Indomitable Design.

A Salmon Called Indomitable

Evolution News & Views August 19, 2015 3:57 AM

They called him Indomitable. This Coho salmon's migratory adventure seems almost impossible to believe, but it's not just an old fish tale -- it's true. Illustra producer Lad Allen and editor Jerry Harned documented the story back in the VHS days of 1992. When planning the new documentaryLiving Waters: Intelligent Design in the Oceans of the Earth a couple of years ago, Lad was hoping to retell it in high-definition, but the constraints of time often call for painful decisions that leave good material on the cutting room floor. We can at least share this and other stories in words.

At the Prairie Creek Fish Hatchery on the northern California coast, workers were surprised on the morning of December 2, 1964, to find a large male Coho salmon swimming among juveniles in a concrete rearing pond. It had the distinctive mark on its fin of fish raised in this particular pond. The puzzle was how it got there. The only route was a vertical pipe that drained the pond's overflow out into Lost Man Creek behind the hatchery, which joined Prairie Creek and then Redwood Creek before flowing into the ocean. Scientists retraced this fish's route to figure out what it would have had to do to make it into the pond.

As Living Waters shows, a juvenile salmon imprints on the distinctive odor of its birthplace before it heads downstream. Water from a salmon's natal stream produces a powerful neurological response when dripped into its nasal cavity, but other samples do not -- even those from nearby streams. Indomitable's rearing pond had a unique chemical "bouquet" this fish had locked into its brain. The fish and its peers had been taken a couple of years earlier from the rearing pond and released into the ocean, but that scent would not be forgotten.

After two years, driven by the instinct to spawn, Indomitable made its way back from the deep ocean to the mouth of Redwood Creek where it had been released. The odor from home would have been very faint as it adapted its biology from salt water to fresh water for a few days. Swimming upstream three miles, the salmon faced a decision at the junction of Redwood and Prairie Creeks. The growing scent of home made it choose to continue north. Another 1.5 miles ahead, the shortest route would have been to turn onto Lost Man Creek that goes under the highway 100 yards to the east -- but that route had been blocked by floods from a winter storm.

Up Prairie Creek, however, water from the rearing pond trickled out of a culvert passing under Highway 101. Heavy rains that year increased the trickle to a small channel nine inches deep. Indomitable swam up that channel, fighting vegetation along the way. Then it entered a storm sewer, requiring a jump into a 12-inch pipe under the hatchery's parking lot. It seemed like a hopeless dead end, but the fish continued on, only to find another obstacle. The only path forward, following the scent, was a concrete flume that seemed like a dead end. The fish hunted till it found a 4-inch drain pipe. Squirming through the pipe, the fish hit the worst obstacle of all.

The pipe now made a 90-degree bend upward. The fish was now three feet below its home, but would have to jump and wriggle straight up to make it. Then, to make matters worse, its path was blocked by an 8-pound frame screen covering the top of the pipe. The screen weighed five times more than the fish itself. Somehow, Indomitable must have rammed the screen over and over with its head, jumping upward in that narrow vertical pipe, until it dislodged the screen, allowing it to wriggle out into the pond. That's where workers found him that December morning, swimming alongside the hatchlings.

"And now," as Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story." Amazed as they were by this salmon's persistence, the workers had another surprise coming. As they were trying to reconstruct Indomitable's route back to the hatchery, they decided to lift some of the boards covering the drainage flume. What they found stirred their imaginations with awe and wonder. Another 72 Coho salmon, each with the distinctive fin clip of the rearing pond, were trapped in the channel, having made it all the way back save for that final narrow pipe with its vertical leap.

When Lad Allen returned to the site and talked to the staff years later, he was shown a jar where Indomitable had been preserved in memory of its Olympic feat. The fish hatchery is now gone, but we thought Indomitable's story makes a great follow-up anecdote to illustrate the olfactory genius designed into the Pacific salmon: its ability to detect extremely dilute odor molecules, its incredible memory, and its instinct that can drive it home despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

National Geographic posted a "Friday Fact" that claims that "a salmon's sense of smell is thousands of times better than a dog's." One part per billion is equivalent to one tablespoon of salt dissolved in a volume equal to 18 Olympic-size swimming pools. As Timothy Standish says in Living Waters, the fish can probably detect odors at that level, and perhaps parts per trillion (equivalent to a fingernail's width compared to the diameter of the earth). These specifications far exceed the requirements of mere survival. Intelligent design can build such systems; tinkerers and blind watchmakers cannot.

If you missed our Pacific Northwest premiere, don't despair; Living Waters is now available on DVD and will soon be out on Blu-ray. Consider setting up your own premiere for your neighborhood or organization.

On Darwinism's unicorn.

Evolution's Grand Challenge

Steve Laufmann July 10, 2015 4:44 AM

Editor's note: We are delighted to welcome Steve Laufmann as a new contributor. Mr. Laufmann is a consultant in the growing field of Enterprise Architecture, dealing with the design of very large, very complex, composite information systems that are orchestrated to perform specified tasks in demanding environments.

