Chance and necessity of the gaps.

Alister McGrath Mistakes Intelligent Design for a God-of-the-Gaps Argument

Casey Luskin October 15, 2014 11:04 AM 

BioLogos's concluding article in its series responding to Darwin's Doubt is by theologian and philosopher Alister McGrath, recently installed as the Andreas Idreos Professor at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford. I'm a fan of much of McGrath's writings, but when it comes to intelligent design, there are problems. He has made a long series of inaccurate chargesthat ID is a "God of the gaps" argument. Oddly, McGrath's piece at BioLogos isn't about Darwin's Doubt at all. In fact, it doesn't mention intelligent design. Rather, it's a transcript from a talk he gave, and someone apparently added the title, "Big Picture or Big Gaps? Why Natural Theology is Better than Intelligent Design," to the speech. However BioLogos evidently intends McGrath's piece as a response to intelligent design, so I'll treat the criticisms there accordingly.

McGrath frames his critique as follows:

My own approach is not to retreat into explanatory gaps. There are those who say (and perhaps I caricature or mis-say what they say), "Well, you know, science can't explain that. But if there were a god, he could. Therefore, what science can't explain -- that is a good reason for believing in God." And part of me wants to say, "Yes!" to that. But part of me also wants to say, well, this is not a very good idea, and leaves us bereft of the richness of a vision of God. It kind of implies that you believe in God because of the tiny little holes in somebody else's explanation, which you think you can explain better in brackets -- at least for the time being. For me, it's not about saying, "Oh look! There's a gap there, and that's where God comes in!" No, no, no, it's about the big picture. That is what makes us think that the Christian faith makes sense of things.

Before we get into this discussion too much, it's helpful to understand what an early "coiner" of the phrase "God of the gaps," Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote in defining the concept:

...[H]ow wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved.

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, May 30, 1944, Letters and Papers from Prison, edited by Eberhard Bethge, translated by Reginald H. Fuller, Touchstone, 1997.)

By that measure, intelligent design is not in fact a "God of the gaps" argument! I first encountered this comment from Bonhoeffer in Douglas Ell's book Counting to God, which rightly praised Bonhoeffer's reasonable argument. ID does not find God, or evidence of design by any intelligent being, in "what we don't know" but rather "in what we know." The design inference is fundamentally grounded in our experience-based observations that high levels of complex and specified (CSI) information come only from intelligence. We find evidence for design in what we know about the causes of new information. Intelligent design is a solution to the question of the origin of information.

Well, what if ID were a "gaps"-based argument? What might it look like? Something like this:

To put it another way, a gaps-based argument for design would say, "Natural selection and random mutation cannot produce new information, therefore intelligent design is correct."

But there's a big and crucial difference between that argument and the actual case for intelligent design made by ID proponents. An actual argument for intelligent design might be logically portrayed as follows:

In other words, "Natural selection and random mutation cannot produce new information. Intelligent agency, uniquely in our experience, can produce new information. Therefore intelligent design is the better explanation for the information we see in life." This is not a gaps-based argument. Rather, it's a positive argument for design, based upon finding in nature the type of information that in our experience only comes from intelligence. Stephen Meyer frames the basic logic of the positive argument this way in Darwin's Doubt (p. 351):

Major premise: If intelligent design played a role in the Cambrian explosion, then feature (X) known to be produced by intelligent activity would be expected as a matter of course.

Minor premise: Feature (X) is observed in the Cambrian explosion of animal life.

Conclusion: Hence, there is reason to suspect that an intelligent cause played a role in the Cambrian explosion.

You'd never find that in a "gaps-based" argument, and thus, there's a big difference between ID and a "God of the gaps" argument because ID has the necessary positive argument -- that intelligence causes high produce CSI -- which remove ID from being a "gaps-based" argument.

McGrath's Odd Formulation of a "Gaps-Based" Argument

McGrath describes a "gaps-based" argument a bit differently from the classical formulation. In the classical criticism, "god" has no positive explanatory value whatsoever, other than to fill in and make up for the failure of some scientific explanation. But McGrath is attacking a slightly different formulation, which, in his description, says "science can't explain that. But if there were a god, he could." In saying that a "god ... could" explain something, McGrath apparently tries to add a positive component to what he still labels a "gaps-based" argument." Adding the "god ... could" component, changes the dynamic of the case. Now, McGrath is no longer attacking a strictly negative "gaps-based" argument with no explanatory value. Instead he is attacking an argument with some positive explanatory value (though the mere addition of the word "could" doesn't give us much in the way of positive explanatory value). Is McGrath necessarily justified in rejecting this sort of "gaps-based" argument?

No, not necessarily. Given that BioLogos frames McGrath's article as a broadside against Meyer's arguments for intelligent design, let's say that he's rejecting the following argument: "Science can't explain that. But intelligent agency could. Therefore, what science can't explain -- that is a good reason for believing in intelligent design." This argument, which I am not making, dramatically understates the explanatory power of intelligent design. But insofar as it does resemble the argument for ID, McGrath is unjustified in rejecting it. Here's why.

