DARWIN’S THEORY AND MATHEMATICIAN

What was it that comprised Von Neumann’s skepticism about evolution?

It was an attitude in three aspects. Von Neumann, in the first place, saw what mathematicians had seen since Darwin first published his theory. The theory required life to clamber over some very sobering improbabilities; indeed, it seemed to require miracles. Other mathematicians were making the same point. “[T]he formation within geological time of a human body,” Kurt Gödel remarked in conversation with Hao Wang, “by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field, is as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components.”

Note the word geological. Gödel, like everyone else, quite understood that Darwin’s theory played out over long stretches of time. He might even have grasped the concept of natural selection, commonly said to be too difficult for all but a handful of initiates. He was skeptical nonetheless. It was precisely to do battle against this kind of skepticism that Richard Dawkins wrote The Blind Watchmaker. His proximate target may have been the physicist, Fred Hoyle, but his general target was a whole climate of opinion current among mathematicians and physicists.

Von Neumann, in the second place, thought Darwin’s theory inadequate. He thought the theory inadequate because the theory did not yet exist. This is as inadequate as it gets. What did exist lacked the fundamentals. It answered no questions. It had no depth. And it was largely anecdotal. This sense of anecdotal has nothing to do with the idea of just-so stories made popular by Lewontin and Gould. Darwin’s theory was anecdotal, Von Neumann suggested, because it lacked the rich and productive concepts that only mathematicians could provide the sciences.

Writing in the 1967 Wistar Symposium, Murray Eden offered a fine sense of the way in which mathematicians and physicists thought Darwin’s theory inadequate. “…[T]he continuity of evolution does not demonstrate that natural laws are operative, for the laws are not known.”

Murray then added a most useful analogy. “It is,” he wrote referring to Darwin’s theory, “as if some pre-Newtonian cosmologist had proposed a theory of planetary motion which supposed that natural force of unknown origin held the planets to their courses.”

Just so. This is what Darwin’s theory is like; and it was how it appeared to a great many mathematicians and physicists.

And then Murray added a demurral. “The supposition is right enough and the idea of a force between two celestial bodies is a very useful one, but it is hardly a theory.”

Far from being controversial among mathematicians in the 1940s and 1950s, a sense of the inadequacy of Darwin’s theory was widespread.

And there is a third and final component to Von Neumann’s skepticism, this one no more than a hint. To say that Von Neumann was skeptical of Darwin’s theory is not to say that he was a supporter of intelligent design. I have no reason to think so. I know nothing about his religious views. Yet there is a curious remark he made to Stan Ulam. I suspect that he made the remark at the end of his life. Von Neumann pointed to a house in the distance and remarked to Ulam how absurd it would be to think that the house just assembled itself. The men were discussing Darwin’s theory. It was not simply a doubt about improbability to which Von Neumann gave voice: It was a more general susurrus of discontent.

David Berlinski

THERE’S NO SUCH A THING AS A DARWINIST RIGHT

Experimental Data Force Researchers to Admit There’s “No Such Thing As Junk RNA”

Originally, proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution lauded “junk” DNA as functionless genetic garbage that showed life is the result of blind and random mutational events. Then “junk” DNA was disproved by the discovery that the vast majority of DNA is being transcribed into RNA. Did the failure of this Darwinian assumption cause evolutionists to terminate their love affair with biological “junk”? Of course not. They just shifted their argument back, claiming that the cell is full of “junk RNA”—DNA that is being transcribed into RNA but still does nothing in the cell. Earlier this year we reported on a Nature paper suggesting function for “junk” RNA. Now a Science Daily NewsArticle is confirming that finding. Aptly titled “No Such Thing As ‘Junk RNA,’ Say Researchers,” the article reports that very small strands of RNA termed “usRNAs” (unusually small RNAs) perform important functions related to gene regulation.

Once again, the Darwinian “junk” mindset seems to have held back such discoveries, as the authors report, “until we did our experiments, we didn’t realize that RNAs as small as 15 nucleotides, which we thought were simply cell waste, are surprisingly stable, and are repeatedly, reproducibly, and accurately produced across different tissue types. … We have dubbed these as usRNAs, and we have identified thousands of them, present in a diversity that far exceeds all other longer RNAs found in our study.” One of the study’s authors, Dr. Bino John, concluded, “These findings suggest that usRNAs are involved in biological processes, and we should investigate them further.”

While it’s heartening to learn they’re now on a better path towards fruitful research, it seems that progress is only made once experimental data—and not evolutionary presumptions—are permitted to guide scientific research. It’s no secret that the Darwinian-based “junk” mindset has hindered research into the actual function for biological features thought to be functionless evolutionary garbage. A 2003 article in Science explained how “junk” thinking has “repelled mainstream researchers” from studying the function of such important genetic structures:

Although catchy, the term ‘junk DNA’ for many years repelled mainstream researchers from studying noncoding DNA. Who, except a small number of genomic clochards, would like to dig through genomic garbage? However, in science as in normal life, there are some clochards who, at the risk of being ridiculed, explore unpopular territories. Because of them, the view of junk DNA, especially repetitive elements, began to change in the early 1990s. Now, more and more biologists regard repetitive elements as a genomic treasure.” (Wojciech Makalowski, “Not Junk After All,” Science, Vol. 300(5623):1246-1247 (May 23, 2003).)

Also in 2003, researcher John Mattick stated in Scientific American that the failure to recognize certain types of “junk” DNA as functional was “a classic story of orthodoxy derailing objective analysis of the facts” that “may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.” Of course, an intelligent design paradigm would have predicted function for “junk” DNA or “junk” RNA all along, perhaps leading scientists to “investigate them further” much sooner.

Casey Luskin

SCIENCE AND DESIGN

When the physics of Galileo and Newton displaced the physics of Aristotle, scientists tried to explain the world by discovering its deterministic natural laws. When the quantum physics of Bohr and Heisenberg in turn displaced the physics of Galileo and Newton, scientists realized they needed to supplement their deterministic natural laws by taking into account chance processes in their explanations of our universe. Chance and necessity, to use a phrase made famous by Jacques Monod, thus set the boundaries of scientific explanation.

Today, however, chance and necessity have proven insufficient to account for all scientific phenomena. Without invoking the rightly discarded teleologies, entelechies, and vitalisms of the past, one can still see that a third mode of explanation is required, namely, intelligent design. Chance, necessity, and design–these three modes of explanation–are needed to explain the full range of scientific phenomena.

Not all scientists see that excluding intelligent design artificially restricts science, however. Richard Dawkins, an arch-Darwinist, begins his book The Blind Watchmaker by stating, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Statements like this echo throughout the biological literature. In What Mad Pursuit, Francis Crick, Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, writes, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”

The biological community thinks it has accounted for the apparent design in nature through the Darwinian mechanism of random mutation and natural selection. The point to appreciate, however, is that in accounting for the apparent design in nature, biologists regard themselves as having made a successful scientific argument against actual design. This is important, because for a claim to be scientifically falsifiable, it must have the possibility of being true. Scientific refutation is a double-edged sword. Claims that are refuted scientifically may be wrong, but they are not necessarily wrong–they cannot simply be dismissed out of hand.

To see this, consider what would happen if microscopic examination revealed that every cell was inscribed with the phrase “Made by Yahweh.” Of course cells don�t have “Made by Yahweh” inscribed on them, but that�s not the point. The point is that we wouldn�t know this unless we actually looked at cells under the microscope. And if they were so inscribed, one would have to entertain the thought, as a scientist, that they actually were made by Yahweh. So even those who do not believe in it tacitly admit that design always remains a live option in biology. A priori prohibitions against design are philosophically unsophisticated and easily countered. Nonetheless, once we admit that design cannot be excluded from science without argument, a weightier question remains: Why should we want to admit design into science?

To answer this question, let us turn it around and ask instead, Why shouldn�t we want to admit design into science? What�s wrong with explaining something as designed by an intelligent agent? Certainly there are many everyday occurrences that we explain by appealing to design. Moreover, in our workaday lives it is absolutely crucial to distinguish accident from design. We demand answers to such questions as, Did she fall or was she pushed? Did someone die accidentally or commit suicide? Was this song conceived independently or was it plagiarized? Did someone just get lucky on the stock market or was there insider trading?