In a recent ENV article, mathematician Granville Sewell asked an intriguing question:

In the current debate between Darwinism and intelligent design, the strongest argument made by Darwinists is this: In every other field of science, naturalism has been spectacularly successful, so why should evolutionary biology be different? Even most scientists who doubt the Darwinist explanation for evolution are confident that science will eventually come up with a more plausible explanation. That's the way science works. If one theory fails, we look for another one; why should evolution be so different? [Emphasis added.]

Dr. Sewell's post mainly explored entropy and theory-based reasoning. From my own perspective as an architect of large information systems, I would like to suggest a different (but complementary) answer.

Enter Information, Stage Right

Evolutionary biology was very much like other sciences up until the 1950s, when the information-bearing capabilities of DNA and RNA were discovered inside living cells.

These discoveries fundamentally changed biology. And as the information payload is increasingly unraveled, we're seeing ever more complex and interdependent assembly instructions, activation circuits, programming sequences, and message payloads. This information is decoded and operated on by molecular machines of similar complexity, and the whole (information + machines) is self-generating, self-sustaining, and self-replicating.

The information has some intriguing properties:

• It must perform an astounding number of complex functions in order to create, sustain, and replicate life. Each function requires multiple distinct programs or sequences for the various phases of its lifecycle: assembly, operation, complex orchestration with other functions, error detection and correction, replication, and so on. These are functionally distinct types of activities, so it's almost certain that they are encoded separately, perhaps with completely different coding structures and mechanisms.
• It has no value without a complex collection of molecular machines, yet it must also include the instructions for generating those same machines. The result is an immensely complex choreography of separate but interrelated information and molecular machines. Neither can function without the other -- a ginormous chicken-and-egg problem.
• It exhibits the design properties of the best human-engineered software systems, yet its capabilities extend well beyond any current human-engineered systems. For example, no human-engineered system is capable of self-replicating both the software that operates on the machinery and the machinery that decodes the software.

Further, based on the observed functionality in living organisms, there are many undiscovered types of information that must be present in a living cell, but which haven't been decoded or understood yet.

Kinesin offers a fascinating example of undiscovered information in action. What programs and machinery are required to assemble the structure and function of kinesin? What information is needed for kinesin to achieve its "runtime" functions? How does kinesin know where to go to pick up a load, what load to pick up, what path to take, and where to drop its load? How does it know what to do next? All this functionality takes information, which must be encoded somewhere.

Indeed, the level of complexity is monotonically increasing, with no end in sight.

With no possibility that new discoveries will ever decrease the observed complexity, it may not be long before we see a seismic shift in the research paradigm -- from the study of biological systems that happen to contain information, to the study of information systems that happen to be encoded in biology.

Causal Requirements and Causal Forces

Aside from the obvious (and intriguing) challenge of understanding the enormous complexity of life's information payload, evolution purports to explain its origins.

The origin of life is perhaps the most obvious example of information's formidable hurdle to evolutionary explanations. First life requires all of the following:

• Sufficient complex programs and sequencing to support first life's complete lifecycle (i.e., the directions have to be complete and correct).
• Sufficient machinery to interpret the programs and to operate life (i.e., the directions must have proper effect).
• Sufficient programs and machinery to replicate both the programs and the machinery (i.e., the directions must be passed to the next generation).

And all this must be present at the same time, in the same place, in at least one instant in history, at which point the whole must somehow be animated to create life. And all this must occur, by definition, before an organism can reproduce. Without reproduction, there is no possibility to accumulate function, from simple to complex, as required by evolution. Hence, the programs must have contained all the complexity required for first life at inception.

By definition, then, the minimal programs and machinery required for first life must have predated any creative capabilities (real or imagined) of Darwinian processes.

Further, since the information necessary for first life must have been assembled prior to the animation of first life, the minimal information payload must have predated first life. And it must therefore have derived from a source beyond biology as we know it.

This poses a causal quandary for evolutionary biology. For there are only two known classes of causal forces, and these have dramatically different qualities.

First, there are physical laws, which include mathematics, physics, and chemistry. These are repeatable (i.e., the same inputs always produce the same results) and purposeless (i.e., the same inputs produce the same results, no matter who gets hurt). Their repeatability makes science effective. But physical laws are not capable of acting with intent, which limits their creative capabilities.

Operating within the physical laws are random events that can change the information payload of life in various ways. But these are constrained by the same physical laws, so are similarly incapable of acting with intent. Random events cannot create complex information, except in two circumstances: (a) there is some predefined notion of a desirable outcome, and (b) any "positive gains" toward that outcome are protected from random degradation through some external mechanism. Both of these special circumstances require intention, which the physical laws cannot offer.

