How Does Philip Johnson Challenge Darwinism in Evolution as Dogma?

[Johann]

Brilliant as the design of the eye is, it betrays its origin with a tell-tale flaw: the retina is inside out. The nerve fibers that carry the signals from the eye's rods and cones (which sense light and color) lie on top of them, and have to plunge through a large hole in the retina to get to the brain, creating the blind spot. No intelligent designer would put such a clumsy arrangement in a camcorder, and this is just one of hundreds of accidents frozen in evolutionary history that confirm the mindlessness of the historical process.

I'm no ID enthusiast, but I really laugh when I see this thing being offered as a counter-argument. Don't they have anything better to think of? Here's a suggestion:

"Brilliant as the design of my brain is, it betrays its origin with a tell-tale flaw: I don't understand more than 2% of the world around me"

Or is anyone ready to claim the brain has fewer blind spots than the eye?

 

[matt grime]

I've encountered the notion--probably due to sloppy use of language--that intelligent design is not a scientific theory because "There's no need to introduce a supernatural element to the process."

you are vaguely alludnig to occam's (or as I've also seen it, ockham's) razor: if we have two competing theories A and B and the hypotheses of A are a subset of B and further if the extra hypotheses of B are not required to explain the current data then A shuold be preferred over B. But this isn't why some of us dismiss it as "not science". We would dismiss it as bad science according to this rule of thumb, since there is nothign to be gained from supposing that there is a guiding designer at work in the personified or deified sense.

Which is nonsense. There is nothing supernatural, unnatural, pseudonatural, or antinatural about intelligence

I think it is the idea of the designer that is the issue, intelligent is just the adjective, and it is the agent noun we dislike.


As Hypnagogue says, it is not science in the Popperian veiw since it is not falsifiable: it does not explain the data (it actually states "the data is too complicated to be natural", which, no matter what the IDers may try to claim, is hardly in the spirit of enquiry is it?) or predict results that we can check against experiment or compare to future finds. That is the experimental sciences anyway. Mathematics and certain aspects of theoretical physics are axiomatic and only internal consistency is required there. but ID has no theory or logic by which we can check its internal consistency.

 

[max1975]

Thanks for the replies to my rant. While the answers are not wholly satisfying, I think you've shown me honestly and reasonably why they can't be, due to the legitimate boundaries of science.

I do think it is entirely appropriate for Science (by which I mean the public image, not the discipline itself) to refuse to allow itself to be used to make theological claims. I wish it were similarly reluctant to be used as a weapon against people's faith.

I have a quick question about falsifiability (though I'm leaving town for a couple of days and will not see any answers till I get back.)

Suppose I set up an experiment to prove that cells will eventually form, without my intervention, given the right mix of chemicals. How many billion years must I watch this mix fail to produce cells before I can say the idea is falsified? At which point my lab assistant will surely say, "Maybe you've got the wrong mix of chemicals," and I'll shoot him.

Is theoretical falsifiability treated differently than practical falsifiability?

 

[Les Sleeth]

Part 1

(I sort of got carried away with this reply, which requires two posts to fit.)

First, let’s clear up one thing. I thought we agreed this was not to become a discussion about ID. I made it clear in my second post in this thread that I wasn’t defending ID (and I’d been careless not to say so more unambiguously), but rather some points Phillip Johnson made were objections I’ve had myself. I have clearly outlined what those objections are, which is there are important gaps in evidence for abiogenesis and evolution theories which should prevent scientism devotees from proclaiming to the public that it is physical explanations which are “most likely” to be eventually found for those missing components.

To a large degree I think this disagreement is between a class of thinkers who are convinced they have the epistemological advantage in all matters of knowing, and others who dispute that.

If you review comments by Bystander, Rade, Hypnagogue (and the person quoted in the NY Times article), and Chronon, one can see an epistemological assumption in place. A small sampling:

There has been no demonstration of a need to appeal to anything beyond the minimal set of physical laws.

This is not a pig headed "scientist" position, it is logical, derived from the evidence of the senses that are then used by consciousness to form the concept of human evolution. The above reported mystical god based "mechanism" on the origin of humans just does not make sense--it is not self-evident--it is not supported by the genetic and morphological facts of Primates to which humans belong. Now, if you have a logical fact based "mechanism" on the origin of humans based on mysticism, PLEASE DO SHARE IT.

When scientists dismiss ID by saying it's not science, what they mean it's that it's not falsifiable-- that is, it has thus far been formulated in such a way that it can't be shot down by experiment or evidence. So there is no epistemological standard here by which we could really judge ID claims to be true or false, and so no use in considering them as serious opposition to the standard scientific picture of evolution. . . . Certainly we should not consider handing the championship title over to our phantom sumo wrestler just because he talks a big game. If the scientific community seems dismissive of ID, it is for the same reason that we should be dismissive of our phantom sumo.

The legitimate way to stir up such a storm is to come up with an alternative theory that makes a prediction that is crisply denied by the reigning theory - but that turns out to be true, or that explains something that has been baffling defenders of the status quo, or that unifies two distant theories at the cost of some element of the currently accepted view.

To date, the proponents of intelligent design have not produced anything like that. No experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding. No observations from the fossil record or genomics or biogeography or comparative anatomy that undermine standard evolutionary thinking.

1) You have an alternative theory B which you think explains the phenomena better. . . . 2) You have no alternative theory, but you think that some things in theory A are not tenable. . . . It looks to me like ID'er start of by taking path (2), but when you look for the sophisticated arguments for this to have any chance of success you find they aren't there. Rather they seem to have changed tack, and say 'well since we've shown that theory A is flawed, this supports our alternative theory B'.

Imagine you are living in late 15th century Spain, and have been summoned to the inquisition to defend taking a scientific approach to studying the world. Every logic point you make for using it is judged by a set of standards that derive from assumptions, such as the Bible is the absolute truth. So if you say it seems like the Earth is billions of years old, that can’t be true because it conflicts with the Bible, or if you say the human body seems evolved from more primitive forms, that also can’t be true for the same reason.

In that time, the Church had achieved great power, so doesn’t that success mean they had “won” the competition for power? I mean, we can’t claim the Church was incompetent with respect to acquiring influence. Once having earned the place of power, weren’t those who’d help get it there entitled to wield that power? Because they had the power to do so, because they had won the battle for influence, and because the Church represented an epistemological system, didn’t church leaders therefore have more rights than others to say how we all should evaluate things? So when your empirical epistemology is discounted for failing to meet the standards of religious epistemology, they are correct and you are wrong because, after all, you’ve not met the standards of those who have the most right to set knowing standards.

Getting back to this thread, the quotes I chose from everyone are relevant to my objections. All of you seem to assume that empirical epistemology is the end all in knowing. You have set up empiricism as THE one and only way to truth, and then demanded everyone meet empirical standards. You judge criticisms of this attitude with that standard, you judge everything with that standard. Why?

Well, because science has achieved so much with physical stuff, some believe it is the way to all knowledge. Those who understand science start thinking of themselves as the new priests of the Scientism Church who have the knowledge the ignorant masses lack. As Michael Shermer once pointed out in his Scientific American column Skeptic, “being the Age of Science, it is scientism’s shamans who command our veneration.”

The attitude becomes, “Look what we’ve achieved, doesn’t that give us epistemological rights? Don’t those in power have the right to demand everyone get in line with what they know is the one and only way to acquire knowledge?” So now fully justified, every discussion is judged by the firmly-entrenched assumption that if something doesn’t meet empirical standards it is inadequate.

(continued in next post . . .)

 

[Les Sleeth]

Part 2

(. . . continued from the previous post)

In contrast to studying things “out there,” some people have explored the inner life. And some of these inner practitioners experience “something more” to reality than what’s perceived strictly through the senses. And sense perception is what empiricism relies on 100%, so if something actually can be known about reality in some way that isn’t sense dependent, then it isn’t going to be known empirically, and the inner method of knowing isn’t going to meet the empirical standard.

If might doesn’t make right, neither does the what the majority believe. But it is still true that the vast majority of humans think there is “something more” to reality than physicalness. Must of what they believe has trickled down from serious inner practitioners, so it isn’t necessarily that they know anything through their own efforts. But many aspire to know that way, and others (IMO) may at least “sense” there is something there.

Then there are those who are obsessed with studying externals, which is precisely what science is about. Is it logical to predict that science might attract a higher-than-normal percentage of people (normal for the population as a whole) who are focused more on externals than anything going on inside themselves? And then, if you practice a discipline that actually requires you to look away from yourself, and comes with the assumption that all reality is physical, then is it likely that one’s externalistic bent is going to be even further emphasized to the point of not only denying there’s anything internal worth knowing, but which even might cause one to look at others who do believe so with contempt? (Richard Dawkins comes to mind.)

What’s disturbing to serious inner practitioners is that the externalists, almost to a person, don’t know the slightest thing about what’s been achieved inwardly over the millennia. Yet they are totally convinced that inner adepts have nothing to add to human knowing. Unfortunately they look at religion as representing innerness, which isn’t where one finds inner competence. They complain about the ignorance of religion, and associate it with all inner pursuits. But the ignorance of religion has nothing to do with innerness, it has to do with the general state of understanding of the human population. If there weren’t religions, the ignorant would do something else ignorantly.

So now we are in a better position to understand one bit of logic scientism advocates employ, which is to say, if you haven’t got a better theory, then you aren’t allowed to critique ours. Really? Why would that be? Is it because scientism devotees have assumed they are most qualified to decide what is true and “most likely” about their theory, and so if anyone criticizes too much, they must be uneducated, or a creationist, or whatever?

If so, it means scientism believers aren’t required to give dissenters serious consideration. Is that how we operate in other areas of life? Do you have to be politician to question laws and policies, or a parent to question someone beating their child? It is a dirty little tactic to say if you aren’t a recognized expert in my subject, I can dismiss your challenges without having to answer them directly.

In my case at least, where I criticize the abiogenesis and evolution theories is where they don’t make sense, and where (I say) scientism believers can’t properly justify the “mostly likely” designation they assign to their physicalist theory (and I am someone who started out long ago as an atheist and a full believer in abiogenesis and evolution).

The scientism logic I criticize is, after deciding a priori the universe is purely physical, one concludes life musthave been started and evolved by purely physical means. Is that the conclusion of an objective mind loaded with all the evidence needed to make that claim, or is that a mind conditioned by participating in a method (empiricism) that only reveals physicalness? Is that conclusion of a balanced consciousness, or is it the conclusion of a mind fixated on externals?

At this point of my life I am moved both by what I observe and what I have realized through over three decades of meditation. When I hear the physicalist explanation for abiogenesis, for instance, I see a problem right away. The problem is attributing abilities to mechanics that just aren’t there. If mechanics alone could be shown self organize to the extent physicalists claim then I would fully accept the possibility of abiogenesis. Likewise, I don’t see the evidence that natural selection alone (especially in 600 million years that includes several mass extinctions) is capable of producing the quality of organs (particularly the human brain) we find in creation. Right now, natural selection looks as pedestrian as mechanistic processes always do.