Not only do we demand answers to such questions, but entire industries are devoted to drawing the distinction between accident and design. Here we can include forensic science, intellectual property law, insurance claims investigation, cryptography, and random number generation–to name but a few. Science itself needs to draw this distinction to keep itself honest. Just last January there was a report in Science that a Medline web search uncovered a “paper published in Zentralblatt f�r Gyn�kologie in 1991 [containing] text that is almost identical to text from a paper published in 1979 in the Journal of Maxillofacial Surgery.” Plagiarism and data falsification are far more common in science than we would like to admit. What keeps these abuses in check is our ability to detect them.

If design is so readily detectable outside science, and if its detectability is one of the key factors keeping scientists honest, why should design be barred from the content of science? Why do Dawkins and Crick feel compelled to constantly remind us that biology studies things that only appear to be designed, but that in fact are not designed? Why couldn�t biology study things that are designed?

The biological community�s response to these questions has been to resist design absolutely. The worry is that for natural objects (unlike human artifacts) the distinction between design and non-design cannot be reliably drawn. Consider, for instance, the following remark by Darwin in the concluding chapter of his Origin of Species: “Several eminent naturalists have of late published their belief that a multitude of reputed species in each genus are not real species; but that other species are real, that is, have been independently created. . . . Nevertheless they do not pretend that they can define, or even conjecture, which are the created forms of life, and which are those produced by secondary laws. They admit variation as a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two cases.” Biologists worry about attributing something to design (here identified with creation) only to have it overturned later; this widespread and legitimate concern has prevented them from using intelligent design as a valid scientific explanation.

Though perhaps justified in the past, this worry is no longer tenable. There now exists a rigorous criterion–complexity-specification–for distinguishing intelligently caused objects from unintelligently caused ones. Many special sciences already use this criterion, though in a pre-theoretic form (e.g., forensic science, artificial intelligence, cryptography, archeology, and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). The great breakthrough in philosophy of science and probability theory of recent years has been to isolate and make precise this criterion. Michael Behe�s criterion of irreducible complexity for establishing the design of biochemical systems is a special case of the complexity-specification criterion for detecting design (cf. Behe�s book Darwin�s Black Box).

What does this criterion look like? Although a detailed explanation and justification is fairly technical (for a full account see my book The Design Inference, published by Cambridge University Press), the basic idea is straightforward and easily illustrated. Consider how the radio astronomers in the movie Contact detected an extraterrestrial intelligence. This movie, which came out last year and was based on a novel by Carl Sagan, was an enjoyable piece of propaganda for the SETI research program–the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. In the movie, the SETI researchers found extraterrestrial intelligence. (The nonfictional researchers have not been so successful.)

How, then, did the SETI researchers in Contact find an extraterrestrial intelligence? SETI researchers monitor millions of radio signals from outer space. Many natural objects in space (e.g., pulsars) produce radio waves. Looking for signs of design among all these naturally produced radio signals is like looking for a needle in a haystack. To sift through the haystack, SETI researchers run the signals they monitor through computers programmed with pattern-matchers. As long as a signal doesn�t match one of the pre-set patterns, it will pass through the pattern-matching sieve (even if it has an intelligent source). If, on the other hand, it does match one of these patterns, then, depending on the pattern matched, the SETI researchers may have cause for celebration.

The SETI researchers in Contact found the following signal:

11011101111101111111011111111111011111111111110111111111111111
11011111111111111111110111111111111111111111110111111111111111
11111111111111011111111111111111111111111111110111111111111111
11111111111111111111110111111111111111111111111111111111111111
11011111111111111111111111111111111111111111110111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111011111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111101111111111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111101111111111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111101111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111110111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111110111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
11111111011111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111101111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111110111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111011111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
1111111111

In this sequence of 1126 bits, 1�s correspond to beats and 0�s to pauses. This sequence represents the prime numbers from 2 to 101,where a given prime number is represented by the corresponding number of beats (i.e., 1�s), and the individual prime numbers are separated by pauses (i.e., 0�s).

The SETI researchers in Contact took this signal as decisive confirmation of an extraterrestrial intelligence. What is it about this signal that decisively indicates design? Whenever we infer design, we must establish two things–complexity and specification. Complexity ensures that the object in question is not so simple that it can readily be explained by chance. Specification ensures that this object exhibits the type of pattern that is the trademark of intelligence.

To see why complexity is crucial for inferring design, consider the following sequence of bits:

110111011111

These are the first twelve bits in the previous sequence representing the prime numbers 2, 3, and 5 respectively. Now it is a sure bet that no SETI researcher, if confronted with this twelve-bit sequence, is going to contact the science editor at the New York Times, hold a press conference, and announce that an extraterrestrial intelligence has been discovered. No headline is going to read, “Aliens Master First Three Prime Numbers!”

The problem is that this sequence is much too short (i.e., has too little complexity) to establish that an extraterrestrial intelligence with knowledge of prime numbers produced it. A randomly beating radio source might by chance just happen to put out the sequence “110111011111.” A sequence of 1126 bits representing the prime numbers from 2 to 101, however, is a different story. Here the sequence is sufficiently long (i.e., has enough complexity) to confirm that an extraterrestrial intelligence could have produced it.

Even so, complexity by itself isn�t enough to eliminate chance and indicate design. If I flip a coin 1,000 times, I�ll participate in a highly complex (or what amounts to the same thing, highly improbable) event. Indeed, the sequence I end up flipping will be one in a trillion trillion trillion . . . , where the ellipsis needs twenty-two more “trillions.” This sequence of coin tosses won�t, however, trigger a design inference. Though complex, this sequence won�t exhibit a suitable pattern. Contrast this with the sequence representing the prime numbers from 2 to 101. Not only is this sequence complex, it also embodies a suitable pattern. The SETI researcher who in the movie Contact discovered this sequence put it this way: “This isn�t noise, this has structure.”

What is a suitable pattern for inferring design? Not just any pattern will do. Some patterns can legitimately be employed to infer design whereas others cannot. It is easy to see the basic intuition here. Suppose an archer stands fifty meters from a large wall with bow and arrow in hand. The wall, let�s say, is sufficiently large that the archer can�t help but hit it. Now suppose each time the archer shoots an arrow at the wall, the archer paints a target around the arrow so that the arrow sits squarely in the bull�s-eye. What can be concluded from this scenario? Absolutely nothing about the archer�s ability as an archer. Yes, a pattern is being matched; but it is a pattern fixed only after the arrow has been shot. The pattern is thus purely ad hoc.

But suppose instead the archer paints a fixed target on the wall and then shoots at it. Suppose the archer shoots a hundred arrows, and each time hits a perfect bull�s-eye. What can be concluded from this second scenario? Confronted with this second scenario we are obligated to infer that here is a world-class archer, one whose shots cannot legitimately be explained by luck, but rather must be explained by the archer�s skill and mastery. Skill and mastery are of course instances of design.

Like the archer who fixes the target first and then shoots at it, statisticians set what is known as a rejection region prior to an experiment. If the outcome of an experiment falls within a rejection region, the statistician rejects the hypothesis that the outcome is due to chance. The pattern doesn�t need to be given prior to an event to imply design. Consider the following cipher text:

nfuijolt ju jt mjlf b xfbtfm

Initially this looks like a random sequence of letters and spaces–initially you lack any pattern for rejecting chance and inferring design.

But suppose next that someone comes along and tells you to treat this sequence as a Caesar cipher, moving each letter one notch down the alphabet. Behold, the sequence now reads,

methinks it is like a weasel

Even though the pattern is now given after the fact, it still is the right sort of pattern for eliminating chance and inferring design. In contrast to statistics, which always tries to identify its patterns before an experiment is performed, cryptanalysis must discover its patterns after the fact. In both instances, however, the patterns are suitable for inferring design.

Patterns divide into two types, those that in the presence of complexity warrant a design inference and those that despite the presence of complexity do not warrant a design inference. The first type of pattern is called a specification, the second a fabrication. Specifications are the non-ad hoc patterns that can legitimately be used to eliminate chance and warrant a design inference. In contrast, fabrications are the ad hoc patterns that cannot legitimately be used to warrant a design inference. This distinction between specifications and fabrications can be made with full statistical rigor (cf. The Design Inference).

Why does the complexity-specification criterion reliably detect design? To answer this, we need to understand what it is about intelligent agents that makes them detectable in the first place. The principal characteristic of intelligent agency is choice. Whenever an intelligent agent acts, it chooses from a range of competing possibilities.

This is true not just of humans and extraterrestrial intelligences, but of animals as well. A rat navigating a maze must choose whether to go right or left at various points in the maze. When SETI researchers attempt to discover intelligence in the radio transmissions they are monitoring, they assume an extraterrestrial intelligence could have chosen to transmit any number of possible patterns, and then attempt to match the transmissions they observe with the patterns they seek. Whenever a human being utters meaningful speech, he chooses from a range of utterable sound-combinations. Intelligent agency always entails discrimination–choosing certain things, ruling out others.

