Fusion at last?

Seeking straight answers from atheists.

  1)If the existence of moral evil and suffering in the world means there is no intelligent design any where in the universe.What does the existence of altruism and moral good in the very same universe mean?2)By what objective criterion/criteria is significance attributed only to the moral negative?3)If we are all the product of mindless/purposeless processes by what OBJECTIVE criteria can moral good or evil be determined?4)Many atheists argue against human consciousness for these:Could you name one thing more axiomatic than your own existence as a unique individual?5)If you don't consider your own existence as an individual axiomatic What about the rest of us?

  6)If law enforcement officers in the course of conducting an investigation were to discover a corpse bound and gagged in the trunk of your car would you consider the following a knockout argument against your being considered a murder suspect:Why officer, there are over two billion car trunks on this planet it is well within the realm of possibility that a bound and gagged corpse would end up in one of these by a combination of purely random/co incidental occurrences lets not have any unwarranted invoking of agent causation.

 7)Why do atheists insists that atheism is a natural font of civil liberty a)when NO society characterised by widespread civil liberty has ever been founded/administred by self-declared atheists b)EVERY society/government ever founded by self-declared atheists has been a repressive thugocracy?

 8)What evidence would persuade you that intelligent causation is the best explanation for the origin of an object? 

One more thing: in as much as some claim that the multiverse can produce men (and depending on whom one ask ubermen) via chance and necessity,can it also in like manner produce Gods? If not, why not?

Yet another dead end in the quest for a plausible human origins Narrative?

 What Are They Teaching at Washington University? S. Joshua Swamidass and the Chimp-Human Divergence

Cornelius G Hunter 

I once had a rare and valuable baseball card I wanted to sell. I placed an ad and was shortly contacted by a collector. But to my dismay he wasn’t interested. He had probably looked at hundreds of baseball cards and it only required one look for him to know that my treasured card held no value for him. He did not attempt any negotiating tricks, just a polite “thank you” and off he went. I would have felt better about the encounter if he had tried to haggle down the price. For I would have had the comfort of knowing my card held at least some value. Instead, there was no price discovery—apparently the card was worthless.

I too am a collector of sorts. And like that baseball card collector I have looked at hundreds of specimens. No matter how unlikely the source or the venue, I will go there and have a look. And in short order, I will know exactly what I am looking at, and if there is any value there. But unlike the baseball card collector, my subject is not something you can touch. What I am interested in are the arguments and evidences for evolution. Ever since Darwin, evolutionists have insisted that their idea is undeniable—beyond all reasonable doubt. I find that complete certainty to be fascinating. So I search, find, analyze and categorize every justification and explanation for that conclusion that I can find.

My goal is to find the strongest, most powerful, such arguments and evidences, and to understand how we can have such certainty. This brings us to S. Joshua Swamidass’s recent article, Evidence and Evolution where Swamidass explains, in typical fashion, that the evidence for evolution is powerful and compelling. Swamidass describes the evidence as stunning. As a professor in the Genomic Medicine Division at Washington University, Swamidass deserves to be listened to. This is definitely a specimen I want to have a look at.

In his article, Swamidass’ focus is human evolution. Evolutionists believe that we humans evolved from a small ape-like creature and that our closest relative on the evolutionary tree is the chimpanzee. The chimpanzee must be our closest relative, they reason, because the chimp’s genome is closest to ours, and according to evolution, genetic mutations are the fuel behind evolutionary change.

The problem with this reasoning is that the chimpanzee is not very similar to humans according to many other measures. There are enormous differences between the two species. Simply put, from an evolutionary perspective the genetic data are not congruent with the other data. Swamidass’ evidence will need to overcome this obvious problem.

But that’s not all.

The basic idea of humans arising via a long series of genetic mutations is, itself, not indicated by the science and unlikely to say the least. Remember, the mutations have to be random. According to evolution, you can’t have mutations occurring for some purpose, such as creating a design. And natural selection doesn’t help—it cannot induce or coax the right mutations to occur. This makes the evolution of even a single protein, let alone humans, statistically impossible. So this is another enormous problem Swamidass’ evidence will need to overcome.

