I've written a lot about the theory of evolution and why it's not really that scientific, and Rand Simberg has an excellent explanation of why his belief in science requires faith.
With regard to my statement that science is a philosophy that rests on faith, I wrote the following:Belief in the scientific method is faith, in the sense that there are a number of unprovable axioms that must be accepted:
1) There is an objective reality
2) It obeys universal laws
3) Its nature can be revealed by asking questions of it in the form of experiments
4) The simplest explanation that fits the facts is the one that should be preferredThere are other tenets, but these are the main ones. ...
So if science is a religion (in the sense of a belief system, which I think it is), then is it a legitimate subject for public schools? As I've said previously, this is largely a symptom of a much larger problem--the fact that we have public schools, in which the "public" will always be at loggerheads about what subjects should be taught and how. But given the utility of learning science (something that I employ every day, whenever I troubleshoot my computer network, or figure out what kinds of foods are good or bad for me), I think that it is an important subject to which everyone should be exposed. But if I were teaching evolution, I would offer it as the scientific explanation for how life on earth developed, not a "fact" or "the truth."
He notes repeatedly that science isn't a set of facts:
Science is not a compendium of "facts." Science is about how we turn unrelated, boring facts into useful knowledge. Science is a method, not an encyclopedia. That's why I get upset when someone says that "evolution is a fact." Not just because it's untrue, but because it misses the point entirely.Science is a means of inquiry. It cannot be learned by simply memorizing a set of dry unconnected facts, but that's what is implied by the "science quiz" described above, and much of what passes for science education in primary schools (and even more frighteningly, in many colleges and universities).
He goes on to explain why physics was his favorite scientific subject in school (mine too) and how he hated the memorization required for biology and chemistry (me too).
All that to get to this:
The problem with creation theories is not that they're inconsistent with the evidence--they are totally consistent, tautologically so, as Eugene [Volokh] says. The problem is that they tell us nothing useful from a scientific standpoint. In fact, there are an infinite number of theories that fit any given set of facts. I can speculate not only that all was created, but that it was created (complete with our memories of it) a minute ago, or two minutes ago. Or an hour ago. Or yesterday. Or the day before. Or, as some would have it, 6000+ years ago. Each is a different theory (though they all fall into a class of theories) that fit the observable facts. They are all equally possible, and all (other than some form of naturalistic evolution) untestable.
Except, of course, that unless one has a time machine naturalistic evolution is pretty untestable as well. In truth, evolution is a poor theory. Mr. Simberg continues:
And furthermore, they offer no hope of making predictions for the future. After all, if a creator can whimsically create a universe in whatever manner he wishes, including evidence that he didn't do it, how can we know what he'll choose tomorrow? Orrin Judd likes to make much of the fact that many evolutionary psychologists believe that free will is an illusion, but if that's the case in a naturalistic world, how much more so must it be with a whimsical creator, who can not only make us as he chooses, but unmake, and remake us on the same basis, whenever he chooses?
Kinda how evolutionists constantly revise their predictions to fit the facts?
I heartily agree with Mr. Simberg's characterization of science as a method of inquiry. In fact, I'm a scientist myself and I use science all the time. I've also studied the theory of naturalistic evolution quite a bit -- and used it in my artificial intelligence research -- and I find it to be quite lacking. That doesn't prove that evolution is wrong or that God created the universe 6,000 years ago or 5 seconds ago, but I don't think there's any greater scientific basis for the former than for the latter. Science works by disproving things until only one thing is left, not by proving anything. (Basically, the theory of evolution is based on induction, and induction isn't science!)
Dr. John Mark Reynolds has an excellent response as well (actually, that link is number three; see especially one and also two).
It's too bad more scientists don't understand Godel's Incompleteness Theorem better; then they might understand how it's possible that there are true but scientifically unprovable statements.
Actually, it's nothing like that. Evolutionists, like any other scientists, are supposed to revise their theories to make them consistent with new discoveries. Religionists do so only when they absolutely must in order to save face. Judging by your ludicrous claim that there's just as much of a scientific basis for saying the God created the world 6,000 years ago as there is for evolution, it seems that not all religionists even do it then.
Yeah, I have to agree with the above comment. The piece you quoted here sounds eminently sensible. Your elliptical criticisms just sound... elliptical.
I'm also amused (again) by your assertion that you are well-versed in the theory of evolution, because you have studied it "quite a bit" as part of your computer science research. From where I sit, your commentary on evolution specifically and biology generally sounds fairly ill-informed.
I like your comment about being a scientist, and science being a method, not a collection of facts. Except that at least in the case of evolution, you're not proceeding scientifically at all. You appear to have an a priori belief in Biblical creation, and to be doing your best to find evidence to support that explanation, while ignoring evidence that undercuts it.
That's not science. It's the opposite of science.