McGrath dramatically understates the explanatory power of intelligent design. In Darwin's Doubt, Stephen Meyer doesn't just say that intelligent design "could" explain the information in life, but he describes many specific properties of life and the Cambrian explosion which require an explanation that could only be intelligent design. Meyer looks at both the nature of the Cambrian animals themselves, and the nature of their appearance in the fossil record, and finds a whole array of specific features which are only explained by intelligent design. Specifically, Meyer finds that "the cause of the origin of the new animal forms in the Cambrian explosion must be capable of:

• "generating new form rapidly
• generating a top-down pattern of appearance
• constructing, not merely modifying, complex integrated circuits" (p. 357)

He goes on to say that "any explanation for the origin of the Cambrian animals must identify a cause capable of generating:

• "digital information
• structural (epigenetic) information
• functionally integrated and hierarchically organized layers of Information" (p. 358)

Let's see how Meyer provides positive evidence showing that intelligent agents produce those features:

Generating New Form Rapidly:

Intelligent agents have foresight. Such agents can determine or select functional goals before they are physically instantiated. They can devise or select material means to accomplish those ends from among an array of possibilities. They can then actualize those goals in accord with a preconceived design plan or set of functional requirements. Rational agents can constrain combinatorial space with distant information-rich outcomes in mind. (pp. 362-363)

Intelligent agents sometimes produce material entities through a series of gradual modifications (as when a sculptor shapes a sculpture over time). Nevertheless, intelligent agents also have the capacity to introduce complex technological systems into the world fully formed. Often such systems bear no resemblance to earlier technological systems -- their invention occurs without a material connection to earlier, more rudimentary technologies. When the radio was first invented, it was unlike anything that had come before, even other forms of communication technology. For this reason, although intelligent agents need not generate novel structures abruptly, they can do so. Thus, invoking the activity of a mind provides a causally adequate explanation for the pattern of abrupt appearance in the Cambrian fossil record. (pp. 373, 375)

Generating a Top-down Pattern of Appearance:

"Top-down" causation begins with a basic architecture, blueprint, or plan and then proceeds to assemble parts in accord with it. The blueprint stands causally prior to the assembly and arrangement of the parts. But where could such a blueprint come from? One possibility involves a mental mode of causation. Intelligent agents often conceive of plans prior to their material instantiation -- that is, the preconceived design of a blueprint often precedes the assembly of parts in accord with it. An observer touring the parts section of a General Motors plant will see no direct evidence of a prior blueprint for GM's new models, but will perceive the basic design plan immediately upon observing the finished product at the end of the assembly line. Designed systems, whether automobiles, airplanes, or computers, invariably manifest a design plan that preceded their first material instantiation. But the parts do not generate the whole. Rather, an idea of the whole directed the assembly of the parts. (pp. 371-372)

Constructing, Not Merely Modifying, Complex Integrated Circuits:

Integrated circuits in electronics are systems of individually functional components such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors that are connected together to perform an overarching function. ... [I]n our experience, complex integrated circuits -- and the functional integration of parts in complex systems generally -- are known to be produced by intelligent agents -- specifically, by engineers. Moreover, intelligence is the only known cause of such effects. Since developing animals employ a form of integrated circuitry, and certainly one manifesting a tightly and functionally integrated system of parts and subsystems, and since intelligence is the only known cause of these features, the necessary presence of these features in developing Cambrian animals would seem to indicate that intelligent agency played a role in their origin. (p. 364)

Generating New Digital Information:

Intelligent agents, due to their rationality and consciousness, have demonstrated the power to produce specified or functional information in the form of linear sequence-specific arrangements of characters. Digital and alphabetic forms of information routinely arise from intelligent agents. A computer user who traces the information on a screen back to its source invariably comes to a mind -- a software engineer or programmer. The information in a book or inscription ultimately derives from a writer or scribe. Our experience-based knowledge of information flow confirms that systems with large amounts of specified or functional information invariably originate from an intelligent source. The generation of functional information is "habitually associated with conscious activity." Our uniform experience confirms this obvious truth. (p. 360)

Rational agents can arrange both matter and symbols with distant goals in mind. They also routinely solve problems of combinatorial inflation. In using language, the human mind routinely "finds" or generates highly improbable linguistic sequences to convey an intended or preconceived idea. In the process of thought, functional objectives precede and constrain the selection of words, sounds, and symbols to generate functional (and meaningful) sequences from a vast ensemble of meaningless alternative possible combinations of sound or symbol. Similarly, the construction of complex technological objects and products, such as bridges, circuit boards, engines, and software, results from the application of goal-directed constraints. Indeed, in all functionally integrated complex systems where the cause is known by experience or observation, designing engineers or other intelligent agents applied constraints on the possible arrangements of matter to limit possibilities in order to produce improbable forms, sequences, or structures. Rational agents have repeatedly demonstrated the capacity to constrain possible outcomes to actualize improbable but initially unrealized future functions. Repeated experience affirms that intelligent agents (minds) uniquely possess such causal powers. (p. 362)

Generating New Structural (Epigenetic) Information and Constructing Functionally Integrated and Hierarchically Organized Layers of Information:

After noting that "the role of epigenetic information provides just one of many examples of the hierarchical arrangement (or layering) of information-rich structures, systems, and molecules within animals," Meyer writes:

The highly specified, tightly integrated, hierarchical arrangements of molecular components and systems within animal body plans also suggest intelligent design. This is, again, because of our experience with the features and systems that intelligent agents -- and only intelligent agents -- produce. Indeed, based on our experience, we know that intelligent human agents have the capacity to generate complex and functionally specified arrangements of matter -- that is, to generate specified complexity or specified information. Further, human agents often design information-rich hierarchies, in which both individual modules and the arrangement of those modules exhibit complexity and specificity -- specified information as defined in Chapter 8. Individual transistors, resistors, and capacitors in an integrated circuit exhibit considerable complexity and specificity of design. Yet at a higher level of organization, the specific arrangement and connection of these components within an integrated circuit requires additional information and reflects further design.