So how might someone with inner experience, but also committed to things making sense, think about all this? Using myself as an example, I wonder what could have lifted the quality of natural selection to produce a human brain. When I look around, I see no organizing force of the quality needed to take mechanics beyond their tedious monotony except when human consciousness gets involved. Thinking inferentially, I can’t see why some sort of consciousness might not have started spontaneously (and naturally) where we say the universe started spontaneously and naturally, evolved for eons, and then was able to participate in creation and add that organizational part, possibly working through genetic manipulation.

What might account for punctuated equilibrium? Well, possibly the evolutive force proliferated so many life forms in the Cambrian period searching for ideal avenues of development. While any species were the focus, they had the benefit of being within the evolutive priority and that’s when lots of complex organs/organisms develop. At some point the evolutive force narrows the number of species within evolutive priority; those in the priority continue to develop creatively, those left behind have only genetic variation-natural selection to help them survive, and most don’t. As the eras pass, the evolutive priority narrows evermore, settling finally (apparently) on the hominid group. And what determined the evolutive priority? Well, since the evolutive force in this model is some sort of consciousness, it was whatever might best facilitate the emergence of consciousness in a physical system. That would explain the prosaic performance of natural selection today, and why species seem to stabilize at some point and evolve little more.

Do I think that’s the truth? No, it’s just me playing around trying to come up with something that explains everything I have experienced inside, and what I can observe outside. I am not committed to any belief system which abhors anything that belief system can’t explain. I am just looking for what makes sense and is true. That’s why I am free to sting the rump of the scientism horse. It’s not because I am against science, but because I am against prejudice, exaggeration, dogma, and attempts at unfairly influencing public opinion in any field, including religion, and against intellectual bullying by people think only they know the truth.

This is why I fight the physicalists who think they get to automatically take credit for explaining the gaps in our understanding. Lots might be physical, but not everything necessarily is that makes this universe work.

 

[matt grime]

Thanks for the replies to my rant. While the answers are not wholly satisfying, I think you've shown me honestly and reasonably why they can't be, due to the legitimate boundaries of science.

I do think it is entirely appropriate for Science (by which I mean the public image, not the discipline itself) to refuse to allow itself to be used to make theological claims. I wish it were similarly reluctant to be used as a weapon against people's faith.

I have a quick question about falsifiability (though I'm leaving town for a couple of days and will not see any answers till I get back.)

Suppose I set up an experiment to prove that cells will eventually form, without my intervention, given the right mix of chemicals. How many billion years must I watch this mix fail to produce cells before I can say the idea is falsified? At which point my lab assistant will surely say, "Maybe you've got the wrong mix of chemicals," and I'll shoot him.

Is theoretical falsifiability treated differently than practical falsifiability?

who knows, but just so you're aware, such an experiment has nothing to do with evolution or darwinism, but abiogenesis. evolution explains the development and differentiation of species, it says nothing about the origin of life. a point that ID defenders often overlook. what next? creationists saying "we're not evolved from chimpanzees"? good, cos no evolutionist says that either.

whatever your beliefs about the origin of life, we have a reasonably well understood mechanism for the evolution of life. there are (at least) two different views on the way that evolution progresses/progressed. One that it is continual and gradual, the other that it tends to go in fits and starts, perhaps impelled by extremal changes in environment (ice ages and so on). Dawkins would be one of the "sudden jumps" people wouldn't he? the sum collection of huiman recollection is far too short to know through experience either way.


we are also conducting scientific investigation into abiogenesis, who knows what it'll turn up, i don't even know what it has turned up already. but surely it is better to experiment for reproducable results than to simlpy appeal to a larger mysterious force? even if the experiments all show that nothign man made can reproduce nature.

one thing i like to baer in mind is that there are "devoutly fanatical" scientists who believe in god. science explains a the wherefors, and religion offers a purpose to them, the why's if you will. there is no conflict here. science says very little about the ultimate "reasons" for anything. but i can think of no fanatically devout theists (the bible is the absolute word of god, yes, the king james AV obviously) who are scientists.

 

[hypnagogue]

Les, my post was made in response to max1975's question about what science's take on ID is and why it is that way. To the extent that IDers claim that ID is a better fit to the facts than evolution, the whole matter about falsifiability of course must come into play. If ID wants to supplant evolution, then it is throwing itself into the scientific ring, and must abide by the rules therein. This is not to say that the scientific method is the only way of knowing. It is merely to say that if one wants to supplant an accepted scientific theory with a new theory, one must do so on scientific grounds. If that does not or cannot happen, then there can be no traction between the scientific theory and its proposed replacement, no basis for real comparison and thus competition.

That does not necessarily imply that the new theory is wrong; the point is that if it is wrong, we will have no way of knowing, which is unacceptable to scientific epistemology. We may have reason to suspect that phantom sumo is a good wrestler, but if he never gets in the ring, we'll never be able to truly evaluate him one way or another. Some may choose to believe that he is indeed a great wrestler, but scientific epistemology is more demanding and will simply dismiss phantom sumo until he decides to get into the ring and show his mettle. Again, this is not to say that science is the only path to knowledge; it is to say that science's criteria for what constitutes knowledge are stringent, and in order to effect change in scientific knowledge or theory, one must submit oneself to those stringent criteria. It could well be that some form of ID is true, but until a falsifiable ID hypothesis is put forward, there can be no scientific way of comparing ID and evolution, and so ID cannot be a proper scientific alternative. So this is not so much about an epistemological advantage as it is a matter of epistemological turf: If you want to stomp around in the turf of scientific epistemology, you must abide by the rules of scientific epistemology. Questions about which forms of epistemology are superior to others are a different matter.

But your priority here, I take it, has not been so much to push some variant of ID as it has been to draw attention to gaps in existing theory about abiogenesis and evolution, which of course is welcome skepticism. I do have to question the force of your objections, though. It is one thing to say that existing theory does not yet satisfactorily account for such-and-such, and quite another to say that it cannot account for such-and-such. You seem to argue for the former, perhaps quite validly, but then you seem to make the inferiential leap from the former to the latter, which I do not think is justified.

How do you know that physical systems cannot self-organize in such an exquisite way to form a cell from primordial soup, or a new organ or whatever? It is certainly not sufficient to argue that we thus far have not observed this process or come to a completely satisfactory theoretical account. You require extra principles to explain why this observation or theoretical account will never come about, even in principle, but I cannot see that you offer any such principles in a detailed or compelling way. You assert that if we let biological molecules sit in a jar for billions of years, we will just end up with the same inert biological molecules, and so life could not have self-organized in this way. But this seems to me like just the kind of extravagant extrapolation you accuse evolutionary theorists of: You generalize the results of an experiment made in a small tank with certain chemical conditions over an exceedingly brief time scale to apply to the primordial Earth and its huge seas and churning atmosphere and so on, which its much richer set of chemical composition and events, over a period of billions of years. If that is not extravagant extrapolation, what is?

 

[Les Sleeth]

Les, my post was made in response to max1975's question about what science's take on ID is and why it is that way. To the extent that IDers claim that ID is a better fit to the facts than evolution, the whole matter about falsifiability of course must come into play. If ID wants to supplant evolution, then it is throwing itself into the scientific ring, and must abide by the rules therein. This is not to say that the scientific method is the only way of knowing. It is merely to say that if one wants to supplant an accepted scientific theory with a new theory, one must do so on scientific grounds. If that does not or cannot happen, then there can be no traction between the scientific theory and its proposed replacement, no basis for real comparison and thus competition.

I agree, and that is why as soon as I could I tried to distinquish my points from ID. If you were only commenting on ID trying to duke it out with science, then you've made a good point.

But your priority here, I take it, has not been so much to push some variant of ID as it has been to draw attention to gaps in existing theory about abiogenesis and evolution, which of course is welcome skepticism. I do have to question the force of your objections, though. It is one thing to say that existing theory does not yet satisfactorily account for such-and-such, and quite another to say that it cannot account for such-and-such. You seem to argue for the former, perhaps quite validly, but then you seem to make the inferiential leap from the former to the latter, which I do not think is justified.

Ahhh, well I am ready to defend that inferential leap. But I hope you will keep in mind that I do so not as a "believer," but purely on the basis of inferential logic taken from observation.

How do you know that physical systems cannot self-organize in such an exquisite way to form a cell from primordial soup, or a new organ or whatever? It is certainly not sufficient to argue that we thus far have not observed this process or come to a completely satisfactory theoretical account.

Yes, but you have to remember I am responding to the "most likely" claim of physicalists. The physicalists have claimed they are justified in inferring most likeliness, and I am claiming there is a more-supported inference.

You require extra principles to explain why this observation or theoretical account will never come about, even in principle, but I cannot see that you offer any such principles in a detailed or compelling way.

Of course not, because I don't think I have to offer those principles. If I propose to someone who comes back from a walk in the woods broken out in blisters, that walking in the woods causes blisters, do you have to explain what does cause blisters before you can refute my logic (by, for instance, pointing out that thousands of people walk in the woods all the time and don't come back with blisters)? Obviously another factor is needed to explain the blisters, such as being allergic to poison oak, etc. It is a common but bogus argument that we can't dispute the quality of someone's inference because we don't have a better one to replace it. Bad inference is perfectly capable of standing on its own.

You assert that if we let biological molecules sit in a jar for billions of years, we will just end up with the same inert biological molecules, and so life could not have self-organized in this way. But this seems to me like just the kind of extravagant extrapolation you accuse evolutionary theorists of: You generalize the results of an experiment made in a small tank with certain chemical conditions over an exceedingly brief time scale to apply to the primordial Earth and its huge seas and churning atmosphere and so on, which its much richer set of chemical composition and events, over a period of billions of years. If that is not extravagant extrapolation, what is?

But my friend, I am not the one who claims we can infer from what happened in that jar that chemistry can keep on self-organizing into a cell! I am disputing their inferences, not substituting my own.

There may have been a richer set of chemicals and events, but then go ahead and recreate such conditions and show us that chemistry can self-organize with the quality needed to reach the self-sustaining system we find in a cell (and BTW, life is believed to have formed within the first 1/2 billion years, not over billions of years). But don't proclaim to the world that little bit of self-organization is going to fill the bill for the kind of self organization needed to create a living system.

If I am guilty of extravagant extrapolation, I most definitely want to know it so I can vigorously purge it out of my mind. I have theories, but you won't catch me saying (or believing) they are most likely. I really don't know. What I do say I know is that the inferences made from the Miller-Urey experiment and simple adaptation are extravagant.