Given this characterization of intelligent agency, how do we recognize that an intelligent agent has made a choice? A bottle of ink spills accidentally onto a sheet of paper; someone takes a fountain pen and writes a message on a sheet of paper. In both instances ink is applied to paper. In both instances one among an almost infinite set of possibilities is realized. In both instances one contingency is actualized and others are ruled out. Yet in one instance we ascribe agency, in the other chance.

What is the relevant difference? Not only do we need to observe that a contingency was actualized, but we ourselves need also to be able to specify that contingency. The contingency must conform to an independently given pattern, and we must be able independently to formulate that pattern. A random ink blot is unspecifiable; a message written with ink on paper is specifiable. Wittgenstein in Culture and Value made the same point: “We tend to take the speech of a Chinese for inarticulate gurgling. Someone who understands Chinese will recognize language in what he hears.”

In hearing a Chinese utterance, someone who understands Chinese not only recognizes that one from a range of all possible utterances was actualized, but he is also able to identify the utterance as coherent Chinese speech. Contrast this with someone who does not understand Chinese. He will also recognize that one from a range of possible utterances was actualized, but this time, because he lacks the ability to understand Chinese, he is unable to tell whether the utterance was coherent speech.

To someone who does not understand Chinese, the utterance will appear gibberish. Gibberish–the utterance of nonsense syllables uninterpretable within any natural language–always actualizes one utterance from the range of possible utterances. Nevertheless, gibberish, by corresponding to nothing we can understand in any language, also cannot be specified. As a result, gibberish is never taken for intelligent communication, but always for what Wittgenstein calls “inarticulate gurgling.”

Experimental psychologists who study animal learning and behavior employ a similar method. To learn a task an animal must acquire the ability to actualize behaviors suitable for the task as well as the ability to rule out behaviors unsuitable for the task. Moreover, for a psychologist to recognize that an animal has learned a task, it is necessary not only to observe the animal making the appropriate discrimination, but also to specify this discrimination.

Thus to recognize whether a rat has successfully learned how to traverse a maze, a psychologist must first specify which sequence of right and left turns conducts the rat out of the maze. No doubt, a rat randomly wandering a maze also discriminates a sequence of right and left turns. But by randomly wandering the maze, the rat gives no indication that it can discriminate the appropriate sequence of right and left turns for exiting the maze. Consequently, the psychologist studying the rat will have no reason to think the rat has learned how to traverse the maze. Only if the rat executes the sequence of right and left turns specified by the psychologist will the psychologist recognize that the rat has learned how to traverse the maze.

Note that complexity is implicit here as well. To see this, consider again a rat traversing a maze, but now take a very simple maze in which two right turns conduct the rat out of the maze. How will a psychologist studying the rat determine whether it has learned to exit the maze? Just putting the rat in the maze will not be enough. Because the maze is so simple, the rat could by chance just happen to take two right turns, and thereby exit the maze. The psychologist will therefore be uncertain whether the rat actually learned to exit this maze, or whether the rat just got lucky.

But contrast this now with a complicated maze in which a rat must take just the right sequence of left and right turns to exit the maze. Suppose the rat must take one hundred appropriate right and left turns, and that any mistake will prevent the rat from exiting the maze. A psychologist who sees the rat take no erroneous turns and in short order exit the maze will be convinced that the rat has indeed learned how to exit the maze, and that this was not dumb luck.

This general scheme for recognizing intelligent agency is but a thinly disguised form of the complexity-specification criterion. In general, to recognize intelligent agency we must observe a choice among competing possibilities, note which possibilities were not chosen, and then be able to specify the possibility that was chosen. What�s more, the competing possibilities that were ruled out must be live possibilities, and sufficiently numerous (hence complex) so that specifying the possibility that was chosen cannot be attributed to chance.

All the elements in this general scheme for recognizing intelligent agency (i.e., choosing, ruling out, and specifying) find their counterpart in the complexity-specification criterion. It follows that this criterion formalizes what we have been doing right along when we recognize intelligent agency. The complexity-specification criterion pinpoints what we need to be looking for when we detect design.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence for design in biology comes from biochemistry. In a recent issue of Cell (February 8, 1998),Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, remarked, “The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of large protein machines. . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function machines? Precisely because, like the machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts.”

Even so, Alberts sides with the majority of biologists in regarding the cell�s marvelous complexity as only apparently designed. The Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe disagrees. In Darwin�s Black Box (1996), Behe presents a powerful argument for actual design in the cell. Central to his argument is his notion of irreducible complexity. A system is irreducibly complex if it consists of several interrelated parts so that removing even one part completely destroys the system�s function. As an example of irreducible complexity Behe offers the standard mousetrap. A mousetrap consists of a platform, a hammer, a spring, a catch, and a holding bar. Remove any one of these five components, and it is impossible to construct a functional mousetrap.

Irreducible complexity needs to be contrasted with cumulative complexity. A system is cumulatively complex if the components of the system can be arranged sequentially so that the successive removal of components never leads to the complete loss of function. An example of a cumulatively complex system is a city. It is possible successively to remove people and services from a city until one is down to a tiny village–all without losing the sense of community, the city�s “function.”

From this characterization of cumulative complexity, it is clear that the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random mutation can readily account for cumulative complexity. Darwin�s account of how organisms gradually become more complex as favorable adaptations accumulate is the flip side of the city in our example from which people and services are removed. In both cases, the simpler and more complex versions both work, only less or more effectively.

But can the Darwinian mechanism account for irreducible complexity? Certainly, if selection acts with reference to a goal, it can produce irreducible complexity. Take Behe�s mousetrap. Given the goal of constructing a mousetrap, one can specify a goal-directed selection process that in turn selects a platform, a hammer, a spring, a catch, and a holding bar, and at the end puts all these components together to form a functional mousetrap. Given a pre-specified goal, selection has no difficulty producing irreducibly complex systems.

But the selection operating in biology is Darwinian natural selection. And by definition this form of selection operates without goals, has neither plan nor purpose, and is wholly undirected. The great appeal of Darwin�s selection mechanism was, after all, that it would eliminate teleology from biology. Yet by making selection an undirected process, Darwin drastically reduced the type of complexity biological systems could manifest. Henceforth biological systems could manifest only cumulative complexity, not irreducible complexity.

As Behe explains in Darwin�s Black Box: “An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced . . . by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. . .. Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a bio logical system cannot be produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on.”

For an irreducibly complex system, function is attained only when all components of the system are in place simultaneously. It follows that natural selection, if it is going to produce an irreducibly complex system, has to produce it all at once or not at all. This would not be a problem if the systems in question were simple. But they�re not. The irreducibly complex biochemical systems Behe considers are protein machines consisting of numerous distinct proteins, each indispensable for function; together they are beyond what natural selection can muster in a single generation.

One such irreducibly complex biochemical system that Behe considers is the bacterial flagellum. The flagellum is a whip-like rotary motor that enables a bacterium to navigate through its environment. The flagellum includes an acid-powered rotary engine, a stator, O-rings, bushings, and a drive shaft. The intricate machinery of this molecular motor requires approximately fifty proteins. Yet the absence of any one of these proteins results in the complete loss of motor function.

The irreducible complexity of such biochemical systems cannot be explained by the Darwinian mechanism, nor indeed by any naturalistic evolutionary mechanism proposed to date. Moreover, because irreducible complexity occurs at the biochemical level, there is no more fundamental level of biological analysis to which the irreducible complexity of biochemical systems can be referred, and at which a Darwinian analysis in terms of selection and mutation can still hope for success. Undergirding biochemistry is ordinary chemistry and physics, neither of which can account for biological information. Also, whether a biochemical system is irreducibly complex is a fully empirical question: Individually knock out each protein constituting a biochemical system to determine whether function is lost. If so, we are dealing with an irreducibly complex system. Experiments of this sort are routine in biology.

The connection between Behe�s notion of irreducible complexity and my complexity-specification criterion is now straightforward. The irreducibly complex systems Behe considers require numerous components specifically adapted to each other and each necessary for function. That means they are complex in the sense required by the complexity-specification criterion.

Specification in biology always makes reference in some way to an organism�s function. An organism is a functional system comprising many functional subsystems. The functionality of organisms can be specified in any number of ways. Arno Wouters does so in terms of the viability of whole organisms, Michael Behe in terms of the minimal function of biochemical systems. Even Richard Dawkins will admit that life is specified functionally, for him in terms of the reproduction of genes. Thus in The Blind Watchmaker Dawkins writes, “Complicated things have some quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by random chance alone. In the case of living things, the quality that is specified in advance is . . . the ability to propagate genes in reproduction.”

