To consider logic, Dr McNeill, to be co-terminous with empirical science, is surely the acme of illogicality. The vast body of empirical science, although ultimately derived from the free-ranging discursions of the great paradigm-changers, is proximately the product of minuscule, incremental steps.

This is possible since it relates to the basest of all the dimensions of our human existence, namely, the material world – Mr McGoo’s specialism, if you like, so to cast it as the sovereign form of knowledge, which seems to be the norm among secular fundamentalists, is folly.

The great paradigm-changers of the last century, Einstein, Planck, Bohr and Godel were all, at the very least, not pantheists, but panentheists, ipso facto, convinced of Intelligent Design. Godel was a devout Lutheran.

This conviction was primordial, fundamental to their thinking, your perspective on empirical science as being ‘the tops’, being dubbed by Einstein as ‘naive realism.’
Physics today has come up against a wall of paradoxes, not counter-intuitive, but counter-rational, and the only way to make progress is to incorporate them – which they duly do, the ‘naive realists’ no less than those with an, at minimum, panentheistic world-view.

Yet the narrative-upholders of empirical science steadfastly refuse to countenance the fact that physicists are facing mysteries which fly in the face of logic as arbitrarily as any Christian or any other religious mystery. No paradox is less opaque and imponderable than any other. They all defy our reason absolutely.

If you could travel through time and speak to each one of those great paradigm-changers, individually, what would you say to them, in order to convince them that they had ‘got the boot on the wrong foot’? That they were illogical not to consider empirical science as the ultimate form of knowledge?

What reason do you have for contending that our universe was not designed, and by an awesome intelligence at that, since you expect the application of our intelligence to fathom its secrets.

Planck pointed out that there are no eternal and immutable laws of nature. We have no evidence, can have no evidence, to suggest that what was true concerning the so-called, laws of nature, in the past, governing the physical world, would remain so in the future. So, straight away, the so-called, Christian Fundamentalists, have at least a fifty-fifty chance of being correct.

But tell me, is it not the case that only an omniscient, omnipotent, personal God could cause light to hit an observer, travelling at a constant speed in the same direction, at its own absolute speed, irrespective of the speed at which that traveller is moving? What other agency could effect such a phenomenon?

“Regarding Allen’s comments:

1. The estimates of mutation rates in the literature are AFTER repair enzyme activity (without repair enzmes, we would all be dead!). Repair enymes can only fix mutations “while the paint is still wet”. Beyond that – repair enzymes can not discern which nucleotides are mutant and which are not. The reality of high mutation rates (after repair) is not really contestible. We can only see and measure those mutations that did not get repaired. Furthermore, the hypothetical divergence of the chimp/human genomes requires mutation rates (after repair) of at least 50-100 mutations per individual per generation. Without high mutation rates evolutionary theory does not work. Repair enzymes do not impact our results.

2. My modeling allows for recombination. When we stop recombination – extinction is much faster. We in no way overlooked recombination.

3. We do not require that the genome is the sole source of biological information – we are simply testing the neo-Darwinian model in terms of how the genome arose and how it can (not) be preserved. We show that neo-Darwinian theory is easily falsifiable.

4. If Allen feels I have “massaged the numbers”, I am happy to run the program with any numbers he honestly feels reflect biological reality.

The modeling program we are developing is entirely adjustable, and has no built-in bias. It is purely an accounting system! We even can do runs with zero mutations, or use only beneficial mutations – whatever Allen feels is biologically realistic.

5. My models have no relation to my religious views on the age of the earth. We are ONLY examining the mechanics of mutation-selection.”

Some consider OOL “part of” neo-Darwinian “modern” evolution, others insist that it is separate. . .

Anyway, “wicked” has some fascination, hasn’t it?

A deadly fascination – frequently entrapping and destroying those who venture close – especially those without authority over it.
Be warned.

First, GP, a brilliant job in 194, in response to nos. 188 – 189.

On a few points of note:

1] Science is . . .

Science is indeed in large part about inference to best current explanation, and retroductive, unifying explanation of diverse phenomena is as important and often at least as powerful as prediction.

Some would indeed argue that prediction is a subset of such empirical explanation, i.e providing a unifying construct that points to as yet non-instantiated empirical data. That is, the logic in basic form has structure, where T – theory, O – observation of fact, P – prediction of not yet observed fact:

T –> {O1, O2, . . . On} AND {P1, P2, . . . Pm},

where the marker between O’s and P’s is set temporally and sometimes financially. [Recall here the unbuilt super-collider that was going to be the lifetime employment programme for a lot of physicists . . . pardon my hints of cynicism.]

However, there is a further factor, as — as GP hints at — domains in science interact.

Namely, there are also points where theories have bridges (B) to other domains in science and associated bodies of accepted theory. Thus, we extend the basic model:

T –> {O1, O2, . . . On} AND {P1, P2, . . . Pm} AND {B1, B2, . . . Bk}

The classic current a case in point would be quantum physics which unifies across a very large cluster of domains across several entire fields of science and associated technologies, brilliantly. Never mind its own gaping inner challenges.

