go so far as to explain higher-order mechanisms such as what we see in chemistry, it demonstrates in an undeniable fashion that amazing complexity IS possible from 0, 1, 0 + 1, and NOT. -More on this later...

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

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MATT: If we think of the English language as an example, think of how much complexity surrounds such a very simple structure. [...] A Shakespearean play might be amazingly complex, but it is ultimately nothing less than repetitions of the same basic informational structure over and over again. How is life any different?-You have put this question to David, and perhaps he will have a different answer, but my own is that this seems quite a good analogy. However, maybe I'm missing something obvious, because in my view it supports David's thesis in two ways:
 
1) The so-called "simple" structures that form the basis of language had to be devised by intelligent minds. ("Simplicity" is a relative term. Nothing could be simpler than the wheel, but whoever invented it was a genius!)
2) The amazing complexity of a Shakespeare play, while based on those simple structures, again could not have been created without the workings of an intelligent mind.-If, then, you take language as being analogous to life, the building blocks may be simple, but putting them together to create a functioning system requires conscious intelligence. This is not, however, an argument against evolution. It's an argument against materialist abiogenesis.-
*** Thank you for your very helpful explanation of Pigliucci's line of thought. I'll have to get back to this next time round.

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The only difficult part I have with your thrust dhw, is that no one knows how language came to be--it's actually a mystery that will probably never be solved. Analyzing language takes intelligence, but if you go back to say, when human babies are born, they have one "word" for everything. Parents then exhaustively try all choices (hungry, needs a change, needs love) until they figure out what the child is trying to communicate. -Animals also communicate using what could be called a language--obviously none of it as expressive (except for maybe squids, that even display syntaxes that include body positions.) -What we need to define in terms of saying that language necessitates intelligence, is define exactly how much intelligence is required, and the type. Human language requires some level of human ingenuity. Everything else is perceptual intelligence; but if we can program automatons that also utilize perceptual intelligence, doesn't this cloud the waters?-If we're talking life as we know it, there are about 60 "words" in the entire language, and thus the complexity of life hinges on the length of the piece, in which case, the words code for proteins of varying sizes. -How intelligent can you be if you can only communicate yourself with 60 words? (and many of them mean the same thing?) In human terms we'd either call you a 1 yr old or mentally challenged. Of course, this is looking at life as it is now, and not when it got started.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

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> If we're talking life as we know it, there are about 60 "words" in the entire language, and thus the complexity of life hinges on the length of the piece, in which case, the words code for proteins of varying sizes. 
> 
> How intelligent can you be if you can only communicate yourself with 60 words? (and many of them mean the same thing?) In human terms we'd either call you a 1 yr old or mentally challenged. Of course, this is looking at life as it is now, and not when it got started.-These comments entirely miss the point of living biochemistry. Sure the 60 codons translate into 20 amino acids, but biochemical protein molecules are more than just strings of amino acids. Folding creates different functions. Enzymes are enormous molecules with keyed areas to hold the molecular actions they helping to succeed. Histones help control DNA, etc. It is not just 20 left-handed amino acids (and why only left-handed?). It is a highly complex interplay of very carefully fashioned molecules. Often one action is coordinated by a large company of different molecules in a succession of events. -Watson and Crick thought their code was the beginning and the end point. Far from it, understanding DNA just opened a Pandora's box of almost infinite complexity.

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> > If we're talking life as we know it, there are about 60 "words" in the entire language, and thus the complexity of life hinges on the length of the piece, in which case, the words code for proteins of varying sizes. 
> > 
> > How intelligent can you be if you can only communicate yourself with 60 words? (and many of them mean the same thing?) In human terms we'd either call you a 1 yr old or mentally challenged. Of course, this is looking at life as it is now, and not when it got started.
> 
> These comments entirely miss the point of living biochemistry. Sure the 60 codons translate into 20 amino acids, but biochemical protein molecules are more than just strings of amino acids. Folding creates different functions. Enzymes are enormous molecules with keyed areas to hold the molecular actions they helping to succeed. Histones help control DNA, etc. It is not just 20 left-handed amino acids (and why only left-handed?). It is a highly complex interplay of very carefully fashioned molecules. Often one action is coordinated by a large company of different molecules in a succession of events. 
> 
> Watson and Crick thought their code was the beginning and the end point. Far from it, understanding DNA just opened a Pandora's box of almost infinite complexity.-Proteins fold in many different ways--but these ways are predictable and is a source of ongoing scientific effort. It is the cutting edge of bioinformatics and is the type of work being conducted here at UNO in order to build a better computer model. Computational simulations of biochemistry will be the greatest push for biology into the next 100 years, and the amount of knowledge we'll gain after quantum computing will be exponential. -It is important to note that it IS at the organic and chemical level where deterministic properties exist. -The harder part to argue from a design perspective, is how a completely undetectable force can influence anything in the physical universe. It isn't enough to rely on chance figures--though I didn't throw away the general formula I was building to help a person judge the validity of chance, and it does include the information processing theorem that will judge time at the quantum level.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

