If all science must be in theory falsifiable, and evolution is good science, can you give me some parameters or predictions that if they were found to be true would hurt the theory of evolution?
What would scientists need to find in the future that would seriously do damage to the theory?
More generally, if we found fossils of organisms with complex adaptations which reliably dated to a time before those adaptations could plausibly have occurred (because the necessary precursors didn’t exist,) then that would be a strong indication that our understanding of the development of species is wrong.
There is a problem of threshold in this debate. There have been anomolies found in the fossil record that don’t seem to make sense, but they are not deemed extreme enough by the scientific community to warrant any damage to evolution. The hypotheticals you have suggested are very extreme, do they have to be that extreme to warrant a hit on evolution or can less extreme finds also warrant questioning? I would like to see the scientific community come up with more specific parameters as to what would be considered: A. minor damage to the theory, B. major hit on the theory, and C. evidence that would make the theory most likely untenable. We do this for almost every other science, except evolution.
My suspicion comes down to the fact that evolution is the natural conclusion of a world view that is part of a necessary dialectic. Either existence happened by chance, or by design. There seems to be no third or fourth way. We are limited to these two conclusions and nothing else. Therefore any hit on a theory that advocates one, is a support for the other. I think this pushes scientists (even sub-consciously) to view evolution almost as a belief system rather than a science.
Either existence happened by chance, or by design. There seems to be no third or fourth way. We are limited to these two conclusions and nothing else.
Does the structure of a crystal come about by chance, or by design? Does the demographic distribution of visibly identifiable subcultures within a diverse population come about by chance, or by design? If I reroll stats for my D&D character until I get one I like, does the resulting set of numbers come about by chance, or by design?
Which is to say: I reject your assertion that the middle is excluded here.
With respect to evolution in particular, there have been many “less extreme hits” on the prevailing theory of evolution over the last hundred years or so, and they have resulted in changes to the prevailing theory of evolution. It happens all the time.
That said, if (hypothetically) someone is looking for is a “hit” large enough to necessitate a change to the theory on the order of positing a goal-seeking selection process, then yeah, that would involve a pretty extreme outlier. Which is to be expected, as it would result in a pretty extreme change.
It usually takes a large “hit” to cause a large change, in any field, be it science or theology.
Lets focus on the chance vs. design conversation here first.
For all 3 of those examples you gave you would have to pick a conclusion of chance or design. Can you explain how any of those 3 could be conceived of as both chance and design at the same time? The only third option is to simply say I dont know.
All three of those options involve structures determined by “chance” (which is itself a more complicated idea than the simple word suggests, but that doesn’t really matter at the level we’re operating on right now), operating within a designed structure that constrains the possible range that chance can operate on. The end result is in fact determined by both design and chance, operating at the same time. A different design would create different results, even if “chance” operated the same way. The same design might create different results, if “chance” operated differently.
Can you name any of these anomalies which “don’t seem to make sense?”
There have been various evolutionary quandaries, where it’s not clear how this or that organism evolved, but many of these have been resolved by further discoveries, which clarified the line of descent. There are some lineages that are still hazy, the evolution of bats for example, where our record of their lineage is poor because their bones are delicate and do not fossilize readily, but cases like these are not a source of confusion.
All the allegations I’ve heard of anomalies which supposedly do not make sense have been put forward by creationist or intelligent design proponents, and they were all based on some sort of misconception. There may be some outstanding sources of confusion in the field of evolutionary biology, but if you have any in mind, you’ll have to clarify.
This is not intended to be a comprehensive review, but evidence against the theory of evolution could occur in such cases as
A: Minor: traits are found where it is unclear how they could have evolved by a natural process, but not highly implausible. These are found on occasion, but are generally resolved in time. Many traits where the evolutionary pathway was once obscure are now understood, so the evidence of any particular trait is weak.
B: Major: Organisms are found in the fossil record where it is highly implausible that they could have evolved from existing precursors. Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian fall into this category. Highly complex and unusual organisms with no apparent precursors, when we should expect their precursors to have left some sort of record, such as large organisms with radial symmetry and internal skeletons, would also constitute strong evidence.
C. Extremely major evidence. Events like seeing a monkey give birth to a human, or humans give birth to mutants with wings or the power to throw bolts of lightning. Any highly reliable observations of organisms developing major, complex adaptations in a single step. For all that many people with low levels of scientific literacy think that this is the sort of thing evolution entails, this is actually the kind of observation that would essentially falsify it outright.
As for whether “existence happened by chance or design,” the meaning of this assertion is unclear. What do you mean by existence? Do you mean species as they currently exist? The phenomenon of life itself? The universe? The nature of the discussion will depend on what you actually mean, but I’ll note that a dichotomy between “design” and “chance” is probably not an appropriate characterization. If you drop a rock, must the fact that it falls either be by design or chance? If something happens as a predictable, inevitable consequence of the rules regarding how things behave, it makes little sense to call it a consequence of chance.
Scientists tend to treat evolution as something that is essentially not in question because our evidence for it is overwhelmingly comprehensive. While there may be some instances of confusion, they are very minor in comparison with our existing body of evidence, so while further observations might alter our understanding of the process in some way, they do not threaten the entire edifice of evolutionary theory any more than the Pioneer Anomaly (which was in fact recently explained without any change to our understanding of physics) threatened to undermine the idea that gravity exists.
There can be any number of anomolies that can be discussed, lets just name the Cambrian Explosion as one of the main ones, albeit a very general one. Where would you put the problem of the Cambrian Explosion? A, B, or C? But more importantly, why?
Not sure what you mean by ‘if something happens as a predictable, inevitable consequence of the rules regarding how things behave, it makes little sense to call it a consequence of chance’. All you would have to do is keep going back to the source of the rocks behavior in order to see if it was by chance or design. Are those rules you are talking about designed or by chance? And so on....If you agree that those rules that govern the falling of the rock, and the rock’s existence itself, (and yes, any rules that governed how it came to existence) came about by chance then you hold one side of the dialectic; that is you have a world-view that believes existence is produced through chance. You can’t say I dont believe in that because I believe existence has come about through natural laws, and so on, because in the end you would have come to some kind of conclusion as to whether those laws are by chance or designed.