So there exists a reliable criterion for detecting design strictly from observational features of the world. This criterion belongs to probability and complexity theory, not to metaphysics and theology. And although it cannot achieve logical demonstration, it does achieve a statistical justification so compelling as to demand assent. This criterion is relevant to biology. When applied to the complex, information-rich structures of biology, it detects design. In particular, we can say with the weight of science behind us that the complexity-specification criterion shows Michael Behe�s irreducibly complex biochemical systems to be designed.

What are we to make of these developments? Many scientists remain unconvinced. Even if we have a reliable criterion for detecting design, and even if that criterion tells us that biological systems are designed, it seems that determining a biological system to be designed is akin to shrugging our shoulders and saying God did it. The fear is that admitting design as an explanation will stifle scientific inquiry, that scientists will stop investigating difficult problems because they have a sufficient explanation already.

But design is not a science stopper. Indeed, design can foster inquiry where traditional evolutionary approaches obstruct it. Consider the term “junk DNA.” Implicit in this term is the view that because the genome of an organism has been cobbled together through along, undirected evolutionary process, the genome is a patchwork of which only limited portions are essential to the organism. Thus on an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function. And indeed, the most recent findings suggest that designating DNA as “junk” merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. For instance, in a recent issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, John Bodnar describes how “non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development.” Design encourages scientists to look for function where evolution discourages it.

Or consider vestigial organs that later are found to have a function after all. Evolutionary biology texts often cite the human coccyx as a “vestigial structure” that hearkens back to vertebrate ancestors with tails. Yet if one looks at a recent edition of Gray�s Anatomy, one finds that the coccyx is a crucial point of contact with muscles that attach to the pelvic floor. The phrase “vestigial structure” often merely cloaks our current lack of knowledge about function. The human appendix, formerly thought to be vestigial, is now known to be a functioning component of the immune system.

Admitting design into science can only enrich the scientific enterprise. All the tried and true tools of science will remain intact. But design adds a new tool to the scientist�s explanatory tool chest. Moreover, design raises a whole new set of research questions. Once we know that something is designed, we will want to know how it was produced, to what extent the design is optimal, and what is its purpose. Note that we can detect design without knowing what something was designed for. There is a room at the Smithsonian filled with objects that are obviously designed but whose specific purpose anthropologists do not understand.

Design also implies constraints. An object that is designed functions within certain constraints. Transgress those constraints and the object functions poorly or breaks. Moreover, we can discover those constraints empirically by seeing what does and doesn�t work. This simple insight has tremendous implications not just for science but also for ethics. If humans are in fact designed, then we can expect psychosocial constraints to be hardwired into us. Transgress those constraints, and we as well as our society will suffer. There is plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that many of the attitudes and behaviors our society promotes undermine human flourishing. Design promises to reinvigorate that ethical stream running from Aristotle through Aquinas known as natural law.

By admitting design into science, we do much more than simply critique scientific reductionism. Scientific reductionism holds that everything is reducible to scientific categories. Scientific reductionism is self-refuting and easily seen to be self-refuting. The existence of the world, the laws by which the world operates, the intelligibility of the world, and the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics for comprehending the world are just a few of the questions that science raises, but that science is incapable of answering.

Simply critiquing scientific reductionism, however, is not enough. Critiquing reductionism does nothing to change science. And it is science that must change. By eschewing design, science has for too long operated with an inadequate set of conceptual categories. This has led to a constricted vision of reality, skewing how science understands not just the world, but also human beings.

Martin Heidegger remarked in Being and Time that “a science�s level of development is determined by the extent to which it is capable of a crisis in its basic concepts.” The basic concepts with which science has operated these last several hundred years are no longer adequate, certainly not in an information age, certainly not in an age where design is empirically detectable. Science faces a crisis of basic concepts. The way out of this crisis is to expand science to include design. To admit design into science is to liberate science, freeing it from restrictions that can no longer be justified.

William A. Dembski

THE CHANCE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

….While the book chronicles and explains a host of issues, I was fascinated by the discussion of random chance and the assembly of the minimum amount of proteins necessary for “simple” life to function. According to Meyer the “simplest extant cell, Mycoplasma genitalium — a tiny bacterium that inhabits the human urinary tract — requires ‘only’ 482 proteins to perform its necessary functions….” If, for the sake of argument, we assume the existence of the 20 biologically occurring amino acids, which form the building blocks for proteins, the amino acids have to congregate in a definite specified sequence in order to make something that “works.” First of all they have to form a “peptide” bond and this seems to only happen about half the time in experiments. Thus, the probability of building a chain of 150 amino acids containing only peptide links is about one chance in 10 to the 45th power.

In addition, another requirement for living things is that the amino acids must be the “left-handed” version. But in “abiotic amino-acid production” the right- and left-handed versions are equally created. Thus, to have only left-handed, only peptide bonds between amino acids in a chain of 150 would be about one chance in 10 to the 90th. Moreover, in order to create a functioning protein the “amino acids, like letters in a meaningful sentence, must link up in functionally specified sequential arrangements.” It turns out that the probability for this is about one in 10 to the 74th. Thus, the probability of one functional protein of 150 amino acids forming by random chance is 10 to the 164th. If we assume some minimally complex cell requires 250 different proteins then the probability of this arrangement happening purely by chance is one in 10 to the 164th multiplied by itself 250 times or one in 10 to the 41,000th power.

That sounded like a pretty big number to me, making it a very small possibility, but is there a way to judge how small? Is there some point at which we can say that such a number is essentially “impossible”? It turns out there may be. Meyer points out there are about 10 to the 80th elementary particles in our observable universe. Assuming a Big Bang about 13 billion years ago, there have been about 10 to the 16th seconds of time. Finally, if we take the time required for light to travel one Plank length we will have found “the shortest time in which any physical effect can occur.” This turns out to be 10 to the minus 43rd seconds. Or turning it around we can say that the most interactions possible in a second is 10 to the 43rd. Thus, the “probabilistic resources” of the universe would be to multiply the total number of seconds by the total number of interactions per second by the total number of particles theoretically interacting. The math turns out to be 10 to the 139th.

MATERIALIST CHURCH CONTINUES ITS CRUSADE AGAINST SCIENCE

The Los Angeles Daily News this morning is reporting the California Science Center’s outrageous cancellation of a screening of the new intelligent design documentary, Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record. The California Science Center is a “department of the State of California,” and its IMAX Theater had been rented by a private group, the American Freedom Alliance, to hold the Los Angeles premiere of the film as part of a series of activities commemorating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. But after the screening became public knowledge, the pressure from Darwinist censors apparently became too intense. So this week the Science Center expelled the film, possibly after being intimidated by the Smithsonian Institution, which clearly was upset by publicity promoting the screening that mentioned the true fact that the Science Center is an official “Smithsonian Affiliate.” The Science Center is now claiming that it canceled the event “because of issues related to the contract,” issues its spokesperson conveniently refuses to identify. If you believe that, I have some swamp land you might like to buy in Florida.

Censorship is apparently alive and well in southern California. Given that the Science Center is a state entity, its heavy-handed cancellation of this event raises significant free speech issues. This is viewpoint discrimination plain and simple. A state agency has decided to ban speech it doesn’t like in a public facility that is supposed to be open to all citizens. And that’s an outrage.

John West

LITTLE WOMAN LYING….AND BIG MAN RUNNING

Darwinist religion fanatic (payed with taxpayer’s money) exposed !

Meanwhile, the Pope of that religion runs faster than light from every intellectual confrontation.

Run Richard, run !

HONEST SCIENCE AGAINST (MATERIALIST) RELIGION

STORMING THE BEACHES OF NORMAN

Norman, Oklahoma, that is.

Okay, so there aren’t any real beaches in Norman, Oklahoma. But when Steve Meyer and I went there recently, the Darwinists who have installed themselves as absolute dictators at the University of Oklahoma (OU) made our arrival feel like D-Day.

On September 28, Steve gave a talk on his best-selling book Signature in the Cell at the Oklahoma Memorial Union on the OU campus. The following evening, September 29, Steve and I answered questions after a showing of the new film Darwin’s Dilemma at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History, again on the OU campus.

