Uncommon Descent Contest Question 9: Is accidental origin of life a doctrine that holds back science?
| August 24, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Origin Of Life |
For a free copy of Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009), help me understand the following:
Accidental origin of life is the basic thesis of origin of life researchers. Life all just somehow sort of happened one day, billions of years ago, under the right conditions – which we may be able to recreate. But there is a constant, ongoing dispute about just what those conditions were.
Here is the problem I have always had with accidental origin of life: It amounts to spontaneous generation. However, banishing the doctrine of spontaneous generation played a key role in modern medicine’s success. If we assume that life forms (for medical purposes, we focus on pathogens) cannot start spontaneously, then they must have been introduced. Hence, we can develop procedures for a sterile operating room or lab.
If life can be spontaneously generated, why isn’t it happening now? Conditions for life today are probably as good as they have ever been, and maybe better. For over 500 million years they have obviously been good for complex life forms, and for billions of years they have been good for simple ones.
If you wish to contribute to this question, you may advisedly wish to read this recent article in the math and engineering literature by Dembski and Marks:
Abstract—Conservation of information theorems indicate that any search algorithm performs, on average, as well as random search without replacement unless it takes advantage of
problem-specific information about the search target or the search-space structure. Combinatorics shows that even a moderately sized search requires problem-specific information to be successful. Computers, despite their speed in performing queries, are completely inadequate for resolving even moderately sized search problems without accurate information to guide them. We propose three measures to characterize the information required for successful search: 1) endogenous information, which measures the difficulty of finding a target using random search; 2) exogenous information, which measures the difficulty that remains in finding a target once a search takes advantage of problemspecific information; and 3) active information, which, as the difference between endogenous and exogenous information, measures the contribution of problem-specific information for successfully finding a target. This paper develops a methodology based on these information measures to gauge the effectiveness with which problem-specific information facilitates successful search. It then applies this methodology to various search tools widely used in evolutionary search.Index Terms—Active information, asymptotic equipartition property, Brillouin active information, conservation of information (COI), endogenous information, evolutionary search, genetic algorithms, Kullback–Leibler distance, no free lunch theorem (NFLT), partitioned search.
72 Responses to Uncommon Descent Contest Question 9: Is accidental origin of life a doctrine that holds back science?
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—-Adel Dibagno: “Your distinction between accidents and causes looks spurious to me. If you should be struck by lightning, would you argue that it was a purposeful action of an agent, or would you consider it a random event? If the latter, a random event can be causal.”
I see where there could be some confusion. I think it’s a problem with vocabulary. I am using the word “accidents” in the context that I perceive Denyse is using it, that is, the idea of a causeless event. On the other hand, plenty of random events can occur in the context of causality. So, in that sense, accidents happen all the time. If necessary and sufficient conditions are met, then randomness can occur, as in quantum events and the principle of causation is in operation. The issue I am addressing is this: Can physical events occur without any cause at all? As I already indicated, Darwinists think they can. I am saying that they can’t. If that is not what Denyse had in mind, then I am on my own. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify.
—-“Similarly, given the appropriate conditions, the random interactions of molecules often result in the synthesis of new molecules or the degradation of the old ones, or a variety of other outcomes. All causal.”
All causal, yes. The conditions are a necessary cause. In order for a causeless event to occur, both the necessary and sufficient causes must be absent. A quantum void is not nothing, so something is not coming from nothing.
—-kairosfocus: “I would only note that you need to underscore a little more strongly — per the comeback above by AD — that it is evolutionary materialists who [especially at UD!] have defended the notion of causeless events.”
Hi KF: Yes, indeed. Most evolutionary biologists think anything at all is possible—-except design.
—-“I would also distinguish the issue of directed/purposeful and undirected/stochastic contingency: design vs chance, and the third factor, mechanical necessity, in so doing. 9Seems the materialists want to put in a blank cause of the gaps to be taken on unacknowledged faith.)
See my comment to Adel.
Stephen:
Yes, I agree.
GEM of TKI
PS: Looks like this contest has been abandoned too. I think my contest entry format suggestion might help.