You cannot escape these two conclusion, you must pick one or the other. If you pick the chance worldview, you are heavilly reliant on evolution to validate your worldview.
Well, we don’t know the exact cause of the Cambrian explosion, but there are a large number of plausible hypotheses, so I’d be hesitant to describe it even as A. I’d be more likely to put it in the same category as the lineage of bats, not known, but not particularly confusing either.
As to whether the laws of nature and so forth come about by chance or design, why would design resolve anything? Did the designer come about by chance or design? It just inserts another complex entity and pushes the question back a step.
If you pick the chance worldview, you are heavilly reliant on evolution to validate your worldview.
No, not at all. Evolution is one aspect of one field of one discipline. One can argue that existence came about by chance (and I’m not comfortable with that term) without referring to evolution at all; there are many other reasons to reject the idea of a designer.
See Desrtopa’s reply, below, regarding chance and design and whether a designer helps here. S/he said it better than I could!
There have been anomolies found in the fossil record that don’t seem to make sense, but they are not deemed extreme enough by the scientific community to warrant any damage to evolution. The hypotheticals you have suggested are very extreme, do they have to be that extreme to warrant a hit on evolution or can less extreme finds also warrant questioning?
This seems to indicate a very confused thought process about how scientific theories work and are tested. A scientific theory that is wrong shouldn’t have data that almost but doesn’t quite fit. If evolution were wrong we would expect to see all sorts of bad data. Almost correct data with a few minor issues that we don’t yet understand is exactly what one would expect for a scientific theory. To use a different example, there are some definite anomalies about gravity and how it functions (the apparent presence of dark matter is one of the more obvious examples). Will you make similar comments about gravity? If evolution and gravity are treated differently in this context, it is worthwhile to ask why. If the sole reason is that evolution has theologically uncomfortable implications, then what does that mean?
I would absolutely include the standard model in physics as a problem as well. When the contemporary scientific explanation of the cosmos can only account for 3% of the universe (about 97% is dark energy or dark matter) then I would say there is a problem. Maybe even more of a problem than evolution.
We seem to be sticking to our current understanding of physics, once again, because of a world-view. That view being that our universe needs to be mathematically harmonious all the way through, at all levels. This is the bias that is also behind string theory and any attempt to unify physics.
Evolution is much the same way. The worldview that there is no purpose/meaning/agency/design (choose your word, but its the same concept) in the universe is pushing scientists to continually ignore or explain away anomally.
Lets say that the evidence seems to point towards design in the universe. Should we ignore that because we think a chance-world view would bring us more scientific achievement? If we do such a thing, would there be a good chance that what we call scientific achievement today would turn out to be delusion in the future because it is based on a forced world-view?
I would like to see the scientific community come up with more specific parameters as to what would be considered: A. minor damage to the theory, B. major hit on the theory, and C. evidence that would make the theory most likely untenable. We do this for almost every other science, except evolution.
I think we do this for evolution as much as any other part of science. In any, the judgment of the severity of a “hit” is possible if you understand the relevant concepts. An understanding of the concepts lets one see what separates minor issues from fossil rabbits in the Precambrian; what’s a detail, and what’s central to the theory—some things would necessitate a modification, and some would cast the entire theory into question. Think of what it took to overturn any other well-established theory in history, or what it would take to overturn relativistic physics.
More generally, if you have a whole bunch of evidence that points to one conclusion, it should take something fairly extreme to substantially sway you away from belief in that conclusion and make you re-evaluate all the accumulated evidence. (And there’s a lot of evidencefor evolution.)
There is at least some sense in which the general pattern of evolution is not falsifiable—but to precisely that extent, it’s not science. There is a mathematical certainty that an evolution-like process would occur in a system with random heritable changes that can selectively help or hinder reproduction. For a theist to deny evolution exists in general, they would have to insist God actively stops it from happening every day (or deny that random heritable mutations occur, or deny that they can help or hinder reproduction).
There is a mathematical certainty an evolution-like process would occur in a system with random heritable changes that can selectively help or hinder reproduction
But this doesn’t make it unfalsifiable, strictly speaking, because it can still be tested like any other empirical claim, similar to how one might “test” 2+2=4.
Thus, finding some evidence that random mutations are not actually random, but part of some global pattern, might reduce our confidence in the theory of biological evolution (as per Ghazzali’s original challenge, above).
Discovering evidence for some sort of Lysenkoism would also work, but might be harder to achieve, since all the evidence we’d found so far points in the opposite direction.
That depends on how you define ‘system’. Is ‘system’ the entire biological existence of earth? In that case, yes evolution would be a mathematical certainty eventually. But is system a specific species? In that case evolution would only occurr within those species. Defining all biological existence on earth as part of a system that would fit that mathematicl certainty would definitely be a scientific claim and could be falsifiable.
Also, time is another factor. Your explanation logically does not necessitate that evolution has already happened, only that it will eventually happen.
That depends on how you define ‘system’. Is ‘system’ the entire biological existence of earth? In that case, yes evolution would be a mathematical certainty eventually. But is system a specific species? In that case evolution would only occurr within those species.
He goes on to tell you exactly what systems: any with random heritable changes that can selectively help or hinder reproduction. This would mean both all life on earth that fits within that definition, and any particular species also under that umbrella.
It seems to me like you’re trying to make a distinction between “microevolution” and “macroevolution” here, but I may be misreading you. If you are, however, notice that thomblake’s process makes no distinction between them; to suppose one but not the other could occur, you’d need a specific mechanism or reason.
Also, time is another factor. Your explanation logically does not necessitate that evolution has already happened, only that it will eventually happen.
