Creation and Evolution Blog

This blog has been officially superceded

2008-06-01T21:36:00.001-07:00

I just finished transitioning all of my blogs onto my new website. Here is the superceded version of this blog. Also see all of my other blogs.

Intelligent Design Postings

2006-06-23T16:23:00.000-07:00

Over at UncommonDescent, I have a post establishing the link between evolution and abiogenesis and also a parody of the people who complain about a "God of the gaps".

Methodological Materialism and Philosophic Materialism

2006-01-11T06:48:00.000-08:00

In my other blog I talked about the problems with using materialist assumptions in the investigation of past history. This is a reply to the first comment on that blog entry. While this entry can probably stand apart from that, it would probably be beneficial to read the article and the comments first.

Not everything scientists say represents "science"

I agree with this statement. However, I would say that anything that is commonly represented in scientific literature and commonly in college-level introductory texts does.

If science has the *ability* to include nonmaterial (supernatural) causation, please feel free to tell me how.

First of all, you are equating all forms of non-material causation with supernatural causation. This is not necessarily the case. Intelligent causation is part of our everyday experience (short demonstration on why intelligent causation is necessary at the end of this post).

There are many creationists who believe God acts not by subverting any laws of physics, but by simply applying intelligent causation to more parts of the material world than we are able to.

The inclusion of intelligent causation in science is precisely what Intelligent Design is all about. It is primarily a descriptive/inferential approach, precisely because if something was fully predictable then it would not classify as intelligent causation. However, ID examines the patterns of design used by designers. Many people incorrectly think that ID is limitted to discussion about the existence or non-existence of intelligent causation in the formation of biology. While there are many in ID who focus on this, ID is actually much wider. In fact, Dembski's original book on the subject, The Design Inference made mention of the biological applications only in passing.

As the science of ID is only beginning, there is not a thorough methodology that has been yet refined. But that is precisely what the operation of ID intends.

The philosophy of science presupposes that matter is all there is, *for the purpose of falsifiability and experiment*. If we did not presuppose this, we could speculate that angels cause the transformation of Pb to Au (or a *real* chemical transformation, like CO2 to HCO3-).

Just to point out, the involvement or non-inolvement of angels in a specific chemical transformation is irrelevant. If we repeatedly experimented too find that CO2 transformed into HCO3- when in solution, the calculations would be correct _whether or not_ there was supernatural intervention. The assumption of materialism is not even necessary for this experimentation (though this is not a case I would object to).

Let's say that there are material and non-material forces engaged in causation. The methodological materialism for present events could still be useful in the following way:

If I do an experiment repeatedly, and there are non-material and material causes involved, to the extent that I there is material causes involved, I would have consistent results. The consistency is the result of the laws binding the universe. If there were inconsistency, it would be classified as experimental error. Thus, when examining law-like behavior of experiments, you have a pretty good idea that the law-like behavior is material causes. Whether your experimental error is the result of bad instrumentation, unknown factors, or intelligent causation cannot be differentiated in this simple scenario.

Now, the question I proposed was, can science exclude modes of causation and still claim to have come up with a definitive history?

Let's separate causes -- we will use A for material causes, B for chance causes, C for intelligent causes, and D for supernatural causes.

Now, I think I have shown above why the existence of C does not affect experimentation. In fact, D does not affect experimentation precisely because of which God is in control (before Christianity, God _was_ viewed as haphazard, and therefore there _was_ no reason to assume that the universe was orderly -- it was Christianity that provided the theology that allowed science to move forward).

So, the existence of C and D will not necessarily affect the ability of scientists to do experiments. Now, let's look into past history.

If the universe had a beginning, that beginning must necessarily make use of D. If there was a beginning point, then it's cause must necessarily have been supernatural, precisely because there were no natural causes in existence. Now, let's suppose for a minute that the universe _did_ have a beginning. Let's say that beginning was 10 trillion years ago. Let's then say we have a scientist, X, who is trying to describe events 9 trillion years ago. Is he able to accurately do so? Perhaps. Now, let's say that he goes back 11 trillion years. Is he able to accurately do so? No longer. By ignoring D in causitive history, his attempts to go back accurately are restricted by supernatural intervention at 10 trillion years ago. Any definitive statements he may make without including D would be summarily false.

Now, let's talk about C (intelligent causation). The naturre of intelligent causes is that it produces order from chaos (see this article that I wrote on the subject). The claim of origin-of-life studies is that the order produced came simply from a happenstance interaction of chemicals in the right place at the right time. Many argue that this is causally insufficient. That the _nature_ of what is produced in life _requires_ an intelligent cause (whether human or supernatural). We have never been able to reproduce this, or even come close, which, while not proving the case, seems to strengthen it. It seems that the _more_ we know about the process of life, the _less_ likely it seems.

Now, let's look at universal common ancestry. The reason that UCA is assumed is because of assumptions about how the origin-of-life worked, which includes the assumption of non-intelligent causes at work. Without intelligent causes, most agree that the origin-of-life is an unlikely event. UCA is believed because it is believed that the origin of single-celled life is unlikely, and the formation of multicelled life initiially is impossible. While the origin-of-life is very unlikely (or impossible) without intelligent causation, with a sufficient intelligent cause it is no longer unlikely. Therefore, if an intelligent cause is at work in creating life, there is no reason to assume common ancestry. The origin of life is no longer extremely difficult, because there is a causitive force capable of producing it. In addition, this would mean that to determine the existence of common ancestry of two animals, you would have to distinguish between homologies that are the result of ancestry, and homologies that are the result of design patterns or design constraints (Google for "Berra's Blunder" for more information on this). Their time sequence in the geologic column would not necessarily be one of ancestry, but could equally be the result of creative acts. In addition, there is no reason to restrict life creation to single-celled animals. Multicellular life could equally be created as an independent root of ancestry. This all holds even if you assume a human designer of life. For example, if scientists were able to create life from scratch, then we would have an instance of a new root of ancestry that noone would disagree with. And there is no reason that, with more knowledge, a scientist could not create multicellular life as well (of course, this assumes that life consists entirely of matter, which, at least for some classes of life, I disagree with, but it is irrelevant to the current line of argumentation).

Therefore, the idea of common ancestry is based totally on the presupposition that there was not an intelligent cause that brought about life.

In addition to these, there are many supernatural (well, also possibly just an unusual application of intelligent causes -- but we'll stick with D for the time being) events in history that Christians claim to have occurred. Now, while it is true theoretically that a supernatural being could have done anything, including created the world last Thursday with each of us having longer memories, that is not the claim of Christianity. The claim of Christianity is that the important supernatural occurrences have been recorded for us, both by revelation and by historical witness. The main instances of this relevant for our discussion is (a) Creation, and (b) the flood. Now, Dawkins has made the claim that there is overwhelming evidence for evolution even as much as there is for the Roman empire. While many cultures have records of the Roman empire, it is difficult to find any culture in any remote part of the world that has not heard of the flood. There is no linguistic, geographic, or cultural boundary that has not heard of the flood. While being more in the distant past than the Roman Empire, and therefore the records themselves are poorer and very skewed, there is amazing commonality, with many cultures having independently established the date of the flood as well as Noah as their most recent common ancestor.

Now, if a worldwide flood has occurred, there would be geological evidence. There is either abundant evidence of the flood, or none whatsoever. I don't have time to argue it here, but John Baumgardner makes a short case for why the Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments seem to be the result of a worldwide catastrophe. If the Pal. and Mes. sediments are not the result of catastrophism, then there is no evidence. If they are, there is abundant evidence.

So, while I have not proven the case for creationism, I think I have shown the following:

(a) the differences between material, intelligent, and supernatural causes, and their impact on scientific experimentation
(b) leaving out a method of causation in consideration will lead one to erroneous results (also my arguments from here)
(c) many of the basics of evolution (such as common ancestry) exist by _assuming_ that life does not require intelligent causation
(d) the God that Christians worship is a God of order, and there exists a specific record of important interventions

And by looking at all of these together, I think we can agree that applying methodological materialism to the past necessarily is the same as philosophic materialism.

SHORT AFTER-THE-FACT DETOUR - WHY INTELLIGENT CAUSATION IS A NECESSARY PART OF LIFE

I think that intelligent causation being separate from material causes is an obvious feature of everyday life. Here is my short attempt of making my case. The question is, do you believe in _choice_ as a real possibility, not just an illusion. If your answer is "no", then I can see how intelligent causation could be denied, but not if you answered "yes".