But that’s not all.

The incredible designs in the human body are not the only thing those random mutations have to create—they will also have to create human consciousness. Evolutionists may try to explain consciousness as an “emergent” property that just luckily arose when our brain somehow evolved. Or they may try to explain that consciousness is really no more than an illusion. But these are just more demonstrations of anti realism in evolutionary thought. Evolutionary theory constructs mechanisms and explanations that do not correspond to the real world. So this is another problem Swamidass will need to overcome.

But that’s not all.

In recent decades the genomes of humans and chimps have been determined, and they make no sense on evolution. One of the main problems is that the genes of the two species are almost identical. They are only about 1-2% different and, if you’re an evolutionist, this means you have to believe that the evolution of humans from a small, primitive, ape-like creature was caused by only a tiny modification of the genome.

This goes against everything we have learned about genetics. You can insert far greater genetic changes with far less change arising as a consequence. It makes little sense that tiny genetic changes could cause such enormous design changes to occur. This is yet another problem for Swamidass to overcome.

But that’s not all.

Not only is evolution limited to tiny genetic modifications to create the human, but the majority of those modifications would have had to be of little or no consequence. Here is how a 2005 paper on the chimpanzee-human genome comparisons put it:

In particular, we find that the patterns of evolution in human and chimpanzee protein-coding genes are highly correlated and dominated by the fixation of neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.

The paper is written from an evolutionary perspective, assuming that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor. Given that a priori assumption, they were forced to conclude that most of the mutations affecting protein-coding genes led to “neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.” So not only are evolution’s random mutation resources meager, in terms of both quality and quantity as explained above, but even worse, those mutations mostly led to “neutral and slightly deleterious alleles.” This is no way to evolve the most complex designs in the world and it is yet another problem for Swamidass to overcome.

But that’s not all.

The supposed divergence rate between chimps and humans also has an unexplainable variation towards the ends of most chromosomes. This is another problem that seems to make no sense on evolution, which Swamidass must explain.

But that’s not all.

This supposed divergence rate between chimps and humans also has an unexplainable variation that correlates with chromosomal banding. Again, this makes no sense on evolution. Why should the chimp-human divergence vary with the banding pattern? Evolutionists have only just-so stories to imagine why this would have happened, and it is another problem for Swamidass to address.

But that’s not all.

This supposed divergence rate between chimps and humans is not consistent with the supposed divergence rate between the mouse and rat. The mouse-rat divergence is about an order of magnitude greater than the chimp-human divergence. And yet the mouse and rat are much more similar than the chimp and human. It makes no sense on evolution. In fact, before the rat genome was determined, evolutionists predicted it would be highly similar to the mouse genome. As one paper explained:

Before the launch of the Rat Genome Sequencing Project (RGSP), there was much debate about the overall value of the rat genome sequence and its contribution to the utility of the rat as a model organism. The debate was fuelled by the naive belief that the rat and mouse were so similar morphologically and evolutionarily that the rat sequence would be redundant.

The prediction that the mouse and rat genomes would be highly similar made sense according to evolution. But it was dramatically wrong.

Another approach is to ignore the morphological similarities and reason from the number of generations available to produce the genomic differences between the mouse and rat. The mouse-rat divergence date is estimated by evolutionists to be older than the chimp-human divergence date. Furthermore, the lifespan and generation time for mice and rats are much shorter than for chimps and humans. From this perspective, and given these two effects, one would conclude that the mouse-rat genetic divergence should be much greater—at least two orders of magnitude greater—than the chimp-human genetic divergence. But it isn’t. It is only about one order of magnitude greater.

So either way the mouse-rat comparison does not help to explain things and is another problem for Swamidass to explain.

