Technology is more predictive re:biology than physics? II

 Systems Biology Cracks Life’s Engineered Intricacies — A Report from CELS

Jonathan Witt

Most academic biologists would sooner parasail into Mordor than admit intelligent design beats blind evolution. Modern Darwinism is very much the reigning paradigm in historical biology. Curiously, however, the hottest branch of experimental biology nowadays actually adopts as a working heuristic the view that biological systems are optimally engineered. This hot new approach — systems biology — has proven so fruitful that there is a growing demand for engineers to join biological research groups to help those groups think like engineers.

Recently I had the privilege of attending a scientific conference that took this systems biology approach — the Conference on Engineering in Living Systems (CELS) in Denton, Texas. What makes this gathering stand out is that the biologists and engineers in attendance don’t adopt the design paradigm as merely a working heuristic. They are convinced that the biological systems under review exhibit clever engineering solutions because they really were cleverly engineered. Every CELS talk I attended spotlighted a different ingenious design in biology, or upended some cherished Darwinian assumption, or both.

Smarter than Knitting Machines

In one lecture, internationally distinguished Brazilian chemist Marcos Eberlin discussed the engineering marvels of proteins, ribosomes, and their underlying amino-acid architecture. Ribosomes contain proteins and RNA. They are waterproof, mechanically resistant, flexible, and elastic, with long-lived, connecting units. They work like knitting machines but are much smarter than knitting machines, Eberlin explained. 

Proteins, likewise, are extraordinarily strong, flexible, and elastic — much better than man-made nylons and able to self-fold into the precise four-dimensional structures needed for life. They do so in a myriad of shapes that fulfill a host of challenging tasks. These protein machines, moreover, don’t just work individually; they work together symphonically.

Eberlin said that many of his fellow scientists disbelieve in God but plagiarize him all the time in a research field known as biomimetics. The kicker is that when they manage the copying feat, they usually do so in a way inferior to the original.

A Chicken-and-Egg Problem

Eberlin also pointed out problems with the idea that RNA, proteins, and ribosomes evolved gradually through a mindless process. To get ribosomes and any kind of protein, you need various kinds of amino acids, all left-handed. (No, amino acids don’t have hands. They do, however, have amine groups either on the right-hand or left-hand side.) How did mindless nature sort through the righties and lefties and choose exclusively left-handed amino acids? There is no purely mindless natural process for generating or selecting only left-handed amino acids.

Eberlin warned against slipping into a view of physical laws as having foresight or intentions. The laws of nature were never striving to produce purely left-handed amino acids. Nature’s laws don’t care about nursing life. If anything, the mindless forces of nature want to tear life apart. 

To overcome these buffeting forces, Eberlin says, you need molecular biological machines. One is the ribosome. It’s essential for making proteins, but ribosomes are themselves partially made up of proteins. So, which came first in the evolutionary story? 

You also need very large RNA molecules to make ribosomes. Some origin-of-life researchers say life began as an RNA World, with DNA and proteins arriving later. Others say, no, proteins came first. Others, that no, ribosomes were first to the party. But really you need all three, Eberlin says. None of them can survive without the others.

It’s a classic chicken-and-egg problem, and Eberlin said that overcoming it requires foresight and planning, activities reserved for intelligent agents. Three chemists won a Nobel Prize for mapping the ribosome, and Eberlin said the prize was well deserved. So, what prize, he asked, is due the one who designed the ribosome in the first place?

The Problem of Orphans

In another CELS talk, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson discussed a rising challenge to modern evolutionary theory — the exponential growth in the catalogue of orphan genes. 

Orphan genes are functional DNA sequences without known homologues outside a given species or lineage. A commitment to universal common descent led biologists to expect such genes to be rare. After all, if all species evolved from ancestor species in a gradually branching tree of life, starting with the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), with genetic changes accumulating only very gradually through small genetic mutations, then novel genes — seemingly without ancestry — should be quite unusual. But as it turns out, they’re not.

Nelson related an experience from years ago when he was called out in a lecture at Dartmouth. He was speaking on the challenge orphan genes pose for evolutionary theory, and his critic complained that we didn’t have enough of a sample — just 122 bacterial species — to conclude that there was any real problem for evolutionary theory. Surely this signal would dissipate, said the critic, once the genomes of more bacterial types were sequenced. 

So, what has occurred in the intervening years? A Polish research team has now surveyed the genomes of more than 60,000 bacterial species and close to 200 million bacterial proteins. In the process they have uncovered 8.5 million orphan proteins. The signal, far from fading, is now loud enough to rattle teeth. Nelson noted that it isn’t just bacteria either. Whenever the DNA of a previously unsequenced plant or animal form is sequenced, many new orphan genes are uncovered.

The pattern clashes with what universal common descent anticipates but meshes well with an intelligent design paradigm. If a feature is closely shared with another species, then we might expect the designer to repurpose a module already in use. If the feature is unique to the species or lineage, then we could expect the designer to write new DNA code for the new feature, much as a software engineer would proceed, with the result being more orphan code. And that is the pattern that is emerging.

The Point of the Pentadactyl

Another CELS speaker was engineering superstar Stuart Burgess, Professor of Engineering Design at Bristol University in England. Burgess is the editor of two bioengineering journals, and a lead designer for the British Olympic Cycling Team. His work there helped the British track cyclists win the top medal haul in both the Rio and Tokyo Olympics. Burgess also has had two research fellowships at Cambridge University and was the lead designer for the European Space Agency’s Metop satellites.

In his CELS talk, Burgess made the case that an understanding of engineering principles well explains the repeated appearance of the pentadactyl (five digit) limb design throughout the animal kingdom.

Evolutionists have long argued that this pattern is due to evolutionary common descent — that is, that a series of mutations constructed the five-digit design in a common ancestral lineage and that the blueprint was passed down to various descendants on the branching limb of animal life, leaving everything from human hands to whale flippers sporting the pentadactyl design. But even a fully paid-up evolutionist such as Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould conceded that this tidy story breaks down. In his book Eight Little Piggies, he noted various exceptions to the pentadactyl rule before he gamely tried to fit the much messier picture into a Darwinian frame. 

Burgess offered what he sees as a more elegant solution. Namely, an engineering analysis shows that five digits (as opposed to, say, one or three or seventeen) provides an optimal tradeoff between strength and flexibility/dexterity. A single digit would be strongest, and a dozen digits more flexible or dexterous. But if you want an optimal combination of these two virtues, and you graph them with strength decreasing with each additional digit, and flexibility/dexterity increasing with each digit, you find that the two virtues cross at the five-digit point. Five digits thus represent what engineers describe as a constrained optimization of competing attributes. 

The five-digit design appears so often in the animal world, in other words, because the designer was a good engineer and selected it as the best trade-off between competing virtues. Take the five-digit whale flipper. The flipper must be strong but also flexible enough to twist in various subtle ways in the service of making the creature a master swimmer. An engineering analysis found that five digits best achieves that compromise, Burgess said.