 

[loseyourname]

Well, that settles it. I suppose we all left to the high priests of science to explain how the universe works. Obviously no one is intelligent enough to recognize gaps in logic, glossing over missing evidence, pushing a theory as the truth in such a way that all but insists on an ontology, and then when confronted about the ontological propagandizing, speaking out of the other side of the mouth saying, "oh no, we aren't talking ontology, we are just doing science."

Les, there are no gaps in the logic. There are plenty of evidential gaps, but men like Johnson would have you believe that these 1) make up the bulk of the explanation, and 2) that these gaps are far more significant than they actually are. In fact, one notable thing that people don't seem to notice in criticizing the logic of evolutionary evidence is that it isn't even possible to have a logical gap in an inductive argument. There are only degrees of certainty about the conclusions that can be drawn based on the amount of supporting evidence. There is no issue as to whether one claim follows logically from another - in principle, they cannot.

I don't agree with Johnson's desire to reconcile Biblical creationism with science, but I do agree he has astutely analyzed the dogmatic attitude of the scientific community. That is the title of his article, and that is what I am asking thinkers to evaluate. I doubt if I will get anybody to look past Johnson's beliefs and strictly critique the points he makes in his article.

Well, as I said, I would be glad to do it if you really want that, but it has already been done. Johnson hasn't made a claim that I know of in the last ten years that he didn't already make before that, and plenty have already responded to him, plenty that are way more qualified than anybody you are going to find on these forums.

But this is irrelevant. So what if he is a creationist? It makes absolutely no difference, just like it makes no difference if he is a scientist. Any good scientific thinker should be able to evaluate his points on face value without knowing a single thing about the author of the points.

It might make no difference to you, but I'm sure you can understand why people that are already well acquainted with Dr. Johnson don't want to respond to him. The man is disingenuous, plain and simple. Perhaps I'm getting a little more indignant than I should, but frankly, you are the last person with any right to criticize another for quickly becoming indignant.

Anyway, I will try to make a general reply to what I see as the crux of Johnson's argument. Keep in mind that this is not easy to do, as again, he is very careful not to state any positive conclusions, not to make any direct claims. As such, it would not even be possible in principle to actually refute any of what he is saying. He does make incorrect claims at times, though I'm not sure if he did in this specific article (at this point, I can't remember it that well and will have to re-read it to determine) as to where there actually are gaps. Michael Behe, the other central figure of the ID movement, actually makes far more specific claims as to what the gaps are than Johnson does, and he has been wrong many times.

But yeah, the general reply I said I would make. This is one way to construct the basic argument of the IDers:

If evolutionary theory were true, there should be no explanatory gaps in the theory.
There are explanatory gaps in the theory.
Therefore, evolutionary theory is not true.

There are plenty of ways to attack this argument. It should be blatantly obvious that this argument is sound, for many reasons. So I will not bother with it. To be more fair, I'll try to construct a watered-down version, more in the spirit of this particular article:

If evolutionary theory were true, there should be no explanatory gaps in the theory and there should be no evidential gaps in its supporting evidence.
There are either explanatory gaps in evolutionary theory or evidential gaps in the evidence that support it.
Therefore, we should not believe in evolution.

The first problem that springs to mind with this argument is that it is invalid; it is not possible for an imperative statement to follow logically from a factual statement. I'll ignore that, though, because it does raise legitimate questions as to when and why we should believe (or accept) a scientific theory.

A more significant problem that arises is that whether or not a given person is going to accept or believe a given theory is a matter of personal choice and varies from person to person. We seem at an impasse because those who study evolution are satisfied with the evidence and theory that they have (in a very broad sense*), but others are not.

I could make an appeal to authority here; although that is sometimes considered to be a logical fallacy, 'judgement' in the sense of an expert opinion is considered a category of evidence in both formal debate and in judicial proceedings. I could just say that those who study evolutionary theory know quite a bit more about it and are more qualified than those who do not to judge its veracity. That claim is almost certainly correct, but you can raise any number of counterclaims that you already have, and though you cannot substantiate them broadly, you can narrowly (that is, you can find individual examples of scientists that are fervently physicalist to a dogmatic degree and claim from that we should not trust evolutionists in general).

To avoid this potential conflict, let us forget about the appeal to authority. Though I personally believe that Hume effectively demonstrated (and contemporary neurological studies corroborate) that there can be no such thing as true practical reason, I'll also ignore that because, frankly, we do not need to be that philosophically sophisticated (interesting how they share the Greek root "sophia," isn't it?) in this matter. Colloquially, it is fair to say that some beliefs are reasonable and some are not. So what constitutes a reasonable belief, colloquially, and does the belief in either evolution or ID qualify?

I would think that even you could agree that those who believe in evolution are at least being reasonable. The only thing you seem to find unreasonable is the claim that ID (in whatever variation) is not, or even cannot be, true. So let us evaluate the reasonableness, colloquially, of ID. Although there may be no specifics in the positive claims made, the broad positive claim of the IDers seems to be that some form of intelligence intervened at least once during the process of evolution. That is, evolution did occur, but not by completely mechanistic means.

So let us ask several questions about this hypothesis:

1) Is there any evidence to support this hypothesis?
2) Can there be any evidence to support this hypothesis?
3) Is it possible to falsify this hypothesis?

1) As far as I know, no IDer has ever offered any evidence to support the claim that any intelligence (other than the intelligence of the evolvers themselves) ever intervened in the evolutionary process.

2) This one is a little trickier. If a natural intelligence intervened in the process; that is, a Space Odyssey scenario where some race of spacefaring creatures prodded evolution in a certain direction at key moments, there are certainly be evidence to support this hypothesis. Look no further than the films and books themselves for what this evidence might look like.

On the other hand, if the hypothesis is that a supernatural intelligence intervened; that is, some sort of "miracle" occured, then I personally don't think that can ever be demonstrated by any means. Again, I appeal to Hume for proof that a miracle could never be verified or even supported. I know there is legitimate disagreement as to whether or not Hume was correct, but personally, I'm convinced.

3) The answer to this one has to be a definitive 'no.' In fact, let us even consider a weaker claim. If an IDer were to make the claim that evolution could not have happened by entirely natural means, then, if over the course of, say, another million years of human existence, we can decisively observe that all of the explantory gaps cited by IDers (abiogenesis, speciation, the creation of complex and novel organs) can be directly observed to occur by natural means, that claim will have been falsified, at least to the satisfaction of what we are here calling a "colloquially reasonable" person. But has the claim actually been falsified? No, it hasn't. Due to the nature of supernatural causes, if there had been supernatural intervention in the evolutionary process, the process would not necessarily look any different than if there had not been. Even if we cooked up some single-celled organism in a lab, using nothing but inorganic chemicals, an IDer could still claim that the only reason we were able to do so is because a supernatural force, not detectable to our instruments, intervened.

*By "in a very broad sense," I mean that there are plenty of disagreements as to what evolutionary theory should really be in its details. The only broadly accepted part of the theory is that the biodiversity we observe today is the result of descent with modification from a less biodiverse initial population of some sort, filtered by natural selection (and many other mechanisms, but natural selection is the only one broadly accepted) and other natural means. For this reason, I will just take it for granted that IDers are only criticizing these broad aspects of evolutionary theory. Actually, they can't criticize natural selection as a mechanism, as that has been rather conclusively demonstrated, but they can criticize the hypothesis that all species in existence today descended from a smaller pool of different species by completely natural means.

 

[loseyourname]

By the way, I have to apologize for something. First, I still didn't do any point by point addressing of Dr. Johnson's article. However, I did try to address at least the spirit of his general argument. I already know that doing so will not satisfy because Dr. Johnson's beliefs, and his general argument, are not completely in line with your own. However, I will wait for you to state a positive claim before I address that, even though I already have a pretty good idea from the past of what claims you will make.

For these reasons, if you completely dismiss my entire post, I'll understand. Hopefully, you can understand my reasons for making the post anyway. Even if it doesn't prove useful to you, it might to someone else.

 

[Les Sleeth]

It might make no difference to you, but I'm sure you can understand why people that are already well acquainted with Dr. Johnson don't want to respond to him. The man is disingenuous, plain and simple.

I am going to agree with almost everything you say in this post after this point, which is to suggest that you may be being blindly prejudiced against anything Johnson has to say. If you think every Darwinist despises Johnson, check out Ruse's attitude (of all people!):

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/ruse.html

Anyway, I will try to make a general reply to what I see as the crux of Johnson's argument.

LYN, I suspect you took my first response to you, got busy with other things, never came back to see my adjustment to what I was trying to say in this thread (detailed in my second post), and then wrote the long refutation without benfit of seeing how the theme of this thread has changed. You make a lot of good points about ID, and some of Johnson's theories. But I've already distanced myself from most of what you criticize.

 

[Bystander]

"Lions, and tigers and bears" ... and Sleeths ... "oh my, oh my, oh my."

For all your showing off, you missed the point. You demonstrated that some bit of organization can happen if you put the right chemicals together in the right conditions, and you demonstrated that chemistry has the potential to account for the structure of life. Did you demonstrate self-organization can take off by itself, and keep going until it reaches the complexity and functional proficiency of a cell? No.

Still can't read? You're back to "It offends my intuition, therefore it can't happen. I don't care what is said about 'lna'." Did someone misinform you regarding the applicability of thermo? Tell you that there is an upper limit to the size of interacting moieties beyond which magical forces take over?

Are you listening to my objections? Self organization is the issue, not anything else.

"Self-organization" is a quality that requires Les Sleeth's personal, intuitive approval? No one said that every coacervate drop, micelle, gel, colloid, suspension, or other intermolecularly bonded/associated/complexed structure formed according to thermodynamic principles is alive, only that a very large set does form, and that in that set a very wide range of properties are going to be observable. Those properties are going to include your "self-organization," self-replication, catalysis of reactions, inhibition of reactions, photosynthetic catalysis, singly, and in combinations. You wanted to know what drives the "self-organization," and you've had that driver explained to you. Get over it.

Say you have all the parts that make up a car in a big pile. By making those collection of parts bounce around, can those parts organize themselves into a car?

Argument by analogy ... "Oh what'll I do. What'll I do. What'll I do." Giggle gleefully, and thank you for dribbling this p*ss-poor analogy down your leg and into the discussion. In all fairness, I'll have to concede that Les is NOT the author --- he just bought a Trojan Horse that not even the actual author realized he'd built.

Analogies are useful if and only if their characteristics correspond well with the relevant characteristics of the problem being considered. Let's procede with such a comparison:

1) interatomic bonding energies are MJ/kg as compared to interpart "bond energies" that are J/kg in an assembled auto, and under the conditions implicit in the analogy, (gm₁m₂/r), fJ/kg to nJ/kg;

2) the parts pile is placed in a 3 to 10 J/kg energy well (depending upon how far above the ground one chooses for COM of assembled vehicle), and the "parts pile" for the "primordial soup" is sitting in a 0 to 30 kJ/kg energy well (sea surface to mean ocean depth, a gross exaggeration, but we've got to give the analogy every break it can get);

3) the activation energy (moving parts around in energy well) for the "soup" is 3% at most of the bond energy, and 3 to 10¹⁵ times the bond energy for an assembled vehicle depending upon whether one looks at OEM bonding or analogic bonding.​

Hence, we apply the adjective "p*ss-poor" to the analogy.