Darwinists at OU are still gloating over the abuse to which they subjected Dr. William A. Dembski in 2007. On September 14, 2009, one of the organizers of that abuse, OU graduate student Abbie Smith, announced on her foul-mouthed blog that Steve and I were coming to OU and urged her readers to give us the same treatment.

The day after her announcement, retired OU zoology professor Victor Hutchison, of the militantly Darwin-only Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education (OESE), posted the following on Smith’s blog: “

Folks at OU are experienced in how to put down such events. An example is the thorough dismantling of Dembski about three years ago. I expect that there will be plenty of students and others well-prepared with good questions and comments at both scheduled events—especially on the crap the film will have about the so-called ‘Cambrian Explosion.’… However, opponents should get to the events EARLY.”

The same day, Darwinist blogger P.Z. Myers scolded OU for allowing Darwin’s Dilemma to be shown.

“Shame on the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History,” Myers wrote. “This will put a little spot of schmutz on their glossy reputation, I fear. And they’re planning to turn it into a real kookfest, with both Jonathan Wells (whose book, Icons of Evolution, revealed that he was an ignorant maroon on the subject of the Cambrian) and Stephen Meyer, the philosopher-creationist with his own book on molecular biology (hah!) to peddle, there to lecture at the opening. I guess any clown can rent the integrity of the U of Oklahoma for a day.”

In response, Sam Noble Museum Director Michael A. Mares issued an “Open Letter” of appeasement, stating:

“Although the museum does not support unscientific views masquerading as science, such as those espoused by the Discovery Institute, the museum does respect the religious beliefs of all people. Moreover, the museum is obligated to rent its public space to any organization that is engaged in lawful activities, free speech and open discourse. The museum does not discriminate against recognized campus organizations based on their religious beliefs, political philosophy, scientific literacy, or any other factors.”

In an attempt to counter the impact of Darwin’s Dilemma, Mares announced that the museum would open its evolution exhibit to the public, free of charge, until 11 PM on September 29. In addition, the museum would sponsor a free public lecture at 5 PM that day by Dr. Stephen Westrop, its curator of invertebrate paleontology, titled “The Cambrian Explosion and the Burgess Shale: No Dilemma for Darwin.” 

On September 18, Smith applauded Mares’s letter, the extension of the museum’s hours, and Westrop’s planned lecture. She wrote:

“If you live in the OKC [Oklahoma City] area, you’ve got a problem. Sure, you want to go see the TARD [short for retard] parade at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History, you can always count on Creationists for a good time. But the problem is, Wells and Meyer are incredibly stupid. While recreational exposure to Creationists can induce euphoria and irrepressible giggles… long-term exposure to pure TARD from DI [Discovery Institute] fellows can cause seemingly irreversible brain damage.” Smith also announced that she would “be around, completely uninvited,” at the showing of the film. “I’ll even talk to Johnny Wells about HIV-1 evolution, since he thinks neither of my research topics exists.”

(Not true, of course, though I question the relevance of HIV microevolution to Darwinian macroevolution.) 

A few days later, Oklahoma Daily columnist Jelani Sims criticized Mares’s letter on the grounds that it “assumes that those presenting the documentary and supporting it must be religious, have conservative political views and lack scientific literacy, while disguising the museum’s malicious shot at those people and groups as tolerance.” According to Jelani,

“the museum should not have opposed the event in this way. Rather than hijacking the night of the documentary presentation with an opposing seminar and free extra hours of operation, it should have let the event stand on its own. And, rather than releasing a statement of vehement opposition, thinly veiled in tolerance, it should have said nothing.
OU and the surrounding halls of learning and education should be places of academic freedom and the open exploration of ideas. Instead of fostering and working toward this ideal, the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History has chosen to align itself with the many mean-hearted voices that wish no one would hear any alternative outside of evolution.”

On September 28, Steve spoke to an audience estimated at 300 in the Meacham Auditorium at the Oklahoma Memorial Union. (I had not yet arrived from Seattle.) “If you apply Charles Darwin’s method of reasoning to what we know now that he didn’t, you come to exactly the opposite conclusion that he did,” Meyer said. “There is evidence of design in nature, and you find that evidence most obviously on display in the digital code that is stored in the DNA.” The evidence shows that DNA is not only complex, but also highly specified to encode functional proteins. To people who claim that intelligent design is not science, Steve said, “It’s important to amend the rules of science to allow scientists to follow the evidence to wherever it leads.” [8,9] 

The ensuing Q&A was surprisingly friendly, with the exception of one man who insisted that most human DNA is junk and who persisted in this claim even after Steve pointed out that recently published scientific research shows that most so-called “junk DNA” is not junk at all. Abbie Smith was there, but she spent the entire time blogging on her laptop. Her entries included the following:

7.10 — Meyer is clueless on origin of life and Darwin. 

7.27 — ‘Origin of information in DNA’. HAHAHA I made all the mathematicians facepalm [place their hands over their eyes and shake their heads].

7.40 — Bored. Now watching porn.

Despite her earlier threats to expose publicly how “stupid” Steve is, Smith left abruptly after the lecture and did not stay for the Q&A. 

On September 29, The Norman Transcript announced the 5 PM lecture by Professor Westrop and the 7 PM showing of Darwin’s Dilemma. The article mentioned Steve’s position that the pairing of events was good because it allowed for students to get two views. “I think it’s great that students will be party to that,” Steve said. “That’s what an academic experience is all about.”

I attended the lecture by Professor Westrop, which was informative and entertaining. Westrop began by saying that the Cambrian explosion was no dilemma for Darwin. Indeed, if Darwin knew what we now know he would have celebrated the fossil record and written about it at length. Westrop disputed the idea that most of the animal body plans (“phyla”) emerged “almost overnight” in the Cambrian. Instead, he argued that they began to emerge much earlier, in the pre-Cambrian period known as the Ediacaran. He mentioned trace fossils (signs of worm burrows) and the “small shelly fauna” that are older than the two most famous sites for Cambrian explosion fossils, the Burgess Shale in Canada and the Chengjiang beds in China—both of which show exceptional preservation of even the soft parts of early animals.

Professor Westrop mentioned pre-Cambrian sponges and the fossil Kimberella, which most paleontologists think was an early mollusc. He went further, however, and claimed that the Ediacaran fossils Vernanimalcula, Parvancorina, and Arkarua were early bilaterians (bilaterally symmetrical animals), arthropods (the phylum that includes crabs and insects) and echinoderms (the phylum that includes sea urchins and starfish), respectively. This would push back the beginning of the Cambrian explosion and make its duration 40 million years instead of the 5-10 million years mentioned in Darwin’s Dilemma. (Steve later addressed this in the Q&A after the film; see below.)

Professor Westrop suggested that the explosion might have been due to an increase in atmospheric oxygen and/or the opening of ecological niches by a mass extinction event at the end of the pre-Cambrian. (I thought to myself that increased oxygen and new ecological niches may have been necessary for the Cambrian explosion, but they were far from sufficient. New body plans need new information, not just air and space.) Westrop concluded by taking exception to J.B.S. Haldane’s claim that finding a fossil rabbit in the pre-Cambrian would prove Darwin’s theory wrong. If such a fossil were found, Westrop said, paleontologists would simply revise their reconstruction of the history of life.

During the Q&A, one student asked him whether any fossil find could falsify Darwin’s theory, and Professor Westrop said “No,” since Darwin’s theory is really about natural selection, which operates on a much shorter time scale than the fossil record. Another student asked him whether he had seen the movie Darwin’s Dilemma; he said he hadn’t, but his lecture was not intended to be a response to the movie.

During the lecture I caught several people glaring at me; the tension was palpable. After Westrop’s lecture I toured the museum exhibit on evolution and the Cambrian explosion. It seemed factually accurate for the most part, emphasizing (among other things) that many of the Cambrian explosion fossils were soft-bodied—which puts the lie to the common explanation that their precursors are absent from the fossil record because they lacked hard parts. The exhibit also made it clear that the Ediacaran fossils went extinct at the end of the pre-Cambrian, so (with a few possible exceptions) they could not have been ancestral to the Cambrian phyla.

One particular panel in the exhibit caught my attention. It showed over a dozen of the Cambrian phyla at the top of a branching tree with a single trunk, but none of the branch points corresponded to a real living thing. Instead, the branch points were artificial technical categories such as “Ecdysozoa,” “Lophotrochozoa,” “Deuterostomia,” and “Bilateria.” The artificiality of the branch-points emphasized that the branching-tree pattern imposed on the fossil evidence was itself an artificial construct.

By 7 PM the auditorium was filled to standing-room-only capacity with about 200 people. During the film Steve and I waited outside; we came in for the Q&A as the film was ending and the audience was applauding enthusiastically.