Material causes can come in one of two varieties. First, there is the lawful mechanistic version. If all action of the world is purely lawful and mechanistic, then you have no choice. Your choices are 100% predetermined by the environment, with no hope whatsoever for you to make a real choice to do something different. No matter how complex the material causes are, they are still out of your control -- you are completely, 100% defined by the material causes impacting you. Now, if you add in chance causes, the results are not much better. Now, your choices are either completely prechosen or haphazard. That means that any choice you make is simply haphazard. You can't make an intelligent choice, only a haphazard and partially pre-determined one. The only way for "choice" to be a legitimate idea is for there to be more in our mind than strictly material and chance causes. This is intelligent causation. It is _required_ for choice to be a legitimate concept. Obviously intelligent causes are limitted by physical law, but they are not wholly determined by them. Also, since, as I've shown, intelligent causes cannot be the combination of chance and material causes, that means that the origin of intelligent causes cannot be material causes, but must include intelligent causes, too. Therefore, intelligent causes must have pre-existed intelligent life on earth. Thus, to assume that there is no intelligent causes involved in the creation of life means that either (a) choice has no meaning, or (b) methodological materialism is insufficient for studying life history.

Evolution, Chance, and Design (T.O. CB940)

2005-06-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

One of the more common criticisms that creationists have to evolutionists is to believe that all of this arose by chance. Evolutionists are always quick to say "natural selection is anything but chance." While I wholly agree with the evolutionists statement, I want to take the time to point out why it doesn't answer the creationist's criticism at all.

This includes a rebuttal of Talk.Origin's response to CB940, though my inspiration for writing this was elsewhere.

So instead of starting out addressing them point-by-point, let me give you a more general discussion.

Is Evolution "Chance"?

In evolutionary theory, there are mechanisms which can be included as evidence of evolution and mechanisms which cannot. For example, if a genome were designed to change itself in a specific in response to a stimuli, or in any specific manner, this would not count as evidence for evolution, because the process for doing this is already there. It is "designed in" for lack of better terminology, whether you believe that design to be evolutive or creative. The evidence could be taken easily either way.

What evolutionists say, however, is that often organisms change in non-specific ways. There are many options for non-specific changes -- nearly an infinitude of them. In each organism, some amount of non-specific changes occur, and those changes which allow the organism to reproduce more are in fact reproduced more often, and those changes which inhibit the organism's reproduction are in fact reproduced less. If no changes were non-specific, and really, if most of the larger changes aren't non-specific, then it is no longer evolution that can be claimed, but a machined designed in a specific way.

So, you see, there are two sides to this -- a generative side and a selective side. The selective side is definitely non-random. HOWEVER, for something to count as evolution and not a "built-in", the generative aspect must be non-specific. When most people talk about randomness they usually aren't talking about randomness in the sense of a mathematical randomness, but simply meaning that it occurs in a non-specific way or direction. As such we can definitely say that while natural selection is surely non-random, the generative mechanism for evolution surely is, otherwise it would have to be progressive creation rather than a true evolution.

To see this in play see Mutations Are Random and Misconception: “Evolution means that life changed ‘by chance.’ ”. In fact, that second link has a great summation of the issue:

Random mutation is the ultimate source of genetic variation, however natural selection, the process by which some variants survive and others do not, is not random.

Can Random Change, When Selected Non-Randomly, Produce ALL the Diversity of Life?

Dawkins has attempted to explain how this is reasonable using computer simulations. The simulations he proposed in The Blind Watchmaker are about generating the phrase "methinks it is like a weasel" by random typing. He proposed typing in random characters, and then letting it "breed" by duplicating itself with minor changes. Whatever phrase is closest to "methinks it is like a weasel" is kept and the rest are discarded, and it starts over from there. However, this does not get at the main problem in two separate places: (1) the intermediate forms make no sense whatsoever. For life to evolve, the intermediate organisms have to make some sort of sense for them to propogate at all (this is another reason why I disbelieve evolution -- the idea that all intermediate forms are stable from molecules to man is just foolish). (2) the model of evolution is actually quite theistic, as there is a model that has to be met.

In Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins tries a different, and much better approach. He has models of such things as spider webs. Each spider has a different set of techniques. Each one is slightly modified from generation to generation, and the ones that survive are the ones that catch the most flies. This is a much better model, showing natural selection in a much truer light. However, what Dawkins fails to realize, and others who say that "evolution is not random" also fail to realize, is that Dawkin's model has pre-coded certain types of web-spinning available, and that is what is varied by. By doing this, he only confirms what creationists already believe -- that there is quite a lot of variety in the world, and species can mix it up and produce different offspring. Natural selection only adds the not-quite-as-ingenious-as-they-think compendium that "dead things don't reproduce".

So how can I say that Dawkin's model is good, but still think that evolution is wrong?

Why Dawkins Changes Are Inadequate for Proving Evolution as the Primary Cause of Biodiversity

First of all let me point out that creationists don't believe that all of evolution is wrong. For more information on that point, see another article of mine. What we believe is that new structures are not produced from nothing without the hand of an intelligent agent. Dawkin's simulation used only a shuffling of pre-existing parts, not the creation of new parts. In fact, that's all a program can do -- rearrange existing parts. So what would be required of Dawkin's program to show the kind of evolution that creationists don't believe is possible?

It would require the program to show something new happening. Something not contained within the original pattern of the program. For example, a spider deciding, whether after one or a million gradual generations, "you know what, I think instead of using this web to catch flies, I'm going to do something else entirely." Or likewise, taking the nearest non-spider relative of spiders, and, without precoding the special spider information in the program, using any natural selection method you want, showing how a spider can be produced from something else. Show the generation of the web material itself and the idea of forming a web without any reference to such activities in the program. Also remember that evolution has to explain the existance of so many genetic codal variations (not the sequence, but the base->protein coding itself), how such a change in code would not utterly destroy any existing organism.

Likewise, for the articles I've investigated in Talk.Origin's post, the same problems apply. For example, in the robotics one, they have the program select the best, most mobile arm from a selection process (selected for movement) from a collection of arms randomly assembled from parts. That's all well and good, but evolution claims that the parts themselves were generated by the same process, without any reference to arms or movement in the code for it. Not just a shuffling of existing parts, but the creation of new parts for something not even intended in the code. For example, if the computer selection for movement had discovered a new material when it is not even programmed to look for new materials, and had then selected the best one and even knew the appropriate way to place the new material within the newly created part which it was not programmed to build, and perhaps even found something that performed the task at hand better than the specific movement mechanism it was trying to achieve.

Under those circumstances, I would start taking notice, but not in this simple shuffling of existing parts which both creationists and evolutionists have agreed upon since time immemorial. Remember, breeding was done for thousands of years by creationists, and it was never thought to be inconsistent, because it was not variation, or even beneficial variation, that creationists objected to, but getting something from nothing.

Examples of How This Does and Doesn't Work

If this sort of mechanism really worked, for example, it would make my job as a computer programmer a whole lot easier. To enhance a program, I could simply write another program to make random changes to it, and then test each one to see if it was a better program. I could remove the need to ever be creative! In fact, it could probably make changes I never thought of. Of course, programs don't work like this. The only thing you'll get in this case is a broken program. Now, it is possible to write a program that made changes to itself -- both randomly and in response to stimuli. However, the mechanisms for change and the categories by which it changes would be pre-coded in the program -- the result of design. Perhaps the exact combination would be a chance event, but it would be within the context of a designed mechanism, not outside of it as evolution claims.

So, am I claiming that all randomized mutations will kill the organism? No. In fact, it is the result of good design that our bodies are able to compensate for faults. However, to view the faults as a fundamental part of how the body came about would be foolish.

What About Beneficial Mutations?

So are all random mutations negative? I would say no. Many say, "well, that shows it -- evolution is at least possible, because you could always just imagine a sequence of beneficial mutations to lead you from A to B". However, that greatly exaggerates the character of such changes. First of all, as I mentioned earlier, it would require a sequence of stable intermediates. That such intermediates exist is only theoretical, and I think highly doubtful. However, let's look more precisely about what beneficial mutations look like.

For example, for a temporary beneficial modification, if your backup system was disabled, that would save electrical energy and manpower for other things. It (a) wouldn't be really helpful in the long run, and (b) wouldn't go any further in explaining how the backup system arose, but it could be classified as a beneficial mutation. But no matter how many of those stack up, you still won't be able to convert an image-processing program into a word processor through random changes, no matter what your selection process is (unless you do a non-evolutionary one, like for "methinks it is a weasel").

Information Theory Requires an Intelligent Source for Information

This is always the problem that evolutionists will run into with DNA, because it is a code. As Arthur Wilder-Smith pointed out, the kind of diversity that exists in the world is the result of novel information implanted into life. Life + Time + Energy will not get you the kind of changes required for the types of fundamental changes proposed in evolutionary theory, with any evolutionary mechanism for selection. Time + Energy + Life + Information will, but true information is always imposed by an intelligent party. Dembski calls this the law of conservation of information.