Whale Bones of Contention

At this point in the talk Burgess anticipated an objection: Yes, but whales have vestigial pelvic bones, left over from their land-dwelling ancestors, pelvic bones largely useless to the whales. Surely that screams blind evolution, not design. Burgess noted that this oft-recycled argument for evolution is badly outdated, since research has long revealed important functions for these bones. 

The point was conceded in a 2014 paper in the journal Evolution. “Due to their highly reduced state, cetacean pelvic bones are sometimes thought of as ‘useless vestiges’ of their land-dwelling ancestry,” but, the authors continued, these whale bones in fact serve “important roles in male reproductive function.”1 In support of the claim, the article cited more than a dozen corroborating scientific papers stretching from 1881 to 2009. 

As one would expect from an article in the journal Evolution, the authors scrambled to provide an alternative evolutionary explanation for the pelvic bones, but the cherished evolutionary story of “vestigial” pelvic bones joins the growing pile of discredited icons of evolution detailed by biologist Jonathan Wells, first in Icons of Evolution and then further in Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution. 

In the case of the pelvic bones of the whale, the Darwinian framework led many scientists astray, whereas the view that these bones are the product of rational and skillful engineering pointed in the right direction.

This pattern of discovery harkens back to the scientific revolution itself. The founders of modern science were theists, tutored in the Judeo-Christian understanding of reality. Their early breakthroughs were fueled by seeing the book of nature as the work of a master author, a great craftsman whose deep designs called for careful study to illuminate their hidden intricacies. So, we shouldn’t be surprised that in recovering this approach to the living world, today’s systems biologists find themselves in the midst of a fresh revolution of discovery.

How the stones bore witness to the bible's account re:Belshazzar.

 How does archaeology confirm the role of Belshazzar of Babylon?

JW.org

FOR many years, Bible critics claimed that King Belshazzar, who is mentioned in the book of Daniel, never existed. (Dan. 5:1) They held that view because archaeologists could find no evidence that he had actually lived. However, that changed in 1854. Why?

In that year, a British consul named J. G. Taylor explored some ruins in the ancient city of Ur, in what is now southern Iraq. There, located in a large tower, the explorer found several clay cylinders. The cylinders, each about four inches (10 cm) long, are engraved with cuneiform writing. The writing on one of the cylinders includes a prayer for the long life of Babylonian King Nabonidus and his oldest son, Belshazzar. Even critics had to agree: This finding proves that Belshazzar did exist.

However, the Bible states not only that Belshazzar existed but also that he was a king. Again, critics were skeptical. For example, the 19th-century English scientist William Talbot wrote that some state that “Bel-sar-ussur [Belshazzar] was co-regent with Nabonidus his father. But of this there is not the slightest evidence.”

That controversy was settled, however, when the writings on other clay cylinders revealed that Belshazzar’s father, King Nabonidus, was away from the capital city for years at a time. What happened during his absence? “When Nabonidus went into exile,” states the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “he entrusted Belshazzar with the throne and the major part of his army.” So Belshazzar served, in effect, as a coruler in Babylon during that time. Thus, archaeologist and language scholar Alan Millard stated that it was appropriate for “the Book of Daniel to call Belshazzar ‘king.’”

Of course, for God’s servants, the principal evidence that the book of Daniel is trustworthy and inspired by God is found within the Bible itself.​—2 Tim. 3:16.

Just another conspiracy theory?

 

In pursuit of JEHOVAH'S Favor.

 Leviticus Ch.8:16NIV"Moses also took all the fat around the internal organs, the long lobe of the liver, and both kidneys and their fat, and burned it on the altar."

1Samuel Ch.2:15-17ASV"Yea, before they burnt the fat, the priest's servant came, and said to the man that sacrificed, Give flesh to roast for the priest; for he will not have boiled flesh of thee, but raw. 16And if the man said unto him, They will surely burn the fat first, and then take as much as thy soul desireth; then he would say, Nay, but thou shalt give it me now: and if not, I will take it by force. 17And the sin of the young men was very great before JEHOVAH; for the men despised the offering of JEHOVAH.

18But Samuel ministered before JEHOVAH, being a child, girded with a linen ephod."

Leviticus Ch.7:25ASV"For whosoever eateth the fat of the beast, of which men offer an offering made by fire unto JEHOVAH, even the soul that eateth it shall be cut off from his people. "

The sacrices and freewill offerings made at JEHOVAH'S sanctuary under the law covenant were foreshadows of the even better sacrifices Christ's High Priesthood facilitates. Yet a careful study of these illuminates key principles as to what JEHOVAH'S Standards are re:acceptable offerings.

The Fat mentioned in these passages was considered the most valuable part of the meat. Note that JEHOVAH insisted that the most valuable part of the sacrifice be offered first and that not even the priests were to convert any of it to personal use on pain of death.

Roman's Ch.12:1NKJV"I beseech[a] you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your [b]reasonable service."

So mere ritual will not do ,the Lord JEHOVAH is entitled to the most desirable/valuable part of our inner life. If we are not leading with an offering of our inner self to JEHOVAH exclusively our overall offering will be displeasing to JEHOVAH. Certainly it would be idolatrous to make material/hedonistic pursuits the centre of our affections and concerns. None of this is because JEHOVAH is a joyless fuddy duddy who begrudges his servants ever having any fun. Rather having created us for a particular purpose he understands that there can be no deep and abiding Joy found outside of that purpose. But joy is an elusive quarry. The trick is to turn Joy in to our pursuer rather than our quarry . JEHOVAH Alone can help us with that. He is worthy of our best,after all we got it from him.

N.T wright on Hell.

 

Irreducible complexity is a thing?

 

Some more on the contribution of JEHOVAH'S Witnesses to religious liberty

 

On the the contribution of JEHOVAH'S Witnesses to religious liberty.

 

Whither the black heterodoxy? III

 

Yet more on how I D is already mainstream.

 

On the maths of Darwinism.

 

A peek at a "science based morality"?

 

Not merely intelligent but ingenious design II.

 Nature Reveals Not Just Design but Genius

Andrew McDiarmid

Almost 50 years ago, physicist Steven Weinberg wrote that “[t]he more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” But is our universe really just a meaningless accident? Or can we detect true genius by studying its workings? On a new episode of ID the Future, we are pleased to share the first half of an interview with Dr. Jonathan Witt on the Denison Forum podcast about a cosmos charged with meaning and purpose. In their book A Meaningful World, Dr. Witt and co-author Benjamin Wiker develop a philosophical argument that the more we learn about the universe, the more it seems laden with meaning. Dr. Witt discusses this argument with host Mark Turman. 