Steve led off with a short statement explaining that we were not challenging the facts, but only the Darwinian interpretation of them. He acknowledged that there are disagreements over the duration of the Cambrian explosion—even among Darwinian paleontologists—but the real issue is the origin of information. Even if the Cambrian explosion had lasted 40 million years, as Westrop had claimed, there would not have been enough time for unguided processes to produce the enormous amount of specified complexity in the DNA of the animal phyla. Then Steve opened the floor to questions, as the moderator walked around the room with a hand-held microphone.

The first “question” came from Victor Hutchison of the OESE, who claimed that the filmmakers had deceived Simon Conway Morris and James Valentine into granting interviews that were now 9-10 years old. Steve responded that he had had tea with Simon just a few months earlier, and although Conway Morris was not a supporter of intelligent design (nor did the film make him out to be), his views on the Cambrian explosion were accurately portrayed in the film. Steve said he had not spoken with Valentine recently, and that the latter had every right to distance himself from the views promoted by the film; but both Conway Morris and Valentine had signed releases and accepted payment for their participation. (In fact, Illustra Media interviewed Conway Morris and Valentine for this project in October and November of 2006—less than three years ago. Both Morris and Valentine knew they were being interviewed by Illustra Media, which was well known for having previously produced two pro-intelligent design films, Unlocking the Mystery of Life and The Privileged Planet. They were not deceived in any way.)

The second question came from a man who was concerned that the film said nothing about the role of viruses in changing DNA. The retrovirus-derived gene PEG10, he argued, explains how mammals evolved placentas millions of years ago. I replied that biologists can establish that certain genes are necessary in the formation of specific organs, but they have never established that genes alone—much less any one gene—can account for any organ. Indeed, I pointed out, we can (and have) mutated the genes of fruit fly embryos in every possible way, and there are only three known outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly. Not even a new species, much less a new organ. So the fact that PEG10 may be necessary for the development of a placenta does not justify the claim that a retrovirus caused the evolution of the first placenta. The questioner persisted, pointing out that PEG10 is widespread among mammals (which is irrelevant to whether it caused the origin of placentas), and when the moderator moved to another person the questioner got up and stalked out of the room with his hands in the air.

The next person—apparently a professor of developmental biology—objected that the film ignored facts showing the unity of life, especially the universality of the genetic code, the remarkable similarity of about 500 housekeeping genes in all living things, the role of HOX genes in building animal body plans, and the similarity of HOX genes in all animal phyla, including sponges. Steve began by pointing out that the genetic code is not universal, but the questioner loudly complained that he was not answering her questions. I stepped up and pointed out that housekeeping genes are similar in all living things because without them life is not possible. I acknowledged that HOX gene mutations can be quite dramatic (causing a fly to sprout legs from its head in place of antennae, for example), but HOX genes become active midway through development, long after the body plan is already established. They are also remarkably non-specific; for example, if a fly lacks a particular HOX gene and a comparable mouse HOX gene is inserted in its place, the fly develops normal fly parts, not mouse parts. Furthermore, the similarity of HOX genes in so many animal phyla is actually a problem for neo-Darwinism: If evolutionary changes in body plans are due to changes in genes, and flies have HOX genes similar to those in a horse, why is a fly not a horse? Finally, the presence of HOX genes in sponges (which, everyone agrees, appeared in the pre-Cambrian) still leaves unanswered the question of how such complex specified genes evolved in the first place.

The questioner became agitated and shouted out something to the effect that HOX gene duplication explained the increase in information needed for the diversification of animal body plans. I replied that duplicating a gene doesn’t increase information content any more than photocopying a paper increases its information content. She obviously wanted to continue the argument, but the moderator took the microphone to someone else.

The next questioner suggested the film might have been better if it had included some Darwinists skeptical of its conclusions. (I learned later that the producer/director had invited several such critics to be interviewed, but they had declined.) Steve agreed that the film might have been better if it had done that. I chimed in that there seemed little need for the producer to pay for such views when the University of Oklahoma was spending so much public money to provide them. (I wished later I had said that if OU were doing its job it would be providing students with both sides of the story in the first place, and there would have been no need to make the film.)

Someone asked why the film refers to “designers” in the plural. Steve answered that this merely followed from the application of Lyell’s explanatory method of inferring past causes from those known to produce comparable effects in the present. We can infer the need for intelligence, but single or multiple designers could be responsible. In response to another questioner who noted that the film apparently assumes the standard geological time scale, Steve said that both he and I hold to the antiquity of the Earth.

An emeritus professor of immunology pointed out that the immune system is essentially the same in all vertebrates, but the supposedly primitive lamprey has a completely different immune system. He regarded this as evidence of a molecular explosion comparable to the Cambrian explosion that also pointed to design.

Then someone suggested that there is a fundamental distinction between the time organisms first arise and when they appear in the fossil record. He said there is abundant fossil and molecular evidence that many animal body plans arose before the Cambrian. I pointed out that three of the pre-Cambrian fossils cited by Professor Westrop as precursors to Cambrian animals were disputed by other paleontologists. According to Stefan Bengtson and Graham Budd, the bilaterian interpretation of Vernanimalcula is “not well-founded” but an “artifact” of changes in the organism after death and changes in the sediment after deposition. [Bengtson, S. & G. Budd, “Comment on ‘Small Bilaterian Fossils from 40 to 55 Million Years Before the Cambrian’,” Science 306 (2004): 1291a.] According to James Valentine, Parvancorina is not “convincing” as an arthropod ancestor; it lacks a head, jointed limbs, compound eyes and antennae. Also according to Valentine, without more shared features with echinoderms the relationship of Arkarua “remains uncertain.” [Valentine, J.W., On the Origin of Phyla (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 287, 397.]

I then pointed out that molecular evidence comes entirely from modern organisms; no biomolecules have been recovered from Cambrian fossils. The molecular data are fed into a computer that has been programmed to generate a branching-tree pattern; the computer is not given the option of concluding that the organisms may not share a common ancestor. Even then, different molecules—or the same molecule analyzed by different labs—can give different trees. So molecular phylogeny is riddled with inconsistencies, and when applied to the Cambrian phyla it is speculative at best.

Finally, someone mentioned Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and asked whether the current controversy over Darwinism and intelligent design fits Kuhn’s description. Steve answered that in many respects it does—not only in the way the Darwinian scientific establishment is using all means at its disposal to suppress the new theory of intelligent design, but also in the way the very definition of science has become part of the controversy.

The formal Q&A ended, but many people came up afterwards to continue the conversation. Both we and the organizers—the courageous students of the OU Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Club—were pleased with the outcome. As IDEA Club secretary Trevor Clark wrote in the student newspaper on October 1, “One of the most spectacular features of these events was the broad spectrum of people who attended. I am thrilled that so many people with different viewpoints could converge to join a discussion about intelligent design.”

Darwinist blogger P.Z. Myers, who had scolded the museum for letting us show the film, did not come all the way from the University of Minnesota, Morris, to attend. Yet he wrote afterwards about Steve’s September 28 lecture:

“I knew ahead of time exactly what it was going to be: complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, therefore, DESIGN. It doesn’t follow. The logic is nonexistent. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect a competent person with a Ph.D. in philosophy to recognize, but no, it’s the same ol’ thing, trotted out every time they get up to speak.”

Of course, Myers is absolutely correct: Complexity, therefore design, doesn’t follow. And yes, “you’d expect a competent person with a Ph.D. in philosophy” to know this. 

That’s why Steve Meyer devoted an entire chapter to it in his book. In fact, it’s the chapter from which the book takes its name (Signature in the Cell HarperOne, 2009, Chapter 4.). If Myers had bothered to read Steve’s book, he would have known this. Indeed, you’d expect that a competent person with a Ph.D. who’s paid by the taxpayers of Minnesota to teach their children would read a book before ridiculing it. But no, it’s the same ol’ thing, trotted out every time Myers blogs on the subject.

Oh, and porn-watcher Abbie Smith was a no-show. In a blog post the day after Darwin’s Dilemma showed, she called Steve a stupid idiot, and gave as her reasons for not coming (1) “I’d be trapped in a theater!” and (2) “I got no response to my debate request re: Wells HIV/Evolution Denial… I just don’t understand why ID Creationists don’t want to debate me.”

A debate about HIV? I don’t know what relevance HIV has to the Cambrian explosion, and I didn’t receive any “request” to debate it, but I would have been willing to discuss the matter with Smith if she had had the guts to show her face.