Conscious and rational agents have, as part of their powers of purposive intelligence, the capacity to design information-rich parts and to organize those parts into functional information- rich systems and hierarchies. (p. 366)

Meyer concludes that "both the Cambrian animal forms themselves and their pattern of appearance in the fossil record exhibit precisely those features that we should expect to see if an intelligent cause had acted to produce them" (p. 379) He sums his positive argument as follows:

When we encounter objects that manifest any of the key features present in the Cambrian animals, or events that exhibit the patterns present in the Cambrian fossil record, and we know how these features and patterns arose, invariably we find that intelligent design played a causal role in their origin. Thus, when we encounter these same features in the Cambrian event, we may infer -- based upon established cause-and-effect relationships and uniformitarian principles -- that the same kind of cause operated in the history of life. In other words, intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate explanation for the origin of information and circuitry necessary to build the Cambrian animals. It also provides the best explanation for the top- down, explosive, and discontinuous pattern of appearance of the Cambrian animals in the fossil record. (p. 381)

Thus we see that Meyer identifies a large breadth of features in both biology and the fossil record that are positively and uniquely explained by intelligence. ID is not the arbitrary filling of a gap. There are specific positive reasons for inferring design, based upon our observations of intelligent agents and their products. We use those observations to generate expectations and predictions about what we should find if an intelligent agent was at work in the natural world. When we find those features in the natural world, and conclude that no other natural cause can explain then, we justifiably infer design. This makes ID the opposite of a "gaps-based" argument, because we're finding in nature specific features which we know from observation only come from intelligence. The argument has a strong positive component, and without that strong positive argument, we cannot infer design.

After seeing all of the features of the Cambrian animals and their pattern of appearance in the fossil record that intelligent design predicts and explains, it's very difficult to accept BioLogos's and McGrath's suggestion that Meyer's extensive positive argument for design is a "God of the gaps."

Materialism of the Gaps

So why, despite ID's vast positive explanatory power, does McGrath dismiss ID as an argument based on "gaps"? Because his unwavering default position is to look exclusively to unguided material causes. He assumes methodological naturalism, and privileges material explanations in all circumstances regardless of their explanatory power. In McGrath's view, even if intelligent design has vast explanatory power, we should still not infer it, because we're filling a "gap" that ought to be filled by material causes.

In subjecting the scientific enterprise to methodological naturalism (MN), McGrath would force ID to operate under the presumption that natural causes always take precedence, regardless of whether they otherwise seem to fail. This itself is a "gaps-based" argument. McGrath assumes that material causes will eventually fill all the relevant gaps. This is not a real search for the best explanation. It's a search for the best explanation, provided that the explanation is naturalistic. It's materialism of the gaps.

ID changes our paradigm, and ID advocates take a different approach. We don't prejudge the scientific evidence, force-fitting it into the mold of methodological naturalism. Rather, using the principle of uniformitarianism, we make an "inference to the best explanation" -- even if that explanation is non-material. If natural causes are the "best explanation" than we appeal to natural causes. If intelligent causes are the "best explanation" then so be it.

This is sound scientific reasoning. I think that Meyer's inference to design in Darwin's Doubt would win Dietrich Bonhoeffer's approval.

Why I don't doubt Jehovah's promise of eternal life.

The players change but the game goes on.

Is universal common descent up a tree?

Another Look at the Latest Blow to the Darwinian Tree of Life, and the Man Who Dealt It

Evolution News & Views July 3, 2012 2:41 PM

How many times can evolutionists say everything they know is wrong before people start to really believe it?

As Casey Luskin noted here earlier, a news article in Nature tells the tree-shaking story of Kevin Peterson. This whole subject is so delightful it deserves another look.

A molecular paleobiologist at Dartmouth, Peterson never set out to disturb fellow believers in Darwinian theory. He just thought he would try a new method for constructing phylogenetic trees: tracking relationships via micro-RNAs. Peterson thought micro-RNAs would be a good marker of evolutionary relationships:

MicroRNAs, Peterson and [colleague Lorenzo] Sempere discovered, are unlike any of the other molecular metrics that biologists typically use to tease apart evolutionary relationships. DNA binding sites, for example, continuously mutate; microRNAs, by contrast, are either there or they aren't, so their interpretation doesn't require such complex sequence and alignment analyses. And once gained, microRNAs usually remain functional, which means that their signal stays intact for hundreds of millions of years.

But when Peterson tested the conventional Darwinian tree of life for rotifers, his tree didn't match the conventional one. That was only the beginning. He found tree rot all over:

But a chance investigation of microRNAs in microscopic creatures called rotifers led him to examine these regulatory molecules in everything from insects to sea urchins. And as he continues to look, he keeps uncovering problems, from the base of the animal tree all the way up to its crown.

Peterson's observations, first published in a minor journal but now getting notice in Nature andScience, are winning him some vocal critics, but mostly reluctant supporters. His work on the family tree of placental mammals will be his latest unsettling contribution. Peterson had decided to lay it all on the line by testing the family tree of mammals. "We're mammals, so this matters," he said. Sure enough, problems are surfacing there, too.