No, it necessitates that it is happening and has happened in any such system. The process, that is. You’re correct if you’re just saying that the process may not have resulted in any differentiation at any given time.
I think that is where we differ, it is in the macro-micro evolutionary distinction. That mathematical model does not hold any water if you distinguish between species.
Also, I would say that the word ‘random’ is in essence a philosophical term, not scientific. It is a term of interpretation.
For what it’s worth, I used to draw a distinction between macro and micro evolution. I always argued that it made little to no sense for species to evolve sexual reproduction—and how would that work anyway?
But I remember exactly when I changed my mind. I was in a genetics class, and we were learning about sex pili—they’re basically channels that bacteria can form to pass DNA between themselves. I realized that life (and evolution) are a whole hell of a lot more complicated than I gave them credit for, and that perhaps evolution is the tiniest bit more creative than I am.
You have to at least recognize that you are looking at science using a world-view (philosophy). In this case you see the amazing complexity of life as a product of chance/random events and not because of some genius unseen designer. The beautiful world you are describing could be interpreted as being the product of either, and the science itself would not change. You have chosen to see it through a particular lens. Both lenses are fundamentally not scientific in nature, they are belief structures.
So there’s some seed of a potentially valid point here. Phrased in a Bayesian fashion, if one assigns low enough priors to certain hypotheses, one isn’t going to practically consider those hypotheses unless one has ridiculous levels of evidence. So is something like that happening here?
I think the conclusion is “no”. There are many religious individuals who have no objection to evolution. The objections stand essentially from religions which have creation stories which are important to the theology. For example, in Christianity, the Fall is very important, and you get a lot of Christians who object to evolution. Islam and Judaism have as important theological points that there deity is the creator, but the method of creation isn’t as important, and one sees less objection to evolution in those religions. Among some religions which don’t have any issues of this sort, or have very weak or very seldomly directly intervening deities (such as some forms of New Age religions) one sees close to no objections to evolution (although there are some prominent exceptions such as Deepak Chopra). But in all these cases, there are people who adopt an essentially similar theological standpoint and yet accept evolution, and this includes full-out major denominations such as Roman Catholicism. Now, it is possible that they simply haven’t really adapted a consistent world-view (consistency isn’t a human strongpoint), but that’s an argument that would need to be made in detail.
In this case you see the amazing complexity of life as a product of chance/random events and not because of some genius unseen designer. The beautiful world you are describing could be interpreted as being the product of either, and the science itself would not change.
So this actually isn’t the case. Evolved life doesn’t look like what you might expect from a designer. When we looked at designed objects we see all sorts of commonalities that make sense from a design standpoint: we see efficiency, modularity, and reuse of parts between designs. We don’t see any of those in evolved life.
Large amounts of life-designs are highly inefficient, almost as if they were added haphazardly by evolution. The giraffe’s nerves which loop all the way from the head down through the neck and then back up again to the head are a good example.
We don’t see modularity- pieces don’t develop and integrate separately except at a very weak level. Thus birth defects that cause one organ to not grow frequently cause problems throughout the body or at very minimum in neighboring organs.
And we don’t reuse of design pieces except for the very basic aspects that form a perfect nested hierarchy. This is in contrast to for example computers. This would be akin to having only mice on one type of computer, and only joysticks on another, and the only computers with USB drives were a subset of the computers with mice that didn’t overlap at all with some subset of computers with mice with CD drives. But we don’t see that with computers, or cars, or any other designed object that has many different designed versions. They reuse the same ideas and technologies. This is something designers do for obvious reasons: you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. But evolution (aside from some very tiny examples of horizontal evolution where a single gene or small number of genes has been copied over due to viruses and a few neato parasites like my favorite parasite, Wolbachia) doesn’t have that option. Pandas would have a much easier time if they had a real thumb instead of an inefficient bone spur. A direct design would have copied over the great ape thumb over or use a very similar design.
So this really is an example where one can look at what one would expect from design and from evolution and conclude that evolution makes more sense in context. This doesn’t rule out less direct intervention, say a deity setting up life on the planet, letting it evolve and then showing a few thousand years ago to talk to a desert tribe and tell them not to eat shellfish. But that’s a distinct issue from evolution except in so far as that if the same text that claims this deity did intervene also claims that the deity did design everything from scratch, then that’s a reason to maybe doubt the text. But this has nothing to do with belief structures or as the Bayesian would say, extreme priors. This is about evidence.
Islam and Judaism have as important theological points that there deity is the creator, but the method of creation isn’t as important, and one sees less objection to evolution in those religions.
I don’t think this is actually true of Islam. Muslims in America rank behind mainline protestants in terms of acceptance of evolution, and as far as I’ve been able to determine, majority Islamic countries tend to fall behind even the US in terms of acceptance of evolution.
Yes, that’s a good point. In the rank-and-file there’s a lot lower acceptance of evolution in Islam. This undermines my point somewhat. I suppose one could point out the general lack of acceptance of science and more reactionary settings of a lot of Islam, or point out that anti-evolution sentiment is less major among prominent Muslim scholars and the like, but that’s a much weaker argument, and wouldn’t change the fact that my statement as stated is empirically false.
Large amounts of life-designs are highly inefficient, almost as if they were added haphazardly by evolution. The giraffe’s nerves which loop all the way from the head down through the neck and then back up again to the head are a good example.
IAWYC, but I’ve seen pieces of computer code written by humans which do stuff nearly that bad.
Very nice comment, giraffe example is especially appreciated.
The beautiful world you are describing could be interpreted as being the product of either, and the science itself would not change.
I think this part of the objection warrants specific attention.
Yes, the belief could be interpreted that way, and there would still be wonder. But we would have lost something else, which is accuracy. If the only thing we used to evaluate arguments was wonder, then both would be equally valid, but using wonder and not accuracy as a tool of argumentative evaluation doesn’t make much sense. You’re not wrong to point out that other belief systems allow for wonder, and indirectly, this remark leads me to wonder (pun always intended) whether or not it might have been better to use a different word without emotional connotations, because I don’t really see past evolutionary processes as something we should develop emotional attachments to. But don’t mistake wonder for a justification for logical belief.