Boosting the well depth for the "soup" to make the system correspond to the analogy puts us on the surface of a neutron star or at the event horizon of a black hole. Not really any surprise that the analogy predicts nothing going on. Reducing the well depth for the analogy to correspond to the well depth-bonding energy ratio of the "soup," it's obviously necessary to conduct the experiment in field-free space, or at worst, the near zero-G conditions of Earth orbit. Give me a J/kg bonding energy and the Keebler Elves to apply it (not to arrange parts, but simply to function as analogs to the bond formation occurring naturally between atoms), and there's no problem reassembling your junkyard to the point that lug nuts are returned to the specific lugs from which they were removed if so desired.

Conclusions:

1) analogies are like scissors in that it is dangerous to run with them;

2) physicists really should be careful in constructing analogies in that they never know when some philosopher is going to pick them up and run with them;

3) the combined statement of the 1st and 2nd laws, Gibbs Free Energy, is so offensive to the intuition of the lay public that it's probably worth finding some other approach to presenting it in science courses for non-majors.​

Should I "snip" this next paragraph? Nah.

Your answer, if you answered as above, would be first to show how it is possible for all those parts to be assembled into a car. But I never doubted that to begin with. What I doubted was if parts bouncing can be made to assemble into a car. And then, you proclaim you've really proven something because you got some washers and bolts to hook up.




Again, you missed the point. I haven't denied that all life has evolved. I have questioned whether natural selection and genetic variation alone are the only influences on genetic change during the period starting about 600 million years ago when lots of new organs [Bold]developed because they were needed[/Bold]

I suppose Lamarck and Lysenko could be argued to have been "closet vitalists." Turn things around so that "cause" precedes "effect:"

"Proto-organs developing at this time enhanced survivabilities of some organisms, and selection pressures furthered development of these to the point that they could be defined as organs."​

to support lots of new life forms. I am not talking about a finger either. I mean the really good stuff like eyes, livers, ears, brains.

We have what we can actually, in person, empirically observe -- natural selection achieving minor changes -- and then we have what you say is possible for natural selection to achieve, but cannot show it ALONE is doing it now or has done it in the past.

Right NOW you need to show natural selection getting creative. You can't go back in time and attribute creative change to it when you can't observe such changes now.

Salt excretion organ in the Galapagos iguana satisfy you? I know, I know. "Yes, but..."

The only reason you want to is, I say, because you are a physicalist devotee, and not because the evidence is there yet. Maybe one day it will be, but it isn't there now.

You seem outraged that I won't buy your belief system, and that I say it is pumped up with dogma, exaggerations, faith, tons of theory . . . but nothing that rises to the level of proof. Today I was reading Michael Ruse's complaint (Professor of philosophy of science at FSU, and a devoted Darwinist) that Darwinists have turned evolution into religion. That's how you act. Absolutely OUTRAGED that someone just won't accept what you see as obvious. If they don't, they must be some ignert, uneducated, moooooron with half a brain because YOU, as the ultimate authority on all things existent have decided the TRUTH is . . .

Arrogance doesn't improve with education.

Wohler put a stake through the "vitalists'" hearts in 1828. http://www.3rd1000.com/urea/urea.htm Unfortunately for Wohler, vitalists don't have hearts --- they're at about the same stage as slime molds on the evolutionary scale. ID ain't nuthin' more than vitalism in a new shade of lipstick.

The physical scientists put computers on loons' laps and desk tops, give them near instantaneous communication, a standard of living Louis XIV couldn't have dreamt, and what do the loons do? Endlessly whine about the way physical scientists do business, complain that we don't listen to them, don't take them seriously, that we really should listen to their intuitive cracked-pottery.

Les, you don't like it, that's tough --- go back to school and learn enough to understand what you're attacking. How long is it going to take to put together a complete picture from the reductionist point of view? Quite a while. It takes money and time to measure rate constants for amino acid condensation reactions, free energies of formation of how many polypeptides, syntheses of enough polypeptides to actually estimate a frequency of occurrence of "self-organization," association constants for pairwise and higher order "complexation" of biomolecules, and on and on down a very long list. You want everyone to drop everything and look for Obi wan's force? Don't let the door slap you in the butt on the way out.

 

[hypnagogue]

Yes, but you have to remember I am responding to the "most likely" claim of physicalists. The physicalists have claimed they are justified in inferring most likeliness, and I am claiming there is a more-supported inference.

I'm confused (honestly, not trying to sound smug): I previously had the impression that you were more interested in drawing attention to perceived gaps in the theory, but from the above it sounds like a big part of your attack is indeed to propose an alternate, superior explanation as well. And it is still eminently unclear to me that your alternate proposal is indeed better supported. What evidence supports your proposal?

As for the whole thing about "most likely"ness, I'm not sure how I feel about that, that is, I'm not sure how much we can or should make of "most likely" claims in a context like this. What does "most likely" mean in this case? 90% confidence in the truth of a claim? 80%? 51%? How is such confidence quantified? Or is it more of a figure of speech used to express subjective expectations?

Of course not, because I don't think I have to offer those principles. If I propose to someone who comes back from a walk in the woods broken out in blisters, that walking in the woods causes blisters, do you have to explain what does cause blisters before you can refute my logic (by, for instance, pointing out that thousands of people walk in the woods all the time and don't come back with blisters)? Obviously another factor is needed to explain the blisters, such as being allergic to poison oak, etc. It is a common but bogus argument that we can't dispute the quality of someone's inference because we don't have a better one to replace it. Bad inference is perfectly capable of standing on its own.

I don't quite see the pertinence of this response. I wasn't claiming that you need to produce a better proposal to replace abiogenesis proposals. I was claiming that in order to effectively argue that physical principles cannot entail abiogenesis, it is not enough to argue that our current knowledge or theory is limited. Just noticing that we are currently impoverished in this way does not at all imply that this will always be so.

Rather, to argue that physical principles cannot (or if you prefer, most likely cannot) entail abiogenesis, you need to explain why this is the case. You need some underlying principles that ensure that the current state of impoverished knowledge / theory will always be so impoverished, because of some basic and inextricable underlying reasons. If you fail to demonstrate such principles, then you have no inductive basis by which to say that our failures today will still be failures tomorrow, and your argument will have a distinct "God of the gaps" air about it.

If I am guilty of extravagant extrapolation, I most definitely want to know it so I can vigorously purge it out of my mind. I have theories, but you won't catch me saying (or believing) they are most likely. I really don't know. What I do say I know is that the inferences made from the Miller-Urey experiment and simple adaptation are extravagant.

So you are claiming that positive extrapolations from the Miller-Urey experiment are extravagant, i.e. just because some basic biological compounds can be shown to self-organize spontaneously, this is not sufficient reason to believe that life can also spontaneously self-organize.

I am claiming that your negative extrapolation from the Miller-Urey experiment is just as extranvagant. i.e., just because very limitied, small scale experiments have not yet been able to demonstrate self-organization beyond a certain degree of complexity, this is not sufficient reason to believe that life cannot spontaneously self-organize.

 

[loseyourname]

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/ruse.html

Hey, at least I'm honest about this. I'm not even going to open a link from the leaderu domain unless we're specifically engaged in a theological discussion.

LYN, I suspect you took my first response to you, got busy with other things, never came back to see my adjustment to what I was trying to say in this thread (detailed in my second post), and then wrote the long refutation without benfit of seeing how the theme of this thread has changed. You make a lot of good points about ID, and some of Johnson's theories. But I've already distanced myself from most of what you criticize.

No, I read the whole thread. I explained why I made the post, and anticipated that you would not respond (even exonerating you of doing so) in the next post. I suspect you did not read that.

 

[Les Sleeth]

Hey, at least I'm honest about this. I'm not even going to open a link from the leaderu domain unless we're specifically engaged in a theological discussion.

Well, you seem a lot more informed on ID stuff than me because I don't know anything at all about leaderu . . . I was strictly trying to refer you to the exchange of ideas between a hardcore Darwinist and Johnson. I could show you other comments of Professor Ruse who suggests it might not be the smartest thing to revile Johnson and other ID guys.

 

[Les Sleeth]

"Lions, and tigers and bears" ... and Sleeths ... "oh my, oh my, oh my." . . . You're back to "It offends my intuition, therefore it can't happen. I don't care what is said about 'lna'." Did someone misinform you regarding the applicability of thermo? Tell you that there is an upper limit to the size of interacting moieties beyond which magical forces take over?. . .
Argument by analogy ... "Oh what'll I do. What'll I do. What'll I do." Giggle gleefully, and thank you for dribbling this p*ss-poor analogy down your leg and into the discussion. In all fairness, I'll have to concede that Les is NOT the author --- he just bought a Trojan Horse that not even the actual author realized he'd built. . . Les, you don't like it, that's tough --- go back to school and learn enough to understand what you're attacking. . . . You want everyone to drop everything and look for Obi wan's force? Don't let the door slap you in the butt on the way out.

Nice, really nice. I suspect you think you've argued effectively, have admirably represented the scientific community, and can win converts to your point of view this way.

In terms of my butt being on the way out, it's not your decision to make is it, but hey, maybe you can appeal to Greg to get rid of me.

 

[hypnagogue]

Let's please try not to be derogatory or derisive where we needn't be. I know this is a charged issue, but Les is correct to point out that excessive put downs only detract from the force and quality of the arguments (and of course, this applies equally to all arguing parties). If one believes an argument is poorly formed, the force of the counter-argument should be sufficient to draw out these inadequacies. Colorful language or excessive sarcasm on top of that detached argumentation can ultimately only be a bad thing for all parties involved. If this continues in this thread I will be compelled to edit out superfluous comments and leave behind only the core argumentation.

 

[Les Sleeth]

I'm confused (honestly, not trying to sound smug): I previously had the impression that you were more interested in drawing attention to perceived gaps in the theory, but from the above it sounds like a big part of your attack is indeed to propose an alternate, superior explanation as well. And it is still eminently unclear to me that your alternate proposal is indeed better supported. What evidence supports your proposal?

I'm getting a migrane. By saying there is a "more-supported inference" all I meant was that one should infer that the evidence suggests a possibility, not what is most likely. But I'll grant you I should have been more clear. I suppose I assumed the weight of my many former posts would make it obvious where I am coming from.