The data's refusal to cooperate with other Darwinian phylogenies has left Peterson "up a tree," asNature writer Elie Dolgin quips: "At first, Peterson was shocked by his results, which still haven't been published. But he has spent the past year validating his tree with gene-expression libraries and genomic sequences, all of which he says support his findings." He's being extra careful, because "If we get this wrong, all faith that anyone has in microRNAs [for phylogenetics] will be lost," his colleague Philip Donoghue, a palaeobiologist at the University of Bristol, said. "It could well be the end of all our careers."

The reactions of other scientists have been entertaining:

• "One of the reviewers said it was impossible, what we were describing," Peterson said.
• "He's talking about the entire genome that has to be wrong."
• "I don't give it any serious consideration. There have to be other explanations."
• "What we know at this stage is that we do have a very serious incongruence. It looks like either the mammal microRNAs evolved in a totally different way or the traditional topology is wrong. We don't know yet."

Stirring controversy was not Peterson's intention. Dolgin describes him as a "mild-mannered but straight-talking Montanan" who "didn't set out to rewrite textbooks."

For now, he's trying to amass the best evidence he can before publishing the mammal study. Then he wants to return to the quiet life of an ancient-invertebrate biologist. But if Peterson's voyage upends the mammalian phylogeny, he'll have left a furry mess in his wake.

Why is this so surprising to anyone? In fact, it's old news. Since the first molecular studies with proteins like cytochrome C and other molecules, neo-Darwinists have repeatedly generated trees that conflict with each other depending on the marker used. Over and over, they have had to explain away these observations. There is so much wiggle room in the methods that some have invoked epicycle-style fudge factors like "rate heterogeneity" (molecular clocks ticking at different rates) to keep the data in sync with the theory.

This is a classic example of theory directing data, instead of the other way around -- a form of theplaustrum ante equum (cart before the horse) fallacy. The fallacy becomes evident when different practitioners with the same theory generate contradictory data sets and have to invoke fudge factors to avoid changing their assumptions. You notice that Nature titled its article "Phylogeny: Rewriting evolution," not "Phylogeny: Falsifying evolution."

Trying to play the unbiased scientist, Peterson said, "Ultimately, I don't really care how mammals are related to one another -- it doesn't matter to me. But what does matter is the validity of the data set." That's a commendable attitude, but would he be equally comfortable questioning neo-Darwinian theory itself?

Intelligent-design advocates are unsurprised by any of this, because their focus is on the origins of functional information, not unobservable prehistories imagined by assuming that a universal common ancestor gave birth to a family tree via random mutation and natural selection. Design theorists also believe in following the evidence where it leads.

Just a name? II

On irreducible complexity and oversimplification.

Has Ken Miller Refuted Irreducible Complexity with a Tie Clip?

Michael Flannery October 6, 2014 4:53 AM |

At a recent meeting of the student apologetics group Ratio Christi an acquaintance suggested to me that biologist Ken Miller's use of a mousetrap as a tie clip -- with the catch and the hold-down bar removed -- was somewhat cheesy but had "made its point." Really?

What exactly was Ken Miller's point? Well, the idea is that Miller's tie clip purportedly demonstrates that Michael Behe's example of the mouse trap as an irreducibly complex (IR) apparatus (comparable in this respect to the bacterial flagellum with its own IR design) fails by a simple analogy. In other words, what we see now as a complete bacterial flagellum might well have served a different function in an earlier form. The degree to which this kind of theatrics has lodged itself in the public mind as a "refutation" of IR caught me by surprise, especially because it came from someone from whom I would have least expected it.

My first inclination was to respond, "The tie clip demonstration doesn't address the essential point, namely, that ALL parts of the mouse trap are necessary to make it function as intended. Now if by removing a part of the mouse trap the mechanism could still function in the same capacity, then I think a valid point would be made. But Behe's whole point is that ALL parts of the mouse trap are needed to function as a mouse trap."

My off-the-cuff answer is valid, I think, but it seemed to me a simpler explanation was likely available. So I e-mailed some friends for their thoughts, and to my satisfaction a great many responses poured in. I will paraphrase the two best, which can be posed as plain rhetorical questions, as follows. First, did the tie clip spontaneously assemble or did it require some intentional, purposeful design? Second, could the selective pressures that led the tie clip to morph into an apparatus for catching mice be explained?

Those simple questions show Miller's complete misunderstanding of IR and ID. Behe has addressed this directly himself (for the complete chapter go here):

Finally, rather than showing how their theory could handle the obstacle, some Darwinists are hoping to get around irreducible complexity by verbal tap dancing. At a debate between proponents and opponents of intelligent design sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History in April 2002, Kenneth Miller actually claimed (the transcript is available at the website of the National Center for Science Education) that a mousetrap isn't irreducibly complex because subsets of a mousetrap, and even each individual part, could still "function" on their own. The holding bar of a mousetrap, Miller observed, could be used as a toothpick, so it still had a "function" outside the mousetrap. Any of the parts of the trap could be used as a paperweight, he continued, so they all had "functions." And since any object that has mass can be a paperweight, then any part of anything has a function of its own. Presto, there is no such thing as irreducible complexity! Thus the acute problem for gradualism that any child can see in systems like the mousetrap is smoothly explained away.