Second, there are intelligent causes, which are purposeful and therefore not generally repeatable. The creation of complex programming requires non-repeatability. While intelligent causes are capable of generating the right kind of information, it's difficult to pin down when and how their actions occurred, or what their intent might have been. All sciences that deal with intelligent causes (e.g., archaeology) are made more difficult by non-repeatability.

An Impending Worldview Crisis

The search for a purposeful cause that predates biology as we know it inevitably drives the conversation to metaphysics. And this places evolution (and biology) at the center of a conflict between worldviews.

For materialists, the first class of causal force is insufficient and the second is unacceptable. Materialist biologists are thus pressed to find a third class of causal force -- one that works without purpose (required to adhere to materialist philosophy), yet produces purposeful outcomes (required to adhere to the observed world). As yet no reasonable candidate forces have been proposed.

So materialists face growing dissonance between their philosophical commitment and biology's complex programming. As the quality and quantity of the discovered interdependent programs and processing machinery increases, the plausibility of material causation gets weaker. So the materialist position is weak, and going in the wrong direction (from their perspective).

On the other hand, for anyone not fully committed to materialist philosophy the options are much more interesting. For those willing to consider the second class of causal force, things begin to fall into place and the dissonance dissipates.

For theists, the second class of causal force is not only acceptable, but expected. Further, theists are unsurprised to learn that the causal forces in class #1 are finely tuned to enable life, and they have no problem with the notion that random events are more likely to destroy information than create it (e.g., there are far more possible non-functioning programs than functioning programs).

Ongoing discoveries about the nature of the information at the core of life present a growing hurdle for the materialist worldview, but are increasingly friendly to any worldview that's open to a pre-biological intelligencewith some means to assemble the programs and machinery minimally required for first life.

And this sets up a worldview collision.

Evolution's Grand Challenge

Molecular biology is characterized by growing questions and shrinking answers.

It's like the guy who, after untying his boat, finds himself with one foot on the dock and one foot in the boat. As the gap grows, it becomes increasingly hard to ignore. And uncomfortable. And temporary.

And this is evolution's grand challenge: The complex programs and amazing molecular machines at the heart of life simply cannot be explained by any current or proposed theory of evolution, nor by any other completely material cause. Apologists for materialism cannot hide this fact much longer. Neither the volume of their arguments nor any level of vitriol can change the fact that the data is skewing against them.

Rarely has any field of science had to deal with questions so difficult, or that cut so deeply into the worldviews, minds, and hearts, of thoughtful men and women.

Evolution sits at the center of a front-and-center debate -- with too much to explain, in too little time, with insufficient causal power, and with so many watching and so much at stake.

That, I would say, is what makes evolution different.

A line in the sand XXI

To chance and necessity be the glory?II

File under 'Well said' IV

"The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away."
Marcus Aurelius Meditations. 167 AD 

More on Atheists' mysticism.

Quashing Materialist Appeals to Magic (Again)

Ironically enough, materialists are a mystical lot. They say they reject irrational and superstitious beliefs, but when one pushes them past their ability to explain life, the universe and everything in materialist terms, they are very quick to resort to obscurantist pseudo-explanations. And “it emerged” is their favorite dodge.

As we have explained many times before, “it emerged” is the explanatory equivalent of “it’s magic.” But like bugs scattering when the lights are turned on, we have to stomp on this one again and again. Like today for instance. In my Why there is no Meaning if Materialism is True post I argued that on materialist premises – that nothing exists but space, time, particles and energy – there can be no meaning.

Popperian says I can do better. There is “emergence” after all.  And I poked a little fun at Pop:

as Popperian argues on these pages ad nauseam, it’s all emergent. You see, if you stack up the burned out star stuff this way, nothing. But if you stack it up ever so slightly differently, poof!! out of a cloud of smoke emerges rabbits, doves, silly string, consciousness, and morality.

Yes, that is the level to which we have descended — the invocation magic.

And then REC gave us this gem:

Barry, @29, seems close to denying that different arrangements of matter will have different properties. If ID wants to fight with chemistry, that is a development I look forward to.

Sigh.

REC, as we have explained over and over and over, we do not reject emergence as an explanation as such. See here where we said this in so many words.  No, we reject “it emerged” when materialist like you and Popperian use it as a pseudo-explanation to obscure the fact that you haven’t the faintest idea how consciousness arises from the physical properties of the brain.

Your fellow atheist Thomas Nagel also rejects your antics:

Merely to identify a cause is not to provide a significant explanation without some understanding of why the cause produces the effect.

To qualify as a genuine explanation of the mental, an emergent account must be in some way systematic. It cannot just say that each mental event or state supervenes on the complex physical state of the organism in which it occurs. That would the kind of brute fact that does not constitute an explanation but rather calls for an explanation.

If emergence is the whole truth, it implies that mental states are present in the organism as a whole, or its central nervous system, without any grounding in the elements that constitute the organism, expect for the physical character of those elements that permits them to be arranged in the complex form that, according to the higher-level theory, connects the physical with the mental. That such a purely physical elements, when combined in a certain way, should necessarily produce a state of the whole that is not constituted of of the properties and relations of the physical parts still seems like magic even if the higher-order psychophysical dependencies are quite systematic.