As for the whole thing about "most likely"ness, I'm not sure how I feel about that, that is, I'm not sure how much we can or should make of "most likely" claims in a context like this. What does "most likely" mean in this case? 90% confidence in the truth of a claim? 80%? 51%? How is such confidence quantified? Or is it more of a figure of speech used to express subjective expectations?

Well, science itself sets the standard for proof. Why can't we say based on all the reports of bleeding Mary statues that it is most likely true? Does the physicalist believer apply the same exact standard of "most likely" to the bleeding statue reports as it does to its abiogenesis theory. I say it doesn't.

I don't quite see the pertinence of this response. I wasn't claiming that you need to produce a better proposal to replace abiogenesis proposals. I was claiming that in order to effectively argue that physical principles cannot entail abiogenesis, it is not enough to argue that our current knowledge or theory is limited.

I didn't say that physical principles cannot entail abiogenesis. Maybe they can, but no one has demonstrated it. Yet some nonetheless are claiming abiogenesis is the most likely cause of the first life form.

Just noticing that we are currently impoverished in this way does not at all imply that this will always be so.

Maybe someday creationists will prove God did it too, and therefore just because they are currently impoverished in this way does not at all imply that this will always be so. Appealing to what some discipline MAY do, doesn't justify them claiming they are the ones who are going to eventually answer the question. Why not keep their mouths shut and just prove it?

Rather, to argue that physical principles cannot (or if you prefer, most likely cannot) entail abiogenesis, you need to explain why this is the case. You need some underlying principles that ensure that the current state of impoverished knowledge / theory will always be so impoverished, because of some basic and inextricable underlying reasons. If you fail to demonstrate such principles, then you have no inductive basis by which to say that our failures today will still be failures tomorrow, and your argument will have a distinct "God of the gaps" air about it.

Geez, how many times do I have to point to the lack of self organizational ability in mechanistic stuff before you take my objection seriously? I have ALWAYS included reasons for my objections.

And I have not said that abiogenesis is impossible, I have not said failures today will be the failures of tomorrow. Please don't put words in my mouth. What I said is that as of now, no physical principles have been demonstrated which would encourage us to believe physicalness alone can rise to the level of self-organization necessary to produce a cell. I am saying that as of now, there is not enough evidence for scientists to be saying abiogenesis is most likely. How much more conservative do I have to be?

So you are claiming that positive extrapolations from the Miller-Urey experiment are extravagant, i.e. just because some basic biological compounds can be shown to self-organize spontaneously, this is not sufficient reason to believe that life can also spontaneously self-organize.

I am claiming that your negative extrapolation from the Miller-Urey experiment is just as extranvagant. i.e., just because very limitied, small scale experiments have not yet been able to demonstrate self-organization beyond a certain degree of complexity, this is not sufficient reason to believe that life cannot spontaneously self-organize.

What's going on Hypnagogue? Why are you putting words in my mouth? I'm feeling like a strawman here! I most definitely did not say that life cannot spontaneously self-organize. I said the evidence isn't there to support the most likely claim. That's it. End of my point. No other assertions. Don't paint me in colors I ain't please.

 

[loseyourname]

Well, you seem a lot more informed on ID stuff than me because I don't know anything at all about leaderu . . . I was strictly trying to refer you to the exchange of ideas between a hardcore Darwinist and Johnson. I could show you other comments of Professor Ruse who suggests it might not be the smartest thing to revile Johnson and other ID guys.

Yes, part of my point was that, if the exchange is legitimate, there should be a better source for citing it. I actually know of leaderu specifically from my engagement in theological discussions, not from anything having to do with ID. I've been involved in directed discussions of William Craig's work, and have even written articles in response to him. None of this took place online, though.

By the way, I agree at least that it is a bad idea to openly criticize anything that Johnson says. The man is very skilled at the arts of persuasion and debate, more so than any scientist I've ever heard of, and he'll tear you apart. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, a major component of his strategy is not make any positive claims that even can be critiqued. For the most part, his position is unassailable, but it is also mostly irrelevant. I'm not an expert on ID or anything, but I'm very familiar with Johnson and Behe, so I usually try to refer to those two, especially as they do seem to be the central figures in the national debate - Johnson creates reasonable doubt in evolution through his courtroom argument methods, and Behe lends the position some air of scientific credibility.

Anyway, I did just read the piece on Ruse from leaderu, and I don't exactly find anything of relevance in it, although again, I can respond if you really want me to. I don't deny that belief in evolution (or even belief in science generally speaking) requires philosophical presuppositions. In fact, I think that any belief whatsoever requires philosophical presuppositions. For this reason, Ruse bringing this to light is not exactly a revelation, nor does it even really matter in the debate about which theory we should accept. While belief in evolution does require some (in my opinion, trivial) amount of faith, it remains the case that belief in Intelligent Design requires a heck of a lot more faith. One might even go so far as to say that the hypothesis in completely faith-based. I would like to see a full documentation of what Ruse had to say, however, which I suspect cannot be found on leaderu or any other of the theological sites, which have acquired masterfully Dr. Johnson's tactic of extremely selective quotation.

 

[loseyourname]

I didn't say that physical principles cannot entail abiogenesis. Maybe they can, but no one has demonstrated it. Yet some nonetheless are claiming abiogenesis is the most likely cause of the first life form.

Actually, Bystander showed you the physical principle that entail abiogenesis. The problem is that we need both principles and the right initial conditions to entail that something actually will happen, and not just that it can. However, I suspect that even if someone gave you a full accounting of the physical principles and necessary initial conditions to entail abiogenesis, you still would not be satisfied. For one thing, there is no way to know for certain whether or not these specific initial conditions actually existed at any time in the history of the planet. For another, you would actually want a physical demonstration of abiogenesis occurring, not just a complete accounting of the principles and conditions that would entail its occurence, which, let's face it, you wouldn't even understand to begin with. None but a handful of people on the planet would. It's certainly well out of my league.

I said the evidence isn't there to support the most likely claim.

We should be fair to this claim in evaluating whether or not it is correct. When it is said that the abiogenesis hypothesis is the most likely hypothesis, we have to keep in mind that the claimant is making a relative statement. The only competing hypothesis that is widely believed enough to be a real competitor is the hypothesis that some supernatural force is responsible. Due to the major problems with this hypothesis (there is no evidence to support it, it may not even be possible to find evidence to support it as we cannot observe a supernatural occurence, etc.), and the fact that abiogenesis does at least have some corroborating evidence, including demonstration of the principles which would allow it to occur given the right initial conditions, and experiments showing the spontaneous creation of organic polymers from inorganic materials, along with the spontaneous creation of protobionts given the presence of the right organic polymers, it seems reasonable to say that abiogenesis is the most likely hypothesis currently out there to be true.

 

[Rade]

I spent a good part of today googling for studies which might prove that natural selection has led to complex organ development. You know, actual proof! The best thing I found was a study of fishes possibly between stages of developing placentas. But even these findings didn't make the researchers claim they had proof. They were excited by the possibilities, but conservative in that they recognized they would need a lot more information to prove anything.

Your statement makes clear to me you are not a research scientist--you "googled" for published papers on the topic of evolution of organ systems ? I have access to > 4000 research journals via local university. I did a quick search using this text thread "evolution of organ systems". I received > 350 hits. Now, of course, we must then read all > 350 papers to get to the details. Some papers do not provide the "actual proof " we desire, many are review papers, but others do discuss details of mechanism of how organ systems have evolved in various animals and plants. Below are a few examples--plus, as I informed you in a previous post, this question was settled years ago (1959) by the exceptional summary book of Bernhard Rensch titled " Evolution above the species level". Now I hope that I have provided sufficient scientific information to put to rest the notion that mystical pathways must be suggested to explain the evolution of organ systems--or that this topic is somehow overlooked by evolutionary scientists. Here's a suggestion Les, why not contact directly one of the scientists listed as authors below and put the question to them as to whether or not there is any scientific evidence on the evolution of organ systems.
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Evolution of cerebral vesicles and their sensory organs in an ascidian larva Authors: Sorrentino, M.a; Manni, L.a; Lane, N. J.b; Burighel, P.a Affiliations: a. Dipartimento di Biologia Università di Padova via U. Bassi 8/B, I-35121 Padova Italy b. Department of Zoology University of Cambridge Cambridge CB2 3EJ UK Keywords: Nervous system evolution; Sensory vesicles; Photoreceptor; Statocyst; Tunicates

Abstract: Abstract Sorrentino M., Manni L., Lane N. J. and Burighel P. 2000. Evolution of cerebral vesicles and their sensory organs in an ascidian larva. — Acta Zoologica (Stockholm) 81: 243–258

The ascidian larval nervous system consists of the brain (comprising the visceral ganglion and the sensory vesicle), and, continuous with it, a caudal nerve cord. In most species two organs, a statocyst and an ocellus with ciliary photoreceptors, are contained in the sensory vesicle. A third presumptive sensory organ was sometimes found in an ‘auxiliary’ ganglionic vesicle. The development and morphology of the sensory and auxiliary ganglionic vesicles in Botryllus schlosseri and their associated organs was studied. The sensory vesicle contains a unique organ, the photolith, responding to both gravity and light. It consists of a unicellular statocyst, in the form of an expanded pigment cup receiving six photoreceptor cell extensions. Presumptive mechano-receptor cells (S1 cells), send ciliary and microvillar protrusions to contact the pigment cup. A second group of distinctive cells (S2), slightly dorsal to the S1 cells, have characteristic microvillar extensions, resembling photoreceptor. We concur with the idea that the photolith is new and derived from a primitive statocyst and the S2 cells are the remnant of a primitive ocellus. In the ganglionic vesicle some cells contain modified cilia and microvillar extensions, which resemble the photoreceptor endings of the photolith. Our results are discussed in the light of two possible scenarios regarding the evolution of the nervous system of protochordates.
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Origin of the chordate central nervous system – and the origin of chordates Author: Nielsen, Clausa Affiliations: a. Zoological Museum, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark DK
Abstract: Contrary to traditional views, molecular evidence indicates that the protostomian ventral nerve cord plus apical brain is homologous with the vertebrates’ dorsal spinal cord plus brain. The origin of the protostomian central nervous system from a larval apical organ plus longitudinal areas along the fused blastopore lips has been documented in many species. The origin of the chordate central nervous system is more enigmatic. About a century ago, Garstang proposed that the ciliary band of a dipleurula-type larva resembling an echinoderm larva should have moved dorsally and fused to form the neural tube of the ancestral chordate. This idea is in contrast to a number of morphological observations, and it is here proposed that the neural tube evolved through lateral fusion of a ventral, postoral loop of the ciliary band in a dipleurula larva; the stomodaeum should move from the ventral side via the anterior end to the dorsal side, which faces the substratum in cephalo- chordates and vertebrates. This is in accordance with the embryological observations and with the molecular data on the dorsoventral orientation. The molecular observations further indicate that the anterior part of the insect brain is homologous with the anterior parts of the vertebrate brain. This leads to the hypothesis that the two organs evolved from the same area in the latest common bilaterian ancestor, just anterior to the blastopore, with the protostome brain developing from the anterior rim of the blastopore (i.e. in front of the protostome mouth) and the chordate brain from an area in front of the blastopore, but behind the mouth (i.e. behind the deuterostome mouth).
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Molecular evidence from Ciona intestinalis for the evolutionary origin of vertebrate sensory placodes
Authors: Mazet, Françoisea; Hutt, James A.a, b; Milloz, Josselina; Millard, Johna; Graham, Anthonyb; Shimeld, Sebastian M.a Affiliations: a. School of Animal and Microbial Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AJ, UKb. Centre of Developmental Neurobiology, King's College London, Guy's Campus, London SE1 9RT, UK
Abstract: Cranial sensory placodes are focused areas of the head ectoderm of vertebrates that contribute to the development of the cranial sense organs and their associated ganglia. Placodes have long been considered a key character of vertebrates, and their evolution is proposed to have been essential for the evolution of an active predatory lifestyle by early vertebrates. Despite their importance for understanding vertebrate origins, the evolutionary origin of placodes has remained obscure. Here, we use a panel of molecular markers from the Six, Eya, Pax, Dach, FoxI, COE and POUIV gene families to examine the tunicate Ciona intestinalis for evidence of structures homologous to vertebrate placodes. Our results identify two domains of Ciona ectoderm that are marked by the genetic cascade that regulates vertebrate placode formation. The first is just anterior to the brain, and we suggest this territory is equivalent to the olfactory/adenohypophyseal placodes of vertebrates. The second is a bilateral domain adjacent to the posterior brain and includes cells fated to form the atrium and atrial siphon of adult Ciona. We show this bares most similarity to placodes fated to form the vertebrate acoustico-lateralis system. We interpret these data as support for the hypothesis that sensory placodes did not arise de novo in vertebrates, but evolved from pre-existing specialised areas of ectoderm that contributed to sensory organs in the common ancestor of vertebrates and tunicates.