Of course the facile explanation rests on a transparent fallacy, a brazen equivocation. Miller uses the word "function" in two different senses. Recall that the definition of irreducible complexity notes that removal of a part "causes the system to effectively cease functioning." Without saying so, in his exposition Miller shifts the focus from the separate function of the intact system itself to the question of whether we can find a different use (or "function") for some of the parts. However, if one removes a part from the mousetrap I pictured, it can no longer catch mice. The system has indeed effectively ceased functioning, so the system is irreducibly complex, just as I had written. What's more, the functions that Miller glibly assigns to the parts -- paperweight, toothpick, key chain, [tie clip,] etc. -- have little or nothing to do with the function of the system of catching mice (unlike the mousetrap series proposed by John McDonald, discussed below), so they give us no clue as to how the system's function could arise gradually. Miller explained precisely nothing.

With the problem of the mousetrap behind him, Miller moved on to the bacterial flagellum -- and again resorted to the same fallacy. If nothing else, one has to admire the breathtaking audacity of verbally trying to turn another severe problem for Darwinism into an advantage. In recent years it has been shown that the bacterial flagellum is an even more sophisticated system than had been thought. Not only does it act as a rotary propulsion device, it also contains within itself an elegant mechanism to transport the proteins that make up the outer portion of the machine, from the inside of the cell to the outside. (Aizawa 1996) Without blinking, Miller asserted that the flagellum is not irreducibly complex because some proteins of the flagellum could be missing and the remainder could still transport proteins, perhaps independently. (Proteins similar -- but not identical -- to some found in the flagellum occur in the type III secretory system of some bacteria. See Hueck 1998.) Again he was equivocating, switching the focus from the function of the system to act as a rotary propulsion machine to the ability of a subset of the system to transport proteins across a membrane. However, taking away the parts of the flagellum certainly destroys the ability of the system to act as a rotary propulsion machine, as I have argued. Thus, contra Miller, the flagellum is indeed irreducibly complex. What's more, the function of transporting proteins has as little directly to do with the function of rotary propulsion as a toothpick has to do with a mousetrap. So discovering the supportive function of transporting proteins tells us precisely nothing about how Darwinian processes might have put together a rotary propulsion machine.

I suppose what disturbs me most is how Miller gets away with such shenanigans. When antics replace analysis and stunts substitute for serious discussion, the only purpose served is the expansion of Miller's calendar of speaking engagements and his honoraria.

Seeking straight answers from 'KJV onlyists'

KJV and the Only Personal Name of God 

This was written primarily for those who believe the King James Version is the infallible, perfect word of God (and for those who wish to discuss it with them).

There are numerous problems with the accuracy of the KJVtranslation. For examples see the 1 John 5:7 study, and 1 Tim. 3:16 in the MINOR study. 

This study however will concentrate on Ps. 83:18 in the KJVand the actual personal name of God.

1. The Hebrew text used by the King James translators is known as the Bomberg (or the Ben Chayyim) text. It may be found here online:

http://pastorpauley.com/ancient/masoretic.pdf (The Hebrew text used for Ps. 83:18 as found in most Bibles is found on p. 833 of this text and is numbered as 83:19.)

2. This text used by the KJV translators contains the name YHWH (יהוה Strong's H3068) in Hebrew characters thousand of times.

3. The Most High God declares that his name is YHWH manytimes in this text.

4. The KJV translators translated this name as ‘LORD’ (all-capitals) in nearly all of its thousands of occurrences in the Bomberg text.

5. In several places, however, these translators rendered it as ‘Jehovah.’

6. Probably the most important of these is found at Psalm 83:18 in the KJV (which is actually Ps. 83:19 in the Bomberg text).

7. Here is how Ps. 83:16-18 reads in the KJV:

“16 Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O LORD.

“17 Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish:

“18 That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.” (Boldfacing added)

8. Notice how the name YHWH in the Hebrew texts (including the Bomberg text used by the KJV translators) as found in verse :16 (:17 in the Bomberg text) is translated in the KJV: “LORD.”

9. The actual word in Hebrew used for “Lord” and applied to God is “adonai” (ADNI in Hebrew characters). YHWH is an entirely different word, a personal name which means something like “He Will Be.” It is the only personal name that God tells us to use for him. And this is exactly what the ‘infallible’ KJV tells us in verse :18 (:19) - “…thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.” 

10. Those who believe the KJV is entirely accurate mustbelieve that ‘Jehovah’ is the only name for the Most High God. There should be no argument by them that it is mistranslated, mispronounced or should be ‘Yahweh’ or similar transliterations. 

11. More important, it becomes obvious that the usual translation of YHWH in the KJV as ‘LORD’ (ADNI in Hebrew) is a serious mistranslation! OR, the translation of YHWH as JEHOVAH in several verses is a serious mistranslation! Either way, the KJV has seriously mistranslated and is certainly not infallible.

12. Although still not infallible, the American Standard Version(ASV) uses the KJV’s Elizabethan English but has corrected the thousands of uses of YHWH in the Hebrew text from the ‘LORD’ of most of the KJV verses to ‘Jehovah.’ The Divine Name KJB has done the same - http://www.dnkjb.net/ 

13. How can we possibly consider the KJV to be infallible (or even the best Bible available)?

Are some more human than others?

But Tantalus, are you saying there are individuals who have more humanity than others?!"