Emphasis added.

And if you don’t believe Nagel, maybe you’ll believe Elizabeth Liddle:

[“Emergent” is] simply a word to denote the idea that when a whole has properties of a whole that are not possessed by the parts, those properties “emerge” from interactions between the parts (and of course between the whole and its environment). It is not itself an explanation – to be an explanation you would have to provide a putative mechanism by which those properties were generated. . . .

‘It’s emergent’ would be on an intellectual par with saying ‘It’s magic!’

REC, you most certainly cannot provide a putative mechanism by which immaterial consciousness arises from the material properties of the brain. I know this, because if you could I feel sure I would have seen you on the news accepting your Nobel prize.


Since you cannot provide such a putative mechanism, your own buddy Elizabeth Liddle would say you have done the equivalent of invoking magic. And I bet you think ID proponents are credulous.

More reasons to just say no to atheists' magic.

Professor Paul Davies is no friend of Intelligent Design. Nevertheless, he puts forward a formidable argument against its best scientific alternative, the multiverse, in an interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator and host of “Closer To Truth,” and author of a recent article titled, Is our universe a fake? (Space.com, July 31, 2015). Kuhn summarizes Davies’ argument as follows:

“If you take seriously the theory of all possible universes, including all possible variations,” Davies said, “at least some of them must have intelligent civilizations with enough computing power to simulate entire fake worlds. Simulated universes are much cheaper to make than the real thing, and so the number of fake universes would proliferate and vastly outnumber the real ones. And assuming we’re just typical observers, then we’re overwhelmingly likely to find ourselves in a fake universe, not a real one.”

So far it’s the normal argument.

Then Davies makes his move. He claims that because the theoretical existence of multiple universes is based on the laws of physics in our universe, if this universe is simulated, then its laws of physics are also simulated, which would mean that this universe’s physics is a fake. Therefore, Davies reasoned, “We cannot use the argument that the physics in our universe leads to multiple universes, because it also leads to a fake universe with fake physics.” That undermines the whole argument that fundamental physics generates multiple universes, because the reasoning collapses in circularity.

Davies concluded, “While multiple universes seem almost inevitable given our understanding of the Big Bang, using them to explain all existence is a dangerous, slippery slope, leading to apparently absurd conclusions.”

Davies’ reductio ad absurdum is a devastating one: the multiverse undercuts the basis of physics itself. And Davies is not alone. Physicist Paul Steinhardt, who helped create the theory of inflation but later came to reject it, declared last September: “Our universe has a simple, natural structure. The multiverse idea is baroque, unnatural, untestable and, in the end, dangerous to science and society.” Steinhardt believes that the multiverse hypothesis leads science away from its task of providing a unique explanation for the properties of nature. Instead, it simply deems them to be random – which, for Steinhardt, feels like giving up on the scientific enterprise. It’s a scientific cop-out. In an interview with John Horgan for Scientific American (Physicist Slams Cosmic Theory He Helped Conceive, December 1, 2014), Steinhardt made no secret of his disdain for both inflation theory and the multiverse (emphases mine – VJT):

Horgan: You were one of the originators of inflation theory. When and why did you start having doubts about it?

Steinhardt: From the very beginning, even as I was writing my first paper on inflation in 1982, I was concerned that the inflationary picture only works if you finely tune the constants that control the inflationary period. Andy Albrecht and I (and, independently, Andrei Linde) had just discovered the way of having an extended period of inflation end in a graceful exit to a universe filled with hot matter and radiation, the paradigm for all inflationary models since. But the exit came at a cost — fine-tuning. The whole point of inflation was to get rid of fine-tuning – to explain features of the original big bang model that must be fine-tuned to match observations. The fact that we had to introduce one fine-tuning to remove another was worrisome. This problem has never been resolved.

But my concerns really grew when I discovered that, due to quantum fluctuation effects, inflation is generically eternal and (as others soon emphasized) this would lead to a multiverse…

To me, the accidental universe idea is scientifically meaningless because it explains nothing and predicts nothing. Also, it misses the most salient fact we have learned about large-scale structure of the universe: its extraordinary simplicity when averaged over large scales…

Scientific ideas should be simple, explanatory, predictive. The inflationary multiverse as currently understood appears to have none of those properties.

These concerns and more, and the fact that we have made no progress in 30 years in addressing them, are what have made me skeptical about the inflationary picture.

    
 ven MIT Professor Alan Guth, a strong supporter of the theory of inflation (which he helped originate) and the multiverse, has acknowledged that it has some philosophically bizarre implications. As he put it in an interview with Natalie Wolchover and Peter Byrne (In a Multiverse, What Are the Odds?, November 3, 2014):

“In a single universe, cows born with two heads are rarer than cows born with one head,” he said. But in an infinitely branching multiverse, “there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?”