 

[Rade]

If you think every Darwinist despises Johnson, check out Ruse's attitude (of all people!):
http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/ruse.html

And then, Dr. Ruse's 2003 paper in Science, where he concludes:

... "So, what does our history tell us? Three things. First, if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false. Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry. Second, there is indeed a thriving area of more popular evolutionism, where evolution is used to underpin claims about the nature of the universe, the meaning of it all for us humans, and the way we should behave. I am not saying that this area is all bad or that it should be stamped out. I am all in favor of saving the rainforests. I am saying that this popular evolutionism--often an alternative to religion--exists. Third, we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it, particularly when we are teaching our students. If it is science that is to be taught, then teach science and nothing more. Leave the other discussions for a more appropriate time."

 

[Les Sleeth]

Actually, Bystander showed you the physical principle that entail abiogenesis.

The unabridged dictionary I have gives the first applicable definition of entail as: to impose, involve, or require as a necessary accompaniment or result. Would you mind showing me where Bystander showed the physical principles that impose the necessary result of abiogenesis? If he had actually entailed abiogenesis from that, then his paper should be on its way to peer review, and a Nobel prize should warmed up for him.

I suspect that even if someone gave you a full accounting of the physical principles and necessary initial conditions to entail abiogenesis, you still would not be satisfied.

? Would you? Doesn't science require the demonstration of a theory? Why am I supposed to accept a merely "reasonable" theory as proof? IMO, only nitwits blindly believe in theories; real seekers of truth wait for the confirmation that only experience can give before claiming they know or yield to belief.

For one thing, there is no way to know for certain whether or not these specific initial conditions actually existed at any time in the history of the planet. For another, you would actually want a physical demonstration of abiogenesis occurring, not just a complete accounting of the principles and conditions that would entail its occurence . . .

There it is again. Is there a double standard for what everyone else has to prove and what scientists have to prove? Proof is proof, you don't get to claim proof unless you can show it happens. You are acting like my standards for proof are beyond the ordinary standard. Show me where I am doing that and I will relax my standard. I say, the standard I expect is EXACTLY what scientists might demand of, for instance, a creationist or an ID proponent.

which, let's face it, you wouldn't even understand to begin with. None but a handful of people on the planet would. It's certainly well out of my league.

Speak for yourself please. I'm not having a problem understanding the evidence.

We should be fair to this claim in evaluating whether or not it is correct. When it is said that the abiogenesis hypothesis is the most likely hypothesis, we have to keep in mind that the claimant is making a relative statement.

Relative to what/whose standards? Who is determining the standard for normal? You obviously have decided to ignore my objections to how epistomological standards come about.

The only competing hypothesis that is widely believed enough to be a real competitor is the hypothesis that some supernatural force is responsible.

I've certainly not suggested anything supernatural and in fact have steadfastly fought that notion. I don't agree with this assessment at all. I think the supernatural theory is the absolute worst hypothesis, and doesn't offer the slightest competition.

. . . the fact that abiogenesis does at least have some corroborating evidence, including . . . spontaneous creation of organic polymers from inorganic materials, along with the spontaneous creation of protobionts given the presence of the right organic polymers, it seems reasonable to say that abiogenesis is the most likely hypothesis currently out there to be true.

First you make the opponent supernaturalism, which isn't even a contender, and then you list boring, repetitive, non-creative, ultra-limited self organization as reason to believe chemistry can self-organize perpetually enough to be given the award of the most likely source of life. Just because an inadequate principle is all you know doesn't mean you should conclude it is the most likely candidate unless, that is, you are deperate to have your pet theory accepted as the truth. No, truth seekers honestly admit to the inadequacy of what's known and keep looking!

 

[Les Sleeth]

Third, we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it, particularly when we are teaching our students. If it is science that is to be taught, then teach science and nothing more. Leave the other discussions for a more appropriate time."

Are you citing this as contradictory to anything I said? Those sentences there seem to be exactly what I am asking for?

Just so you know, I cherish science. What I dislike is physicalist theory pushed as though it is already proven or even "most likely." That ain't science.

 

[hypnagogue]

Sorry if you think I'm putting words in your mouth, Les. I suppose what I'm thinking of can be tracked down more or less to the following statement you did indeed make earlier in this thread:

Notice "quality" is the key issue with both self-organization and evolution. That's because the physicalist theory relies on mechanics alone to produce the kind of system building seen in life. But when we observe how mechanics operate, they are rather dull when it comes to creative change. Leave a bunch of chemicals alone and you might get amino acids, but wait for a billion years and guess what else you get . . . little more. Hmmmmm.

This is not just a denial that we've thoroughly figured out how abiogenesis might have occurred. This looks a lot like an explicit denial that abiogenesis can occur.

It also looks like extravagant extrapolation: Apparently from the Miller-Urey experiment you have concluded that if we leave amino acids alone for billions of years on a complex and dynamic Earth, and allow them to follow a course uninterrupted by 'consciousness,' we will get little more than amino acids. And in general, you extrapolate from your experience or impression of what mechanistic processes are like to the conclusion that their dynamics must be limited in such a way that abiogenesis does not, or is unlikely, to occur.

If you still believe I am putting words in your mouth, I invite you to explain how I misinterpreted the above comments.

Maybe someday creationists will prove God did it too, and therefore just because they are currently impoverished in this way does not at all imply that this will always be so. Appealing to what some discipline MAY do, doesn't justify them claiming they are the ones who are going to eventually answer the question. Why not keep their mouths shut and just prove it?

You cannot seriously compare what science might achieve with what creationists might achieve. Science has a fantastic track record of being able to explain and predict objective phenomena. In the life sciences there is and has been a steady trend of empirical and theoretical progress, and we are in possession of physical/chemical principles which do indicate general mechanisms by which abiogenesis might occur, as Bystander has pointed out. Perhaps much of the low-level theoretical and empirical details still need to be filled in through dedicated scientific practice, but as far as I can see, there is good reason to believe that this will occur and no good reason to believe it won't.

I think the good reason to believe science can fill in the details of how abiogenesis might occur is something like the following:

1. The problem of abiogenesis is the problem of discovering how certain kinds of atoms and molecules in certain kinds of physical conditions and contexts could have spontaneously formed features typical of life, such as the cell membrane and DNA, etc.
2. The problem of abiogenesis is thus ultimately a problem about the physical dynamics of objective, physical systems.
3. Carefully conducted scientific practice is ideally suited to studying the properties and dynamics of objective, physical systems.
4. Therefore, there is good reason to believe science can crack the problem of abiogensis.

Premises 1-3 could be unpacked a bit or be stated in a more refined manner, but that's the general picture I have. This attests to the power of scientific inquiry and the manner in which the problem of abiogenesis naturally lends itself to scientific scrutiny. No such analogous power or applicability holds for e.g. creationist theories. And on top of this, I see no good reason to believe that abiogenesis might pose a problem that is unique in such a way that science cannot handle it in due time.

 

[Bystander]

The unabridged dictionary I have gives the first applicable definition of entail as: to impose, involve, or require as a necessary accompaniment or result. Would you mind showing me where Bystander showed the physical principles that impose the necessary result of abiogenesis? He showed how

([Bold]under human direction BTW)[/Bold]
​

a more ordered condition can result from the thermodynamic sacrifice of less ordered conditions. We all know that. If he had actually entailed abiogenesis from that, then his paper should be on its way to peer review, and a Nobel prize should warmed up for him.

Would you be so kind as to point specificially to where I stated any requirement for human direction of chemikcal processes?

Might also be worth your knowing that people do NOT get Nobels for the content of introductory chemistry texts, particularly when that content is well over a century old.

 

[Rade]

What I dislike is physicalist theory..

OK, perhaps I just do not know what you mean by this. The word "theory" has great weight in science--for example, the Theory of Gravity, Relativity Theory, Cell Theory. These I know. But what is the "Physicalist Theory" that you dislike. Is it a theory of science or philosophy ?

 

[Les Sleeth]

Would you be so kind as to point specificially to where I stated any requirement for human direction of chemikcal processes?

You are right. I had a splitting headache from staring at this screen all day and was thinking about research rather than your example. I went to the post first thing this morning to delete that, but I see you've already decided to make an issue of it.

Might also be worth your knowing that people do NOT get Nobels for the content of introductory chemistry texts, particularly when that content is well over a century old.

I wasn't talking about that, and certainly you must know it. I was saying that if you could demonstrate a way to make chemistry kick into self-organizing gear, and keep going toward building a living system, then you would have demonstrated something no one else can.


I don't see that our exchanges have been fruitful plus your debating style really disturbs me, so I'd prefer to just agree to disagree and cease interaction for the sake of maintaining better discussion atmosphere here.

 

[Les Sleeth]

This is not just a denial that we've thoroughly figured out how abiogenesis might have occurred. This looks a lot like an explicit denial that abiogenesis can occur.