Michael Egnor January 29, 2011 8:02 AM |

Tantalus Prime and I have had a discussion about the moral status of abortion and the scientific status of the human embryo (shorthand for human zygote/embryo/fetus).

Tantalus has expended quite a bit of effort to deny that human embryos are human beings. My recent post pointed out the absurdity of asserting that human embryos are anything but human beings. And I asked Tantalus this question:

What is a human embryo?

My question is a scientific question, not a moral question (yet). The assertion that human embryos aren't human beings leads to all sorts of scientific nonsense. For example, if human embryos aren't human beings but rather, say, a part of the mother's body, then in each gestation a genuine human being arises spontaneously at some point from the mother's body, like budding. This is of course biological nonsense. The only biologically coherent understanding is that a human embryo is a human being (a homo sapien).

Why would a scientifically literate person (Tantalus appears to be a neuroscientist of some sort) deny the obvious biological fact that human embryos are human beings? For ideological reasons, of course. Recognition of the humanity of unborn children is anathema to supporters of abortion. Dehumanization of children in the womb makes abortion easier to accept morally.

Tantalus, in an effort to circumvent the biological fact that a human embryo is a human being, engages in a bit of deconstruction:

Mr. Egnor has asked me a single question: What is a human embryo? Now, I must stop there because this is really two questions. The first is "What is an embryo?" I hope we can safely set aside the question of what an embryo is. Let's say a group of two or more dividing cells that, in placental mammals, is between the zygotic and fetal stages. I don't believe it is the question Mr. Egnor wants answered though. That means there is something about that dangling modifier "human". That would make the second question "What is a human?" Now, perhaps I am wrong, but I believe this is the key question Mr. Egnor wants answered. If that is the question to be answered, why not simply ask that question outright? Only Mr. Egnor knows why. So let me try rephrasing the question to better capture what I believe is being asked. "Is an embryo human?" That, is better, but I'm fairly certain that embryos associated with other animals aren't to be included, only those embryos undergoing gestation in an adult female of the species Homo sapien, commonly referred to as human. So lets use the word human in its common form to distinguish what class of embryos we are discussing. "Is a human embryo human?"

Well, this can't be right. Instead of trying to prove the unborn is fully human, such a question simply assumes the proof is true. This logical fallacy is called, of course, "begging the question". I'm sure such an outcome was unintentional.

I didn't ask a linguistic question, or a rhetorical question, or a logical question. I merely asked a biological question. If I were to show Tantalus a human embryo, and ask him "what is this", meaning in a biological taxonomy sense, the only correct answer is that it is a human being- a homo sapien. There is no debate about this. It is analogous to showing Tantalus my dog, and asking him what this is, in a biological-taxonomy sense. There is only one answer: Canis lupus familiaris. A domestic dog. That's it. It's not a cat or a tree. There's no debate. There are no opinions, only correct answers and incorrect answers. Failure to answer correctly is evidence of ignorance or dishonesty.

Tantalus:

Now, some will say that I have significantly altered the question. I disagree based on the potential answers offered (especially answer 5 [i.e. a human embryo is a human being])."

Tantalus admits basing his scientific opinion on the philosophical and ethical implications of the science. He admits misrepresenting the science in order to protect his ideological presuppositions. Why can't he just acknowledge the science-- a human embryo is a human being-- which is uncontroversial, and then contemplate the philosophical implications of accurate science?

Tantalus next raises a series of casuistic objections to defining a human embryo as a human being:

1) Monozygotic twins - Identical twins (or triplets, etc.) arise from a single fertilization event but result in two individuals. Since life begins at fertilization and the separation resulting in twins occurs after this, this must mean that one of the twins did not arise from fertilization and is therefore not human. No doubt such a conclusion makes people uneasy. To resolve this dilemma there are a few solutions. One could concede that fertilization is not the starting point of life. Alternatively, one could maintain that fertilization does give rise to multiple lives in the sense that each cell division creates another potential life. This creates the greater problem of reconciling the fact that each adult human is made up of billions of potential lives. In fact, one could scrape one's cheek with a swab and remove several cells with the potential for life with the express intent of preventing them from reaching such potential. In fact, I just did so and, by the rationale above, performed an abortion. Of course this is ridiculous but it is the logical conclusion using the stated definitions. One potential work around is to claim that fertilization gives rise to multiple lives but that these potential lives lose their potential after a set period of time, let's say after the first six cycles of division. This of course raises even greater problems. Where did the lives go to? Were they the unfortunate victim of spontaneous abortion (aka miscarriage)? If a drug were available that would suppress the the development of monozygotic twins (not a drug that leads to the induced abortion of one but that only suppresses the splitting of one zygote into two) then wouldn't such a drug be morally equivalent to abortion? Alternatively, if possible, wouldn't forcing split eggs back together also be morally equivalent to abortion?

Twinning raises no problems for the taxonomical classification of an embryo as a member of its species. The fact that a human embryo is a human being isn't refuted by the observation that each human embryo is at least one human being. Sometimes the human embryo is more than one human being. The argument relevant to the abortion controversy is that a human embryo is never less than one human being. Twinning, despite raising interesting biological and philosophical questions, does nothing to advance the argument that a human embryo isn't a human being. The argument advanced by twinning is that sometimes a human embryo is more than one human being, but never less than one.