Can code be rearranged, perhaps at random? Certainly, but notice that the rearrangement mechanism rearranges in such a way as makes sense to the organism -- in a designed way, according to designed, pre-built categories. Now, these mechanisms can lead to a vast amount of variation. The variation possible in people from just two parents with no genomic modifications is more than the number of electrons believed to be in the universe, with every member still being fundamentally human. Add in rearrangements, and you get even more. However, all of this variation occurs within the categories and specifications of the code. The genomic modularity hypothesis (which is enjoying more and more evidence all the time) says that the genome can even rearrange itself according to predefined specifications and categories. However, when the code undergoes a random mutation, then the system becomes less stable. Like other codal systems, it cannot withstand too many unplanned changes before becoming unstable.

The Creationist Hypothesis -- Genomic Modularity

I've mentioned genomic modularity before on this site, but I think, since we're talking about genomic change here, it's good to expand upon. Genomic modularity is the creationist hypothesis that genomes are essentially modular in different areas. That some genes are built for changing in specific ways in response to specific events. There is more and more evidence for this, as we are finding hotspots for change in many genomes, and also finding that some organisms can invoke as-yet-not-understood changes in result to environmental stress, like the SOS mechanism of bacteria.

Now, I'm sure that evolutionists will say that evolution can create such changing mechanisms themselves. Hopefully the previous argument will show that this just doesn't make sense. However, granting that, let's figure out if there are any sort of adaptations that evolutionists might even agree that evolution cannot do. I hate to be presumptuous, but I would say that evolution would not be compatible with full-fledged mechanisms for handling an environment that the organism had never experienced. For example, if there was a full-fledged mechanism for handling life in the vacuum of space within an organism, we would find it odd for that to have evolved in population that had never had any contact with space. This would clearly indicate that there was a pre-coded design for doing so, and such a designer.

Some links about genomic modularity from www.nwcreation.net:

Genetic Variability by Design

What's Driving Evolution: Mutations or Genetic Recombination?

The Genetic Limits of Evolution

Does the Nylon Bug Prove that Evolution Works?

This has a lot of relevance to things such as the Nylon bug, which evolutionists have pointed to as an example of evolution at work. The logic is essentially this: (a) nylon is new, (b) bacteria can't possibly have always eaten Nylon, (c) therefore this nylon-eating bacteria must be the result of evolution, and (d) we even know which genes mutated and in what ways, and it even includes a frame-shift.

That is all well and good, but without further experiment we cannot know if this was the result of a designed mechanism or if it is truly evolution at work. For example, it has been pointed out that there were many transposons at work here. Transposons form an integral part of the genomic modularity hypothesis, as essentially "work units" for change. Likewise, the idea of a frame-shift is not unusual for bacteria, as many bacteria read multiple enzymes from a single strand of DNA through frame-shifting. So the creationist hypothesis would be that the bacteria was built to modify its digestive protein based on the abundance of available material. When Nylon abounds but no normal food source exists, the bacteria alters its genome to eat on whatever is available.

Some facts in support of the creationist hypothesis:

The change happened quickly -- it is not widely known, but creationists usually propose faster mechanisms for biodiversity than evolutionists -- it's just that, as this essay points out, there are limitations and boundaries to that diversity.

The change utilized known transposons, which are one of the keys to genomic modularity.

The change affected two genes in concert. Evolutionary theory would have this be highly unlikely in such a short timeframe, but makes perfect sense as a predefined mechanism for change in response to food supply.

The new genes were significantly changed, not the gradual kind of change that evolution suggests. Remember, evolution agrees with creationism that completely random generation of genes is ludicrous, therefore such a large change necessitated to produce the enzyme in such a short time without beneficial intermediaries is not indicative of evolution. Evolutionists claim that this was a simple frame-shift mutation, but in fact there were many more changes than that.

Two interesting links on this are:

AiG's TJ Article by Don Batten

T.O's response

So how would one test whether the creationist or evolutionist hypothesis was correct? By taking the non-modified form of the bacteria and adding it to nylon in several separated populations. If each population undergoes essentially the same change, then this is obviously a directed mechanism. If only some populations survive, and each that does survives in a completely different way, utilizing completely different adaptations on completely different genes, while it does not completely invalidate the creationist hypothesis, it lends much more credence to the evolutionist one.

Also of interest is one of the concluding paragraphs of the AiG article mentioned above:

P. aeruginosa was first named by Schroeter in 1872.10 It still has the same features that identify it as such. So, in spite of being so ubiquitous, so prolific and so rapidly adaptable, this bacterium has not evolved into a different type of bacterium. Note that the number of bacterial generations possible in over 130 years is huge—equivalent to tens of millions of years of human generations, encompassing the origin of the putative common ancestor of ape and man, according to the evolutionary story, indeed perhaps even all primates. And yet the bacterium shows no evidence of directional change—stasis rules, not progressive evolution. This alone should cast doubt on the evolutionary paradigm. Flavobacterium was first named in 1889 and it likewise still has the same characteristics as originally described.

So, we have a fast-mutating species, and after millions of generations of reproduction, it still retains the basic properties as originally described, and is still identifiable as itself. You may disagree, but I find this quite evident of the idea presented in this essay -- that information cannot arise from nothing, but can recombine in specific, preprogrammed ways for specific purposes, but remains bound to those mechanisms and categories as they were originally designed.

Clearly the mechanisms of genomic change are long overdue for study, as evolutionary assumptions have plagued them (namely, presuming the lack of predetermined adaptation mechanisms). However, for the short time that studying them has been in vogue, the creationist hypothesis seems to be bearing fruit.

Differences and Similarities between Evolutionists and Creationists

2005-05-08T19:17:00.000-07:00

Most people think that evolutionists and creationists are separated by a large gap. They think that everything creationists believe in are being countered by evolution and vice-versa. However, biologically, evolutionists and creationists agree on most things. Here are some of the many points of agreement:

Speciation occurs (I know that many uneducated creationists disagree with this, but this point is agreed upon by AiG, ICR, CRS, and ARN).

Many species can be traced back to a common ancestor.

The frequency of alleles within a population varies over time.

Mutations occur.

It is possible for a beneficial mutation to occur.

Most aspects of genetics (in fact, genetics was discovered by a creationists and used as a rebuke against evolutionary ideas).

So, with all of the agreement, where is the disagreement? The disagreement lies, primarily with three issues:

The origin of life (which is, technically, not part of evolutionary theory anymore).

Universal Common Ancestry vs Multi-Rooted Ancestries.

Emergence of New Biological Systems by Undirected Processes.

The idea of "millions of years" is somewhat in conflict with some theories of creation, but technically, I think it belongs in the categories of geology and perhaps astrophysics, not biology.

Now, you see that there is actually very little that is disagreed upon. In fact, if you look on the list of agreements, #3 is used by some to be the very definition of evolution. Therefore, it is hard to say that creation is anti-science or even completely anti-evolution. The main differences are simply how many roots we perceive to be at the basis of ancestries, and whether or not complex systems can arise on their own by mutation and natural selection.

I've already dealt with most of the arguments about Universal Common Ancestry being way oversold.

I also think that the de novo creation of biological systems is quite disputable, but I don't have the time to mention it here. However, this is really a secondary point for creationists. I know for certain that Creationists would not be as livid, active, or vocal if Universal Common Ancestry and Origin of Life were removed, and only the creation of biological systems were left in. However, I think that biologists would have little reason for advocating the de novo creation of biological systems if multiple tree roots were allowable.

Really, creationists and evolutionists are nearly identical, with the primary difference being the number of roots of our proposed biological trees.

Lessons to Creationists from Another Alternative Movement

2005-05-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

Creationism is not the only alternative movement I'm involved witn 1999 (or was it 98?) I got involved with another movement which was against mainstream -- the Linux movement. This post is meant to share what I learned from being a part (though a small part) of the Linux movement.

First of all, don't be just an opposition movement. That will get you nowhere. This might seem strange coming from a blog where the majority of the posts are about opposition to evolution. Opposition and Debunking of myths is an important function, but no movement will survive simply by stating opposition, no matter how valid. Ultimately, to be established, you have to not only point out the faults, but establish something useful.

For example, in the Linux movement, it is wildly popular to criticize Windows. By now, everyone knows the faults of Windows, and they have been argued to no end that most people involved should be able to recite them from memory. And yet people still want to post a new essay rehashing what has been hashed thousands of times. While this has a small amount of merit to keep it in front of people and on their minds, it's mostly just noise pollution. People have made up their minds philosophically, and one more post re-stating the same reasons isn't going to convince anyone.

So what does push you ahead? Linux gained ground initially by being REALLY CHEAP. It would be nice if creationism gave a model of biology that was intrinsically cheap to study. Sadly, this is not the case. However, another way to look at it was that Linux gained ground by serving a niche very well. Very quickly, it became _the_ webserver platform. It especially became the webserver platform for new webmasters and for mass-hosting webmasters.

The rest of the infrastructure for Linux was there, and indeed some people were using Linux for everything, but it got a full-fledged niche doing webserving. MySQL then plunged it into the low-range DB space, where all other systems were either overpriced or underpowered (sadly, this should have been PostgreSQL, but oh well). It started taking over other backend IT niches (fileserving, LDAP serving, mail serving, clustering, etc.) -- it was a low-cost utility platform that you could use for pretty much any boring purpose. Recently it has started taking the telephony industry by storm with Asterisk, the VOIP server.