In Part 1, Witt shares his personal journey of faith and notes why he became skeptical of Darwinism. He discusses why he and Wiker wrote their book, describing the volume as an antidote to the materialist thinking that has dominated academic and scientific circles for the last 150 years. Witt explains that after studying the hallmarks of genius in humans, they looked for the same characteristics in nature, finding bountiful examples of the same challenges, surprises, mystery, and elegance one expects from a work of genius.

Download the podcast or listen to it here

On the price of convergent serendipity.

 Convergent Evolution: An Argument That Comes at a Price

Emily Reeves

Can the laws of nature explain the biological information in human beings and other creatures? In his recent book The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, theologian Rope Kojonen argues that they can. My colleagues and I reviewed the book in the journal Religions and have been critiquing it here.

I turn now to convergent evolution, which is Kojonen’s strongest positive argument for the laws of form, or what he calls the “library of forms.” This argument is significant because these laws of form play a crucial role in Kojonen’s positive case for design. In his view, the laws of form arise from designed laws of nature and, in turn, they vitally shape the “fine-tuned” preconditions that help make evolution possible. So, Kojonen’s convergence argument is a crucial part of his case for design. It also plays a key role in his account of how design supplements evolutionary processes in just the right way.

To understand why this is problematic, it helps to know more about convergence. Kojonen says that convergence means “the independent evolution of the same biological outcome in two or more different lineages, beginning from different starting points” (Kojonen 2021, p. 125). He notes, for example, that “dolphins and sharks have similar streamlined bodies and dorsal fins, even though dolphins are mammals and sharks are fish.” He also says that “paddle-shaped limbs for swimming have evolved independently seven times, and a structure as complex as the eye has evolved independently 49 times…” (p. 125). The word “convergent” is used to describe these examples because, in general, multiple lines of evidence — usually from genetics, paleontology, biochemistry, systematics, and similar fields — indicate that it is hard to make a coherent phylogenetic account of how they came to be from a given common ancestor. Under the idea of common ancestry, these facts are considered odd. Thus, evolutionists say that they are the result of convergent evolution.

A Stacked Deck

Kojonen sees this convergence as evidence that laws of form “play a significant role” in helping evolutionary processes cluster around similar solutions (p. 125). He comes to the conclusion that convergence shows “functional constraints have a big effect on the evolution of life like that on Earth” (p. 127). The general idea, expressed as a rhetorical question, seems to be: If the same solutions came up independently over and over again, doesn’t that suggest that the deck was probably stacked to help evolution succeed? 

The first problem is that convergence needs not only to evolve certain complex proteins, traits, and systems but also to evolve these things on their own more than once. If proteins are rare and isolated (as our review establishes) and the chances of even a single short protein evolving once in the whole history of the earth are too low, then, all other things being equal, the chances of similar proteins evolving more than once are even lower. This is amplified when scaled up to protein complexes, cell types, tissues, and organs, again demonstrating why the strength of the scientific evidence is crucial. If unguided evolution was not the cause of convergence, Kojonen’s argument that convergence supports the reconciliation of evolution and design would also fall apart.

A Dilemma

Second, and more importantly, Kojonen’s model is stuck in a paradox. This problem is a version of “Sober’s Paradox,” which is a term used by philosopher of biology Paul Nelson (Nelson 2022). Kojonen’s ideas about common ancestry and his ideas about convergence are at odds with each other. His attempt to agree with both sides breaks up the model internally.

Accept Convergence, Lose Common Ancestry

For instance, if convergence of forms is the result of being constrained by the laws of physics and chemistry, then Kojonen’s co-option response to Behe’s argument about irreducible complexity loses some of its power. This is because co-option only makes sense if there are similar protein parts in other systems that could be changed into the specialized parts needed for the bacterial flagellum. Kojonen says this about the flagellum: “The fact that similar parts exist in other systems, for example, does show that evolution is possible” (p. 118). But with “convergent evolution,” parts or systems that are even more complicated than the flagellum of a bacterium can develop without any similarity or common ancestry. If that’s true, what real power does co-option have?

Let’s also think about how true evolutionary convergence hurts Kojonen’s case that proteins evolved over time. As the story goes, mutation and natural selection can transform one functional protein into another. But if convergence is happening, wouldn’t it be easier for evolution to just make a new protein? Otherwise, if it is just as likely that evolution can lead to big changes as it is to lead to small ones, why talk about gradual changes moving one functional protein to another? Again, the argument has lost its power.

As we’ve seen, Kojonen’s belief in evolutionary convergence hurts the case for common ancestry in standard evolutionary theory. Evolutionary biologists usually think that similar structures can best be explained by having a common ancestor with a similar structure, i.e., it is far more likely that a complex trait evolved once instead of twice. If complex features are just as likely to appear on their own, then it is very hard to prove that two organisms share a common ancestor (Luskin 2017).

Accept Common Ancestry, Lose Convergence

What about the other side of the dilemma? If Kojonen accepts common ancestry, then what follows for his case for convergence and, by extension, his case for the “laws of form”? It seems like two results follow. First, he can no longer explain a lot of biological phenomena. This is because he says that convergence is “ubiquitous.” 

Second, in Kojonen’s model, convergence is part of his case for the laws of form. And these laws play a crucial role in the “fine-tuned” preconditions that help make evolution possible. Given that these preconditions arise from designed laws of nature, they play a vital part of Kojonen’s overall account of design. But if Kojonen accepts common ancestry (and its standard justification), then he loses a crucial element of his particular account of design. This greatly harms the heart of his model, which is to defend a certain view of design and its compatibility with evolutionary theory.

So Kojonen’s model has internal inconsistencies. He is basically stuck between a rock and a hard place. Kojonen’s understanding of (and justification for) “design” conflicts with both his own reasoning (about co-option and protein evolution) and the justification of common ancestry, which is a mainstay of evolution. So while Kojonen’s study of the laws of form is one of the most interesting ways he looks at design, this argument comes at a very high price.

References

Branscomb, Elbert, and Michael J. Russell. 2018. “Frankenstein or a Submarine Alkaline Vent: Who Is Responsible for Abiogenesis?: Part 1: What Is Life-That It Might Create Itself?” BioEssays: News and Reviews in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology 40 (7): e1700179.

Djamgoz, Mustafa B. A., and Michael Levin. 2022. “Bioelectricity: An Update.” Bioelectricity 4 (3): 135–135.

Dobson, Christopher M. 2004. “Chemical Space and Biology.” Nature 432 (7019): 824–28.

Ellis, George. 2023. “Quantum Physics and Biology: The Local Wavefunction Approach.” arXiv [quant-Ph]. arXiv. http://arxiv.org/abs/2301.06516v10

Dr. Hector Zenil vs. The Sphinx.

 

The thumb print of JEHOVAH is more obvious than ever?

 

The first humans are just as human as present day humans?

 Childhood in the Ice Age — What Was It Like?