I was trying a bit of creative license and so not being entirely accurate . . . obviously no one has watched chemicals that long. But for as long as we've watched them, they don't do much. I mean, how many years do we have to watch that vat?

It seems clear something more is needed, and not that that means creationary consciousness, but something. Why do physicalists, who lack the explanation of what that "something" is, get to lay claim it it? A lot of people have noticed this particular "gap" and a lot, the majority in fact, think physical principles aren't going to cut it. You can't say everyone who doesn't buy physicalism is stupid, or ignorant of all the wonderful things science has discovered. Plenty of informed people don't agree, so it is rather insulting to hear some of the attitudes by physicalist "believers."

My attitude is, maybe physicalism is right, but prove it before insisting you get to teach our kids and tell the world you "most likely" have it right.

It also looks like extravagant extrapolation: Apparently from the Miller-Urey experiment you have concluded that if we leave amino acids alone for billions of years on a complex and dynamic Earth, and allow them to follow a course uninterrupted by 'consciousness,' we will get little more than amino acids. And in general, you extrapolate from your experience or impression of what mechanistic processes are like to the conclusion that their dynamics must be limited in such a way that abiogenesis does not, or is unlikely, to occur.

There is nothing extravagant about that. Extravagant would be to embue mechanics with abilities they've never manifested. However, all I have done is infer from the only way mechanics have ever been observed behaving. How is it "extravagant" to say, based on what we've observed . . .?

You cannot seriously compare what science might achieve with what creationists might achieve.

I wasn't seriously comparing. I was poking fun at those who automatically assume they can explain the creative part of life (organization) using the consistantly uncreative mechanics. BTW, I don't think offering creationism as the alternative to physicalism is quite fair (as you do below).

Science has a fantastic track record of being able to explain and predict objective phenomena. In the life sciences there is and has been a steady trend of empirical and theoretical progress, and we are in possession of physical/chemical principles which do indicate general mechanisms by which abiogenesis might occur, as Bystander has pointed out.

Well, I say we don't have those mechanisms, that the the degree of self-organization exhibited by chemistry without conscious intervention does not suggest chemistry alone can do it. Just because a wind storm can leave a bunch of lumber looking like a teepee doesn't mean you can say windstorms are what "most likely" built a mansion we find out in the middle of nowhere. The windstorm can create order, but it can't build system upon system upon system upon . . .

In the same way, the few amino acids that are able to form is expotentially far from the quality of self-organization needed to get to a living cell.

Perhaps much of the low-level theoretical and empirical details still need to be filled in through dedicated scientific practice, but as far as I can see, there is good reason to believe that this will occur and no good reason to believe it won't.

I don't have a problem with people believing it. I have never tried to say what anyone should believe or not believe. My objection is what's presented to the public.

I think the good reason to believe science can fill in the details of how abiogenesis might occur is something like the following:

1. The problem of abiogenesis is the problem of discovering how certain kinds of atoms and molecules in certain kinds of physical conditions and contexts could have spontaneously formed features typical of life, such as the cell membrane and DNA, etc.
2. The problem of abiogenesis is thus ultimately a problem about the physical dynamics of objective, physical systems.
3. Carefully conducted scientific practice is ideally suited to studying the properties and dynamics of objective, physical systems.
4. Therefore, there is good reason to believe science can crack the problem of abiogensis.

Premises 1-3 could be unpacked a bit or be stated in a more refined manner, but that's the general picture I have. This attests to the power of scientific inquiry and the manner in which the problem of abiogenesis naturally lends itself to scientific scrutiny. No such analogous power or applicability holds for e.g. creationist theories. And on top of this, I see no good reason to believe that abiogenesis might pose a problem that is unique in such a way that science cannot handle it in due time.

Your four points are typical physicalist reasoning (not that you are physicalist), particularly your point, "The problem of abiogenesis is thus ultimately a problem about the physical dynamics of objective, physical systems."

They conclude that because life is complex connections of physical properties and processes, that explaining all the connections explains life. As you likely know, this is the logic fallacy of composition. It assumes what is true of each part is true of the whole. The example I've used in the past is to ask if a Vermeer painting is fully explained by describing the chemistry of the paints, the wavelengths of light reflected, the composition of the canvas, etc. After we detail every last bit of that painting's makeup, have we completely accounted for it? Similarly, physicalists are focused on "parts" and tend to overlook the central importance of organization, and the fact that there is no observed organizing ability known in the universe that is of the quality to bring about abiogenesis.

What do they do about that? Well, they stick in this ridiculously inadequate degree of observed self-organization and say that'll do. And after all, Earth had millions of years to get it right. Right? The problem is, they assume a priori, like you, that only physical processes are involved. They don't have the evidence for that confidence, and yet they are telling kids the evidence will "most likely" come.

So I say anyone who claims that what's actually been observed is a good enough explanation, is really just pushing physicalism and not giving us the evidence we need to have confidence in chemistry's proposed self-organizing ability to reach life.

 

[Johann]

Perhaps Les could come forward and explain what kind of mechanisms he believes "consciousness" could use to manipulate DNA. In all honesty, I can't think of anything short of voodoo.

Also, the claim that chemistry doesn't do what evolutionists say it does can equally be turned around. If consciousness really has the power to do all those marvellous things chemistry is supposedly incapable of, how come there is no single precedent for it happening? While it is difficult to put a few chemicals in a jar and watch it develop into a microorganism, it should be somewhat simple to put a Buddhist monk in front of the jar to prove that meditation can help the process.

Why is it that every single claim that consciousness can have effects on the physical world has been demonstrated to be bogus? Clearly consciousness needs a brain to do anything at all, except perhaps think. Any claims to the contrary are completely lacking both logic and evidence.

 

[Bystander]

(snip)I don't see that our exchanges have been fruitful plus your debating style really disturbs me, so I'd prefer to just agree to disagree and cease interaction for the sake of maintaining better discussion atmosphere here.

On the contrary --- you've demonstrated your understanding of chemistry and thermodynamics for us all, you've made your objections to the "state of the art" in the physical sciences clear, and you've made the bases for your objections clear. Anyone following the thread can decide for him or herself what the merits of the physical sciences, Johnson, and your objections may or may not be.

 

[loseyourname]

The unabridged dictionary I have gives the first applicable definition of entail as: to impose, involve, or require as a necessary accompaniment or result. Would you mind showing me where Bystander showed the physical principles that impose the necessary result of abiogenesis? If he had actually entailed abiogenesis from that, then his paper should be on its way to peer review, and a Nobel prize should warmed up for him.

Come on, Les, can't you read an entire post holistically? I was clear, or at least I tried to be, that physical principles alone cannot actually entail anything. You need principles and the right initial conditions. Bystander has, however, given the principles. He has shown you that abiogenesis can happen, given the right initial conditions. It's all part of the building of a case. No piece of evidence proves anything by itself.

? Would you? Doesn't science require the demonstration of a theory? Why am I supposed to accept a merely "reasonable" theory as proof? IMO, only nitwits blindly believe in theories; real seekers of truth wait for the confirmation that only experience can give before claiming they know or yield to belief.

Am I a nitwit if I believe I can hit a jumpshot at the end of a game before I've actually done it? There are myriad examples of when it is perfectly acceptable to believe something before you have directly experienced its occurence. There are plenty of beliefs that I have that change on a daily basis, and personally, I don't think of myself any less because of it. The simple fact that I believe something doesn't mean that I am wedded to that belief. Instead, I think it is nothing more than testimony to the difficulty in not holding an opinion of any kind, no matter how ill-informed. For instance, I'm not going to fault some bush-person for believing that his dance causes rain to fall. What I will fault is his continuuing to believe that after he has been taught why and how rain actually falls in a given location.

The theory of the evolution of species is a curiosity in the sciences. We cannot ever experience events that occurred millions, and even billions of years ago. No exhaustive demonstration of the physical priniciples and initial conditions necessary to create a living cell from a batch of inorganic materials is ever going to prove that it actually happened. What it shows is that it can happen. You are correct to say, that even then, to be scientifically rigorous, we cannot yet accept this possibility as gospel. Until we have actually created a living cell from a batch of inorganic materials, we should not be completely certain that it can happen. But science is not about complete certainty, and certainly a theory that claims something can happen over the course of 500 million years is not a serious candidate for empirical falsification. The best we can do is to confirm the physical principles through other means, and as long as we accept those, then we accept that, according to them, abiogenesis can occur.

Remember here that we are only talking about most likely. What competing hypothesis can lay out principles of any form detailing how the creation of a living cell, whether instantaneously or over the course of eons, can occur?

There it is again. Is there a double standard for what everyone else has to prove and what scientists have to prove? Proof is proof, you don't get to claim proof unless you can show it happens. You are acting like my standards for proof are beyond the ordinary standard.

I am only acting like your standards of proof cannot be met. I'm not disagreeing with them. I'm making the point that because these standards cannot be met, we're not ever going to be certain one way or the other. All we can do is establish some subjective form of probability, based on the notion that hypotheses which have some means of demonstrating how they can be true are more likely to be true than hypotheses that can offer no such principles or evidence.

Speak for yourself please. I'm not having a problem understanding the evidence.

Could you honestly not tell that I was referring to a complete accounting of principles and conditions by which abiogenesis could occur? No such thing exists; how on Earth are you going to sit here and tell me that you already understand what does not yet exist? Regardless of what you say in response to this, I will remain completely convinced that you do not have the necessary understanding of physical chemistry and statistical mechanics, subjects over which graduate students in this field struggle mightily, to understand this hypothetical complete accounting.

Relative to what/whose standards? Who is determining the standard for normal? You obviously have decided to ignore my objections to how epistomological standards come about.

I didn't say anything in that piece you quoted about probability relative to any particular standard. I was saying that the claim that abiogenesis is most probable simply means that it is more probable than any competing hypothesis widely known. Surely you can concede, and not argue, this rather mundane detail that, if true, would do absolutely nothing to weaken your own case.

I've certainly not suggested anything supernatural and in fact have steadfastly fought that notion. I don't agree with this assessment at all. I think the supernatural theory is the absolute worst hypothesis, and doesn't offer the slightest competition.

Good, then you can agree with me. Perhaps you simply don't agree that the only truly contending hypotheses out there are abiogenesis and supernaturalism. You have to remember Les, that although you always frame any debate as being a debate between the accepted theory and your theory, not everyone else is speaking in those terms. In fact, I made it rather explicit that I would make reference to no theory of yours until you have actually laid one out in this thread. Save your indignation for later.

First you make the opponent supernaturalism, which isn't even a contender, and then you list boring, repetitive, non-creative, ultra-limited self organization as reason to believe chemistry can self-organize perpetually enough to be given the award of the most likely source of life.