But notice that while Linux started out good for most backend tasks, and is becoming better for many frontend tasks, it proceeded taking over one niche at a time. In each of these areas, it proved to be the best method of processing for the price.

Now ideological differences mean very little. If someone wants a low-cost telephony server, there really is only one choice -- Linux. If someone wants to do a large-scale cluster, it's Linux. A gateway mail server -- Linux. A web farm -- usually Linux.

Likewise, I can see creationists finding niches in which creation offers the best explanation. This is a little harder for creationists than it is for Linux users, since creationism is a theory of origins, and we cannot reproduce origins. However, here are some areas of research where I think a creationist theory would be able to easily trump evolutionary ideas:

Show genetic recombination to be a planned, well-defined process. This would mean that before asserting "random mutations" someone would first have to rule out "pre-defined recombination". I can imagine some sort of mechanism where certain transposons are programmed to recombine in certain places based on environmental conditions. This sort of process, if studied, could easily explain such things as the nylon bug.

Examine the relationship between the marsupials and the placentals more closely.

Examine the precise locations of the continuities and discontinuities among animal groups.

In geology, the answer is fairly simple (at least to do from an armchair quaterback standpoint). If you can come up with a model of the flood that better predicts the location of oil deposits than standard methods, the entire field of geology will change faster than you can even get a paper published on the subject. Of course, this will also have the instantaneous effect of evolutionists all around the world pointing out that science equations are not directly tied to epistemology or a true understanding of the universe, but are merely a working theory capable of prediction.

The real problem with creationist biology is funding. Government does a whole lot of science funding, and I wish they'd stop -- it's really not their business. Some people have pointed out that individuals would not know which projects to contribute to in order to make all of science work together well. I say that's bunk -- forming an organization like the United Way would be rather easy, and would allow people with different worldviews to be able to have the same opportunities at securing funding, and keep the rest of us from having to fund science that we believe to be in error. I find it amusing that evolutionists refer to creationists as being well-funded when most of them are milking off the government super-sugar-daddy.

However, most of the ideas above can be framed using evolutionary terms, although this might not help your funding if the results and conclusions are anti-evolutionary. Pretty much any study of convergent evolution can be used to show evolution to not be the best explanation, since showing convergent evolution denies the tenet that such similarities are proof of evolution.

Anyway, this isn't meant to be a slam on creationists, but a push. Sometimes I think that the reason that we don't hear about creationists in biology is that they are busy doing other, more productive things than arguing about origins. That's certainly what reading In Six Days led me to believe. I have a lot of respect for that. However, we also need more Christians to work toward a Christian understanding of origins. People like the RATE group, the Baraminology Study Group, the Geoscience Research Institute, and others are doing well, but there needs to be more. No amount of anti-evolution books are going to change anyone's mind. But what will change people's minds are when creationist assumptions are used to find fascinating facts about the world around us.

It will start out being just a small area, especially because of the few scientists and small amounts of money. People will claim, "well it's good for that, but it's just a matter of time before we find the true evolutionary explanation". But then, one niche at a time, people will start to see the results of investigation based on God's word. It will be great to see. I imagine that there will be a turning point in the next 15 years, after which creation research will regain legitimacy. It takes time.

However, creationists will have to learn to hold their tongue more. For those engaged in constructive research, the pot shots on evolution will have to be put on hold, at least for the scientific investigation. In my own writings on Linux programming, I have simply left out references to Microsoft altogether. The fact is that Linux makes sense even without a Microsoft, and Creation makes sense even without something like evolution to compare it to. And if people don't feel like they are being threatened when you speak about creation, they will probably be more likely to listen.

So why do I continue to post criticisms of evolution? Because the comparison is a valid, ongoing topic. Not everything has been said which needs to be said, and for the people coming up through the ranks we must be able to give them responses to the evolutionary mindset. Usually in debates, the people debating are not going to change their minds. Sometimes they will over time. However, by the nature of the fact that they have studied the issue well enough to debate it shows that they are fairly firm in their stance. Therefore, they are not the ones who are convinced by the debates, usually. It is those watching the debates from outside.

Anyway, I'm sorry for the rambling essay. I try to stay away from that in here, but this is a topic I really wanted to touch on. I haven't given it justice either. I encourage people to post in the comments other ways that creationists can pursue positive research using Creation assumptions.

One other thing you might want to check out is the book Understanding the Pattern of Life. It's not superb, but it is a step in the right direction. It is a book on Creationist biosystematics. The first third is truly boring, but the rest of it is pretty good. It makes many, many references to Following Form and Function which I will have to read next. It has some decent insights. What I liked about it most was that it was not confrontational with evolutionists. In fact, it showed many of the places where evolutionists were right and how creationists can learn from it. It shows that being a creationist is not at all about attacking evolution. Honestly, I would love to not focus on evolution at all, except evolutionists nearly unanimously claim that all evidence points to them, and that anyone who thinks differently is stupid. This brings up two of m favorite verses, and choosing which one is applicable is always one of life's toughest decisions -- Proverbs 26:4 and Proverbs 26:5 (what's really amusing is that these wound up in the Skeptic's Annotated Bible as being a contradiction, while I find it obvious that the juxtaposition is one of the most inspired thoughts of the Bible).

Anyway, I'm done rambling for right now.

Breaks in the Chain of Being

2005-04-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting things about evolution is its relation to Greek philosophy. While it rejected a large part of aristotelian biology (namely, the essences, or immutable species concept), it affirmed Aristotle's chain of being concept, which had been expanded during the scholastic period. The idea of the chain of being is that you can arrange the species into a line from simple to complex. When evolution was originally proposed, it was strongly influenced with this line of thinking. Not only did creatures change, Darwin believed that the change was in an upward manner, so that some species were more evolved than others.

While the strict idea of evolution moving in an upward direction is no longer the dominant idea in evolutionary thinking, a soft form of it remains, and is in fact required for evolution.

The evolutionary chain of being goes roughly like this:

Inorganic material -> Organic Material -> Self-replicating enzymes -> Simple pseudo-organisms -> Unicellular life -> Multicellular life -> Present Larger Organisms

This is absolutely ingrained into evolutionary thinking. However, there is almost no evidence for any of it.

First of all, there is the inorganic -> organic link of the chain. While there is definitely some links between inorganic and organic material, the fact is that when you look at organic material required for life, then there is a clear break here.

Let's look at the Miller-Urey experiement. While they were able to generate some organic materials (amino acids and nucleic acids if I remember correctly), the problem is that of chirality. Organic material generally comes in both a "right-handed" and a "left-handed" form. In nature, generally half of each type of molecule is made for inorganic->organic reactions. However, one of the characteristics of living organism is that each type of material exists in only one handedness. So, while the Miller-Urey experiment produced organic material, it did not produce the single handedness required for life molecules.

The next break in the chain comes in the organic->self-replicating enzymes chain. The idea is that, because it is so unlikely that an entire system would come out of nothing, perhaps it started out as just one or two self-replicating RNA molecules. Unfortunately, all known replicating systems usually use many, many enzymes to perform replication.

Now, let's say that we were to find a way to generate all of the molecules that we needed. Let's say that we found a way to get the environment to generate every single enzyme, gene, and protein needed for life to function. Certainly then we would have solved the problem! Unfortunately not. Imagine this: take a cell of ANY TYPE, and kill it. In fact, take several cells and kill them, but be sure to keep as much of the organic material in the cell as you possibly can unaltered. Put it all together. Wait. Wait some more. Guess what -- it will never form into life. Life is so complicated, that even if you have every single enzyme necessary for life to work, it still doesn't self-organize into cells. No matter how well the next generation of prebiotic experiments happen, they still won't do anything to tell us how life arose.

The cambrian explosion (perhaps beginning in the precambrian period) is supposed to be where unicellular life morphed into multicellular life. However, there is no real evidence either (a) that this occurred, or (b) how it might have happened. It was assumed that the organisms in the cambrian explosion were "simple" multicellular life, but in fact they are just as complex as modern species -- at least as far as we can tell from the fossil remnants. This is not a gradual transition from simple to complex, but a giant leap from very simple to very complex. In addition, there is an explosion of body plans at this level, which is counter to evolution's "diversity precedes disparity" idea. Also, there is no evidence of relationship between the kingdoms of life.

Then there is the break between the life forms found in Cambrian rock and what I will call generally the modern, higher organisms (like vertebrates). While there are many similarities among the higher organisms, there are distinct discontinuities as certain places (usually at about the family level) which can be confirmed with holistic comparisons of species, as well as by breeding experiments. There are even greater disparities with even fewer links seen between the higher and lower organisms.