Tantalus proposes several other philosophical dilemmas (genetic alterations, taking cells from frozen embryos, cloning, etc), none of which have any particular relevance to status of a human embryo as a human being.

Hypothetical stories about chimeras and clones are irrelevant to the biological fact that human embryos are human beings. The taxonomy of human clones or human-mouse chimeras will be an interesting question if such science ever becomes reality (I pray that it won't ), but I point out that the mere concept of 'human clone' or 'human-mouse chimera' presupposes that the cloned human embryo or the human embryo to be fused to the mouse embryo is .. human.

Tantalus finally exhausts his rationalizations, and says something honest:

It seems that to avoid this dilemma, we must rethink what we mean by Homo sapien.

...So let's try redefining these terms in a way that removes such a dichotomy.

Homo sapien - an individual, from the zygotic stage on, with genomic content generally common to the hairless, social great ape originating on the planet Earth

Human - An individual Homo sapien with certain cerebral abilities believed to be unique to Homo sapiens including, but not limited to, abstract thought, language, and reasoning.

Person - A human who is entitled to certain rights, usually by virtue of maturation or reaching a certain age

Again, incomplete I know, but good enough for the present purposes and much closer to my personal beliefs... I have also removed rights from 'Homo sapien' and placed it under 'person' to permit denial of rights to human cells with the potential to be cloned but which are not undergoing the cloning process. I also redefined human to make it a continuous variable rather than dichotomous.

"But Tantalus, are you saying there are individuals who have more humanity than others?!" Yes. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but it is not me who is saying this.

So Tantalus isn't the one saying that not all human beings are fully human! Other people tell him:

It is assumed in society's everyday vernacular. People anthropomorphize their pets, calling them their children and ascribing them human characteristics. Many have no problem calling mass murderers and suicide bombers "less than human". When children misbehave, we say they are acting like animals. We dehumanize our enemies in war to make it easier to kill them. Brain dead individuals are called "vegetables". In the few recorded instances of feral children, such individuals have been said to behave more like animals then humans. Phineas Gage suffered a horrible accident that caused damage to his frontal lobes and while he lived a decade beyond his accident friends recognized that Gage was "no longer Gage".[my emphasis]

Bottom line: Tantalus Prime denies the mundane scientific observation that human embryos are human beings (Homo sapiens) and he asserts that not all people are fully human because... he's heard people using slang and figures of speech. My head is spinning. In the pantheon of idiot atheist/materialist arguments, this is the most witless I've read.

So what is a human being? Aristotle defined human beings as rational animals. But he recognized that rationality was human potency, and not always human actuality. Aristotle understood that rationality is characteristic of our species ('species' in the classical sense), but not necessarily characteristic of all individuals. Not all humans are rational, no human is rational all the time, and no human is completely rational. Yet we remain human throughout. We are not rational when we sleep, or when we act out of intense anger, or when we are in the womb, or when we are young children. But we are human, always.

If irrationality-- the absence of Tantalus' criteria of abstract thought, language, and reasoning-- diminishes our humanity, then is our humanity diminished in sleep? Is homicide less culpable if the victim is killed in sleep, when he is not rational and by Tantalus' criteria not human? In Tantalus' taxonomy, how does the humanity of a child in the womb differ from that of an adult taking a nap?

But the napping adult is only temporarily non-rational, Tantalus might assert. The gestating embryo is only temporarily non-rational, I would reply. But a napping adult was rational before the nap, unlike the gestating embryo, Tantalus might assert. I would reply that by Tantalus' criteria a corpse is fully human, because past rationality, not present or future rationality, is decisive. But Tantalus might assert that past and future rationality, not present rationality, is what makes us fully human. I would reply that rationality is an odd criterion for humanity if it is always irrelevant to humanity now.

Is actual rationality really the pinnacle of what it is to be human? Is a logician more human than an athlete? A neuroscientist more human than a taxi driver? A taxi driver establishing criteria for humanity might choose skillful driving and quick reflexes, rather than abstract thought and reasoning.

Others might propose different criteria for full humanity-- being God's chosen people, or having poverty of spirit, mournfulness, and meekness. Another might choose recitation of five daily prayers, or fasting for a month, or a once-in -a-lifetime-pilgrimage.

And of course throughout history many have chosen other criteria for being fully human, such as being a member of the victorious army and not a member of the vanquished civilian populace, or being a vanguard of the proletariat, or being Aryan and non-semitic, or being Hutus and not Tutsi, or being caucasian and not African. If we deny full humanity to all, then the only consistent historical criterion for 'full humanity' is 'us, not them'. Notice that all of the criteria that Tantalus proposes to measure humanity are criteria presumably possessed in abundance by... Tantalus.

Tantalus fashions his scheme for human sifting as 21st century avant garde cutting edge science that eclipses medieval theolgy. But dehumanizing other men who don't share the traits of the select is the oldest system of taxonomy, older and less honorable than the oldest profession, and older than any monotheism. It is the source of rivers of human blood. There is only one remedy for it: the unwavering insistence that all human beings are fully human, and all have the right to life.

If we insist on defining humanity as an achievement test, rather than an affirmation of what we are, why would Tantaulus presume that he gets to set the criteria? I might suggest measuring humanity as the refusal to measure humanity in others. But that would make Tantalus less than human, and that is not true.

Time to part ways with methodological naturalism?

Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let's Dump Methodological Naturalism

Paul Nelson September 24, 2014 4:25 PM

After reading my article about methodological naturalism (MN), a correspondent wrote and asked a good question:

Doesn't ID satisfy the requirements of MN, if we define MN as simply excluding inferences to supernatural causes? Obviously MN cannot rule out all cases of agent (versus strictly physical) causation. Because, if MN does exclude agent causation, then archaeology, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and in fact many other areas of ongoing scientific research, would be placed outside the sphere of empirical knowledge -- and that can't be right.

ID seems committed only to detecting intelligence, not supernatural causes. If so, doesn't ID fit easily within a modest formulation of MN? If we regard MN as a reasonable epistemological boundary, not a sweeping ontological claim about the non-existence of the supernatural, then it's hard to see why ID theorists should worry about MN.

Here's my reply to this reader. It turns out that SETI provides an illuminating test case for the validity of MN. Even a modest formulation of MN excludes too much, hindering us from learning what we really might want to find out.

Assessing the Damage MN Does to Freedom of Inquiry

Epistemology -- how we know -- and ontology -- what exists -- are both affected by methodological naturalism. If we say, "We cannot know that a mind caused x," laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won't include minds.

MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn't write your email to me. Physics did, and informed you of that event after the fact.

"That's crazy," you reply, "I certainly did write my email." Okay, then -- to what does the pronoun "I" in that sentence refer?

Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural? Who knows? Don't get hung up on the "natural versus supernatural" distinction, which brings a world of mischief.

You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse -- i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss -- we haven't the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world -- such as your email, a real pattern -- we must refer to you as a unique agent.

If ID satisfied MN as that philosophical doctrine is usually stated, the decades-long dispute over both wouldn't have happened. The whole point of invoking MN (by the National Center for Science Education, for instance, or other anti-ID organizations) is to try to exclude ID, before a debate about the evidence can occur, by indicting ID for inferring non-physical causes.

That's why pushing the MN emergency button is so useful to opponents of ID. Violate MN, if MN defines science, and the game is over.

If You Like SETI, You Should Dump MN

Or is it? Here's where SETI provides an illuminating test case.

Most people -- atheists, agnostics, theists, whatever -- see the question "Does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe?" as an open puzzle to be investigated on the basis of the evidence. We can imagine all kinds of data that, if observed, would lead us to infer that an intelligence (at least one, anyway) had acted somewhere beyond the Earth; hence, the SETI research program.

At the heart of SETI -- providing its very raison d'etre -- is the following decision (logic) tree:

Figure 1

We can use "physics" as a shorthand for all undirected bottom-up causation (physics → chemistry → biology) where the most fundamental level of entities is mindless: "atoms and the void," to use the ancient expression. The undirected outcomes of physics represent what radio telescopes normally deliver to observers. As SETI Institute astronomer Jill Tarter explains in this interview,

 

that is "what Mother Nature does" -- but that's not what she or the SETI program want to find out. (The official SETI Institute rationale is here.)

Tarter is looking for what she calls "artifacts" -- physical effects in the radio spectrum (such as a narrow-band pattern, where all the energy in the signal is concentrated within a few Hertz), warranting her to move down the other branch of the decision tree, to "intelligence."

Why? Because the effect in question cannot be produced by physics alone. At least one intelligence must be causally involved.

Now here's the twist. Tarter herself is an atheist. In her view, the extraterrestrial intelligence she seeks to discover was, like her own, produced by a long evolutionary process, in which the fundamental causes were all natural (material and physical). So surely, as a philosophical naturalist, Tarter could endorse MN?

Nope -- not without surrendering her SETI research goals at the same time. SETI requires the basic decision (logic) tree of "intelligence OR physics," which means isolating and seeking to detect some aspect of intelligence that is irreducible to physics. And that defies the "physics only, in the end" claim of MN.

To see why, consider this expanded decision tree:

Figure 2

While this schema reflects Tarter's overall understanding of reality -- intelligence anywhere in the universe was caused by undirected evolution -- it does not allow her to eliminate the box labeled "intelligence." That is, her ontology must include "intelligence" (no matter how it arrived on the scene) as a cause that produces diagnostically unique effects.

Otherwise, she and the whole SETI program have nothing to detect. You can't sift radio telescope data looking for something (i.e., a diagnostic effect, such as a narrow band pattern, uniquely implicating intelligence) that could not possibly be there.

Physics or physics (see Figure 3) is just not interesting if you want to discover intelligence.

Here is what happens to SETI research if we follow MN with complete consistency, and eliminate "intelligence," because we think that category is ultimately a temporary placeholder for a fully comprehensive physical account:

Figure 3

Tarter thinks the arrow from physics to intelligence in Figure 2 describes what actually happened in the evolution of the universe. Nonetheless, some feature of "intelligence" must be irreducible to physics, because otherwise we're back to physics versus physics, and there's nothing for SETI to look for.

Simple Ontology, Boring Universe

Having a nice, clean, simple ontology -- atoms and the void -- is easy to remember and even easier to distribute like handbills to passersby. No need to bother yourself with non-physical entities and messy concepts like "mind" or (atoms forbid) a transcendent intelligence, aka God.

But making the universe simple and easy to remember is hardly the same as letting your scientific curiosity go free, naked and unhindered into the complex forests of reality. That's the path into the possibly scary unknown and the totally delightful regions of finding out something new.

Image: Allen Telescope Array/Wikipedia.