No Les, that is the way you view it. I listed steps in a process of abiogenesis. There are certain things that would have to occur for inorganic materials to organize into a living cell. First, they would need to organize into organic materials. Then, they would need to organize into organic polymers. Then, the lipid polymers would need to organize into membranes. Then, other polymers would need to come inside of the membranes. Some would need to become enzymatic and some would need to carry out processes of metabolism. Some of these steps have been observed to occur in a lab, some have not.

It is evidence, Les, it is not proof. I am not claiming that anyone has ever demonstrated the ability of inorganic material to organize into a living cell. I am claiming only what I just said above: Any demonstration would need to include these steps, some of which have been shown to occur spontaneously.

[Edit: I should note that all of these steps actually have occurred in a laboratory, but the end-product of these is simply a protobiont. It is the step from protobiont to cell, with all of its organelles and complex systems, that is problematic.]

Just because an inadequate principle is all you know doesn't mean you should conclude it is the most likely candidate unless, that is, you are deperate to have your pet theory accepted as the truth.

Which of us here actually has a pet theory, Les? I'm not a chemist, and frankly, I could care less how life came into being. It's an interesting topic, have no doubt, but it's not one I have a personal investment in.

No, truth seekers honestly admit to the inadequacy of what's known and keep looking!

Well, I don't know what to tell you. I've heard this lecture of yours several hundred times by now about how you are so much more objective and honest than anyone else around here. I suppose you can say that, in this matter, I am not a truth seeker. I do not conduct any abiogenesis research nor do I have any interest in doing so. If someone else should seek and find the truth, more power to him. I'll certainly be tuned in. All I can say as of right now is that I cannot tell where you get this impression that I haven't admitted to the inadequacy of abiogenesis hypotheses.

 

[loseyourname]

Just so you know, I cherish science. What I dislike is physicalist theory pushed as though it is already proven or even "most likely." That ain't science.

Just so you know, although you won't believe me anyway, given that you never have, I am personally not trying to push through anything akin to physicalism. As far as I could tell, the claim being disputed at this point is whether or not there are any serious competitors to abiogenesis around right now. A complete commitment to physicalism would be something entirely different; indeed, it would require us to believe that the truth of any hypothesis that was not physically abiogenetic was impossible. As far as I can tell, no one in this thread has yet to make that claim. Just so you don't go doing that "putting words in people's mouths" thing that you're so hung up on.

 

[Canute]

There are so many issues here that it's difficult to know where to start. I agree with Les entirely that our education system is one of indoctrination, in which conjectures and hypotheses are fed to kids as if they are true. I remember when my son came home from school with some physics homework concerning mass. Of course, he had been given no indication that we have no idea what mass actually is. I suggested he asked his teacher about this. Needless to say he was told to shut up. Mass is what the textbook says it is. I feel it is as important to teach kids what we don't know as well as what we do, and probably far more so.

Recently, as a favour for a friend, I looked half a dozen articles on evolutionary psychology. I was astonished to find that consciousness was not mentioned once, and did not seem to exist at all for the authors. Then I started thinking. We cannot claim that consciousness has any role in evolution without claiming that consciousness is causal. To claim that consciousness is causal is not unscientific, scientists have no idea whether is causal or not, but it is scientifically unorthodox in the sense that it is inconsistent with science's usual metaphysical conjectures, such as the causal completeness of the physical and physicalism. Perhaps then peer pressure is such that one cannot talk about consciousness if one is a professional evolutionary psychologist. Or perhaps I just happened to read an unrepresentative sample of articles.

But it does seem to me, as an outsider, that neo-Darwinism is a theory of machines. Why does it have to be this? No reason that I can see other than temperamental prejudice. There is no evidence that consciousness plays no evolutionary role, and it is damn difficult to explain how it evolved, if it did, without giving it such a role. Utterly useless mutations do not usually turn into adaptions or species-wide traits, and it would be hard to argue that consciousness is just a 'spandrel'. Darwin was not so dogmatic, and admits to uncertainty on the role of consciousness. In his 'Descent of Man' (I/36) he writes:

"The orang in the Eastern islands, and the chimpanzee in Africa, build platforms on which they sleep; and as both species follow the same habit, it might be argued that this was due to instinct, but we cannot feel sure that it is not the result of both animals having similar wants and possessing similar powers of reasoning."

If having wants can affect behaviour then consciousness is causal. If having wants can affect behaviour then consciousness can affect evolution. It seems reasonable to suppose that human beings have two legs because they wanted to walk upright. If we had wanted to crawl on all fours then by now we'd have four legs. Our behaviour detirmines which physiological changes become useful and widespread and which do not. So what detirmines our behaviour? Popper says it is our beliefs, and I would agree with him mostly, but before beliefs come wants and needs. Machines have no wants and needs. Only conscious being have wants and needs.

It seems to me then that it is fairly easy to argue that it is consciousness that drives evolution. After all, if human beings did not want to survive then the species would have disappeared. All animals, at least, seem to have this basic desire. Do machines want to survive?

If our behaviour is in any way motivated by our wants and needs than consciousness plays a central role in the evolution of our species. The only way to avoid this conclusion that I can see is to say either that our behaviour is not affected by our wants and needs or that it is possible to have wants and needs without being conscious. The former is a counterintuitive idea to say the least, and has no evidence to support it, and the latter seems to make no sense at all.

This relates to the intelligent design argument in that it suggest that no such design is necessary. Evolution becomes just the outcome of a complex interaction of entities with different wants and needs and of varying intelligence. If, let's say by a mutation, a blind creature gains a light sensitive cell then it bestows no advantage at all on that creature and disappears, except in the case where the entity behaves differently as a result of gaining it. Even then it bestows no advantage unless it helps the entity satisfy its wants and needs.

What I am arguing for here is neither intelligent or unintelligent design. Guru of complex systems Stuart Kaufmann has expressed uncertainty over what it is that drives systems to complexity, the nature of the motivating force behind the emergence of biological complexity. He suggests it must be simple and 'deep'. Why not consciousness?

To link this back to the actual 'creation' of biological life, if our desire to survive as individuals ensures the survival of the species then it seems a small step to say that it is a desire to live that brings life into existence.

Perhaps Les could come forward and explain what kind of mechanisms he believes "consciousness" could use to manipulate DNA. In all honesty, I can't think of anything short of voodoo.

Not voodoo, although no doubt voodoo has some truth in it somewhere. If I consciously decide to be celibate then this will affect the evolution of the human gene pool. Thus consciousness affects DNA. It may affect it more directly, and perhaps some part of the consciousness of a person is transmitted via DNA, but I wouldn't know about that. Still, many people think that spermatazoa are conscious.

If consciousness really has the power to do all those marvellous things chemistry is supposedly incapable of, how come there is no single precedent for it happening?

What makes you say that there isn't?

While it is difficult to put a few chemicals in a jar and watch it develop into a microorganism, it should be somewhat simple to put a Buddhist monk in front of the jar to prove that meditation can help the process.

Buddhists do not claim to be able to create life from chemicals, and nobody here has suggested they can. It may be that practioners can affect substances at a molecular level, and there is a growing body of evidence that they can, but I wouldn't know about that either.

Why is it that every single claim that consciousness can have effects on the physical world has been demonstrated to be bogus?

What is it that makes you think this? How did maize evolve, or bananas? Or, come to that, evolutionary biology? Are you saying that you would have written your last post had you not been conscious?

Clearly consciousness needs a brain to do anything at all, except perhaps think. Any claims to the contrary are completely lacking both logic and evidence.

If you are saying that consciousness can do things via the brain then you are saying that consciousness is causal. If it is causal then why shouldn't it play an evolutionary role? If you are saying that consciousness is not causal then it doesn't do anything and your objections are no more than mechanical interactions in your brain, in which case logic and evidence have nothing to do with anything since your beliefs would be just the state your brain was physically caused to be in by past physical events. We do not normally think that billiard balls arrange themselves on the table according to their logical deductions concerning scientific evidence, why should neurons (microtubules, NCC's, wave-states or whatever) be different?

(To avoid some possible objections I should add that what I've said here, which is just my current layman's opinion, is not intended to have any implications for the the existence or otherwise of freewill, God, divine miracles or teleology).

 

[Les Sleeth]

This is probably my last post to this thread because I don’t think this discussion is going anywhere.

In a two-part post back on page 3 (which no one responded to) I outlined what I think is going on psychologically between two types of thinkers. First I’ll repost the relevant points (in blue), and then I’ll sum up my view:

To a large degree I think this disagreement is between a class of thinkers who are convinced they have the epistemological advantage in all matters of knowing, and others who dispute that.

All of you seem to assume that empirical epistemology is the end all in knowing. You have set up empiricism as THE one and only way to truth, and then demanded everyone meet empirical standards. You judge criticisms of this attitude with that standard, you judge everything with that standard. Why?

Well, because science has achieved so much with physical stuff, some believe it is the way to all knowledge. . . . The attitude becomes, “Look what we’ve achieved, doesn’t that give us epistemological rights?

In contrast to studying things “out there,” some people have explored the inner life. And some of these inner practitioners experience “something more” to reality than what’s perceived strictly through the senses. And sense perception is what empiricism relies on 100%, so if something actually can be known about reality in some way that isn’t sense dependent, then it isn’t going to be known empirically, and the inner method of knowing isn’t going to meet the empirical standard.

Is it logical to predict that science might attract a higher-than-normal percentage of people (normal for the population as a whole) who are focused more on externals than anything going on inside themselves? And then, if you practice a discipline that actually requires you to look away from yourself, and comes with the assumption that all reality is physical, then is it likely that one’s externalistic bent is going to be even further emphasized to the point of not only denying there’s anything internal worth knowing, but which even might cause one to look at others who do believe so with contempt?

What’s disturbing to serious inner practitioners is that the externalists, almost to a person, don’t know the slightest thing about what’s been achieved inwardly over the millennia. Yet they are totally convinced that inner adepts have nothing to add to human knowing.

I believe science is something we really need, but I also believe, like most people, we need to develop inside too. For the most part, the physicalists I debate have no interest in what might be inside. I don’t think that is mere coincidence.

Does the 90% of the population who don’t believe physicalness can explain it all represent the generally more inward nature of a human being? Does the 10% devoted to externalism represent individuals a bit narrow psychologically but who are so smart they can out-calculate the average person and then point to that as reason we should abandon what we feel inside?

If the empirical-minded hope to interest the general population more in science, I don’t think it’s going to work by acting like science is the only epistemological avenue; and it especially isn’t going to work if scientism devotees treat people who trust innerness like they are stupid.

I believe Dr. Ruse is totally right when he says, “we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it, particularly when we are teaching our students. If it is science that is to be taught, then teach science and nothing more. Leave the other discussions for a more appropriate time.”

That and that alone is what the point of this thread was. Teach science and what science actually knows, and leave the ontological “most likelys” out of it.