In the scientific sense, this debate took place in the 19th century, and as I've pointed out before, those arguing the position you favor lost. Not because of some secular liberal conspiracy; they lost on the merits, and they lost convincingly. I previously recommended a good, lay-level book that covers some of that history: The Song of the Dodo, by David Quammen. I've recently been reading another one: When Life Nearly Died, by Michael Benton. It focuses on the mass-extinction event at the end of the Permian, about 250 million years ago, but it also talks about the birth of geology and paleontology as scientific disciplines, the debates over catastrophism and uniformitarianism, and the legacy that made it difficult for more recent catastrophic explanations of mass extinctions to be taken seriously by scientists.
Both books would be good for you, I think, because they cover that 19th-century debate over evolution-vs.-creationism in ways that are accessible without needing a formal education in the biological sciences. What facts they present are presented entertainingly, so you needn't be put off by the need to memorize too much.
Whatever process or deity led to your presence on the planet, it gifted you with curiosity, and the means to satisfy that curiosity. I think you're squandering that gift, at least in terms of your current approach to the question of human origins.
X: Sure, science changes to fit the facts, but my point was mainly that a theory which continually makes wrong predictions -- as the theory of evolution does -- is a poor theory.
JC: Most of my experiences isn't with biological evolution, but there's a lot more to the theory than biology. Information theory actually has a lot more to contribute to the discussion at a foundational level than biology does; biology is just one specific type, information theory and complexity theory define the concept of evolution at a much lower level. IT basically rules out the possibility of evolution from a mathematical perspective, no matter what biology claims to observe. So in a sense, I don't feel a great responsibility to learn more biology; I know a decent amount, and it's not really science anyway (as Mr. Simberg also says).
By the way, information theory is pretty much unknown territory for most biologists, even evolutionary biologists. I've never seen any of the deductive proofs of IT addressed by the the theory of evolution, even from an inductive perspective (as inadequate as that would be).
I agree with your views on evolution, Michael. As a philosophy major, I was always amazed at how many people believed with religious fervency that the scientific method was the only legitimate path to knowledge, and that you shouldn’t believe anything that science can’t prove. It’s apparently quite difficult for people to get above that and see a larger picture.
It’s particularly interesting to read comments like those of X and JC. Both have tried to pull the question out of the realm of intellect and into the personal and social realms: If you don’t agree with them, then X says that you’re stubbornly trying to save face, and your claims are ludicrous. JC goes farther, saying that you’re amusingly ill-informed. And besides, your side lost that debate a long time ago, so you should just sit down and shut up because no one respectable agrees with you.
Of course, X and JC are polite enough in their comments, and they no doubt mean well. But their responses encapsulate my view of those on their side: It isn’t an intellectual issue for them. It’s a test of character. If you don’t agree with them, it shows that you’re ignorant or stupid, and on the losing team.
Evolution interests me because it exposes the faith that science demands. The intellectually accurate view on evolution is simply that no one knows how life originated, or where humans came from. But those with an emotional attachment to the idea of a clockwork universe can’t seem to accept that.
I don't think you've accurately described where I'm coming from, Ben. It's not just that this debate took place in the 1800s, and that your side lost. It's _how_ they lost, and _why_ they lost, that are important.
They lost because as more evidence was gathered and evaluated, it simply wasn't possible to take Biblical explanations of prehistory seriously. That evidence comes from a broad range of scientific disciplines, including geology, paleontology, archaeology, and biology. Michael obviously is well-versed in the subject of his graduate work. But it's equally obvious that he's managed to avoid learning much about those other disciplines. And yeah, I find that kind of amusing. But that could just be my weird sense of humor.
Yes, I'm only commenting on this at a meta level. I'm not actually getting into a debate with Michael about this, in which I present evidence in some kind of advocacy process, because I don't see much point in that. If he were interested in learning about this, he'd have done so already. I've suggested a couple of books I think he might enjoy, and that present some of that evidence in a way that I think would challenge his current beliefs, but if he doesn't want to go there (and the evidence seems pretty clear that he doesn't want to), I can't force him. You can't push a string, and all that.
Michael, you write, "IT basically rules out the possibility of evolution from a mathematical perspective, no matter what biology claims to observe." Can you elaborate on that?
JC: Here's a concrete example from particle physics that's analogous to evolution, from an IT perspective. Say you've got a room full of air, such as the one you're sitting in. It would be possible for all the molecules in the atmosphere of the room to simultaneously move towards the upper left corner, creating enormous pressure there and leaving the rest of the room in a vacuum. It's possible, statistically, but it's incredibly unlikely. If you left the room in place for a billion years it would never happen; if you had a trillion such rooms and let them sit for a trillion years it would never happen in any of the rooms. It's statistically possible, but it'll never happen.
Thinking that order will accumulate in a single location through random processes is a lot like thinking that particles of gas will migrate naturally up a pressure gradient. It's possible, statistically, and on a small scale it happens all the time. But the quantity of information we're talking about when it comes to the human brain is absolutely staggering, and it's implausible to think that such order could be the result of a natural process that ultimately ruled by entropy.
Assuming the universe is a closed information system, we're doomed to an ever-decreasing quantity of information (2nd law of thermodynamics, since information is the opposite of entropy). There can be localized concentrations, just as there are localized pressure differences in the atmosphere (wind, storms, and so on) but there's no way to explain the sheer quantity of information required to define a human brain, much less the ecosystem in which it lives. Nothing else in the universe even comes close to biological complexity. Most of the universe is ruled by a few simple quadratic equations.