Denyse O Leary

In Aeon late last winter, University of Victoria archaeologist April Nowell offered insights into the lives of children in the Paleolithic era, roughly 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. The surprising thing is how much we actually know about that.

Nowell, author of Growing Up in the Ice Age (Oxbow Books 2021) points out, in addition to Caves of Lascaux-level archeological finds that make world news, a wealth of additional information, put together, tells us more than we might have expected about Stone Age life.

For example, footprints embedded in soft earth or mud in and near a cave tell us that a family, burning bundles of pine sticks to light their way, crawled through a cave called Grotta della Bà̀sura 14,000 years ago. The footprints belonged to two adults, an 8-to-11-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 3-year-old.

Having reached a point now known as the “Sala dei Misteri,” they left signatures of their time there: “While the adults make charcoal handprints on the ceiling, the youngsters dig clay from the floor and smear it on a stalagmite, tracing their fingers in the soft sediment. Each tracing corresponds to the age and height of the child who made it: the tiniest markings, made with a toddler’s fingers, are found closest to the ground.”

Then They Left

Their pine torches left charcoal traces on the walls. What were they doing? We will never know for sure but it seems like a ritual of some sort.

We know other things about the lives of children back then as well. One is that they had to learn the art of making stone tools (knapping). Examining the masses of struck-off fragments, archeologists can tell which ones were produced by novices who had not yet perfected the art.

But, says Nowell, we have evidence of children at play too:

Other studies of footprints, this time from 13,000-year-old sites in Italy and France, document children and teens running around playing tag, making ‘perfect’ footprints the way kids do today at the beach, and throwing clay balls at each other and at stalagmites — some of the pellets missed their targets and remain on the cave floor. Skills were honed through play in other ways: at Palaeolithic sites in Russia, researchers found 29 clay objects that, by analysing traces of fingerprints, were determined to be made by children between the ages of six and 10, and adolescents between 10 and 15. Ethnographically, we know that children often begin to learn ceramics by first playing with clay, making toy animals and serving bowls.

APRIL NOWELL, “CHILDREN OF THE ICE AGE,” AEON, 13 FEBRUARY 2023

And Sadder Evidence as Well

One young child from 10,000 years ago was buried in clothing with hundreds of beads lovingly sewn in.

When telling us of our ancestors, researchers often hold out the hope that the information they painstakingly accumulate will shed light on human development. From the fragments gathered so far, it seems we have no evidence for a history of the human mind, only the history of human technology.

It's a social contagion?

 

Atheism fails on its own terms?

 

On junk science re:junk DNA?

 

On separating real from apparent design in nature

 Stephen Meyer: Evidence of Mind in the Natural World

Andrew McDiarmid

Can we scientifically detect the activity of a mind behind the universe? On a new episode of ID the Future, philosopher of science Dr. Stephen Meyer answers this question and more in the concluding hour of a new two-hour interview on various topics related to his work and books. The interview was recorded in the fall of 2023 by Praxis Circle, a worldview-building organization that promotes open dialogue around life’s biggest questions. The word praxis harkens back to Latin and Greek as a word for practice, action, or doing. So praxis refers to the process of interaction between our worldview — our conception of reality, our view of the world — and our practice of living and acting in it. It’s an interesting mental space to begin a dialogue.

A word on the format of the interview. The interview host is Doug Monroe, and you’ll hear him at various intervals. However, the discussion was recorded specifically to be broken up into 39 short videos, so most of the time you won’t hear the question being asked — just Dr. Meyer’s response. The questions he answers are often connected and follow a logical progression exploring Dr. Meyer’s books and arguments. Plus, Dr. Meyer usually begins his answer by paraphrasing the question, so you’ll have a good idea what he’s talking about as he begins each new answer.

In case it’s helpful, here’s an outline of the topics covered by Dr. Meyer in this second hour of the interview:

How Christianity Sparked the Scientific Revolution

How Human Fallibility Led to Development of a Scientific Method

Scientific Materialism and Philosophical Skepticism

Where Intelligent Design Stands in the Scientific Community Today

The Argument of Signature in the Cell

The Universe’s Origin and Quantum Physics

Every Philosophical System Posits a Prime Reality

Cosmological Data that Points to God?

Our Fine-tuned Universe

Fine-tuning vs. the Multiverse

Applying Occam’s Razor

The Low Creative Power of Darwinian Mutations

The Problem with Theories of Everything

Theistic Evolution: an Oxymoron

Do Miracles Violate the Laws of Nature?

A Good Theology of Nature

Society’s Ultimate Problem

Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Winning in an empty stadium?

 

Chess: a brief history

 

How science enables an intellectually satisfying theism.

 Stephen Meyer: Scientific Arguments for a Theistic Worldview

Andrew McDiarmid

Are there strong scientific arguments for theism? Is there such a thing as objective morality? How is a worldview built? On a new episode of ID the Future, philosopher of science Dr. Stephen Meyer answers these questions and more in the first hour of a new two-hour interview on various topics related to his work and books. The interview was recorded in the fall of 2023 by Praxis Circle, a worldview-building organization that promotes open dialogue around life’s biggest questions. The word praxis harkens back to Latin and Greek as a word for practice, action, or doing. So praxis refers to the process of interaction between our worldview — our conception of reality, our view of the world — and our practice of living and acting in it. It’s an interesting mental space to begin a dialogue.

A word on the format of the interview. The interview host is Doug Monroe, and you’ll hear him at various intervals. However, the discussion was recorded specifically to be broken up into 39 short videos, so most of the time you won’t hear the question being asked — just Dr. Meyer’s response. The questions he answers are often connected and follow a logical progression exploring Dr. Meyer’s books and arguments. Plus, Dr. Meyer usually begins his answer by paraphrasing the question, so you’ll have a good idea what he’s talking about as he begins each new answer.

In case it’s helpful, here’s an outline of the topics covered by Dr. Meyer in this first hour of the interview:

Founding of Discovery Institute

Definition of worldview

Dr. Meyer’s own worldview journey 

Epistemology and the Judeo-Christian idea of intelligibility

Mind-body problem of consciousness

The need for objective, rational arguments for theism

Importance of philosophy

Materialism, relativism, and objective morality

The fact/value divide

Newton and Leibniz debate: gravity and God

The nature of information 

This is Part 1 of a two-part interview. Download the podcast or listen to ithere

Leviathan.

 

James Tour vs. Lee Cronin:more post game commentary.

 

Science for sale?

 

The fossil record bears witness to design?

 

Yet another clash of Titans :a new opening?

 

Birds aren't little dinosaurs?

 Fossil Friday: New Evidence Against Dinosaur Ancestry of Birds

Gunter Bechly

This Fossil Friday we revisit the ancestry of birds, with the featured skeleton of the Late Cretaceous bird Hesperornis gracilis, exhibited at the Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany. Hesperornis was a flightless and toothed marine bird, somewhat similar to modern penguins, and lived contemporaneous with some of the raptor dinosaurs that are well known from the Jurassic Park movies.