StephenB,
Thanks for the clarification. However,
In the context of the original post, the aim of scientific investigations into the origin of life is an investigation into causes, physical and chemical. It is an experimental endeavor based on testable hypotheses. Whoever those “Darwinists” to whom you refer may be, they would not be practicing science if they eschewed causality
—Adel: “It is an experimental endeavor based on testable hypotheses. Whoever those “Darwinists” to whom you refer may be, they would not be practicing science if they eschewed causality.
That’s right. Darwinists, for the most part, are not doing science. They are doing ideology in the name of science. They interpret all evidence in the light of their unwarranted assumption that life had to occur spontaneously and without a directive cause, meaning that they insist on the conclusion even before the investigation begins. So, to make their dubious scheme work, at least in their own minds, they accept causality when it serves their purpose and deny it when it doesn’t. That may be convenient, but it isn’t rational.
I would simply point out that to ascribe origins of the universe, the origins of life on earth, or the evolutionary directions taken by life over the last ~3.5 billion years either to “accident” or “not an accident” is a category error (or category mistake), pure and simple.
It is defensible to ascribe to persons and perhaps a few other higher organisms “intent” to engage in some behaviors. To do so is to ascribe to them the ability to represent behavioral options prior to behaving and hence “intend” a given behavior. As a component of this ascription, we say that for them it is possible to exhibit “accidental” behaviors or results, when their behavior results in an unanticipated outcome. A person may “accidently” knock the cup from the table. Or may do so intentionally.
An earthquake, however, neither behaves intentionally nor causes results “by accident.” It may cause many cups to fall from many tables, but these are neither accidents nor not accidents. They are not “acts” at all. Such an ascription is simply inappropriate for a natural event such as an earthquake, and represents a category error.
It is similarly inappropriate to ascribe either intention or lack of intention (“accidents”) to other natural phenomena, outside of the actions of organisms (particularly human beings) that may employ representations to guide their behavior. Hence the course of evolution is neither accidental nor non-accidental. Such an ascription is a category error. It is also a category error to describe the origins of the universe either as “accidental” or as “intentional.” However universes originate, it is unlikely to be by means of “actions” analogous to human actions.
StephenB said the following:
Dembski once wrote the following:
To require prediction fundamentally misconstrues design. To require prediction of design is to put design in the same boat as natural laws, locating their explanatory power in an extrapolation from past experience. This is to commit a category mistake. To be sure, designers, like natural laws, can behave predictably (designers often institute policies that end up being rigidly obeyed). Yet unlike natural laws, which are universal and uniform, designers are also innovators. Innovation, the emergence to true novelty, eschews predictability. Designers are inventors. We cannot predict what an inventor would do short of becoming that inventor.
Personally, I sense a disconnect. In Dembski’s words, I see that madhouse.
Also, I think the assertion that any biologists assert that something “just happened” is overtly ludicrous.
As I see it, something-alive coming from something-not-alive is simply not the same thing as an “uncaused” something-from-nothing, flagrantly violating logic by “poofing” into air.
ID insists not only that abiogenesis of a sort occurred (unless the designer is defined as an organism, which the ID designer usually isn’t), but that it occurred by means material scientists have absolultey no hope of figuring out, so they may as well give up now and… start researching the problem with an ID mindset? How, exactly? Aren’t designers unpredictable? Or was I simply quote-mining, and in fact, a system has been figured out for describing/predicting the designer’s means?
If it’s the year 4 billion BC, and the designer wants life to occur, what are the odds that it successfully occurs? 100%? How could they be any less?
—-Lenoxus: “Personally, I sense a disconnect. In Dembski’s words, I see that madhouse.”
Apples and oranges. Dembski is saying that predictability is not a function of design. The dynamic with which Mozart composes music is not the same dynamice that causes a musical sound when a hammer hits a string. The second is a function of mechanical laws, the first is not.
Either way, that point has nothing at all to do with the Darwinist fantasy that events can occur without a cause.
ARGH ABIOGENESIS IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF A “CAUSE” ARGH
I think you mean “that life can occur without a living cause”, or something. Or are you talking about the Big Bang, and including the notion that it was a causeless event in the realm of “Darwinism”?
kariosfocus, #59
If life consisted of a single organism blindly searching for a single specific configuration, your argument might actually make some sense.
However, a single parent cell can produce 10^150 daughter cells in less than 500 generations, so finding any of the peak functions in your search space is almost a certainty.