Why I think a transcendent Creator would make computer simulations of consciousness impossible

An interesting question for Intelligent Design proponents to ponder at this point is: supposing that the universe was designed by a Being Who wished to make His existence scientifically knowable to any intelligent life-forms living within the cosmos, and suppose that this Being was not only intelligent but also transcendent, how would He design the universe in such a way as to prevent human beings (and any other intelligent life-forms that might exist in outer space) from drawing the wrong inference about the nature of the Designer, and conceiving of Him as merely super-human (like the Greek and Roman gods of antiquity), rather than transcendent?

In his article, Robert Lawrence Kuhn finds that the argument that our universe might be a simulation rests upon five critical premises: “(i) Other intelligent civilizations exist; (ii) their technologies grow exponentially; (iii) they do not all go extinct; (iv) there is no universal ban or barrier for running simulations; and (v) consciousness can be simulated.” Kuhn goes on to say that the notion that our own universe is a simulation is not incompatible with theism, but he adds that it would be a weak form of theism, as the super-intelligent designer(s) of our universe “wouldn’t need unlimited or infinite minds.” Kuhn wonders how scientists, philosophers and theologians would distinguish between “the traditional creator God and hyper-advanced creator-simulators.”

Here is a prediction I would make. If the transcendent God of traditional theism exists, and wishes to make Himself known to His creatures, then the last thing He’d want to do is give the intelligent life-forms within this universe the power to create other universes. For if these intelligent life-forms discovered that they had this power, then they would also realize that it was highly likely that they, in turn, were created by intelligent life-forms in another universe. This disturbing realization would make it much harder for them to infer the existence of a transcendent God. So my prediction would be that to prevent this from happening, a Transcendent Creator would make it impossible for intelligent life-forms to simulate human consciousness on a computer – and probably animal consciousness, as well. This is just what we find, as I reported in my article, Could the Internet ever be conscious? Definitely not before 2115, even if you’re a materialist. In that article, I calculated that the human brain is 31 orders of magnitude more complex than the entire Internet. And to those who would appeal to Moore’s law as a way for scientists of the future to catch up, I have some bad news: Moore himself declared in 2005 that his law would reach a “fundamental limit” in 10 or 20 years – i.e. by 2025 at the latest – and according to Intel’s former chief architect, Robert Colwell, Moore’s law will be dead by 2022, largely for economic reasons. Darwinist philosopher Daniel Dennett is also skeptical of the Internet ever becoming conscious. In a recent article by Slate journalist Dan Falk (September 20, 2012), he remarked:

“The connections in brains aren’t random; they are deeply organized to serve specific purposes,” Dennett says. “And human brains share further architectural features that distinguish them from, say, chimp brains, in spite of many deep similarities. What are the odds that a network, designed by processes serving entirely different purposes, would share enough of the architectural features to serve as any sort of conscious mind?” (Emphasis mine – VJT.)

Dennett also pointed out that while the Internet had a very high level of connectivity, the difference in architecture “makes it unlikely in the extreme that it would have any sort of consciousness.”

The massive number of assumptions upon which the multiverse hypothesis is built

In addition to the reductio ad absurdum advanced above, Professor Paul Davies has other objections to the multiverse. In an interview last year on Closer to Truth titled, Are There Multiple Universes? (August 23, 2014), Professor Davies explained why he finds the multiverse hypothesis intellectually unsatisfying (emphasis mine – VJT):

[0:40]
It’s not an unreasonable speculation. However, it falls far short of being a complete theory of existence, which it’s often presented as. That is, if there’s a multiverse, we can forget about all the mysteries of the universe because it’s all explained: everything’s out there somewhere. End of story. Well, it’s simply not true, because to get a multiverse, you need a universe-generating mechanism – something has got to make all those Big Bangs go “Bang!” – so you’re going to need some laws of physics to do that. All of the theories of the multiverse assume quantum mechanics, quantum physics, to give the element of spontaneity to make the bangs happen. They assume pre-existing space and time, they assume the normal notion of causality – a whole host of things. You write down a list, there’s about ten different basic assumptions they have to make to get the theory to work. And you can say, well, “Where did they all come from? What about these meta-laws that generate universes and impose effective local by-laws, as Martin Rees would call it, upon these universes? What is this distribution mechanism? How does that work? Where do those rules come from? So all you’ve done is shift the problem of existence up from the level of universe to the level of multiverse. But you haven’t explained it.

Davies’ philosophical misgivings about the multiverse – and Intelligent Design

Continuing in a philosophical vein, Davies explains why he rejects both the multiverse andIntelligent Design (emphases mine – VJT):

[3:00]
I suppose for me, the main problem is that what we’re trying to do is explain why the universe is as it is by appealing to something outside of it – in this case, an infinite number of universes outside of it – that, to me, is no better than traditional religion, that appeals to an unseen, unexplained God that is outside of the universe.