To claim that the world is not designed because, based on your knowledge of design, it is not a good design is a very weak argument. If the world was designed by a supreme being, your knowledge and His knowledge would be like comparing the intelligence of a rock to a human being. It simply does not compare. All the supposed weaknesses you claim in the design of the cosmos comes from your extremely limited knowledge of reality and cannot compare to the wisdom behind the design of the Creator. Now, this is all the case only if you concede there is a grand designer. If you do not hold that view, then of course this argument does not hold. But as long as you do hold the view, even as a devil’s advocate, you must concede that judging the ‘quality’ and nature of the design as being below standards is rather incoherent. In other words, there may be reasons to those imperfect designs that you are pointing towards that you do not understand. You are not the supreme designer of the universe.
On top of that, it amazes me that a person who knows science will actually think in this way to begin with. That the complexity of a cell, let alone the entire brain, let alone the entire body, would not put you in awe over their design is beyond me. To focus in on those sporadic examples of design that we do not understand and to leave everything else that seems so complicated and fine tuned for life is the ultimate example of how a philosophy is driving your view of science and the world around you.
At this point, your argument really doesn’t amount to anything other than apologetics. In this context, we’ve looked at every single thing that we know for sure is designed, and we can see simple common patterns (which moreover are patterns that make sense for designers to use). It is possible that you are missing part of the point so lets make it clear: most of what I’ve talked about above has nothing to do with “good” or “bad” design. Products that really suck (e.g. Windows ME) show the same basic patterns. The only one of the above that hits on the quality of the design is efficiency. Things like reuse are simply habits of design.
At this point, you are claiming that something is a philosophical presupposition, but even without that class of presupposition, we get the same result by simply looking at the designed objects around us. To then claim that no matter what we see it may or may not be designed makes the claim unfalsifiable.
To focus in on those sporadic examples of design that we do not understand and to leave everything else that seems so complicated and fine tuned for life is the ultimate example of how a philosophy is driving your view of science and the world around you.
They aren’t sporadic examples, they are the entire tree of life. To use just one example from my list- we see essentially no examples of reuse of the same designs or parts of designs. And this is true not just for examples in specific body parts (such as the panda’s thumb, or the mammalian eye) but for whole species. In isolated areas like Australia and Madagascar, species have filled nearly identical niches to the niches filled in much of the rest of the world, exactly as you’d expect from evolution, and not what we see human desigers do.
At that point, you have a deity who is not only making things not as a designer would be likely to make them, but you have a deity that is making things in a way that is actively deceptive. The deity has made life which down to the last detail looks old and evolved.
It may help to ask yourself what it would take for you to accept evolution. Is there any evidence that would do so? If not, the problems of philosophical presuppositions would seem to be if anything an issue of projection.
In isolated areas like Australia and Madagascar, species have filled nearly identical niches to the niches filled in much of the rest of the world, exactly as you’d expect from evolution, and not what we see human desigers do.
This isn’t a great argument; human designers actually do this all the time. We call it “reinventing the wheel.” We do it often when we’re constrained against merely reusing parts of the same designs — for instance by copyright or personal pride.
Clearly the designer of the octopus eye was forbidden from just ganking the design of the mammalian eye, or vice versa. This is an argument for Semi-Intelligent Design By Committee, and thus for polytheism: the sea-god was either disallowed from copying the design done by the god of beasts, or was too damned proud to do so.
My point is that you can argue rationally about whether there is design in the universe, but you cannot argue whether the design is good or bad. The later is incoherent. Maybe the Grand Designer does want to make things confusing? Maybe he has put evidence of design in the universe, but not absolute evidence for whatever reason He wants? You can make the point that the design is good or bad, but that point has no real consequence to the question about whether there is design in the first place. Thats my point.
Another interesting point;
Do you agree that design does indeed exist anywhere in the universe? Lets say in the form of human design? If you do believe that humans actually do design, and it seems like you do because you are judging the design in nature based on human experience of design, then you have to come up with an explanation of how purely mechanical/physical beings produced this design to begin with?
I’m not arguing about whether design is “good” or “bad”- reuse for example isn’t an aspect of good or bad design. It is an aspect of design, period.
. Maybe the Grand Designer does want to make things confusing
Sure, and maybe the Grand Designer deliberately made all the evidence look like there was no designer, and then the designer is going to reward people in the afterlife who looked at it logically and came to that conclusion.
Or maybe this entire discussion is actually occurring in a simulation in some future transhumanist utopia, after Ghazzali made a bet with a friend that he’d be logical enough that even if placed in the benighted 21st century he’d still reach correct conclusions about the nonsense that is religion. (Apparently you were wrong.)
Or maybe this entire conversation hasn’t occurred, and this message is the last fraction of coherent apparent input to you before your Boltzmann brain dissolves back into chaos.
Etc. Etc. Do you see why this isn’t a useful game to play?
You can make the point that the design is good or bad, but that point has no real consequence to the question about whether there is design in the first place. Thats my point.
It does though. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That you can construct other hypothetical deities that are more and more convoluted in their behavior says more about your imagination than the likelyhood of their existence. This is especially the case because the deities as described in most classical religions (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism) are explicitly highly interventionist.
then you have to come up with an explanation of how purely mechanical/physical beings produced this design to begin with?
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are you asking how humans come up with new ideas? There’s ongoing research by psychologists and cognitive scientists on this, but it isn’t an area I know much about. My understanding is that the current hypotheses suggest that some of it is random borderline nonsense bubbling at a barely conscious level, and that part of the difficulty is recognizing the good ideas and bringing them out to full attention. But again, not my area.
You didn’t address whether there’s any amount of evidence that would convince you that evolution was correct.
First of all, what are you defining as a “world view” and why is that a useful definition to have? It seems like you’re trying to say “You believe things, beliefs are dogmas, you’re being dogmatic”. That is whole manners of cheating.