Few hypotheses in evolutionary biology have become as popular among lay people as the postulated ancestry of birds from bipedal dinosaurs. Indeed, many a school kid will tell you proudly that birds simply are surviving dinosaurs. The theropod ancestry of birds has become an evolutionary dogma that is almost universally accepted and taught as the consensus view. However, there are a few dissenters, among whom the paleornithologist Alan Feduccia from the University of North Carolina certainly is the most prominent. He famously coined the term “temporal paradox” for the fact that the fossil record of the assumed theropod stem group of birds tends to be younger than the oldest actual birds. Last week I discussed new evidence that makes this temporal paradox much worse (Bechly 2023).

Beyond the Fossil Record

However, Feduccia’s critique of the dinosaur-bird hypothesis is not based just on problems with the fossil record, but also on conflicting evidence from comparative anatomy. Now, he presents new evidence that still more sharply contradicts the consensus view. One of the arguments for a dinosaur-bird relationship has been the presence of a so-called “open” acetabulum, which “is a concave pelvic surface formed by the ilium, ischium, and pubis, which accommodates the head of the femur in tetrapods.” Feduccia (2024) studied the acetabulum in early basal birds and found that their acetabulum tends to be partially closed and an antitrochanter (process of the ischium or iliac) is absent. This casts strongly into doubt one of the key characters for a dinosaur-bird relationship and suggests that this hypothesis must be re-evaluated. The fact that microraptorids and troodontids “also exhibit partial closure of the acetabulum and lack an antitrochanter is a further incongruity in that these taxa should exhibit “typical” theropod pelvic girdle modifications for terrestrial cursoriality.” This could support the view of several experts (e.g., Martin 2004, and various studies cited by Feduccia), that these maniraptoran taxa represent secondarily flightless birds rather than theropod dinosaurs.

Feduccia concluded his new study with this remarkable statement:

                 The hypothesis that birds are maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs, despite the certitude with which it is proclaimed, continues to suffer from unaddressed difficulties … Until problems like those discussed here — and many others that continue to be dismissed either by appeal to “consensus” or through overconfidence in the results of phylogenetic analysis of morphological data — have satisfactorily been resolved, skepticism toward the current consensus and continued investigation of alternative hypotheses are needful for the promotion of critical discourse in vertebrate phylogenetics and evolutionary biology.

                  Birds and dinosaurs may not represent arbitrary chunks of an evolutionary grade after all, but may instead represent distinct natural kinds. At the very least, the evidence seems to be much more ambiguous, weaker, and less convincing than most evolutionary biologists love to pretend.

Germania and the rise of the west.

 

The inability of chance and necessity to navigate the fitness landscape.

 Trapdoors in the Fitness Landscape: Scientists Revive Worries About an Evolutionary Metaphor  

David Coppedge

Sewall Wright concocted one of those metaphors in science that lingers long past its “best by” date. In 1932, he coined the term “the fitness landscape.” He envisioned a mythical land of peaks and valleys, with the peaks indicating higher fitness, and valleys populated by evolving organisms starting out on their journeys toward progressively higher fitness levels. Impelled by the struggle for existence, organisms would climb higher till reaching a peak. One difficulty with this picture appeared soon after the metaphor gained popularity: to get to a higher peak, an organism would have to climb down, lowering its fitness on the way to a neighboring peak. Some workarounds 7were concocted, but the evocative metaphor lent itself to 3-D graphs and formulas of positive selection, giving evolutionary biologists hopes of empirical rigor as they measured their research organism’s progress up the landscape.

                

Stability of the Landscape

Unwarranted assumptions are the bugaboo of clever models like this. One is the stability of the landscape. Does the hypothetical landscape undulate over time, such that a peak at one epoch becomes a valley in another? After all, the dynamic environment is oblivious to the needs of organisms. How quickly does a given habitat change? How can evolutionists be sure that fitness for a savannah does not become a detriment if the population finds itself in a habitat undergoing desertification? For reasons like this, Mustonen and Lässig in 2009 dubbed it a fitness “seascape” instead of a landscape.

Another of Wright’s assumptions was that the fitness landscape follows Gaussian curves consisting of smooth lines without discontinuities. Even if some of those Gaussian curves rose steeply like a cliff, Darwin defenders like Richard Dawkins could get their organisms up to the summit of Mount Improbable by envisioning a gradual staircase from another direction, allowing natural selection to maintain Darwin’s narrative of the accumulation of small, incremental steps.

But what if the Gaussian assumption is wrong? What if, instead, the structure of the landscape is like a block of Swiss cheese, flat and riddled with holes that a blind watchmaker cannot foresee? The probability of a “holey” fitness landscape becomes credible when considering dependent traits. These “quantitative traits” are made up of components that must cooperate to work. Without all of them emerging simultaneously, no organism can ascend to higher levels. With dependent traits in operation, such as in the case of powered flight, a mutation or defect in one can send the organism to immediate extinction — as if, as in the old board game, a trapdoor opened underneath

This Is Not a New Worry

Sergey Gavrilets thought of this back in 1997 and raised it again in 2004. Now, worries about a “holey landscape” have been given new emphasis in a paper in PNAS — “Drift on holey landscapes as a dominant evolutionary process.” The four authors, from universities in North Dakota, California, and Paris, complain that this worry has been largely neglected.

Our understanding of selection has been strongly shaped by Sewall Wright’s conceptualization of an evolutionary landscape, with populations moving from areas of low fitness to areas of higher fitness. While the one- and two-trait landscapes Wright originally described have been criticized as unrealistic, including by Wright himself, the general metaphor has nonetheless guided much of evolutionary thought

What if the metaphor has “guided much of evolutionary thought” astray? Then, the “understanding of selection” has been shaped awry.

An important conclusion from this research is that evolutionary dynamics on simple landscapes often fail to properly predict evolution on higher dimensional landscapes. Empirical research into quantitative traits has been slow to incorporate this need for a higher-dimensional perspective.

Perhaps most conceptually unfamiliar and unintuitive to researchers focused on quantitative traits are holey landscapes (Fig. 1C; ref. 16). Holey landscapes are high-dimensional evolutionary landscapes that consist of trait combinations that are either of average fitness or that are inviable. This results in flat landscapes with holes at inviable or low fitness phenotypes (Fig. 1C)

Quantitative traits comprise “many aspects of physiology, behavior, and morphology,” they say, illustrating them with things like “most behaviors, physiological processes, and life-history traits.”

To investigate whether such traits tend to be distributed on a Gaussian landscape or a holey landscape, they looked at genetic variations in sixty species, including animals and plants. They found the results to be consistent with “high-dimensional, holey landscapes” instead of simplistic single-peak depictions or “badlands” landscapes consisting of rolling hills and gentle valleys. This suggested to them that

the leading conceptualizations and modeling of the evolution of trait integration fail to capture how phenotypes are shaped and that traits are integrated in a manner contrary to predictions of dominant evolutionary theory.Our results demonstrate that our understanding of how evolution has shaped phenotypes remains incompleteand these results provide a starting point for reassessing the relevance of existing evolutionary models.