[5:01]
I would like to try to find an explanation for the universe from entirely within it, without appealing to anything external. And as a matter of fact I believe that if somebody did a proper mathematical analysis, they would find that the complexity of the explanation of the multiverse – an infinite number of universes we don’t see – is the same as the explanation of traditional theology: an infinitely complex God outside the universe that we don’t see. They’re really the same thing, in different language, and so my point of view now is: a plague on both your houses. We need to try to find the explanation for the universe from within it, from what we see, and not multiply these unseen entities.

Religious believers will point out, correctly, that the God of classical theism is not complex at all, but utterly simple. However, one needs to distinguish between God’s necessary Being and God’s contingent operations: the former is dogmatically defined to be simple, whereas the latter is not. Even supposing God’s operations to be complex, however, it does not follow that they are infinitely complex. The question that mathematicians should be asking, in my opinion, is: how much information would you need to put into the universe, if you were going to fine-tune not only its laws but also its initial conditions, in such a way that it would be guaranteed to ultimately generate living cells and later on, complex life-forms, some of which would possess consciousness?

More problems with the multiverse

Finally, I should point out that the multiverse is plagued by no less than five severe problems, which I briefly enumerated in a recent post. The first two have already been discussed above; the last three are equally devastating (emphases mine – VJT):

The multiverse hypothesis faces five formidable problems: first, it merely shifts the fine-tuning problem up one level, as a multiverse capable of generating even one life-supporting universe would still need to be fine-tuned; second, the multiverse hypothesis itself implies that a sizable proportion of universes (including perhaps our own) were intelligently designed; third, the multiverse hypothesis predicts that most of the intelligent life-forms that exist should be “Boltzmann brains” that momentarily fluctuate into and out of existence; fourth, the multiverse hypothesis predicts that a universe containing intelligent life should be much smaller than the one we live in; and fifth, the multiverse hypothesis cannot account for the fact that the laws of physics are not only life-permitting, but also mathematically elegant – a fact acknowledged even by physicists with no religious beliefs.

Further discussion of these problems can be found here. The elegance of the laws of Nature has been remarked on by many scientists, including Paul Davies, who wrote in his best-selling book, Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster):

A common reaction among physicists to remarkable discoveries of the sort discussed above is a mixture of delight at the subtlety and elegance of nature, and of stupefaction: ‘I would never have thought of doing it that way.’ If nature is so ‘clever’ that it can exploit mechanisms that amaze us with their ingenuity, is that not persuasive evidence for the existence of intelligent design behind the physical universe? (1984, pp. 235-36. Emphasis mine – VJT.)

That was what Davies wrote in 1984. In recent years, sadly, he has changed his mind – not for scientific but for philosophical reasons. In a 2007 article for the Taking Science on Faith

, Davies stated why he now prefers an explanation of the universe’s laws from within the cosmos, even as he candidly acknowledged that no such theory presently exists (emphases mine – VJT):

It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

The way forward for ID?

For my part, I do think Davies is right about one thing. It is not enough to argue that the laws of the universe must have been designed by some Intelligence. For a hypothesis to be scientifically fruitful, it needs to make predictions. What the Intelligent Design movement needs is physicists who are not afraid to “get inside the mind of God,” and freely speculate about why the universe has the laws, fundamental principles and underlying mathematical structures that it does. Why was the universe designed this way, and not some other way? To say that it was designed to support intelligent life is all well and good, but we need to go further, and explain why alternative life-permitting designs for the cosmos would have been less suitable than the one that we find ourselves in. I have previously suggested that Intelligent Design could be rendered more fruitful if it incorporated the assumption that one of the Designer’s aims was to make His existence known to His intelligent creatures, and I also suggested above that the Designer wants to make His transcendence known to us. Finally, I would suggest that the cosmos is asbeautiful in its underlying principles as it possibly can be, while at the same time remaining mathematically comprehensible to the human mind. Taken together, these three assumptions might narrow the range of life-permitting possible universes to the point where we can eventually conclude, on purely scientific grounds, that this universe is the best possible design that a Transcendent Creator could have selected, had He wished to make His existence known to human beings. That, I think, would be a fruitful line of inquiry.

What do readers think?

A hostile takeover?

Horizontal Gene Transfer: Sorry, Darwin, It's Not Your Evolution Any More

Denyse O'Leary August 13, 2015 10:48 AM |

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), sometimes called lateral gene transfer (LGT), is a profound recent discovery in genetics: Genome mapping has shown that bacteria can acquire genes from the bacteria around them --that is, horizontally -- rather than from a previous generation (vertical transfer), as when a parent cell divides into two daughter cells. They can transfermultiple segments of DNA at once to fellow species members.