Secondly, you’re right. It is possible that the universe was intelligently designed. But the Kolmogorov complexity formulation of Occam’s Razor necessarily requires I assign that a very small probability prior. In order to simulate a universe designed by God, a computer must first simulate God, including why ey would create the universe the way that it is, then simulate that universe, as opposed to just simulating the universe.
FWIW, I have heard a more generalized version of Ghazzali’s argument, which goes something like this:
The way a person sees the world is colored by his preferences and biases. We all have them. You personally place a very high value on empirically reproducible results; this is what you call “truth”, and you are strongly biased in favor of it; your insistence on proper logic and evidence stems from this core belief. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I personally don’t value this specific notion of “truth” as much as you do. Instead, I place a higher value on personal happiness/simplicity/social approval/niceness/whatever. Thus, I choose to believe in an unseen designer/universal consciousness/karma/etc., and it doesn’t matter to me whether there’s any evidence for it or not. Evidence is your thing, not mine.
I’m not endorsing this worldview (and I’m probably not even rendering it properly here), but I do believe it to be pretty much argument-proof. You can’t have a rational discussion with someone who denies the value of rational discussions.
You can’t have a rational discussion with someone who denies the value of rational discussions.
That’s not quite true. You can’t use evidence to convince a machine that runs on anti-induction, but luckily humans are at least somewhat intuitively swayed by evidence, even when they claim not to be.
That’s a good point; humans are not perfect “anti-induction machines”. That said, each person who’d presented this argument to me had spent a lot of mental effort during his or her life to embrace and perfect this worldview. In the same way as a rationalist would train himself to use Bayesian reasoning and distrust his biases, the anti-rationalist trains himself to trust his faith/emotions/ESP/etc., and ignore scientific evidence. Thus, even when the anti-rationalist feels the intuitive sway of evidence, he or she will strive to ignore it.
BTW, I’m using slash-separated lists in my posts because I’d heard this argument multiple times, from multiple people, each of whom had a different set of ancillary beliefs. Thus, it seems like this worldview is not tied to any particular religion or philosophy.
I do believe in the truth of empirically reproducible results. However, other than stating facts I do not see how these results force me to believe in anything. It is my belief system or personal philosophy that makes me conclude a interpretation of those facts.
For example:
Evolution is seen by many people through the lens of materialism/atheism. That means that while studying evolution these people ASSUME the world has no creator and and is purely physical and closed system, free from anything super-natural....and so on.
In that way, any discovery in biology is treated in this interpretation and millions of dollars of research money is used to search for evidence in that way.
Something as so fundamental to us as consciousness and free will is ignored as illusion because it doesnt fit into these peoples world view of a purely mechanical universe. Where did they get this idea that the universe is purely mechanical and material?? NOT from science, it is from their personal philosophy or belief system. Everything in science is interpreted towards that end.
Those who believe in intelligent design also have their assumptions, and will look at evolution in that way. They will tend to be looking for evidence of a super natural involvement in biology, and dedicate their research dollars in that direction.
For you to accept the intelligent design bias and not see your bias is amazing.
Science is neutral, it is your belief system that interpretes these ‘facts’. The real argument is in the varying philosophies, not in the actual data of science.
Where did they get this idea that the universe is purely mechanical and material?? NOT from science...
Let’s imagine that there exist two universes, M and E. Universe M is purely material. Universe E contains etherial things in addition to material ones. However, the material things that E contains are exactly identical to the material things that M contains, down to each individual quark or cosmic string or whatever everything material is made of. The material objects in two universes are perfectly synchronized; for example, whenever a drop of water falls into a pond in universe M, and identical drop falls into an identical pond in E, etc.
If you were accidentally transported into one of these universes, is there any way you could tell which of them you ended up in ?
Evolution is seen by many people through the lens of materialism/atheism. That means that while studying evolution these people ASSUME the world has no creator and and is purely physical and closed system, free from anything super-natural....and so on.
In that way, any discovery in biology is treated in this interpretation and millions of dollars of research money is used to search for evidence in that way.
If we found in every single mammal a long conserved sequence in its genome which had its own extra code to help conserve it and it spelled out in easy substitution code the entire text of some religious text, you can be very sure that every biologist would stand up and take notice. Moreover, your claim doesn’t really follow since there are many religious biologists (like Ken Miller, a very religious Catholic) who are perfectly ok with evolution and the entire standard understanding of biological history.
Your extreme example of evidence in a creator is a valid point, but only to a certain limit. Maybe the grand creator does not want to make things that obvious? Maybe he puts just enough evidence in the universe for people of sincerity for the truth to be lead to the conclusion of design, and not an inch more? The point is we dont know, and the fact that God is not coming down from heaven and telling us he exists is NOT rational evidence that he does not exist and is not the designer of the universe.
As to those Christians who believe in evolution, they have simply developed a personal theology and see science to that end. They are no different from the other religion views, or no religious view.
The real battle is not in science, it is in these ‘world-views’ that cause us to see science in a particular way. I’m not saying we cannot debate what is the truth, only saying that the debate is a little deeper than saying ‘sciences says this’ or ‘science says that’. The debate is more abstract and rational than it is empirical.
The point is we dont know, and the fact that God is not coming down from heaven and telling us he exists is NOT rational evidence that he does not exist and is not the designer of the universe.
Then you think that God coming down from heaven and telling us he exists is rational evidence that he does not exist or is not the designer of the universe? See Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence.
Your extreme example of evidence in a creator is a valid point, but only to a certain limit. Maybe the grand creator does not want to make things that obvious?
Sure, that is possible. Then, in the absence of overwhelming evidence for a designer, we have at least two possible explanations for the evidence that we do possess:
1). Cellular replication in general and DNA in particular is a result of natural processes, specifically {insert long explanation here}. 2). Cellular replication in general and DNA in particular is a result of both natural processes, as well as supernatural intervention by an intelligent designer for whose existence we have no evidence.