Now, too, let us observe: when a bridge to another established domain in science opens up, all at once there is the major potential for cross-checks across entire domains.

Thus, the opening of a bridge is fraught with potential for confirmation and disconfirmation, as all at once whole new domains of fact and associated theories are exposed to mutual cross-examination. If there is mutual coherence and support, then it lends our confidence in the underlying constructs in both domains a greatly enhanced weight of credence. [For instance, think here on the import of key bridging concepts such as atoms, energy, particles such as electrons, the wave concept, and now information.] But, on the other hand, where there is incoherence, we then have to look at the weights of the relevant alternative explanations and come to conclusions on where the changes need to be made.

That is a major reason why I take the design inference seriously, as the progress of molecular scale biology over the past 60 or so years has revealed elements of a complex, in part digitally based information system at the core of cell based life. Onward, that bridges to an even more established domain of science, thermodynamics. One may deny the bridges but they plainly are there and it boils down to this: the current dominant chance + necessity only paradigm in biology is deeply challenged to account coherently for the information systems and content at the core of cell based life.

Now, there is an alternative paradigm, design, that can. But it is controversial as it cuts across major worldview level commitments of many leading practitioners in the sciences. So, we now see a major political dust-up taking place, across entire domains of science and also in the education system and wider culture, where key dominant elites have embedded in key elements of the evolutionary materialist paradigm in their worldviews and life/culture agendas.

Also, while I would not go so far as to say that life inherently and inevitably has such a digital information system at its core, it certainly is relevant to observed bio-physical, cell-based life.

That brings up my own thoughts on the issue of life . . .

2] On Life

I agree with those who point out that we do not know necessary and sufficient conditions to define life, nor can we find an agreed genus and differentia framework that absorbs all accepted cases without serious exception. That leaves us with family resemblance to commonly accepted cases, and notes on oddities that stick out.

I even seem to recall a Sci Am article from about 15 years ago on how there is some sort of seaweed that does not seem to have cells in the conventional sense. And of course, I am not convinced that we may properly restrict the phenomena or expressions of life to the strictly biophysical. For instance, is mind an expression of life? If so, it has very unusual properties and may point beyond the simply biophysical. Recall too that attempts to account for mind on biophysically based chance + necessity only founder on the shoals of self-referential incoherence.

Having noted that, GP has raised several key considerations that have interesting bridges: life as observed embeds serious energy-flow constraints and associated information systems and structures that exploit some very clever chemistry, polymer science and physics, etc.

3] The bridge from life to information and thermodynamics . . .

The above brings to bear all that we know about information and communication systems and associated issues on information generation and the implications of noise and , onward thermodynamics considerations as they affect information issues. It also explains why so many information science and/or technology practitioners are engaged on the ID side at this blog, as they are practically experienced in what is now opening up: a bridge from biology to information and even [statistical] thermodynamics issues.

That poses a major empirical test of the soundness of biology theories, i.e. coherence across such a bridge to other domains of science, and the classical NDT-based thought on origins (including extensions to OOL) is not faring well at it. So, the bioscience establishment now finds itself seriously challenged to effectively address links from their major biological models to information science and associated onward links to thermodynamics considerations.

(BTW, “negentropy” is due to Brillouin, who defined a form of information metric by observing that – k ln w, i.e. negative Boltzmann entropy [s = k ln w], has the properties of a measure of information. Since the underlying metric is logarithmic, taking the negative has the effect of being the mathematical reciprocal, as opposed to a negative value of entropy as such; fractional numbers have negative logarithms. He was building on earlier work on Maxwell’s Demon. Thaxton et al use this in their foundational ID discussion, TMLO chs 7 – 9. This can be found in excerpt in my always linked, appendix 1. I link TMLO ch 8 here.)

Okay again . . .

GEM of TKI

Stephen C. Meyer compiled an excellent review of the data and models in:
Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, May 18, 2007 (which by the way was peer reviewed by four credentialed reviewers)

From his specialty of history of science, Meyer addresses the issues of what is / is not science in:
The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design: The Methodological Equivalence of Naturalistic and Non-Naturalistic Origins Theories;
Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe (Ignatius Press) November 13, 2005.

If you wish to comment on definitions of science and whether evolution and/or ID is science, please address Meyer’s arguments.

Regulation is a central factor in engineering and consequentially a natural expectation from ID theory.

A biology book may offer a definition of life but then again it may not. Here are a few:

Purves et al 2004 – an organized genetic unit capable of metabolism, reproduction and evolution.

Miller and Levine – no definition but characteristics; made of cell, grows, obtain and uses energy, responds to environment, can reproduce

Campbell and Reece – 6 edition – refuses to give a definition.

John Maynard Smith said life was “any population of entities which has the properties of multiplication, heredity and variation”

Nasa defines it as

“a self sustained chemical system capable of under going Darwinian evolution”

Wikipedia defines it as

“Life is a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects, i.e. non-life, and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.”

Be the first to define life. What are the necessary conditions to define life?