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Matt proposed the building blocks of language as an analogy to those of life, and I said this supported David's design thesis, because language requires intelligence.-MATT: The only difficult part I have with your thrust dhw, is that no one knows how language came to be.-I think we have to assume that language came into existence through the creatures that use it, though it raises the interesting conundrum of how a God might communicate. You have quite rightly broadened the argument: "Animals also communicate using what could be called a language..." I wouldn't hesitate to call it language. But use of sounds to communicate requires intelligence, whether human or animal.-You say: "What we need to define in terms of saying that language necessitates intelligence, is define exactly how much intelligence is required, and the type. Human language requires some level of human ingenuity. Everything else is perceptual intelligence." I'm not sure about the meaning or the accuracy of this last remark, but again it makes no difference to the analogy. No matter how simple the basic units may be, they could not have come into existence, and indeed would serve no purpose, without conscious intent, and that entails intelligence on the part of the user and on the part of the recipient. -I've taken the gist of your argument to be: the building blocks of life/language are so simple that they could have formed themselves, and we know that simple things can build themselves up into complex things. My argument has been that language is not capable of forming itself or even of building itself up to complexity without the input of intelligence. The degree of intelligence is only relevant to the degree of language sophistication. And so I still say that as an analogy it supports design. However, since you've brought in degree, I have to say that the original mechanisms of heredity, adaptation and innovation sound to me infinitely more complex than the original "grrrr mmmm oink gimme". Maybe it's not such a good analogy after all!-Briefly, in response to your latest post: I'm emphatically not an opponent of evolution, but there are aspects of it that I do think remain open to question. There seems to be a mistake in your Point 3 of Pigliucci's intentions. You say he aims to show "that the objections to evolution and natural selection at large are a thrust towards materialism and not science at all." Surely that should be a thrust towards theism. And that would be right, in my view, so long as one acknowledges that certain aspects of evolution CAN be challenged scientifically. But if Pigliucci "goes out of his way to demonstrate that it is possible for theists to support evolution", then I think all the misunderstandings have been cleared up now.-I really appreciate your putting his and Seth Lloyd's ideas to us. These discussions are all helpful, and even the misunderstandings make us clarify our thoughts. "Educate" would indeed sound condescending, but it's not inapt!

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dhw,-I'll try one more time to reconcile the analogy, but it might be fruitless. -Also I was hoping to start discussing Pigliucci's ideas about direction in evolution but as I understand it--the issue isn't even with natural selection, its purely about origins and therefore I cannot really bring it in. I noted this in my recent post to David in the "return to irreducible complexity" thread. (Not the Pigliucci issue, but the issue of the questions that are really being asked.) -Now, the basic syntax and structure of language we can agree is is some variation on subject and predicate. This structure is a relationship; it's something that has no cause but it is an existing structure nonetheless--like a physical law. It's something that is deduced from the nature of language, but no early primate sat out and said "we have a subject and predicate" and then invented language based upon that. -Where the language analogy will cause us issues in this discussion, is that man really was able to do whatever he wanted in terms of creating language; any sound can represent any other thing. There was no preordained system to determine what meant what prior to invention of the verbal symbol. -In other words, with language, you can put any sounds you want in this relationship:-_______________ XOR _______________
and it won't matter or affect the outcome of the meanings that are derived from it. -However, when we're dealing with physical laws, there is a cause-effect relationship involved that CAN'T mean whatever we want it to mean. -When we have the word '01' and we place it into the relationship XOR with another word, '11' the only result is '01.' -Before I go further, are we on board?

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

3975 views

MATT: Where the language analogy will cause us issues in this discussion, is that man really was able to do whatever he wanted in terms of creating language [...] There was no preordained system to determine what meant what prior to invention of the verbal symbol. [...] However, when we're dealing with physical laws, there is a cause-effect relationship involved that CAN'T mean whatever we want it to mean.-Matt, it was you who introduced the analogy. Initially, I thought it was a good one, but the more we've discussed it, the more convinced I am that it's a dead end. We don't know whether the origin of life required conscious intelligence or not, but we do know that the origin of language required intelligence, as does its evolution. Your excellent argument above is enough for me. The analogy is false.-But language in itself is a subject I'm very anxious to discuss, because although it's our best instrument of communication, its subjective use and misuse underlie most of our misunderstandings, while even in the field of science it can be used to deceive. I'm hoping to start a new thread on this soon, but at the moment I'm having a hard time keeping up with you, David and George! (All good stuff, though, so don't wait for me!)