Which explanation is more likely to be true, Bayesically speaking (yes I know that’s not a word) ?
I don’t think you need to invoke any sort of Bayesian issues there. Just ask which is simpler. You also are going one step ahead of what is necessary because as far as I can tell, Ghazzali isn’t even ok with theistic evolution.
I want to taboo the word “simpler”, because its meaning is vague. “God did it” is certainly a simpler statement than “Here, read this 500-page biology textbook and find out”.
because as far as I can tell, Ghazzali isn’t even ok with theistic evolution
I think my example still applies, though. Ultimately, we still have purely physical things like fossils, DNA molecules, etc. etc.; as far as I understand, Ghazzali doesn’t dispute the fact that these items exist, only the conclusions we can draw from their existence.
Mathematically you have the same problem whether you believe in God or you don’t. If you say that there is no God you must still account for these two questions:
How did the universe begin from nothing, and why?
If the universe did not begin from nothing, what did it begin from and why is it not considered part of the universe so that we say it is the creator of the universe but not an extension of it?
And if you say 2. you still have to go back to one.
The same mysteries are there whether you believe in God or not. It is your world-view, your faith that leads you to conclude in God, not science. For a Muslim, for example, it is his belief in the words of Prophet Muhammad that he is really communicating with God, and so on. For the atheist/materialist it is his world-view that he rejects any kind of notion that a human being has these powers. And so on...
Science itself is neutral on these issues, it must be seen and interpreted by philosophies and beliefs.
The consistent downvoting of your posts should give you some indication that your arguments are not going to be well received here. I don’t intend to continue this discussion further for the following reasons:
I don’t believe you’re here to genuinely arrive at truer beliefs. I think you’re here to try and convert us.
You did not answer the one direct question I asked you to answer (which, among other things, leads me to conclude the above.)
Other people on this site are far more willing to refute your arguments and will do a better job, and have been doing so.
I don’t think you have enough background (have read enough of the sequences) in why I (or LW in general) believes what we believe for you and I to be able to have a conversation productive enough to be enjoyable to me. Most of the ensuing discussion would probably consist of me spending 15 minutes looking up exactly which of Eliezer’s posts refuted the point you made in your most recent post, and linking you to it, at which point, you probably wouldn’t read what I linked to anyway.
I think that is where we differ, it is in the macro-micro evolutionary distinction. That mathematical model does not hold any water if you distinguish between species.
Speciation is a well-established result. See for example this not at all exhaustive list. Simply noting that species is a term that exists doesn’t break the models. Moreover, the lines between many species are quite blurry, exactly as one would expect if evolution were correct. This has gotten to the point where the evidence for speciation is so overwhelming that Answers in Genesis, one of the world’s largest young earth creationist ministries, lists the claim that speciation doesn’t occur as an argument not to use.
Also, I would say that the word ‘random’ is in essence a philosophical term, not scientific. It is a term of interpretation.
Shannon and Kolmogrov among others would disagree with you.
Any number of things. One example would be traits appearing in advance of conditions that would make them favorable e.g. a deep ocean fish developing legs or a reptile developing wings while it is too heavy for the wings to increase the length of its jumps. Another would be one species adopting traits of another through direct transfer of genes, rather than through separate evolutionary lines e.g. a snake using a variety of venom that was previously only in spiders.
I could probably come up with several hundred examples, if you really needed that many. None of them are particularly likely though: there is a huge weight of evidence behind modern evolutionary theory, which means it is almost certainly true.
There is a problem of threshold in this debate. There have been anomolies found in the fossil record that don’t seem to make sense, but they are not deemed extreme enough by the scientific community to warrant any damage to evolution. The hypotheticals you have suggested are very extreme, do they have to be that extreme to warrant a hit on evolution or can less extreme finds also warrant questioning? I would like to see the scientific community come up with more specific parameters as to what would be considered: A. minor damage to the theory, B. major hit on the theory, and C. evidence that would make the theory most likely untenable. We do this for almost every other science, except evolution.
My suspicion comes down to the fact that evolution is the natural conclusion of a world view that is part of a necessary dialectic. Either existence happened by chance, or by design. There seems to be no third or fourth way. We are limited to these two conclusions and nothing else. Therefore any hit on a theory that advocates one, is a support for the other. I think this pushes scientists (even sub-consciously) to view evolution almost as a belief system rather than a science.
I addressed this here, but I missed a few things. For one, I address the extremity of the hypotheticals in the linked post, but I didn’t point out, also, that these things seem extreme because we’re used to seeing things work out as if evolution were true. These things wouldn’t seem extreme if we had been seeing them all along; it’s precisely because evolution fits what we do find so well that evolution-falsifying examples seem so extreme. Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian would probably not seem so extreme to a creationist; it’s what they’d expect to find (since all species supposedly lived alongside one another, AFAIK).
For two:
We are limited to these two conclusions and nothing else. Therefore any hit on a theory that advocates one, is a support for the other.
I don’t think that follows. A hit on a chance-favoring theory could be a “hit” in such a way as to support a different chance-favoring theory, rather than any favoring design.
I think this pushes scientists (even sub-consciously) to view evolution almost as a belief system rather than a science.
Can you point out some ways that scientists view evolution as a belief system rather than science?
I don’t think you can assume that all critics of evolution believe all animals lived alongside one another. I doubt they are all evangelical Christians.
You are correct that a hit on a chance-favoring theory could be a support for another chance-favoring theory, but that is only if there are other chance-favoring theories competing with eacother in at least some way. When you have a theory as monolithic in nature as evolution, it is for all intents and purposes THE chance-favoring theory. Things could change in the future though, and maybe another chance-favoring theory could at least get some foothold. However, as long as we are in our current situation any support of evolution is a hit on design theories in general and vice-versa.