So, while there is some evidence of continuity among the advanced organisms, and a little even between the advanced and "simple" multicellular organisms, the rest of the chain of being is completely broken. Now you can see why the origin of life has been separated from evolutionary theory over the last 40 years.

One note to make -- I refer to "no evidence" several times here. This is obviously a subjective statement, so I encourage you to look at all of the evidences evolutionists present for these jumps and see if you think any of it is plausible yourself. When I get some time, I might look up some links that evolutionists use to disprove these claims, or, if you are an evolutionist, I encourage you to post links in the comments.

Overselling Universal Common Ancestry

2005-04-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

When talking about evolution, one of the main sticking points with creationists is the idea of Universal Common Ancestry. Biblically, the Bible speaks of creating things according to their kinds, giving the idea of multiple, distinct lines of ancestry.

Evolution, on the other hand, says that all organisms evolved from a single organism, or, at most, a set of unicellular organisms. However, this assumption is entirely based on materialist presuppositions and not on evidence.

Evolutionists almost always say that the origin of life (abiogenesis) has absolutely nothing to do with the theory of evolution. The problem is that other than assumptions about how life came about in the first place, there is no reason whatsoever to assume that there was a single starting point.

The evidence is that there are discontinuous groups of organisms. This has been studied quite a bit by both creationists (called baraminology) and process structuralists. The study of discontinuity in living organisms is actually quite fascinating. These studies show both extreme continuities and discontinuities. For example, the dog family is extremely continuous within itself, but extremely discontinuous outside of the family.

Now, many people, despite the current observed discontinuities, believe that homology and fossil succession show clear evidence of historic vertebrate continuity. I have commented on homology before and will not do so again here. However, even then, the Cambrian explosion gives absolutely no evidence whatsoever of continuity between the many phyla that arose duing that time. All of the supposed links between them are based on pretty much no data whatsoever. Evolution says that diversity should precede disparity, but there is no evidence of that happening in the Cambrian explosion either.

The fact is, though there are many explanations of why there is no evidence of continuity among the phyla emerging in the Cambrian explosion, there still remains the fact that there is no evidence. Therefore, one must ask, why is everyone being asked to believe that all life is related? If (a) there is no data of continuity in the Cambrian explosion, and (b) evolution does not deal with the theory of abiogenesis, then why should one assume, even assuming that all the rest of evolution is true, that Universal Common Ancestry is a sure thing?

Even if you believe in evolution, and even with the fossil record being incomplete, the fact remains that Universal Common Ancestry is a theory that is imposed on the data, not one that arises from it. The overselling of Universal Common Ancestry implies that either (a) abiogenesis is indeed a part of the theory of evolution, but one where the data is so far against it that evolutionists want to separate themselves from that part of the discussion, or (b) it is part of metaphysical assumptions required to get evolution to work. It could be another reason, but I can't think of any others at this time.

Reassessing the Theologic Impact of Evolution

2005-04-24T21:01:00.000-07:00

I have long believed that evolution has no theological significance. Probably the biggest reason for this was that a friend of mine was beeh one of the most fervent Christians I knew and also believed very strongly in evolution. He told me that he simply believed that evolution was the method that God used to create.

While I disagreed with him greatly on the issue of creation/evolution, it was obvious to me that this was not a major doctrinal issue, because I had great respect for him. I have held this viewpoint for at least 15 years. Recently, however, others have been pointing out the problem with this view.

Here are the main incompatibilities of evolution with scripture:

Evolution Says	Creation Says
From death came Adam (natural selection operates primarily through death of unadapted species)	From Adam came death (before the fall, death was unknown, and all animals were vegetarian)
All animals form a continuity	Animals were created with discontinuities
The world is billions of years old	The world is thousands of years old (while some disagree whether or not Genesis is poetic, Exodus 20:11 is very clear
The flood was local, and we continue to have local floods	Noah's flood was global, and destroyed the entire Earth, and God promised never again to send a similar flood
Creation was not very good	Creation was very good until Adam's sin

While some of these are minor issues, the first one is not. It is the very basis for the need for Christ. While some have argued that the death of Adam is spiritual only (and he would have died physically anyway), that interpretation ignores many of the aspects of death included in the Genesis narrative, including the ability to eat meat after the fall and not before, and the groaning of creation after the fall through thorns and other problems. While there are several possible interpretations of Genesis, it is clear from their writings that those who have opted for old-Earth interpretations have done so for the express purpose of incorporating prevalent philosophies of the earth into Christianity, and not because that's the best reading of the text. Likewise, that sort of ploy is used unconsciously to include the anti-Biblical ideas of evolution into Christian theology, such as from death came Adam.

This brings up another issue -- that of taking man's ideas over God's ideas. The fact is that the whole point of the Bible is to trust God and what He says over what others say. The Bible repeatedly warns against those who are right in their own eyes. In order to be a Christian you HAVE to be willing to trust God over and above what you think and what others think. The cross is a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others -- to think that we should synchronize their ideas with those of God is a mockery of God.

However, this does not mean that there is one and only one possible interpretation of a verse. The question comes about -- why are you re-interpretting this verse? Is it because you truly think that the verse means something else, or is it because man's ideas force you to re-interpret the verse to read into them man's ideas? If it is the latter, then you are saying that you are smarter than God, and that your ideas are more important. What's really bad about this is that once man's ideas become official Church teaching, when man changes his ideas it is the Church that is left holding the bag.

A clear case of this is in evolutionary racism. During the first part of this century, the evolutionary biology textbooks taught that there were four races of man -- australoid, negroid, mongoloid, and caucasoid -- and had evolved in that order. Caucasians were the most advanced race. While this was not the origin of racism, it has both fueled and solidified racist thinking -- giving people a false comfort of believing based on facts. This led to numerous heinous atrocities including the hunting of Australian aborigines, and the display of a Pygmie from Africa in the Bronx Zoo. This was justified because they were viewed to be from lower forms of life. This thinking infected the Church, too, who had mostly given up to evolutionary thinking. However, after the second world war, the implications of this type of racism were obvious. The mind of the world changed. But, of course, the Church since then has been blamed for producing racist people. And the charge is not that far from the truth. They were a party to it. They forsook the Word of God for a lie, and that is the outcome. Had they remained true to God's word, it would have been a great victory for the modern Church.

All of this has led me to believe that evolution is the modern idolatry. I know there are many idols that we have in our lives -- money, comfort, pleasure, etc. However, I think that evolutionary thinking has plagued Christianity the same way that other syncretisms have in the past. The difference is that the Church isn't seeing it because it isn't an obvious idol. However, secular humanism is the antithesis of Christianity, and evolution is the core foundation of it. Letting evolution modify our understanding of the Bible is the same as syncretism with idol worship.

It's not being anti-science, either. There is nothing wrong with supplemental information to scripture. The difference is that, as Christians, we regard the scripture as authoritative. Other understandings come below that, not above. We are to cast down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. By its own admission, scientific knowledge is tentative. However, we let the tentative results of science trump belief in the authoritative word from scripture. As Christians, our authority is in scripture. Ceding that to other authorities is the equivalent of idolatry.

So what to do with Christians who are participating in this? I think the best thing to do is to help them see what is happening, and why it is problematic. This is probably the thing which has prevented me from believing this -- I don't like confronting others, especially on matters of faith. But God has really been dealing with me in this area, and I think I'm going to have to start helping others individually to see the conflict between evolution and Christianity, rather than just doing so impersonally on the web.

Also, just to point out for those theological evolutionists that are still out there, the theory of evolution as it is usually formulated is against you, too. Most formulations say that it is both undirected and unsupervised, which specifically excludes you. The idea that evolution is not in conflict with theology is pretty much just a ploy to limit resistance, rather than a real nod to theology. Just like the Churches in the past and racism, you too will be left holding the bag.

Some people have worried about whether such a stance will drive people away from Christianity. This is entirely possible. However, that is the nature of Christianity -- it is a stumbling block to some, and foolishness to others. Christ himself said that in order to follow him that you should count the cost before following Him. This is a far cry from the modern idea of salvation at any price. While our job is to present Christ for and to all people, it is NOT our job to change the message to make it more palatable. The message is what it is, and if proclaiming the true message of Christ causes people to turn away from God, then that will just have to happen. It's sad, but Jesus said that He will divide. We have become so scared of people rejecting us that we have started rejecting scripture in order to bring more people in. In that case, what are we bringing people into? Just another way for people to be right in their own eyes? In that case, we are bringing them to destruction on the pretext of bringing them to life.

Setting the Facts Straight on Intelligent Design

2005-03-25T13:11:00.000-08:00

My main point here is not to defend Intelligent Design. In fact, I have many problems and questions with relation to Intelligent Design. However, almost everyone who talks about Intelligent Design (both for and against) is completely ignorant of what it is. I don't know a whole lot about it, but I know enough to know that most of the arguing going on about Intelligent Design is just noise. So this article is to set forth what Intelligent Design actually says, based on Debski's book The Design Revolution.