But that was hardly the critical finding. This is: Because bacteria are found everywhere and are comparatively simple, they can move newly acquired genes between life forms in the other domains of life. They can produce heritable changes with no recent common ancestor. For example,

-- Some researchers have reported that a massive network of recent gene exchange connects bacteria from around the world, "10,000 unique genes flowing via HGT among 2,235 bacterial genomes," providing the bacteria with genetic information they didn't inherit from their parent cells, including antibiotic resistance.

Microbes were fighting natural antibiotics this way, we are told, from long before humans learned how to invent them. Bacteria from 30,000 years ago that resist today's antibiotics have been found in permafrost (underground frost that never melts). A generalized antibiotic resistance may have been traded between types of bacteria long ago, including some that subsequently got frozen for millennia.

-- Bacteria were assumed to need long, intact strings of DNA to integrate. But it turns out that they can also use discarded DNA. A 2013 PNAS papernotes:

Our surroundings contain large amounts of strongly fragmented and damaged DNA, which is being degraded. Some of it may be thousands of years old. Laboratory experiments with microbes and various kinds of DNA have shown that bacteria take up very short and damaged DNA from the environment and passively integrate it in their own genome. Furthermore this mechanism has also been shown to work with a modern bacteria's uptake of 43,000 years old mammoth DNA.

One is reminded of mechanics who visit wrecking yards to locate reuseable spare parts.

-- Sometimes the microbes' methods of harvesting genes are more sophisticated than we might expect. Bacteria that grow on crustaceans can absorb fragments containing more than 40 genes, using a small "spear." Researcher Melanie Blokesch describes that number as "an enormous amount of new genetic information." That may explain why antibiotic resistance sets in so quickly.

Bacteria just do not play by Darwin's rules.

Neither, it turns out, do plants, animals, or fungi, not when bacteria shuttle between them, absorbing, carrying, and delivering genes that get incorporated into other genomes.

-- Scientific American observes that HGT from bacteria to more complex life forms (eukaryotes) is more common than formerly believed:

Muller and his colleagues scanned the genomes of 149 eukaryotes, and found acdS-like genes in 65 of them -- 61 in fungi and 4 in parasitic microorganisms called oomycetes, includingPhytophthora infestans, the microbe responsible for the Irish potato famine. After analysing the organisms' genetic family trees, the researchers determined that the most likely explanation was that three different kinds of bacterium had donated the gene to the fungi and oomycetes in a total of 15 different horizontal-gene-transfer events.

-- In another study, ferns were found to have adapted to low light via HGTfrom moss-like hornworts from which they diverged 400 million years ago:

"We're actually seeing more and more incidence of horizontal gene transfer in plants"... However neochrome was transferred, it seems to have occurred at just the right moment in ferns' evolutionary history.

-- The giant Rafflesia flower has stolen genes from plants it parasitizes.Genes may even be shared among plants with only a distant ancestral relationship.

-- Animals do it too. Bacteria are known to use horizontal gene transfer by injecting toxins into rival cells. And some species of ticks and mites (relatives of spiders) have been found to acquire these toxins to get rid of the bothersome bacteria.

-- The bdelloid rotifer (pictured above) holds the record for HGT (as of 2013). It dispenses with sex, and at least 8 percent of its genes are considered likely to have been acquired by HGT.

Even vertebrates do it.

-- An article in prestigious Scientist tells us, "Scientists show that horizontal transfer of a particular DNA sequence among a diverse range of vertebrates is more widespread than previously believed."

The results can be surprising. In one gene sequence, cows are closer to snakes than elephants, with shared parasites as a possible vector.

-- One finding could affect lab research: Bacterial DNA pass traits from mouse mother to offspring, which means, among other things that when we study lab mice, we must account for the possibility that inherited bacteria and their genes could influence the trait under study--as opposed to assuming that the Darwinian mechanism of vertical common ancestry is the only possible source of genes.

-- Lastly, in one remarkable case, an invertebrate stole more than a plant's genes: Sea slugs were known to steal chloroplasts from algae (kleptoplasty) since the 1970s. But one question was how the chloroplasts lasted so much longer in the slug than in the algae. A recent finding:

"This paper confirms that one of several algal genes needed to repair damage to chloroplasts, and keep them functioning, is present on the slug chromosome," Pierce says. "The gene is incorporated into the slug chromosome and transmitted to the next generation of slugs." While the next generation must take up chloroplasts anew from algae, the genes to maintain the chloroplasts are already present in the slug genome, Pierce says.

"There is no way on earth that genes from an alga should work inside an animal cell," Pierce says. "And yet here, they do. They allow the animal to rely on sunshine for its nutrition. So if something happens to their food source, they have a way of not starving to death until they find more algae to eat."

The slug did not "evolve" this trait, it hijacked it. One researcher has commented, "The process of evolution just isn't what many evolutionary biologists think it is."

But surely bacteria could not transfer DNA to humans, considering how complex we are? Yes they can, apparently,according to a recent article in the Scientist.