Some beliefs that are usually incorporated to support evolution are:
-The world is purely physical/material in nature
-There is no such thing as real agency (free will)
There is no real purpose/meaning in the universe
These are philosophical/belief points that directly or indirectly help a persons belief in evolution. If for example a person does not accept that all of existence is physical in nature, then he is more likely to question the ‘evidence’ of evolution. If he further believes in free-will (real free will) then he is even more likely to question evolution. And if he believes there is a purpose to the universe....and so on.
Some beliefs that are usually incorporated to support evolution are:
-The world is purely physical/material in nature
-There is no such thing as real agency (free will)
There is no real purpose/meaning in the universe
I’d be curious where you can point to these being used as evidence for evolution. You won’t see them in any major biology textbook. Note that even if they are used that way that doesn’t become a problem with evolution by itself.
. If for example a person does not accept that all of existence is physical in nature, then he is more likely to question the ‘evidence’ of evolution.
This statement is probably true. But why is it true? It doesn’t have anything to do with evolution as an issue and primarily has to do with the fact that most classical religions have creation stories and other aspects which make evolution uncomfortable for them, and people who are religious form a substantial overlap with people who make claims about non-physical or non-material existence. Similar remarks apply to your other bits. These are people who are unhappy with evolution not because of evidence but because it goes against their theological predilections.
Biology textbooks reflect the belief that “The world is purely physical/material in nature” by not even entertaining the possibility that there could be a super natural cause for anything. Any natural activity is assumed to have a physical/material cause. This is philosophy, so it may not be physically written out that way in the biology textbooks, but everything in the textbooks points to this major world assumption.
Same with the issue of free will. Any act by a species is seen in a way that needs to be explained in chemical/biological/mechanical manner. There is no room for this mysterious/other-worldly notion called free will.
Same with the idea that there is no real purpose or meaning to the universe.
As for this statement:
If for example a person does not accept that all of existence is physical in nature, then he is more likely to question the ‘evidence’ of evolution.
It is not necessarily true because of specific theological beliefs only. Lets say a person has absolutely no theological beliefs from any religion, but he does not automatically assume that all of existences is physical/mechanical. That person, because of this world view by itself, now all of a sudden has a higher chance of rejecting evolution than someone who only believes in a physical/mechanical world view.
The real debate is on the level of philosophy, not science. That is because ones science is driven by his philosophical interpretations....whether he realizes it or not.
If all science must be in theory falsifiable, and evolution is good science, can you give me some parameters or predictions that if they were found to be true would hurt the theory of evolution?
What would scientists need to find in the future that would seriously do damage to the theory?
The standard snappy answer to this one is “fossil rabbits in the precambrian”.
More generally, if we found fossils of organisms with complex adaptations which reliably dated to a time before those adaptations could plausibly have occurred (because the necessary precursors didn’t exist,) then that would be a strong indication that our understanding of the development of species is wrong.
There is a problem of threshold in this debate. There have been anomolies found in the fossil record that don’t seem to make sense, but they are not deemed extreme enough by the scientific community to warrant any damage to evolution. The hypotheticals you have suggested are very extreme, do they have to be that extreme to warrant a hit on evolution or can less extreme finds also warrant questioning? I would like to see the scientific community come up with more specific parameters as to what would be considered: A. minor damage to the theory, B. major hit on the theory, and C. evidence that would make the theory most likely untenable. We do this for almost every other science, except evolution.
My suspicion comes down to the fact that evolution is the natural conclusion of a world view that is part of a necessary dialectic. Either existence happened by chance, or by design. There seems to be no third or fourth way. We are limited to these two conclusions and nothing else. Therefore any hit on a theory that advocates one, is a support for the other. I think this pushes scientists (even sub-consciously) to view evolution almost as a belief system rather than a science.
Does the structure of a crystal come about by chance, or by design?
Does the demographic distribution of visibly identifiable subcultures within a diverse population come about by chance, or by design?
If I reroll stats for my D&D character until I get one I like, does the resulting set of numbers come about by chance, or by design?
Which is to say: I reject your assertion that the middle is excluded here.
With respect to evolution in particular, there have been many “less extreme hits” on the prevailing theory of evolution over the last hundred years or so, and they have resulted in changes to the prevailing theory of evolution. It happens all the time.
That said, if (hypothetically) someone is looking for is a “hit” large enough to necessitate a change to the theory on the order of positing a goal-seeking selection process, then yeah, that would involve a pretty extreme outlier. Which is to be expected, as it would result in a pretty extreme change.
It usually takes a large “hit” to cause a large change, in any field, be it science or theology.
Lets focus on the chance vs. design conversation here first.
For all 3 of those examples you gave you would have to pick a conclusion of chance or design. Can you explain how any of those 3 could be conceived of as both chance and design at the same time? The only third option is to simply say I dont know.
All three of those options involve structures determined by “chance” (which is itself a more complicated idea than the simple word suggests, but that doesn’t really matter at the level we’re operating on right now), operating within a designed structure that constrains the possible range that chance can operate on. The end result is in fact determined by both design and chance, operating at the same time. A different design would create different results, even if “chance” operated the same way. The same design might create different results, if “chance” operated differently.
Can you name any of these anomalies which “don’t seem to make sense?”
There have been various evolutionary quandaries, where it’s not clear how this or that organism evolved, but many of these have been resolved by further discoveries, which clarified the line of descent. There are some lineages that are still hazy, the evolution of bats for example, where our record of their lineage is poor because their bones are delicate and do not fossilize readily, but cases like these are not a source of confusion.
All the allegations I’ve heard of anomalies which supposedly do not make sense have been put forward by creationist or intelligent design proponents, and they were all based on some sort of misconception. There may be some outstanding sources of confusion in the field of evolutionary biology, but if you have any in mind, you’ll have to clarify.
This is not intended to be a comprehensive review, but evidence against the theory of evolution could occur in such cases as
A: Minor: traits are found where it is unclear how they could have evolved by a natural process, but not highly implausible. These are found on occasion, but are generally resolved in time. Many traits where the evolutionary pathway was once obscure are now understood, so the evidence of any particular trait is weak.