Intelligent Design in a Nutshell

Many people equate Intelligent Design with Creationism. That is untrue. Although this is somewhat the fault of dogmatic darwinists, some blame must be placed on Dembski, who often fails to separate out the idea of Intelligent Design with its implications based on results in Biology. I think if this were more properly separated by both him and others, it would lead fewer people to misunderstand Intelligent Design.

The basics of Intelligent Design say the following:

Objects that are creations of design (computers, toaster ovens, paintings, etc.) have certain properties that objects that arise by chance (tornadoes, rock formations, etc) do not contain.

It is possible to determine mathematically the likelihood of whether or not an object is the result of design.

We can use this mathematic quantity to determine whether an object of unknown origin is a product of design.

I hope you noticed that these basics mention neither biology, creation, nor evolution.

If Intelligent Design is correct (and I emphasize "if"), then this can be used to go beyond an intuition that something is a result of intelligent causes to a mathematical criteria to determine whether they are above a statistical threshold containing evidence of design. Note that this is how every other scientific property is judged -- based on statistical thresholds (this are often termed "error bars" or "confidence measures" in science). Also note that although it is always possible that something deemed to be Intelligently Designed might have just resulted from chance, that is true of all scientific inferences. What makes an inference scientific is the ability to measure the confidence interval of your data (i.e. 93% accurate, +- 1%, 99% confident of the interval). Any given set of scientific data might be inaccurate, but we have measures so we can determine the likelihood of its accuracy. While it is possible that all scientific experiments are incorrect and the results are the result of chance happenings, we know because of the confidence measures that this possibility is so remote as to not even consider. This is also how Intelligent Design works. It says that we can measure the design of an object so that we can have a measurable confidence in an assertion about whether or not an object is designed. And remember, we still haven't mentioned biology yet.

Some people complain that Intelligent Design is simply covering up the gaps with an "Intelligent Creator". In fact, it's nothing of the sort. Let's take, for instance, a computer. According to Intelligent Design, a computer is the result of an intelligent designer. However, this does not prevent further inquiry into how computers are put together. It is perfectly logical to say that computers are built by intelligent designers, and then go and describe the production process for a computer. It is also perfectly logical to describe the history of computers, and of their design. Intelligent Design absolutely does not just throw up its hands and say "I don't know how it got here, it must be intelligently designed." On the contrary, most designed objects we have experience with we know exactly how they got here. In fact, some production processes are so efficient, with only a serial number I can identify the assembly line workers who put it together, and get a fully documented history of its design. The only thing Intelligent Design does do is rule out a process that is completely devoid of design. It is compatible, however, with the idea that chance could be involved in an object's final state. For example, the scratch on my computer monitor was the result of a chance happening. This does not negate the known fact that my computer was designed by an intelligent designer. In fact, even positive chance happenings can occur. For example, my shoes are much more comfortable after I've worn them for a few months, but that does not mean because some parts of their final state are improved and different from their design, that the shoes themselves are not a product of design.

And notice, we still haven't talked about biology yet.

A Short Note on the SETI Project

As mentioned in Dembski's book, the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) project relies entirely on Intelligent Design. In their case, they are trying to find a signal that is obviously not the result of chance or purely naturalistic causes, but can only be ascribed to an intelligence. Without this assumption, SETI would not have any way of evaluating a signal and determining if it was the result of intelligence or not. SETI recognizes that there are distinct differences between natural, chance happenings and intelligent happenings, and believes that they can detect them. That's how Intelligent Design works.

Criteria for Determining Design

Before going into these, we must note that the lack of these criteria does not imply an undesigned object. In science, you have the null hypothesis, which can never be proven right, only wrong. In Intelligent Design, the null hypothesis is undesign, which can never be proven right, we can only prove that the characteristics of design are statistically significant, as with every other area of scientific inquiry.

The key to Dembski's Intelligent Design criteria is specified complexity, which is complexity that accomplishes a purpose or follows a patterned design. He lists five ingredients for specified complexity:

Probabilities of Events Occurring

This is the most basic -- essentially establishing the probabilities of various possible events and outcomes occurring (however, while it is easy to understand, this can be very hard to compute). The example Dembski gives is that of a combination lock with three wheels each with 40 positions. The chance that any given combination will be the combination to the lock is 40x40x40 = 64,000. The "complexity" part of specified complexity refers to the improbability of an event occurring when not taking intelligent agents into account.

Conditionally Independent Patterns

The patterns found must be independent of an event. Shooting an arrow and then drawing a bullseye around the arrow's landing point does not qualify the arrow shot as intelligently directed. However, if the targets are set up in advance, then hitting a bullseye does point to an intelligence, because the pattern was specified independent of the event. This is the "specified" of specified complexity. Specification doesn't mean much when the odds are about even, but when taken with events of small probability, you have specified complexity.

Probabilistic Resources

This is the number of opportunities for a specified complex event to occur. There are two types:

Replicational resources means that the event has multiple chances to happen. If we have 200,000 random guesses at the combination lock mentioned above, hitting upon the correct combination is no longer seen as such a feat.

Specificational resources means that there are multiple specifications to hit. If the combination lock above has 50,000 possible combinations that open it, again, hitting upon the correct combination is no longer a feat.

Specificational Complexity

This is the one I find most interesting. Since we can't see the patterns of a designer beforehand, this is a test to verify that we aren't just making up ad-hoc specifications. The more complex the specification, the more likely it is that we are dealing with a true specification, and not just a description made up to look like the specification. According to Dembski, this is measured by Kolmogorov complexity. For example, the pattern "ten heads in a row" is a simpler pattern than "heads, then tails, then heads twice, then tails once, then heads once, then heads four times".

This sort of order is interesting to me because of my background in computer science. In computer science, there are numerous compression algorithms. This is what makes GIF files smaller than BMP files on your computer, and allows you to compress your entire CD collection into mp3's that can fit on an iPod. However, it is a principle of mathematics that you cannot compress random data. If you know how, there is someone willing to give you $10,000 right now if you can compress the data he gives you. Therefore, you can essentially detect the amount design that occurs within a specification by attempting to compress it. The more compressible it is in relation to the event/object specified, the more likely it is an actual specification, and not an post-hoc specification.

The Universal Probability Bound

This is a measure of the highest amount of improbability available in the universe. According to Dembski, events over this bound are improbable no matter how many probabilistic resources you apply to them. He calculates by estimating the number of particles in the universe, combining it with available time, and the fastest rate that matter can change states (corresponding to Planck time, again, another item outside my field).

Modes of Explanation

In addition to specified complexity, Dembski also discusses Intelligent Design in more of a philosophical context dealing with the three modes of explanation -- necessity, chance, and design. Necessity is something that by physical law must happen. Chance is something that occurs, but not by necessity. Design is that which is neither by necessity nor by chance, which we can determine by specified complexity.

Intelligent Design and Biology

I hope you've noticed, WE HAVEN'T MENTIONED BIOLOGY YET. Intelligent Design as a theory is entirely separate from anything dealing with Biology at all. If you have a criticism of Intelligent Design in general, and you can't frame it WITHOUT REFERENCING BIOLOGY, CREATION, OR EVOLUTION, then you haven't understood Intelligent Design. So, why has Intelligent Design created such a noise in the area of biology? Simply this:

IF Intelligent Design is true (and I hope you notice that "if" is emphasized), then there is no reason it cannot be applied to biological systems.

Criticism of Intelligent Design

I have a lot of criticisms of intelligent design, personally, but I need to go be with my family for a little bit, I miss them :) However, I will tell you what my major ones are in general terms.

I think the biggest problem in all of science is determining the role intelligence plays in causation. If we assume cause/effect relationships (and quantum mechanics I've heard gives us some reason not to), then ultimately those cause/effect relationships include intelligent agents. Therefore, to what extent are the actions of intelligent agents guided by necessity, and to what extent are they guided by design? This conundrum even prompted one philosopher (I forget who) to speculate that will and causation were two completely different entities, which only happened to collide. Note that if necessity were the only real component of explanation, then explanations themselves would have no meaning, because they would only be the result of necessity. In order to engage in reason or science at all, intelligence or will must be assumed, but the relation of them to necessity is still a very large problem which we have not even approached solving.

This has a HUUUGE effect on calculating probabilities, and of detecting design.

Secondly, there is determining whether the base set of objects we apply this test to to determine the test's validity we know whether or not they are designed. A nihilist might believe that nothing is designed, and therefore would falsify the design inference because it would show design on things that were not designed. The Calvinist creationist might think that all is designed, therefore the percentage of designed objects that the inference detects would be meaningless. For science to be workable at all, both these extreme positions must be rejected, but that still leaves us without a true ability to find a base set of designed and undesigned objects to perform these tests on. However, we can probably get around this by looking at objects that the majority of us can agree are designed and undesigned.