Scrap and Start Over?

One way to reassess the relevance of an existing model is to scrap it and start over. The authors are not ready to try that, but they do point to serious shortcomings of conventional models: for instance, missing the holes.

Even more importantly, it is unknown what the topography of landscapes is for natural populations. While portions of selection surfaces and landscapes can be directly estimated, these estimates may differ from the full landscape due to several factors. These include the omission of fitness-affecting traits, incomplete estimation of fitness, and insufficient power to estimate non-linear selection coefficients.

In effect, modelers using Wright’s metaphor are building imaginary landscapes in thin air instead of working with real plants and animals on the real earth that must eat and survive. Simplistic Darwinian models of selection presuppose that beneficial mutations add up. This is not necessarily the case. A benefit to one gene can be a detriment to another — an example of negative pleiotropy. For realism, the whole animal must be considered, lest negative correlations open up a trapdoor that ends that organism’s progress, sending it down into one of those “inviable” outcomes. The authors call for better answers to the “crucial questions we have raised.”

Why would a holey landscape be flat? The authors explain what the model predicts for quantitative traits:

This topography stems from the multivariate nature of phenotypes: while there may be continuous fitness differences in two dimensions, fitness gradients will create holes in the landscape and peaks will average out when additional traits are considered. Unfortunately, predictions about quantitative trait evolution on holey landscapes are not clear and have rarely been pursued (e.g., ref. 18).

This means that traits are not isolated in one or two dimensions, but are interdependent on other traits in additional dimensions. This multi-dimensional consideration of traits on a flat landscape suggests that organisms are already at their optima; the fitness peaks have averaged out. The only way left is down, falling through a hole like a trapdoor if a trait changes that other traits depend on. 

Irreducible Complexity and Devolution

The picture fits Michael Behe’s concepts of irreducible complexity and devolution. No part of a mousetrap should be considered in isolation. It may have a great spring, but if the other parts are weak or absent, the trap will not catch mice. Neo-Darwinism’s focus on positive selection of individual genes or traits, therefore, misses the holistic multi-dimensional view of organisms as functional wholes, to borrow Douglas Axe’s phrase. To function, a multi-dimensional trait must reach a threshold of coherence among its parts. These can be considered a list of design requirements.

Can neo-Darwinism recover from the neglected view of holey landscapes? The authors do not offer any hope, other than to wish that better landscape models may be forthcoming. Even with that concession, they remain pessimistic.

Our implementation of Wright’s metaphor represents only one of many possible evolutionary models. It is possible that unmodeled alternative landscapes may produce populations for which variation is distributed in a manner similar to holey landscapes and empirical estimates…. Importantly, and as mentioned previously, much of the exploration of evolution of quantitative traits has focused on simple landscapes like we have implemented here. Thus, it also is an open question what different models of selection “look” like when implemented for higher-dimensional phenotypes. For example, rugged landscapes of high dimensionality may give rise to holey landscapes as peaks average out and valleys are inviable…. Nonetheless, the close correspondence between empirical data and populations simulated as evolving on holey landscapes suggest that our understanding of quantitative trait evolution remains incomplete.

Regardless of any other possible devices to rescue the picture of progress up fitness peaks, they assert that “our finding that observed patterns of quantitative genetic variation across taxonomic groups are not consistent with traditional evolutionary models stands.”

This disconnect between observed patterns of multivariate variation and expectations under conventional models of selection suggests that Wright’s metaphor of landscapes — and the subsequent implementation of this metaphor as Gaussian surfaces — may have contributed to an incomplete understanding of how selection has shaped phenotypes. A potential contributor to this problem has been the lack of clear alternative explanationsbesides a simple null hypothesis of drift with no selection. Moving forward, clear development of additional alternative models of the action of selection and evolution in multivariate space is needed. This will allow the comparison of simulated populations to empirical data as we have done here.

Ultimately, our findings suggest that evolutionary biologists need to better consider the effects of high dimensionality as simple standard evolutionary models are not consistent with available data for quantitative data

Design Trumps Darwinism

Science is supposed to be about observable, quantitative data, isn’t it? If observations do not fit Wright’s convenient metaphor, the metaphor must be revised or discarded. Intelligent design is consistent with flat optima and built-in mechanisms to detect and avoid holes (e.g., DNA error correction, immune systems, blood clotting). Once again, design with its emphasis on engineering specifications trumps Darwinism in the real world.

Yet another clash of Titans : beware of greeks bearing gifts.

 

Cicero echoes our brother Paul.

 Cicero on Intelligent Design — Sound Familiar?

Nancy Pearcy

Yesterday was Cicero’s birthday. To celebrate, here’s my favorite quote from the Roman philosopher. From my Book Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes:

“Yet we don’t really need the latest findings from science to recognize that a mind is needed to explain the universe. In every age, people have realized that an intelligible universe must be the product of intelligence.”

In ancient Rome, the Stoic philosophers offered an argument from design that sounds very familiar to modern ears. In the century before Christ, the great Roman orator Cicero wrote, “When we see something moved by machinery, like an orrery [model of the planetary system] or clock or many other such things, we do not doubt that these contrivances are the work of reason.”

He then drew the logical conclusion: “When therefore we behold the whole compass of the heaven moving with revolutions of marvelous velocity and … perfect regularity …, how can we doubt that all this is effected not merely by reason, but by a reason that is transcendent and divine?”

Sounding almost biblical in his language, Cicero wrote, “You see not the Deity, yet … by the contemplation of his works you are led to acknowledge a God.”

Clearly, people in the ancient world were capable of “reading” the message of general revelation in nature. The opening theme in Romans 1 is that anyone can conclude that the created order is the product of an intelligent being.

Ps.Romans Ch.1:20NIV"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

Junk DNA demystified.

 

Titan vs. Aspiring Titan.

 

College is a scam?

 

Theistic Darwinism is not an oxymoron? III

 Could Laws of Nature Give Rise to Platonic Forms?

Emily Reeves

Did the laws of nature give rise to “platonic” forms, which then constrain matter (and perhaps protein formation) in certain ways that make it easier for mutation and selection to search for and find biological forms? That question is thoughtfully posed by theologian Rope Kojonen in his recent book, The Compatibility of Evolution and Design. My colleagues and I reviewed the book in the journal Religions. Over the past two days, as part of a longer series, I’ve been looking at how Kojonen’s model would work practically. 

Here is a third interpretation of Kojonen’s model, which I want to consider now.