Swamidass arguments and evidences

The science makes no sense on evolution. If we begin by assuming chimps and humans share a common ancestor, we end up with all kinds of contradictions and failures. So what exactly are Swamidass’ arguments and evidences? How is it that he is so certain? What is it in the data that he finds to be so stunning? And most importantly, how does he resolve the above problems?

Well, he doesn’t.

Astonishingly, Swamidass doesn’t even mention the above problems. It is as though they don’t exist. After some stories and high claims of certainty, here is what Swamidass says:

As predicted by common ancestry, human and chimpanzee genomes are extremely similar (greater than 98% similarity in coding regions), much more similar than we would expect without common descent. Remarkably, just as predicted by the fossil record, humans are about 10 times more genetically similar to chimpanzees than mice are to rats.

First, the high chimp-human genomic similarity was not predicted by common ancestry. No such prediction was made and no such prediction is required by common ancestry. Common ancestry would be just fine with very different levels of similarity than 98-99%. In fact, this high similarity makes no sense on evolution, for several of the reasons given above.

Swamidass’ claim that this evidence is a stunning confirmation of common ancestry is utterly at odds with the science. It is in stark contrast to the scientific facts.

Second, Swamidass’ claim that mouse-rat divergence, compared with the chimp-human divergence, is “just as predicted by the fossil record” is also blatantly false. While evolutionists can always combine various explanatory mechanisms to rationalize just about any comparison, that does not make for stunning evidence that is “just as predicted.”

Finally, the real strength of Swamidass’ argument lies in its metaphysics. The professor states that the chimp-human genome comparison is “much more similar than we would expect without common descent.”

Without common descent?

The evolutionist has just made an unbeatable (and unfalsifiable) argument.

This is not science. Swamidass’ claim about what is and isn’t likely “without common descent” is not open to scientific scrutiny.

Scientists, qua scientists, do not have knowledge of all possible explanations for the origin of life. This is why scientists, qua scientists, make statements about theories, not about the complement of a theory. A scientist cannot know that something is unlikely “without” his theory. That implies knowledge of all other possible theories. And that knowledge does not come from science.

This is the strength of Swamidass’ argument. Notice that with this metaphysical knowledge, all of the scientific problems melt away. No wonder he does not address them. They are inconsequential. At worst, they are simply interesting puzzles. The truth of the matter is already known.

If Swamidass is correct then, yes, of course, the genomic data must be strong evidence for common ancestry. But it all hinges on his metaphysics. This is not about science. It never was.

Cosmic fine-tuning necessary but not sufficient for the Origin of Life?

 Theistic Cosmology and Theistic Evolution — Understanding the Difference

Eric Hedin 

Astronomers have convincingly shown that the laws of nature are sufficient to account for the formation of stars and planetary systems throughout the universe. Given the initial conditions of our universe, as determined from big bang cosmology, and given the values of the fundamental physical parameters and the strengths of the four fundamental forces of nature, scientists can make predictions of the subsequent state of the cosmos that match the essential macroscopic structure found in our universe today. This predictive ability based on nature’s laws lends credence to the validity of our understanding of those laws and the initial conditions that manifested in the beginning. This achievement attests to the remarkable comprehensibility of the universe — how the discoverability of its laws and properties is commensurate with our mental ability to comprehend them.1

Many scientists have written about the remarkable fine-tuning of the laws and initial conditions of our universe that must exist within narrowly defined limits to allow life‘s existence.2,3 Additional research into the particular properties of our galaxy, star, solar system, Earth, and its moon have revealed a comprehensive suite of specific conditions that must have come together for Earth to be able to support life in its various forms over the long course of its history.4

In my book Canceled Science, after discussing many of the finely tuned conditions for life, I ask whether the culmination of fine-tuning that resulted in the existence of Earth could have come about naturally, or would some behind-the-scenes purposeful intervention be necessary? I suggest that the skill and foresight necessary to orchestrate the cosmic beginning so that the Earth eventually formed as part of our solar system seems “compatible with the traditional understanding of God’s attributes of great wisdom and power. Beyond that, we cannot say.”5

Far from Common

The uniqueness of planet Earth is becoming more apparent (see here) as the inventory of extrasolar planets continues to grow without revealing any other planets that could substitute for our home. Estimates of the low probability of obtaining all the features of the Earth-moon-Sun system required for maintaining livable conditions over the years do not necessarily point to any violations of the laws of physics in its formation, but all we are learning suggests that our congenial environment is far from common. 