I thought that that might be what you were talking about. The challenge to evolution represented by the 2nd law of thermodynamics is easily dismissed. See this page from the talk.origins folk for a succinct version of one counter-argument:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF001.html
In brief, the universe as a whole may be a closed information system, but the part of it in which life operates is not. Living organisms operate within the context of an energy budget characterized by low-entropy sunlight shining on the earth, and being transformed there into high-entropy heat. In the course of that, photosynthetic plants manufacture sugars, with the resulting low-entropy energy being used for metabolic activities by other organisms in the food chain. Entropy descreases locally, while increasing in the overall system. This is basic biology; you should have been exposed to it as an undergrad.
That talk.origins page links to the following interesting article, in which the authors go into a lot more depth about the relationship between thermodynamics and evolution:
http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/Life_as/lifeas.pdf
Since the authors approach the question from a more mathematical/computational perspective (the article originally appeared in the journal Mathematical and Computer Modelling) it might be especially interesting to someone with your background.
You've made disparaging comments about inductive reasoning; I'd think that would make you more hesitant to invoke something as suspect as reasoning by analogy. Your room-full-of-gas scenario doesn't apply, because evolutionary theory doesn't claim that complex organisms sprang forth fully formed via random non-biological processes. The theory describes such organisms coming into existence through the processes of reproduction, heritable variation, and natural selection. That those processes actually operate in living systems is clearly evident (well, to those willing to look at the evidence), and it's equally evident that they are capable of producing greater complexity in those systems over time.
So really, the question gets pushed back to the original emergence (creation, if you prefer) of those fundamental processes, which evolutionary theory describes has having taken place at a much lower level of complexity.
In talking about that original emergence of living systems, you have more room to operate if you want to assert the literal truth of Biblical explanations, since scientists have far less evidence about that event, and admittedly their explanations are much more speculative. But be honest about what you're doing, in that case: you're retreating from creationists' previous assertions that Genesis is literal truth, that the earth is 6,000 years old; and saying, in effect, okay, maybe life does evolve, but it still came into existence originally at the hand of an unknowable and indescribable (at least by scientific methods) deity.
Well, okay. You can assert that if you want to. But real scientists will continue to ask questions about that event, and use their senses and brains and opposable thumbs to come up with the answers to those questions. And from where I sit, they will be showing a greater appreciation of the true wonder and majesty that is creation when they do that than those who ignore that creation in order to cling to the comfort and familiarity of a particular oral-tradition creation myth.
JC: I'm familiar with the 2nd law arguments, but that's not what I was saying. I was using an analogy. Information theory is not particle physics, and I didn't intend to imply that order and information are identical.
We are in a closed system information-wise. I'm aware that biological systems (from plants to humans) are capable of moving information around within a system and increasing the quantity of ordered mass, but they don't create information just because they spread order. Synthesizing sugars doesn't create information, it just moves and copies information from the plant to the molecules the plant takes from the air. Similarly, copying a book doesn't create information.
I don't question the existence of natural selection, mutation, and heritability. I just think it's absurd to suppose that those three mechanisms can lead to macroevolution. It's not at all evident that they can create information, and in fact quite the opposite is true. No experiment, computational or biological, has demonstrated that these mechanisms can create information. Arguably, from a deterministic standpoint, not even humans can create new information -- we merely move information from our brains into our surroundings.
I don't think I ever claimed to know the age of the universe, so I don't have to retreat from any position on that. I only claim that biological evolution is bunk.
In perusing Schneider and Kay article, which is quite interesting, it seems to me that they merely demonstrate that more "developed" ecosystems dissipate more heat, which makes plenty of sense since that's what biomass does. The problem I see is that "developed" to them reflects mostly a pure quantity of biomass and has little to do with information or complexity. Plus, they tengentially mention the Sahara but don't really address why their restated second law almost requires evolution to work to dissipate heat in some climates (rain forests) but not others (Sahara). It's an interesting article, but I'm not sure how useful it's main predictive claims are.... Sure ecosystems will "develop" and dissipate more heat, but the only development they look at is on the scale of 20 years or less. They don't demonstrate that evolution is possible, only that, assuming it exists, it's products can fit into their revised second law. But that doesn't get biology over the information hump required to get the biomass required.
Take your copying the book example.
Before the printing press, books were only copied by hand. There would be errors, most of them meaningless. When the meaningless errors are themselves copied, they are reocgnised as errors by the copyist and "fixed" (possibly wrongly, but most of the time you can tell what someone meant)...
Very occassionally, an error will be made which makes sense. That error will not be fixed, but faithfully copied, and so the meaningful error is propagated.
The analogy does not perfectly fit with evolution, but while mutations which "add information" are unlikely, they are not impossible; given enough goes at imperfect copying, molecular biology will make the occassional meaningful error; and these are the only errors which are propagated and grow as a ratio of population.
What is the barrier in molecular biology that prevents macroevolution? How does the chemistry of copying DNA know to prevent speciation?