The laws of nature gave rise to “platonic” forms, which then constrained evolution in ways that allowed selection and mutation to build biological forms. These “forms” are “an emergent consequence of the laws of chemistry and physics.” In this interpretation, the laws created these forms. The forms themselves are more than simply laws and matter under a different guise; they are non-physical. In this view, laws generated these forms, which then shaped the physical tendencies of matter such that (with possible contingency and other factors in play) they produced biological information sufficient for selection and mutation to evolve all manner of proteins, protein machines, unique human abilities, and the like.

Denton’s Structuralist View 

Biologist Michael Denton’s structuralist view says that underlying structural principles govern the form of living things. Denton argues that these principles transcend the specifics of individual species and that the structural organization of living organisms is not merely the result of random processes but reflects a fundamental and innate order in nature. But how would this interpretation understand these “forms”? Kojonen helpfully writes:

[I]f we accept the idea of a platonic library of forms that makes evolution possible, it seems that evolution no longer explains the forms themselves, but only their actualization. In Wagner’s (2016) words, before evolution, the forms “already exist in a world of concepts, the kind of abstract concepts that mathematicians explore.” (p. 152)

On this interpretation, it seems that forms are abstract concepts that exist independently of and prior to evolution. They influence physical matter and its properties. Andreas Wagner’s statement about “abstract concepts” that exist “in a world of concepts” suggests that forms are not physical entities, forces, or patterns. They are non-physical phenomena that influence physical phenomena.

A Library of Forms

This viewpoint raises a variety of questions and concerns. First, since Kojonen describes the library of forms as “an emergent consequence” of physical laws, it is unclear how the laws of physics and chemistry — including gravity, electrostatics, the strong nuclear force, and so on — could (1) produce immaterial phenomena that (2) in turn exercise their own independent causal influence on matter and energy that are (3) still governed by the laws of nature. This is in part because it’s difficult to imagine how an emergent phenomenon can have its own independent causal powers over and above its ontological substrate. It’s also difficult to imagine how non-physical phenomena affect material phenomena that are apparently also fully governed by the material substrate that underlies them.

A second worry is that Kojonen’s viewpoint would most likely be seen as believable only by those with very specific background beliefs. Some people believe that non-physical phenomena can emerge from physical phenomena. (Some believe, for example, that brain states produce mental states.) Others believe that non-physical phenomena can exert a causal influence on physical phenomena. (For example, some believe that irreducible minds can cause brain states.) But it’s quite another matter to claim that physical phenomena gave rise to non-physical things, which then exercise independent causal power back on (other) physical phenomena — which are also still under the governance of the laws of physics and chemistry. If Kojonen’s account of the origin of biological information relies on this particular set of claims, then many thinkers will understandably find it unpersuasive.

Abandon Mainstream Physics and Chemistry?

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the “platonic” interpretation of Kojonen’s model deviates dramatically from mainstream scientists’ understanding of physical and chemical laws and their effects on the natural (and biological) world. If Kojonen’s idea necessitates abandoning mainstream physics and chemistry, it’s unclear why compatibility with mainstream biology is as valuable as Kojonen argues. In that case the model’s “mainstream” status appears arbitrary.

Finally, several of the issues mentioned above apply with equal or greater force when it comes to the emergence of human capabilities. Can the laws of nature produce platonic forms to explain ourselves? Could that explain our capacity for abstract thought, volition, and the like? For many reasons, this is doubtful.

Our AI overlords jockey for position.

 

Whither the black heterodoxy? II

 

Whither the black heterodoxy?

 

0n sacrificing like a titan?

 

Yet more on fusion as the future of energy.

 

On scientism and epistemology

 

The ministry of truth's public enemy no.1 David Berlinski holds court.

 

Yet more on why "junk DNA" is junk no more.

 Casey Luskin On Junk DNA’s “Kuhnian Paradigm Shift”

Andrew McDiarmid

Prevailing scientific assumptions often die hard, especially when they fit so neatly into an evolutionary view of the development of life on Earth. On a new episode of ID the Future, Dr. Casey Luskin gives me an update on the paradigm shift around the concept of “junk DNA.” 

Luskin explains that intelligent design theorists have long argued against the idea that non-protein coding DNA is useless evolutionary junk, instead predicting that it serves important biological functions. Year after year for over a decade, new evidence has emerged revealing such functions and vindicating ID scientists. Luskin summarizes several recent papers that have found specific functions for non-coding DNA, such as regulating gene expression, controlling development, and influencing epigenetic processes. He then reports on the latest new evidence: the function of short tandem repeats (STRs), previously considered “junk DNA.” Luskin also discusses the work of molecular biologist John Mattick, who has written recently about the shift in thinking about “junk DNA.” Luskin suggests a new way of looking at non-protein coding regions of DNA and concludes that, far from junk, these “highly compact information suites” are essential and serve a variety of important functions in the genome. Download the podcast or listen to it here

Technology is more predictive re:biology than physics?

 Paper Digest: Standard Engineering Principles as a Predictive Framework for Biology

Emily Reeves

In 2017, professor of engineering Gregory T. Reeves and engineer Curtis E. Hrischuk published an open access paper in Journal of Bioinformatics, Computational and Systems Biology titled “The Cell Embodies Standard Engineering Principles.” They explained how the cell fulfills different sets of standard engineering principles (SEPs). This paper builds on Reeves and Hrischuk’s earlier publication that surveyed engineering models for systems biology. Once more these authors argue that engineering concepts can be used as a predictive and successful framework for biology.

Human designing and building have resulted in lists of standard engineering principles which must be followed to produce efficient, robust systems. These principles have been refined through countless engineering projects, and Reeves and Hrischuk demonstrate that these same SEPs are used in biology. They are therefore useful to biologists as an expectation framework for anticipating cellular systems:

The presence of engineering principles within the cell implies that SEPs can be used as starting point to formulate hypotheses about how a cell operates and behaves. In other words, we should pragmatically approach the cell as an engineered system and use that point of view to predict (hypothesize) the expected behavior of biological systems. We call this approach the Engineering Principle Expectation (EPE).

Several Categories of SEPs 

In the paper, several categories of SEPs are examined: general engineering principles (GEPs), hardware/software codesign principles (CDEPs), and robotic engineering principles (REPs). For each of these categories, the authors give specific examples of how the cell conforms to the set of SEPs. The authors also develop a non-exhaustive list of SEPS for chemical process control engineering (CPCEP), since a list was not available.

The comparison between cellular systems and engineered systems has strong implications for intelligent design. The reality that cells abide by the same engineering principles discovered in human design is highly significant. This finding is much better predicted on the hypothesis that biological systems have been intelligently designed than the alternate theory of a blind neo-Darwinian process giving rise to living systems.