A Few Notes about the Fossil Record

2005-03-20T21:22:00.000-08:00

I used to think that the fossil record provided the greatest support for evolution. Not because of homologies, as discussed below, but rather because certain species tended to show up in certain places in the geologic record over and over again. What would account for that except evolution?

In fact, I held this opinion quite recently. I was going to write this article to mention the placement of fossils within the fossil record as evidence for evolution. However, as I began to dig into this I found the same kinds of bad logic that I found in homologies -- namely that if counterexamples are abundant, then the rule must not be sound.

Living Fossils

In homologies, we talked extensively about convergent evolution. Basically, to sum up, if homologies were evidence for evolution, then finding non-evolutionary homologies removes the weight of homology from evolution. If homologies often occurs because of other causes than common ancestry, then using homologies as evidence of common ancestry doesn't hold water.

That's the same basic line of reasoning that will be occurring here. The evolutionists believe that if a fossil of a certain species is always found in a certain layer, then we can conclude that the fossil lived during that period. If a fossil is never found in a certain layer, then we can conclude that the fossil didn't likely live during that period. So, if a species is never found in the same layer as humans, we can assume that they never lived at the same time as humans.

Of course, that's completely wrong. The coelacanth fish, for example, had supposedly gone extinct with the dinosaurs. We have a lot of fossils of the fish in the same layers as the dinosaurs, and NO fossils of the fish with modern humans. They thought this until we found out that they were being sold in the markets of Madagascar. Obviously, the fact that we don't find these fish in the same layer as humans means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about whether or not they lived at the same time as humans. The tadpole shrimp is another similar story.

So, although coelacanth fish RELIABLY are in the same geologic layers as dinosaurs and RELIABLY NOT in the same geologic layers as humans, this DOES NOT mean that they lived in different eras -- we know this because the direct evidence shows that they are living today. So why are we so sure about other cases?

Historic Accounts of Dinosaurs

Now that we know that animals not existing in certain geologic layers isn't proof of when they became extinct, we can ask another question. Is there any evidence that animals believed to be long extinct have existed sooner than the geologic record tells us? Yes there is. In fact, numerous dinosaur-era animals have been described by human accounts. Here are a few:

Pterydactyls - native americans called these things Thunderbirds. They have also been spotted in Africa.

Ankylosaurus - this is described in the book of Job as "Leviathan". The only difference is that Leviathan supposedly breathes fire. Oh, wait, Ankylosauruses have complex sinuses of unknown function, so maybe they do.

Behemoth - also mentioned in Job, matches the description of a Brontosaurus or similar species.

This is actually happening so often that a new field is emerging called paleocryptozoology that correlates historic facts with fossils.

So, we've seen that the geologic evidence can produce results that we know are incorret, and we have historical accounts that lend doubt to other parts of that record. So, as you can see, there is less and less reason to believe that geologists and biologists are correct when assigning dates to the lifespans of these species.

How Old Are Geologic Structures

In fact, not only is it hard to date fossils, it is getting fairly hard to reliably date anything. The grand canyon has often been heralded as a monument to the concept of geology forming over millions of years. However, we have seen similarly stratified layers formed in a matter of DAYS in other canyons. At Mt. St. Helens, we find that a large canyon of stratified layers was formed in a matter of hours.

The island of Surtsey, which has been formed only in the last century, National Geographic said this: "… in one week’s time we witness changes that elsewhere might take decades or even centuries … Despite the extreme youth of the growing island, we now encounter a landscape so varied that it is almost beyond belief."

The speed at which we actually observe these processes take place continually amazes and confounds the uniformitarians. However, apparently it isn't amazing or confounding enough to believe that other geological structures on the earth might have been formed by the same sort of quick-forming catastrophic events that we see today, as opposed to the slow-moving gradualistic processes that noone has ever observed and we can only guess at.

Contra-indications of the Geologic Column

There are many reasons to believe that the geologic column exists, but there are also many reasons not to. Modern dogmatic evolutionists like to present one side of the story, but without addressing the problems. And when they do address the problems, they are absolutely sure that you recognize that it doesn't affect the general concept of millions of years. I'm sure you know the arguments for millions of years. If not, take a look at the Talk.Origins link on the right. Here are some arguments against it (from Ariel Roth):

Present rate of erosion of continents - Continents would be eroded 170-340 times over in 3500 Ma.

Sediments carried into the ocean - Present rate would produce sediments now found in oceans in 50 Ma and would fill the oceans 19 times over in 3500 Ma.

Rate of sediment accumulation on continents - In 3500 Ma, there should be 14-23 times as much sediment as found, excluding some limited recycling.

Rates of uplift of mountains - Mountains are rising at a rate of 100 cm/1000 years, which would result in mountains 100 km high in 100 Ma.

Rate of production of volcanic ejecta - In 3500 Ma 20-80 times as much volcanic ejecta as we now find would have been produced.

Time for evolutionary development - Many orders of magnitude more than 5000 Ma are needed for the improbable events postulated.

Other Geologic Inconsistencies

Polystrate fossils - some fossils span multiple geologic layers.

Inconsistent finds - the geologic column is not as consistent with its fossils as some may present. The inconsistencies are usually glossed over. It makes sense to gloss over inconsistencies if your assumption is millions of years. However, without that assumption, such inconsistencies point to a reconsideration of the original hypothesis.

Preservation of animal tracks - the fossilization of animal tracks indicate that stratified layers formed quickly, not over years, otherwise the tracks would have eroded away.

Animal tracks always going upwards - in many spots, like the Grand Canyon, for instance, all of the animal tracks found are going uphill. This could be an indication of a massive flood occurring where the animals are all trying to find high ground.

Most geologic features can form faster than previously expected - we've already mentioned some examples. In addition, fossils can form very fast, as well as coal and other features that are supposed to have taken millions of years.

Anyway, the geologic evidence for evolution rests on some shaky assumptions about the validity of the geologic column, and especially its relationship to the survival dates of species. If we find that all of these evolutionary "ancestors" were all living contemporaneously, it casts severe doubt on the idea of the process occurring at all.

This still leaves the question of, what does, exactly, the geologic column represent. I don't know the answer to that. There are some hypotheses, and hopefully the correct one will show itself over the next few decades.

Some Comments on Homology

2005-03-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

Homology is one of the most interesting aspects of biology. While evolutionists are convinced that homology plays in their favor, it actually creates more problems for an evolutionary framework than it solves.

What is Homology

Homologous limbs are limbs or organs shard between species that have a large number of features in common. These differ from analogous structures, which are limbs or organs which have a similar function, but much different features.

For example, the wings of birds and bats are analogous -- they both accomplish flight but share few structural similarities. The structure of vertebrate forelimbs are usually homologous, because even if their use is different, the structure is very similar.

Evolutionists believe that homology provides great evidence of evolution. They believe that the shared structure indicates a common parentage. They believe that shared structure of limbs performing vastly different functions shows evolution especially well, because it indicates that a given structure was being re-used. The idea is that a designer would have created more specialized structures rather than re-using similar structures for different purposes. The use of similar structures for different purposes is evidence of adaptation to differing environments. Since evolution requires very stable intermediates even in the fastest evolution, it requires that many structures remain shared and simply repurposed in different environments.

This is fairly good evidence for evolution. However, when weighing the evidence, one must also weigh the counter-evidence. For homology, the counter-evidence would be homologous structures that are outside the expected evolutionary tree. The more similar the homology and the further diverged from the evolutionary tree (especially when diverged from the environment that supposedly gave rise to the structure in the first place) the weightier the evidence against evolution. If homologies are continually found outside the expected evolutionary tree, then it can't be said that homologies provide evidence for evolution.

So, instead of examining the evidence, homologies have simply been redefined within biology. The definition of homologies have changed to be similar structures that are a result of common ancestry, while analogies are modified to also include similar structures that are not a result of common ancestry. Notice that, with the new definition, it is logically impossible to have a homology that doesn't prove evolution. This is why evolutionists can consistently say "all the evidence points to evolution" -- because all of the terms have been redefined to assume evolutions existence. The weight of evidence is simply weighed against consistency with the theory of evolution in order to determine its importance.

For the rest of the blog entry (and probably as long as this blog remains active) we will use "homology" and "analogy" to mean the classic definitions of homology and analogy, and "evolutionary homology" to refer to the redefined homology term.

What Do Homologies Indicate?

The crux of the matter is "what, exactly, do homologies indicate?" Unless all homologies or nearly all homologies lined up perfectly with evolutionary homologies, the existence of homologies means very little by itself. Homologies can be explained just as easily by all of the following:

Common ancestry
Common designer
Common pattern of design (with either one or multiple designers)
Common environment

The "common environment" can be attributed to both evolution and creation -- either created to match a common environment or evolved to survive according to selective pressures. So, unless there is an overwhelming correspondence between evolutionary homology and classic homology, the mere existence of homology means very little to each side.