So our landing at Norman was a success. Despite all their taxpayer-funded professors and museum exhibits, despite all their threats to dismantle us and expose us as retards, the Darwinists lost. We’re now moving inland, and the end of the war may be coming into view.

Jonathan Wells

Feser on Heisenberg on Act and Potency

In my view, the most important question in the ID-Darwinism debate is this: what do we mean by design? All participants in the debate agree that living things manifest design of some sort; Darwinists assert that the design is unintelligent, the product of ateleological genetic variation and natural selection. ID proponents assert that design implies an intelligent source. Philosophers of an Aristotelian and Thomist stripe assert that teleology pervades nature, but insist that a proper understanding of teleology entails a metaphysical understanding of nature (hylomorphism) that differs from the metaphysical presuppositions of most ID advocates, who generally accept (implicitly if not explicitly) the mechanical view of nature shared by materialists.

In my view, we need to integrate our understanding of the obvious design that is manifest in biology with the teleology that is evident in all of nature. We need a “unified theory” of teleology in nature that intrinsically explains the obvious design in living things as well as the obvious teleology in scientific “laws” and in all natural change. That integration necessarily will come from the “teleology” camp; Darwinist “ateleology” is an impoverished philosophical mistake that persists only when it not made explicit. The ID-Darwinism debate is rapidly eroding materialist credibility, not only because of the strength of the ID arguments, but because ID proponents have forced materialists to state clearly what they believe. Candor is incompatible with materialist ideology; Darwinists are angry in large part because they’ve been forced to explain themselves.

Can a teleological understanding of nature of an Aristotelian sort bring together the seemingly disparate strands of modern science? Philosopher Ed Feser suggests that a hylomorphic understanding of quantum mechanics, which intrinsically depends on a teleological view of nature, provides a coherent framework on which to understand some counterintuitive aspects of quantum mechanics. His source for this insight is Werner Heisenberg, a pioneer in the development of quantum theory.

Feser notes that, unlike many contemporary scientists like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, Heisenberg was philosophically literate, and he understood that classical philosophical notions are essential for an understanding of nature. Heisenberg saw that the “strangeness” of quantum mechanics was merely strange to the modern mind; classical Aristotelian notions such as act (the actual manifestation of a property) and potency (the potential, but not actual, manifestation of a property) anticipated many of the seemingly counterintuitive findings of quantum mechanics.

Heisenberg:

One might perhaps call [the statistical nature of quantum theory] an objective tendency or possibility, a “potentia” in the sense of Aristotelian philosophy. In fact, I believe that the language actually used by physicists when they speak about atomic events produces in their minds similar notions as the concept “potentia.” So the physicists have gradually become accustomed to considering the electronic orbits, etc., not as reality but rather as a kind of “potentia.” …The probability wave of Bohr, Kramers, Slater… was a quantitative version of the old concept of “potentia” in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality…The probability function combines objective and subjective elements. It contains statements about possibilities or better tendencies (“potentia” in Aristotelian philosophy), and these statements are completely objective, they do not depend on any observer; and it contains statements about our knowledge of the system, which of course are subjective in so far as they may be different for different observers…If we compare [the quantum mechanical relationship between matter and energy] with the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, we can say that the matter of Aristotle, which is mere “potentia,” should be compared to our concept of energy, which gets into “actuality” by means of the form, when the elementary particle is created.

 

Feser notes that Heisenberg’s understanding of Aristote’s notions of potency and act is not precisely correct in several ways, but he points out that Heisenberg understood that classical hylomorphic understanding of nature anticipated some of the “counterintuitive” aspects of quantum mechanics.

Feser:

In any event, it is clear that what Heisenberg is defending is a core thesis of [Aristotelian-Thomist] philosophy of nature, namely that we cannot make sense of the physical world behaving as it does without attributing to its basic components inherent powers which point beyond themselves to certain (often as yet unrealized) ends – a thesis that, as I have noted before, contemporary writers like Ellis, Cartwright, Molnar, and other “new essentialist” philosophers of science are starting to rediscover.

In my view, we are in the midst of a philosophical revolution. Like the materialist ‘Mechanical Philosophy’ revolution in the 18th century, the 20th and 21st century philosophical revolution is driven by contemporaneous advances in science. It began with quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, is now shaking the foundations of biology, and in time will cast aside simplistic materialist theories of the mind.

It is a corrective, really, to a banal philosophical mistake– the assertion that nature was a ‘machine’, a system of passive matter organized by externally-imposed laws and comprehensible without reference to inherent essences and teleology. The strangeness of quantum mechanics has a simple explanation: ‘mechanical system’ is a woefully impoverished paradigm for nature. Nature is not a machine composed of passive parts acted on by external agency. Science is revealing that intrinsic essences and teleology pervade nature. Materialistic ‘mechanism’ as a philosophical system (if one can call a transparent mistake a ’system’) leaves nature inherently incomprehensible. Materialistic Mechanical Philosophy is a philosophical system that creates philosophical problems; it doesn’t, and can’t, explain nature. Neither quantum mechanics, nor biology, nor the mind can be understood in the materialist paradigm.

Phillip Johnson is right: the debate about Darwinism is a philosophical debate. It is a debate about the metaphysical basis of science. This much about the denouement of the debate is clear: materialism and mechanism are dying. They are under siege from many fields of science– from physics, from biology, from neuroscience. Its replacement is as of yet unclear, but an application of classical Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy to a 21st century understanding of nature (New Essentialism) is underway. It is a cogent and even elegant approach to understanding nature, and I believe that it has much to offer for our modern understanding of biology. It is quite compatible with ‘evolution’ understood as biological change over time and stripped of crude Darwinist metaphysics. New Essentialism may provide the insight into biological design that Darwinian materialism has utterly failed to provide.

Michael Egnor

Jerry Coyne and Aquinas’ First Way

Jerry Coyne and Jim Manzi have been mixing it up lately over the religious implications of evolution. Coyne asserts, quite rudely at times, that evolution disproves the existence of God. Manzi disagrees, and asserts that theism is compatible with evolutionary science.

I’ve had a blog discussion or two with Manzi, and he’s a thoughtful courteous interlocutor. He doesn’t believe that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific inference (so he’s not perfect), but he is logically rigorous and very well informed on scientific matters as well as on the broader philosophical issues. He believes that evolution, understood as an algorithmic process by which populations of organisms change over time, is compatible with belief in God. He asserts that evolutionary science does not demonstrate that atheism is true. He’s right.

Jerry Coyne is another matter. Coyne’s manner is sarcastic and supercilious, or at least as supercilious as one can get without relevant literacy. Coyne is an evolutionary biologist of the first rank, but that is where his competence ends. His arguments against the existence of God are embarrassing, and, like the arguments of Richard Dawkins and other New Atheists, are eliciting a backlash among intellectuals who have at least a modicum of philosophical and theological education. I don’t claim for myself any more than a marginal competence — an amateur’s competence — on such matters, but in refuting Coyne, that’s all that’s necessary.¹

Coyne:

Oh dear. This chestnut [Aquinas’ First Way] is so old that it’s fossilized. And the answer to this claim hasn’t changed for decades: why is God any more an “uncaused cause” than is the universe, or the “physical laws” themselves? God is always called the “uncaused cause” without further explanation, but that simply won’t do. If He was an uncaused cause, what did He do before creating everything? Hang around twiddling His thumbs? The people who make this argument are claiming, in effect, that God is by definition an uncaused cause, but we can properly ask “What caused God?” with exactly the same tenacity that theists ask “What caused matter?” And why is God exempt from having a cause, but matter or physical laws are not? This is just sophistry. Faitheist philosophers are always telling us that we don’t grasp the subtleties of theological argument, but that won’t wash here….

Aquinas’ First Way is an elaboration of Aristotle’s argument for the existence of an Unmoved Mover. It is traditionally called the Argument from Motion, but “motion” is the traditional Aristotelian word for what we moderns call change. Motion, meaning translation in space, is only one very limited meaning of classically understood “motion,” which refers to any kind of change (e.g., a change in color, a change in shape, a change in temperature, etc.).

The Argument from Motion is based on the observation that all change involves the transition from possibility (“potency”) to actuality (“act”). That is, when something changes, it moves from a state of potency for a certain attribute to a state of actuality for that attribute. An acorn is in potency for an oak tree (it is potentially an oak tree). When it becomes an oak tree, it is in act for an oak tree. It’s essential to note that “potency” means that the substance does not posses that attribute, it merely can, under the right circumstances, posses it. No thing can simultaneously be in potency and in act for the same attribute.