The concept of theistic cosmology does not seem necessary to explain Earth and its solar environment, since the outcome in view is not physically impossible, albeit unlikely. How is this different from the concept of theistic evolution? The difference is that the outcome needed to be explained by evolution — life with all its millions of species culminating in humans — is not known to be compatible with the established laws of physics.6

One argument in support of this contention deals with predictability. Starting with the initial conditions of our universe and the specific values of the forces of nature, the laws of physics would not lead to a prediction of the origin of life as we know it.7 This argument grows even stronger when we consider that our uniform and repeated experience with the laws of nature demands that on the whole, entropy will increase and specified complexity will decrease with the passage of time. Neither of these universal principles of nature is consistent with a natural origin of life.

Theistic evolution or evolutionary creationism8 maintains that evolution is a done deal but that God’s behind the scenes influence was necessary to bring about the full panoply of life, including humans, that we have today. If, however, God’s guiding hand worked throughout history in the development of every species of life, as scientific observers, we would perceive not the hand of God, but a law of nature at work. The concept of the evolution of all life from a common ancestor, if attributed either to a law of nature or a natural process guided by God, is at odds with our most fundamental understanding of how nature works.9 In our study of science, we have found that the laws of nature do not contradict one another. We don’t have laws of nature that only apply piecemeal. 

Deep Levels of Design

What alternative view could explain the deep levels of design that appear in all life on Earth? If God didn’t redirect a law of nature to act contrary to nature, how should we explain the historically increasing complexity and diversity of life on Earth? My respect as a physicist for the laws of nature doesn’t preclude my acceptance of intelligent beings like us manipulating matter and energy to bring about outcomes that would never occur naturally. In like manner, extrapolating this everyday experience, neither science nor theology precludes us from accepting that God manipulated nature as often as desired to introduce various species of life and to maintain Earth’s habitability.

Neither does the frequency of intervention disparage the source of the agency. We admire an architectural and construction firm that designs and builds a beautiful home for us to live in. Would it be reasonable for someone to criticize the firm because the house didn’t also prepare dinner for its occupants every night? I suppose a house could be built that did so, but would it be desirable? Choosing a menu, selecting ingredients, and working to prepare dinner is something my wife and I enjoy doing together (although sometimes, when we’re tired after a long day of work, a “home-cooked” meal might be nice!). 

Perhaps in a similar manner, the laws of physics that limit what outcomes can occur naturally in our universe provide us with the pleasure and discipline of creative work. As I mentioned in an earlier article, “Is Life an Information Ratchet?,” gravity may cause a landslide to build up a pile of rocks at the bottom of a hill, but it will never make a castle. The laws that limit natural outcomes not only provide opportunities for us to manipulate material for our purposes, but their limitations also required God’s interventions to produce life by manipulating atoms into living organisms (however exactly that may have been accomplished).

Science and Experience

A reason for advocating this view is that it fully comports with our science and experience. It’s a juggler’s nightmare to assert that a law of nature is only valid except when it’s not valid. Rearrangements of physical matter into forms that would never occur naturally (such as the arrangement of the atoms that form my car) don’t constitute a violation of any law of nature if we acknowledge the immaterial intelligence and will of the human agent. The same principle applies when acknowledging God as the intelligent, non-contingent being who intervenes in nature to bring about the unnatural outcome of life in all its myriad forms.

NOTES

Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt, A Meaningful World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006).

Stephen C. Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe (New York: HarperCollins, 2021).

Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity’s Home (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2016).