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I tried, at least. I'll try to come up with another math-less analogy for this.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

3967 views

Fallacy 4: Natural Phenomena Mean Randomness
"For some reason many people, not just creationists, seem to think that if something is natural, then it must also be random (in the sense of being undirected and therefore, in the minds of those with a misunderstanding or ignorance of natural selection, clearly not designed). This is the basis for one of the most persistent fallacies of creationism: that evolution cannot be true because it purports to explain complexity in the biological world by means of random accidents."-Before I continue, David, dhw, does any of this pertain to your views? I don't want to waste valuable time. -My own short answer to your question would be no. However, a short answer won't do, because Pigliucci's fallacy as presented here is itself a fallacy and also a gross oversimplification of a complex argument. But perhaps this statement has been taken out of context, so what follows may be an unfair criticism. I can only comment on the quote.
 
His fallacy lies in the sly manner with which he skips from natural selection to evolution as if they were synonymous. Natural selection is only one component of the theory, as I tried to point out under 'Evolutionary Catechism', and non-creationist ID-ers and agnostics (presumably those meant by "not just creationists") can accept both its naturalness AND its non-randomness. Similarly they, and theists too, can accept that all forms of life sprang from one or just a few forms. So are they evolutionists or aren't they? Creationists, of course, believe in the literal truth of the Bible, which is a totally different starting-point. -The controversial areas which Pigliucci has tried to conflate for the sake of his generalization are those in which randomness really does compete with design, i.e. certain ASPECTS of evolution (such as innovations), and the mechanism that led to evolution, as opposed to evolution itself. The question here, as you know, is whether those first living organisms which were capable of replication, adaptation and innovation (e.g. through random mutations) could have come into existence through a random combination of globules of matter. The claim that this hugely complex mechanism arose naturally IS the same as randomly, and that is where materialism requires just as much faith as theism.

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dhw,-You are missing some background context from the book. He establishes a continuum of thought in the beginning of the chapter that moves from flat-earth creationism, to materialistic evolution. His establishment is that all of these things can be looked at as a continuum of creationism to materialism or the converse. If you are a flat-earther, you accept no scientific explanations and if you're a scientific materialist you accept no supernatural explanations. -The position he takes is that since you cannot differentiate between Ra, Jehovah, or Aliens, that any person who takes an "intelligent designer" argument is *some* from of creationist and for convenience he uses creationism throughout the book to refer to anything on the continuum that is NOT scientific materialism. (And scientific materialism is something that he establishes later as a concept that is actually open to at least *some* forms of theism.) -As for the Natural Selection equivocation, he establishes in the same book that evolutionary theory as it stands makes no sense except in the light of natural selection. Without natural selection, you can't explain anything in biology. It provides all the criteria needed for a working scientific explanation. He discusses some of the "holes" as suggested by other arguers here, but stresses that science always accepts the explanation that fits the best, and that other explantions seek to refine natural selection (such as punctuated equilibrium) but even PE wouldn't replace natural selection.-Additionally, although some on the continuum reject evolution at large, all forms of creationist thought reject natural selection--from flat earthers to theistic evolutionists. -Hopefully this gives you a better perspective to the context.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

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> As for the Natural Selection equivocation, he establishes in the same book that evolutionary theory as it stands makes no sense except in the light of natural selection. Without natural selection, you can't explain anything in biology. -I am waiting for the release of the book: The Altenberg 16, by Suzan Mazur. Preliminary comments so far suggest that natural selection will be taking a more minor role in the new synthesis. Out next month. I think this is a proper development.

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> > As for the Natural Selection equivocation, he establishes in the same book that evolutionary theory as it stands makes no sense except in the light of natural selection. Without natural selection, you can't explain anything in biology. 
> 
> I am waiting for the release of the book: The Altenberg 16, by Suzan Mazur. Preliminary comments so far suggest that natural selection will be taking a more minor role in the new synthesis. Out next month. I think this is a proper development.-I will stress--so I don't misconstrue Pigliucci's position as being more than an acceptance of a "best current explanation." He goes out of his way in this book to describe science as a machine that is self-modifying in terms of paradigms (and actually does discuss Kuhn.) It was also written in 2002 and is therefore about 8 years out of date. -I took a look at the pre-release info at Amazon for Mazur's book, and this is the first time I've seen the public discussed in a positive light in relation to science. Most academics--myself included--tend to shun the views of the general public. Hubris, I know, but I've never pretended to be humble all the time. I will comment that I attribute much of this to the public's fight against evolution going back to Scopes and the like; I think that there's something in the human spirit that sings when someone cries war against you and it blinds you. I blame the stagnation as much upon creationists such as Hovind as I do against the scientific establishment.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