-- For example, we are told in Aeon Magazine, "... in Japan, some people's gut bacteria have stolen seaweed-digesting genes from ocean bacteria lingering on raw seaweed salads."

-- It may not even be rare, say researchers published in Genome Biology:

Lead author Alastair Crisp from the University of Cambridge, UK, said: "This is the first study to show how widely horizontal gene transfer (HGT) occurs in animals, including humans, giving rise to tens or hundreds of active 'foreign' genes. Surprisingly, far from being a rare occurrence, it appears that HGT has contributed to the evolution of many, perhaps all, animals and that the process is ongoing, meaning that we may need to re-evaluate how we think about evolution."

-- From the Economist, we learn:

Alastair Crisp and Chiara Boschetti of Cambridge University, and their colleagues, have been investigating the matter. Their results, just published in Genome Biology, suggest human beings have at least 145 genes picked up from other species by their forebears. Admittedly, that is less than 1 percent of the 20,000 or so humans have in total. But it might surprise many people that they are even to a small degree part bacterium, part fungus and part alga.

Dr Crisp and Dr Boschetti came to this conclusion by looking at the ever-growing public databases of genetic information now available. They did not study humans alone. They looked at nine other primate species, and also 12 types of fruit fly and four nematode worms. Flies and worms are among geneticists' favourite animals, so lots of data have been collected on them. The results from all three groups suggest natural transgenics is ubiquitous.

So we are a long way from when biochemist Christian de Duve (1917-2013), grudgingly admitted the significance of horizontal gene transfer, noting that it "... has been recognized as a major complication when attempting to use molecular data to reconstruct the tree of life."¹

It certainly has, because where HGT is in play, there just isn't a tree of life. Even popular science writers are beginning to recognize the significance of this fact. New Scientist's Mark Buchanan writes: "Just suppose that Darwin's ideas were only a part of the story of evolution. Suppose that a process he never wrote about, and never even imagined, has been controlling the evolution of life throughout most of the Earth's history."

No need to suppose, actually; it's here. But HGT isn't "controlling the evolution of life." It is simply breaking Darwinism's monopoly on accounting for it.

Some ask, why is HGT bad news for Darwin? Can't Darwinism simply co-opt it? No. Admittedly, some hope it can, sort of. In Aeon Magazine, science writer Ferris Jabr suggests,

The fact that horizontal gene transfer happens among eukaryotes does not require a complete overhaul of standard evolutionary theory, but it does compel us to make some important adjustments...

Ferris, it really does require a complete overhaul.

He goes on to defend Darwinism by personifying the gene:

We did not invent gene transfer; DNA did. Genes are concerned with one thing above all else: self-perpetuation. If such preservation requires a particular gene to adapt to a genome it has never encountered before - if riding a parasite from one species to another turns out to be an extremely successful way of guaranteeing perpetuity - so be it. Species barriers might protect the integrity of a genome as a whole, but when an individual gene has a chance to advance itself by breaching those boundaries, it will not hesitate.

No, no, no. Genes can travel but they have no minds and no desires. When the Dawkinsian metaphysic of the vertical "selfish gene" is used to assign properties of minds to genes, it becomes not only questionable but ridiculous. What Jabr mainly demonstrates is how difficult it is for people raised on Darwin (and Dawkins) to maintain a science-based view of evolution in the face of evident non-Darwinian evolution.

Speaking of Richard Dawkins: For over a century, Darwinism was the "must be" explanation, the only "scientific one." As Dawkins put it (p. 287, Blind Watchmaker, 1986):

My argument will be that Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life. If I am right it means that, even if there were no actual evidence in favour of the Darwinian theory (there is, of course) we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.

But Darwinism is not "the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life." Claims that were formerly merely preferred must be tested against HGT. True, some of the example findings given above may need revision or replacement. But many more will likely turn up, as research uncovers HGT in many genomes.

Anything HGT does, Darwinian evolution did not do. As more and more pieces are carved out of Darwin's territory, just think of the impact on the vast project of "Darwinizing the culture."

One report boldly alludes to Darwin's plight:

It's a firmly established fact straight from Biology 101: Traits such as eye color and height are passed from one generation to the next through the parents' DNA.

But now, a new study in mice by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that the DNA of bacteria that live in the body can pass a trait to offspring in a way similar to the parents' own DNA.

The latter explanation involves a major change in thinking because it suggests that traits affected by bacteria can pass from mothers to their offspring in the same manner as traits affected by mouse DNA.

As a major change in thinking, HGT is very bad news for Darwinism.

So we find ourselves in an odd situation: Yes, there is some evidence for evolution, but it provides no help to the publicly funded, widely believed, court-enforced Darwinian theory stoutly defended in media as "evolution."

And things will get stranger still when we look at epigenetics. For now, just suppose a sharply diminished Darwin.

Notes:

(1) Christian de Duve, "Mysteries of Life" , in Bruce L. Gordon and William A. Dembski, The Nature of Nature: Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science(Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011), p. 348.