For the category of general engineering expectations, the authors go over three principles in the main text. GEP1 states that the “development of engineered objects follows a plan in accordance with quantitative requirements.” The authors point out that the development of molecular machinery requires careful orchestration, including but not limited to decision-making, gene expression, protein synthesis, post-translational modification, the assembly of multicomponent complexes, and life cycle processes like cell division. Thus, cells embody GEP1. GEP2 states that “requirements are ranked according to cost effectiveness, and the development plan, which has an incremental structure, emphasizes the higher-ranked requirements.” This principle describes hierarchy, which results from top-down design where components are constructed, and resources expended in accordance with higher system goals. To give a biological example, the authors note the prioritization of ATP in the cell. GEP3 states that “standards are used where available and applicable with every departure from applicable standards explicitly justified.” Biological examples include how all different types of cells have conserved features such as the genetic code, ATP, a near universal central metabolism. Amino acids, nucleic acids, and some lipids might all be thought of as a cellular standard from which deviations rarely occur.

Hardware/Software Co-Design Principles

Next the authors discuss hardware/software co-design principles starting with CDEP1. This is the principle of “partitioning the function to be implemented into small interacting pieces.” In the cell, cellular regulatory networks can be decomposed into autonomous acting modules which cooperate to accomplish a function. Even the basics of cellular physiology, where unique macromolecular structures such as chromosomes, membranes, and ribosomes exist, implies partitioning of function into small interacting pieces. Thus, cells abound with examples of autonomous players carrying out a specific role towards a greater purpose. CDEP2 is the principle of “allocating those partitions to microprocessors or other hardware units, where the function may be implemented directly in hardware or in software running on a microprocessor.” This principle underlies the benefit of having a separate processer for each function. In computer systems, manufacturing constraints preclude this from being possible, but the authors point out that the cell is able to realize the ideal of having each protein or complex operating independently as a unique unit of hardware. 

Reeves and Hrischuk then describe REPs and CPCEPs. While going over each of those is beyond the scope of this article, the takeaway is that SEPs provide logic for understanding biological systems. By familiarizing themselves with these principles, biologists can enhance their research methodologies and improve their ability to predict and validate their experiments.

The Engineering Principle Expectation

Reeves and Hirschuk say that any complex system must adhere to SEPs. If it doesn’t, the outcome is catastrophic. Biological systems, which are more complex than any engineered system today, are not exceptions. When looking at a biological system, one should expect engineering characteristics. This can be thought of as the engineering principle expectation, a predictive model that can be used when looking at a biological system whose mechanistic details are not understood. Reeves and Hrischuk argue that it is crucial to apply engineering principles to understand and analyze biological systems. By doing so, researchers can gain insights into the underlying mechanisms and predict the behavior of these systems. Additionally, considering engineering principles can help in designing effective interventions or therapies for complex biological problems.

Theistic Darwinism is not an oxymoron? II

 Could Finely Tuned Initial Conditions Create Biological Organisms?

Emily Reeves

Is the arrangement of mass energy at the beginning of all things sufficient to account for the origin of life, the diversification of life, our capacity for abstract thought, volition, spiritual communion, and more? At present, there seems to be very little reason to answer in the affirmative.

However, theologian Rope Kojonen, in an attempt to wed design and evolution, allows for this interpretation in his recent book, The Compatibility of Evolution and Design. My colleagues and I reviewed the book in the journal Religions and have been discussing it further in a series here. The laws and preconditions of nature are at the heart of Kojonen’s model. They are his proposed mechanisms of design, the linchpin of his project. Yesterday, we looked at the first of three interpretations of how Kojonen’s model would actually work. Today we will look at the second:

The laws of nature simply transmitted biologically relevant information sufficient to produce all biological complexity and diversity, including new proteins, protein machines, and the like. This biologically relevant information was “built in” to the mass-energy configuration at the Big Bang. The laws of nature did not create anything but rather were the media (or “carriers”) through which biologically relevant information was eventually expressed and instantiated in everything from proteins to bacterial flagella to human beings.

A Helpful Analogy 

Laws have the capability of transmitting information in some situations, but they lack the ability to generate biological information of the kind found in DNA and proteins, as we’ve already discussed. Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer develops this point with a helpful analogy in Return of the God Hypothesis:

[I]magine that a group of small radio-controlled helicopters hovers in tight formation over the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. From below, the helicopters appear to be spelling a message: “Go USC.” At halftime, with the field cleared, each helicopter releases either a maroon or gold paint ball, one of the two University of Southern California colors. Gravity takes over and the paint balls fall to the earth, splattering paint on the field after they hit the turf. Now on the field below, a somewhat messier but still legible message appears. It also spells “Go USC.”

Did the law of gravity, or the force described by the law, produce this information? Clearly, it did not. The information that appeared on the field already existed in the arrangement of the helicopters above the stadium in “the initial conditions.” Gravitational forces played no role in causing the information on the field to self-organize. Gravity merely transmitted preexisting information from the helicopter formation to the field below.

The information in the message was encoded in the original position of the helicopters. The laws of nature (and gravity in particular) were merely the “carrier” of this previously created information. The second interpretation of Kojonen’s view agrees with this perspective of the laws of nature but then supposes that all the information necessary for the origin of life, diversification of life, and accounting for human cognition was present in the initial conditions (positioning of matter and energy). This concept is comparable to playing pool, where a single strike of the cue ball can knock all the balls into their respective holes due to their positions on the table. This mechanism is highly implausible when applied to life because the initial conditions that would have had to be established to create such a system are extreme.

Six Objections from Meyer

Additional problems plague this “initial conditions” idea. In Return of the God Hypothesis, Meyer summarizes six objections.

[G]iven the facts of molecular biology, the axioms of information theory, the laws of thermodynamics, the high-energy state of the early universe, the reality of unpredictable quantum fluctuations, and what we know about the time that elapsed between the origin of the universe and the first life on earth, explanations of the origin of life that deny the need for new information after the beginning of the universe clearly lack scientific plausibility.

Let’s explore this a bit more. To understand the absurdity of proposing that initial conditions could, without additional intervention, account for the facts of molecular biology, consider again the pool analogy. The idea that unfavorable thermodynamic events could be stacked into the initial conditions would be like supposing that after the cue ball hit one ball, three balls went in immediately, but after ten minutes, three more went in, and finally all the balls went into the holes. This scenario is scientifically implausible because our experience with the laws of nature is that they work consistently through time, and only agents that can work outside of the system are able to cause new events to occur. Thus, after a causation event, processes that must overcome thermodynamic barriers do not occur.

An Unknown Force in History

While the laws of nature can transmit information, the way they transmit it is consistent and constant. If the initial conditions could do something thermodynamically unfavorable after time has elapsed from an initial agent’s action, this would certainly be different from what we observe today. The laws would require the ability to select specific outcomes — i.e., to assemble specific molecules into these outcomes at specific points in time. This would require a process model running in the background and invoking the right actions at the right times — an unknown force that only seems to work at specific times in history. 

Tomorrow, we will look at the final possible interpretation of Kojonen’s model for the laws of nature.