3957 views

Matt has explained Pigliucci's line of thought, and there are two areas of this that bother me, though once again of course I can only discuss the ideas as you present them to me:-"...any person who takes an 'intelligent designer' argument is some form of creationist and for convenience he uses creationist throughout the book to refer to anything on the continuum that is NOT scientific materialism."-I'm glad you've explained this, but it seems to me a risky and even unfair line to follow. Is there anyone these days who doesn't associate Creationism with literal belief in the Bible, and hence with radical opposition to evolution? It would surely have been better to use "design" for anything that is not scientific materialism. Even though ID has been tainted with Creationism (sometimes deliberately by those with an agenda, but also by its own advocates), at least as a theory, design can be separated from the Bible and from any specific concept of God, and is not per se anti-evolution.-The second problem for me is the "Natural Selection equivocation", which is used over and over again by materialists seeking to pour scorn on the design theory. You say Pigliucci points out that "evolutionary theory as it stands makes no sense except in the light of natural selection." Quite true. But evolutionary theory as it stands also makes no sense except in the light of heredity, adaptation, innovation. And natural selection makes no sense unless there is something to select from! However, for materialists the great advantage of equating evolution with natural selection is that it's the only area of the theory that does not depend at one level or another on randomness. It's a totally logical principle, demonstrable in many spheres ... not just biological ... and you don't have to ask how the creative physical mechanism was originally formed because there IS no creative physical mechanism. Natural selection doesn't create anything. It only begins when the mechanisms of heredity, adaptation and innovation have done their work, after which logically whatever is advantageous in a particular environment will survive and be passed on. But it's precisely the origin of the creative mechanisms that remains unknown and therefore wide open to the interpretations of the faithful, whether theist or materialist. That's why in my view Pigliucci's so-called fallacy, as you've presented it (the erroneous argument that "evolution cannot be true because it purports to explain complexity in the biological world by means of random accidents") is based on an unfairly selective view both of evolution and of design.-As for the absurd claim that all theistic evolutionists reject natural selection, what on earth does he base that on? Let me yet again quote Darwin himself: "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist." (Letter written May 7, 1879). I don't think he intended to exclude natural selection from that statement. And incidentally, the biology teacher who first introduced me to evolution long, long ago was a lay preacher.-*** Thanks for the piece about language. Fascinating subject, which I'll respond to next time round.

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As for the absurd claim that all theistic evolutionists reject natural selection, what on earth does he base that on? Let me yet again quote Darwin himself: "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist." (Letter written May 7, 1879). I don't think he intended to exclude natural selection from that statement. And incidentally, the biology teacher who first introduced me to evolution long, long ago was a lay preacher.
> -I think I'm going to tackle this first as it was a complete fudging of my own wording here. I meant to say that it was Natural Selection that is singled out by all types of theist-minded thinkers. They don't challenge inheritance, they challenge that part that on many levels suggests that evolution is undirected or as many argue, "random." I think he's trying to argue that random is a false distinction; that just because something *wasn't* designed, it doesn't mean that it was built at random. I know he argues later in the book that the appearance of order in nature necessarily means "not random." -As for your comment about his continuum of belief/unbelief, that's a better point for you to make to him than to me. But in America ID is a mask for creationism as the Discovery Institute made clear, so I think its natural and fair to remind people about that. -For the meat of your post, remember, if evolution makes no sense minus natural selection, than you cannot have one without the other. I don't necessarily view that as an equivocation, because at least at the moment, there is nothing better. -At this point I'd almost recommend trying to find the book, because he actually discusses much of what you talk about in your post: his ultimate goal about the book was to show these points:-1. Evolution is universally supported by science.
2. The battle about evolution is limited to the United States, to one specific subset of its religious population.
3. That the objections to evolution and natural selection at large are a thrust towards materialism and not science at all. 
4. That the arguments as posited by ID proponents in the United States have a political and cultural goal, not one of science. -He goes out of his way to demonstrate that it is possible for theists to support evolution, and cites many religious denominations that openly do so. --> *** Thanks for the piece about language. Fascinating subject, which I'll respond to next time round.-It's my attempt to try again to talk about Seth Lloyd's ideas in a way that might be useful to you. Though remember, he didn't touch upon origins or theism in the slightest, only the physical theories and laws. I'm just trying to... help you understand both him, and my ideas that are based off of his. ("educate" sounds condescending in an online reading...)

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

3946 views


> For the meat of your post, remember, if evolution makes no sense minus natural selection, than you cannot have one without the other. I don't necessarily view that as an equivocation, because at least at the moment, there is nothing better. 
 
There is a lot better if one follows the curent radical thinking that has appeared. "Natural selection' has always been a tautology. I keep raving about epigenetic evidence of rapid change. Here is much more:-http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/19/evolution-darwin-natural-selection-genes-wrong

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