Eric Hedin, Canceled Science: What Some Atheists Don’t Want You to See (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2021), 139.

The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos, William A. Dembski, Casey Luskin, Joseph M. Holden, Editors (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2021).

Gerald L. Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (New York: Touchstone, 2001), 58.

https://biologos.org/common-questions/what-is-evolutionary-creation .

Jay Richards, “Is Theistic Evolution a Viable Option for Christians?”, Ch. 39 in The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos, William A. Dembski, Casey Luskin, Joseph M. Holden, Editors (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2021).

Putting the ghost in the machine?

 All We Need to Do to Give a Robot a Soul Is… (Error 404)

Denyse O'Leary 

Academic publisher Taylor & Francis asks in TechXplore, “Should robots be given a conscience?” I give away no spoilers by revealing that we are meant to think that that is both doable and desirable.

T & F is publishing Eve Poole’s Robot Souls later this year. Poole is a British writer and academic, and author of Capitalism’s Toxic Assumptions, Buying God, and Leadersmithing.

Her Thesis is that, in our quest for the most functional software, we left out the “junk,” which includes our “emotions, free will and a sense of purpose”:

Our junk code consists of human emotions, our propensity for mistakes, our inclination to tell stories, our uncanny sixth sense, our capacity to cope with uncertainty, an unshakeable sense of our own free will, and our ability to see meaning in the world around us.

She proposes “Giving them to all intents and purposes a soul.”

Very well. But how? T & F tells us:

In the new book, Poole suggests a series of next steps to make this a reality, including agreeing [on] a rigorous regulation process, and an immediate ban on autonomous weapons along with a licensing regime with rules that reserve any final decision over the life and death of a human to a fellow human.

She argues we should also agree [on] the criteria for legal personhood and a road map for Al towards it.

Insert Here…But How?

Okay. Setting aside the fact that we live in a world where Russia, China, and North Korea would not likely heed any such demands, bans, or criteria, how exactly does all this get us toward a soul? In reality, programmers don’t leave souls out of robots because they don’t find them useful; they simply and obviously have no idea how to insert them.

Actually, we have only one way of producing new human souls (ahem) and those souls animate only humans. But then does Poole even believe in a “soul” in any meaningful traditional sense?

The traditional model of the soul is that it is the (immortal) rational and moral part of a human being. Yet the publisher’s comments make clear that we are talking about inserting irrational elements into machines: “But on considering why all these irrational properties are there, it seems that they emerge from the source code of soul. Because it is actually this ‘junk’ code that makes us human and promotes the kind of reciprocal altruism that keeps humanity alive and thriving.”

Reviewer David J. Gunkel of Northern Illinois University assesses Poole’s project as “an innovative conceptualization of soul as the messy but necessary ‘junk code’ of consciousness.”

Blue-Sky Talk About Robots

So this proposal is part theory of consciousness and part blue-sky talk about what robots will be able to do one day. If there are specific formulas for making a robotic soul, we are given no hint so far.

There is already a large literature on the topic of conscious AI, bound by one common thread: We don’t have any idea what consciousness is but we are pretty sure we can endow robots with it anyway. 

To take but one example of thousands, neuroscientist Ryota Kanai, founder and CEO of Tokyo-based startup Araya, has said, “If we consider introspection and imagination as two of the ingredients of consciousness, perhaps even the main ones, it is inevitable that we [will] eventually conjure up a conscious AI, because those functions are so clearly useful to any machine.”

Yes, and it would be “clearly useful” for a dog to learn the pass codes by which humans operate his kennel doors. But it hardly follows that he can. He doesn’t and can’t know what he would need to learn. Perhaps we could say the same for the project of inserting human consciousness (a soul?) into a machine.

An article in The Economist back in 2017 meandered around in this Hard Problem of Consciousness for a while, eventually concluding that “The nub of the hard problem, then, is to make this ineffability effable.”

Um, okay… That’s as clear a prescription for giving a machine a soul as we are likely to get.