When something changes (“moves”), it goes from potency to act with respect to that attribute. But, by definition, a substance cannot change itself, because it lacks the attribute — it is in potency, not actuality. It can’t give itself what it doesn’t have. This is the basis for Thomas’ famous dictum:

“That which is moved is moved by another.”

It is logically necessary that everything that changes is changed by another. When a substance changes, it begins in potency (without the attribute) and ends in actuality (with the attribute). It cannot give itself the attribute, because, by definition, it is initially in potency for that attribute and doesn’t have it to give. It must be changed (moved) by another.

Thomas’ observation is a commonplace. An acorn becomes an oak tree (the actualization of its potency) by the action of radiant heat from the sun, energy and matter from the soil and the air, etc. A tree falls because of the wind. A grass fire is ignited by lightning. Everything that changes is changed by another.

Yet, Aquinas (and Aristotle) noted that the proximate cause of the change (the sunlight, the chemicals in the soil, the wind or lightning) is, generally speaking, itself in a process of change, of transitioning from potency to act. And each change in nature was itself generally the result of change in another substance, and so on. Natural change of this sort is a layered hierarchy of changes — a hierarchy of transitions from potency to act.

The salient question is: can this hierarchy of change — this hierarchy of transitions from potency to act — go on to infinite regress? To understand the answer to this question, it is first important to understand the difference between a series of causes that is accidentally ordered and a series that is essentially ordered.

An accidental series is a series of causes extended in time; it is not essential to the continuation of the series that any of the prior causes remain in existence. The classic example of an accidentally ordered series of causes is a father begetting a son who begets a son who begets… and so on. Aquinas pointed out that this kind of casual series can go on to infinite regress (or at least there’s nothing self-contradictory about it).

But that is not the only kind of change. There are changes — causal series — that are ordered in priority, not in time. That is, there are causal series in which each of the causes must be in existence for the series to be actualized. For example, I use a hammer to hit a nail. The nail changes because it is hit by the hammer; the hammer changes because my hand moved it; my hand moved because my muscles contracted; my muscles contracted because of biochemical changes in my muscle cells; the biochemistry in my muscle cells changed because of action potentials in my nerves, etc.

This kind of casual series in which the series depends on the continuing existence of each component is called an essential series. The components of an essential series depend on the simultaneous existence of prior components. If one one member of the series doesn’t exist (the nerve in my arm is cut), then all of the subsequent changes cease. Aquinas (and Aristotle before him) observed that, for an essential series, infinite regress of potency-to-act is not possible.

This is why: in an essentially ordered series of changes, each change depends simultaneously on a change from a prior member of the series. If all members of the series were merely in potency, but not in act, the series could never get started, because potency means lack of actuality. No subsequent “down-the-line” member of an essentially ordered series has independent causal power of its own. So an infinite essentially-ordered series of changes is impossible, because without a first act, it is merely potency (not actuality) all the way down, and nothing could get started. An essentially-ordered causal series must begin with act, not potency. There must be a first member of the series that is in pure act, without potency, or the essential series — the change — would not occur at all. The First Mover in the series must be itself unmoved, because if it were moved — that is, if it went from potency to act — it would necessarily be moved by another, and then wouldn’t be the first member of the series. An essentially ordered casual series must have a First Mover that is itself unmoved.

It’s important to point out that Aquinas (and Aristotle) assumed an eternal universe for the purposes of the Argument from Motion. The First Mover is necessary for each and every essentially ordered series of changes in nature. The First Mover is necessary for change occurring at each moment. The argument is unrelated to the Big Bang; as noted, Aquinas assumed (for the sake of the First Way) that there was no temporal beginning of the universe. The argument works irrespective of whether or not the universe had a beginning in time.

The only way to explain change in the natural world is to posit the existence of an unmoved First Mover. Aquinas goes on (in Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica) to draw out in meticulous detail the necessary attributes of the First Mover, and he demonstrates that it is logically necessary that the First Mover have many attributes (simplicity, omnipotence, etc) that are traditionally attributed to God as understood in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Argument from Motion is rigorous, and I have merely summarized its salient points, but it is straightforward once the premises are established. It is a very powerful argument. Yet I am not here proposing that Aquinas’s First Way is irrefutable. I believe that it is valid, but thinkers much smarter than I am have debated it for millennia, and still debate it. It is disputed; it has certainly not been refuted. It is a very strong argument, and it has engaged the best philosophers for a very long time.

Enough with philosophical rigor; let’s get back to Coyne. He asserts:

Oh dear. This chestnut [Aquinas’ First Way] is so old that it’s fossilized. And the answer to this claim hasn’t changed for decades…

 

The philosophical debate on the Argument from Motion (“this chestnut”) has been ongoing for two and a half millennia (since Aristotle). Coyne, for reasons that are obscure, seems to think that the definitive answer was given “decades” ago. Coyne again:

… why is God any more an “uncaused cause” than is the universe, or the “physical laws” themselves? God is always called the “uncaused cause” without further explanation, but that simply won’t do. If He was an uncaused cause, what did He do before creating everything? Hang around twiddling His thumbs?…

Coyne doesn’t understand the argument. Aquinas assumed an eternal universe; the First Mover is necessary for all essentially ordered change in the natural world at every moment; it depends not at all on a moment of creation in time. The argument is of course equally valid in a universe with a finite past, but assumptions as to the eternal or finite nature of the past have no bearing whatsoever on the argument. The First Mover is necessary for change at all moments in time; the First Mover is logically necessary once the nature of change is carefully understood.

Furthermore, contra Coyne, the conclusion that a First Mover is logically necessary to explain change in the natural world is the denouement of extraordinarily detailed “further explanation”; in Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas devoted hundreds of pages of meticulous philosophical reasoning to the explication of the argument. Coyne again:

The people who make this argument are claiming, in effect, that God is by definition an uncaused cause, but we can properly ask “What caused God?” with exactly the same tenacity that theists ask “What caused matter?”

Coyne can indeed ask what caused the First Mover with “tenacity,” but not with cogency. The logical conclusion of the Argument from Motion is that the First Mover can’t be “caused.” The First Mover is pure actuality. The First Mover cannot move from potency to act (i.e., “be caused”) because it has no potency. Matter (substance) is caused because it has potency; it’s not pure actuality. It changes, and thus it is a mixture of potency and act. Matter (substance) cannot be the First Mover, because it’s not pure actuality. Coyne:

And why is God exempt from having a cause, but matter or physical laws are not? This is just sophistry.

Coyne doesn’t understand the Argument from Motion. The natural world needs a cause that is pure act because an essentially ordered series requires a First Mover that is Itself unmoved. This isn’t sophistry — it’s a detailed logical argument that Coyne doesn’t understand.

Faitheist philosophers are always telling us that we don’t grasp the subtleties of theological argument, but that won’t wash here…

The Argument from Motion was originally made by a pagan (Aristotle), not a “faitheist philosopher.” It has been held by countless thinkers representing an enormous range of metaphysical persuasions. It is an argument that depends entirely on philosophical, not “theological,” premises. And if you make a modicum of effort to understand it, it’s not particularly “subtle.” It’s routinely mastered by freshmen in Introduction to Philosophy courses.

There have been brilliant atheists (Hume, Russell, Quine) who have struggled with the profound philosophical issues raised by Aquinas’ Five Ways and by a host of other demonstrations for the existence of God. Their contributions warrant respect, but they have never successfully refuted the classical arguments. These powerful and elegant demonstrations of the necessary existence of a First Cause have been set aside by stipulation, not by refutation. It is merely fashionable to deny them. Yet this denial isn’t a denial of the truth of the arguments; it’s a denial of philosophical rigor. It’s a sneer. It now seems that our materialist intelligentsia’s understanding of classical philosophy has degenerated to the point where public intellectuals like Coyne can make arguments that would embarass a teenager in a first semester philosophy course.

Coyne doesn’t understand the Argument from Motion. His arguments are too uninformed to even be sophistry. He’s all spittle. But there are people who do understand, and they’re taking notice. Thanks to the high public visibility of New Atheists like Coyne and Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens and Dennett, the anti-intellectual nature of New Atheism and the sheer malignity and fatuousness of what passes for New Atheist thought is becoming increasingly apparent to those who are paying attention to this debate. Many non-theists are cutting ties with New Atheism. The damage that Coyne and other New Atheists are doing to their own atheist cause is incalculable.

Michael Egnor

DARWIN’S PREDICTIONS AND DARWINISTS’ EPICYCLES

A toothsayer could do better…..