The common argument from evolutionists is that evolutionists have been able to arrange fossils (especially vertebrate fossiles) in a near-perfect evolutionary tree. This is seen as conclusive proof that evolution must be right -- otherwise no such arrangement would be possible. This argument is patently false. There are many counterexamples. Here are a few:

Cars can be easily arranged into an "evolutionary hierarchy". However, the similarities between cars is a product of the market (common environment) and the manufacturer (common design) and just the way that cars tend to be built (common pattern of design). We know that automobiles were created, not generated spontaneously or descended one from another, and yet they fit neatly into an evolutionary hierarchy.
Marvin Lubenow gives an excellent story about how an evolutionary teacher of his gave each student a packet of about 150 metal artifacts (screws, paperclips, etc.) and had the students arrange them in an evolutionary tree. Even though each student's arrangement varied slightly, they all agreed generally. This was supposed to be an exercise in evolutionary classification, but it really showed that any assortment of items can be arranged in an "evolutionary tree" whether or not such a tree is valid.

I'm sure you can come up with a large number of similar examples on your own. The truth is that humans have a habit of hierarchical arrangement. The mere fact that people largely agree on a hierarchical arrangement means absolutely nothing about whether or not that arrangement is a result of common descent or another means.

Are There Counterexamples to Evolutionary Homology?

The answer is an emphatic yes. Of course, as dogmatic evolutionists insist they are the only game in town, they have renamed counterexamples so that they at least appear in name to be consistent with evolution. That name is convergent evolution. While occasionally used to indicate analogous organs, "convergent evolution" is usually used to indicate homologies which do not line up with the evolutionary tree. Examples of convergent evolution are abundant, both morphologically (dealing with the structure of organisms) and biochemically (dealing with the proteins, enzymes, and DNA in the cell). We'll cover a few here.

But first, let's take note of why evolutionists don't think that convergent evolution is a problem for them. They believe that there are perfectly valid explanations other than evolution for homology. The main one they point to is environmental selective pressures which select the same mutations across two lineages. There are a number of problems with this stance:

If evolutionists agree that there are other possibilities for the origin of homologies than common descent, then they should also agree with us that this makes the use of homologies as evidence of common descent null and void, since homology can be just as much evidence of other mechanisms.
The idea that the same set of beneficial mutations can occur randomly twice is astronomically low. First of all, the chances of getting one beneficial mutation is astronomically low. The chances of finding a sequence from point A to point B with all containing beneficial or at least non-lethal configurations is astronomically low. The chances of two different organisms finding the same configuration from the same random space is even more astronomically low.

For a good sense of how much recent studies in homology are turning up counterexamples to evolution, take a look at this google search of creationsafaris.com.

Some simple, easy-to-find examples:

The marsupial wolf. Most wolves are placental. According to evolution, the placentals and marsupials branched away from each other 300 million years ago, in a small rodent-like animal. However, strangely, in two separate environments (with different "selective pressures", mind you) nature seemed to invent the wolf twice -- once as a placental and once as a marsupial. For a comparison of skulls between these two species, see this diagram. There are differences between the skulls, but they are no more numerous than would be for "evolutionary homologous" structures.
In fact, the wolves are actually just one part of the marsupial/placental convergence. There are a number of placentals who have marsupial counterparts. These whole-body similarities are even bigger than the individual piecemeal evolutionary homologies. See here, here, and here.
The electrical sense apparatus in the ghost knifefish and the African elephant snout fish are regarded as convergent evolution even though it is highly complex and unusual.
Antifreeze Glycoproteins which help fish survive freezing temperatures seem to have evolved completely independently.
This is a great paper on convergent evolution. Unfortunately, however, since evolutionists paint both non-evolutionary homologies and analogies with the same brush, this paper includes a long list of both types, and its up to you to sort out which is which.

"The fundamental problem - which is not often admitted, unfortunately - is how can you be absolutely sure that a character found in two species, perhaps something like a tentacle, really is from a common ancestor, or perhaps emerged entirely independently - in other words, it would be an example of what we call convergent evolution." (Simon Conway Morris, quoted from here)

Homology and Embryology and Genetics

In order to prevent simply restating the work of Jonathan Wells, I will refer this section to his excellent article, entitled Homology in Biology. The essence of the article is that even evolutionary homologies have non-homologous developmental pathways, and that even evolutionary homologies often have non-homologous genes controlling them.

What is the Creationist Position?

Creationists look at biology a different way than evolutionists. For evolutionists it's all just a giant accident, and biology is simply sorting out the "how" of how we got here. For creationists, however, we assume that there is a purpose behind our creation, and the job of biologists is to learn the purpose behind the creation. It is the question of George Washington Carver -- "God, why did you make the peanut?"

This is certainly much more useful in biology. The notion of "vestigal" organs (organs that are evolutionary left-overs or non-functionals) is particularly damaging to research, as it closes off inquiry. While a creation framework would be saying, "God, the function of these are elusive, why did you make them?" and then begin a process of investigation, the evolutionary framework says, "gee, these are vestigal, guess there's no function there." This is happening right now with pseudogenes and "junk DNA".

Why are there homologous structures? That's a very good question. I don't know the answer to that, but I think that searching for that answer is a better idea than saying the false premise that its just from ancestry (its false because convergent evolution shows that even if evolution is true, the premise of it just being from ancestry is certainly false).

It's obvious, however, that life was created with patterns. Anyone who has designed anything knows the power of design patterns. As a computer programmer, I create programs continually using design patterns, and while similar programs share many patterns, very dissimilar programs share many patterns as well. In fact, almost all programs, for any purpose and on any platform, share the initialize->process information in a loop->finalize pattern. If you look at the many homologies that lie both in and out of the normal classification hierarchy, it opens up the possibilities that many of life's designs are a combination of patterns arranged in unique ways. As someone who designs for a living, it makes perfect sense to me. On the other hand, I'm not a biologist, so what do I know?

Personally, I think a lot of biologists are aware of these problems, and just don't say anything because they're jobs would be at stake. That's evident from the Rick Sternberg fiasco, and the number of scientists who are signing on with some form of ID or Darwin criticism. They aren't all creationists, in fact many are theistic evolutionists (which true theistic evolution differs significantly from neo-Darwinian evolution).

Hunter exposed many of the theological assumptions behind the evolutionary interpretation of homology. Most of them, in order to prove evolution as trumping creation, have to result in "God wouldn't have designed it this way." Of course, that requires you to have specific, theological notions. However, since they are usually unstated, they are not open to criticism.

Do Creationists Publish?

2005-03-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

This is one of my favorite topics, because its fun to dogmatic evolutionists squirm. Dogmatic evolutionists really get upset when they are not the only game in town. They want it to be clean and simple. "There are no creationists who publish." Or at least "there are no creationists who publish on creationist topics." Of course, they are talking about being published in the journals controlled by the dogmatic evolutionists. And this is where it gets amusing.

First of all, creationists do publish on origins topics in peer-reviewed journals. However, usually they have to hide the fact that they are creationists, and just stop short of saying outright the creationist implications. A good summary of creationist publishing in secular peer-reviewed journals is at trueorgin.org. I don't want to get bogged down into talking about that.

Recently, an overtly intelligent design-oriented paper was published in a peer reviewed journal. The paper, The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories, was published in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a publication that is part of the Smithsonian. Now, there is a lot to this story. The best account is the managing editor, Rick Sternberg's account. However, I do think he was leaving out a few details. I'm sure he intentionally did this as his last act as managing editor, but I do believe he believed in the scientific validity of the paper, but was aware of the political problems that arise from criticizing Darwin. However, I don't want to focus on that, either.

What I'd really like to point out is the pickle that dogmatic evolutionists are getting themselves into. In order to say that the paper was bogus, they have to paint Sternberg as a raving creationist. This allows them to continue to say that creationists don't get published, especially on creationist topics. However, doing so means that they must acknowledge that not only are real scientists creationists (although Rick Sternberg actually isn't, by his own account), but that they are well-respected enough to have been given the position of managing editor of a prestigious publication.

So, either intelligent design is an idea worthy of publication, or creationists are of such high respect in the sciences as to having been given a place of honor as the managing editor of a publication of the Smithsonian. Quite a pickle, huh?

Added to that is the fact that at least one article along the same line is being published in another peer-reviewed publication.

I'll have more to say on the science of creation and design at a later time. I just had to take the time to point out the pickle dogmatic evolutionists have created for themselves.

Introduction to the Blog

2005-03-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

I'm a creationist. I've been talking to many people at many different sites about creation and evolution, and decided to start this blog to review some of my more general thoughts and comment on the conversations I'm having.

Having said that, I do want to say that I am open to the possibility of evolution. Although I find it at odds with many of the facts, and some versions of it inconsistent with Christianity, I am not a priori opposed to any account of evolution. The truth is obviously somewhere, as we are dealing with history, not strictly philosophy. Unfortunately, the historical record is not as clear as anyone wants it to be.