B: Major: Organisms are found in the fossil record where it is highly implausible that they could have evolved from existing precursors. Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian fall into this category. Highly complex and unusual organisms with no apparent precursors, when we should expect their precursors to have left some sort of record, such as large organisms with radial symmetry and internal skeletons, would also constitute strong evidence.
C. Extremely major evidence. Events like seeing a monkey give birth to a human, or humans give birth to mutants with wings or the power to throw bolts of lightning. Any highly reliable observations of organisms developing major, complex adaptations in a single step. For all that many people with low levels of scientific literacy think that this is the sort of thing evolution entails, this is actually the kind of observation that would essentially falsify it outright.
As for whether “existence happened by chance or design,” the meaning of this assertion is unclear. What do you mean by existence? Do you mean species as they currently exist? The phenomenon of life itself? The universe? The nature of the discussion will depend on what you actually mean, but I’ll note that a dichotomy between “design” and “chance” is probably not an appropriate characterization. If you drop a rock, must the fact that it falls either be by design or chance? If something happens as a predictable, inevitable consequence of the rules regarding how things behave, it makes little sense to call it a consequence of chance.
Scientists tend to treat evolution as something that is essentially not in question because our evidence for it is overwhelmingly comprehensive. While there may be some instances of confusion, they are very minor in comparison with our existing body of evidence, so while further observations might alter our understanding of the process in some way, they do not threaten the entire edifice of evolutionary theory any more than the Pioneer Anomaly (which was in fact recently explained without any change to our understanding of physics) threatened to undermine the idea that gravity exists.
There can be any number of anomolies that can be discussed, lets just name the Cambrian Explosion as one of the main ones, albeit a very general one. Where would you put the problem of the Cambrian Explosion? A, B, or C? But more importantly, why?
Not sure what you mean by ‘if something happens as a predictable, inevitable consequence of the rules regarding how things behave, it makes little sense to call it a consequence of chance’. All you would have to do is keep going back to the source of the rocks behavior in order to see if it was by chance or design. Are those rules you are talking about designed or by chance? And so on....If you agree that those rules that govern the falling of the rock, and the rock’s existence itself, (and yes, any rules that governed how it came to existence) came about by chance then you hold one side of the dialectic; that is you have a world-view that believes existence is produced through chance. You can’t say I dont believe in that because I believe existence has come about through natural laws, and so on, because in the end you would have come to some kind of conclusion as to whether those laws are by chance or designed.
You cannot escape these two conclusion, you must pick one or the other. If you pick the chance worldview, you are heavilly reliant on evolution to validate your worldview.
Well, we don’t know the exact cause of the Cambrian explosion, but there are a large number of plausible hypotheses, so I’d be hesitant to describe it even as A. I’d be more likely to put it in the same category as the lineage of bats, not known, but not particularly confusing either.
As to whether the laws of nature and so forth come about by chance or design, why would design resolve anything? Did the designer come about by chance or design? It just inserts another complex entity and pushes the question back a step.
No, not at all. Evolution is one aspect of one field of one discipline. One can argue that existence came about by chance (and I’m not comfortable with that term) without referring to evolution at all; there are many other reasons to reject the idea of a designer.
See Desrtopa’s reply, below, regarding chance and design and whether a designer helps here. S/he said it better than I could!
This seems to indicate a very confused thought process about how scientific theories work and are tested. A scientific theory that is wrong shouldn’t have data that almost but doesn’t quite fit. If evolution were wrong we would expect to see all sorts of bad data. Almost correct data with a few minor issues that we don’t yet understand is exactly what one would expect for a scientific theory. To use a different example, there are some definite anomalies about gravity and how it functions (the apparent presence of dark matter is one of the more obvious examples). Will you make similar comments about gravity? If evolution and gravity are treated differently in this context, it is worthwhile to ask why. If the sole reason is that evolution has theologically uncomfortable implications, then what does that mean?
I would absolutely include the standard model in physics as a problem as well. When the contemporary scientific explanation of the cosmos can only account for 3% of the universe (about 97% is dark energy or dark matter) then I would say there is a problem. Maybe even more of a problem than evolution.
We seem to be sticking to our current understanding of physics, once again, because of a world-view. That view being that our universe needs to be mathematically harmonious all the way through, at all levels. This is the bias that is also behind string theory and any attempt to unify physics.
Evolution is much the same way. The worldview that there is no purpose/meaning/agency/design (choose your word, but its the same concept) in the universe is pushing scientists to continually ignore or explain away anomally.
Can you explain how the view that there is purpose, meaning, agency or design in the universe helps us address any anomalies better? With examples?
Lets say that the evidence seems to point towards design in the universe. Should we ignore that because we think a chance-world view would bring us more scientific achievement? If we do such a thing, would there be a good chance that what we call scientific achievement today would turn out to be delusion in the future because it is based on a forced world-view?
No, let’s not just say that, let’s discuss the actual pieces of evidence, it’s much more likely to be productive.
I think we do this for evolution as much as any other part of science. In any, the judgment of the severity of a “hit” is possible if you understand the relevant concepts. An understanding of the concepts lets one see what separates minor issues from fossil rabbits in the Precambrian; what’s a detail, and what’s central to the theory—some things would necessitate a modification, and some would cast the entire theory into question. Think of what it took to overturn any other well-established theory in history, or what it would take to overturn relativistic physics.
More generally, if you have a whole bunch of evidence that points to one conclusion, it should take something fairly extreme to substantially sway you away from belief in that conclusion and make you re-evaluate all the accumulated evidence. (And there’s a lot of evidence for evolution.)
Do we? Could you show this for 3 other fields?
There is at least some sense in which the general pattern of evolution is not falsifiable—but to precisely that extent, it’s not science. There is a mathematical certainty that an evolution-like process would occur in a system with random heritable changes that can selectively help or hinder reproduction. For a theist to deny evolution exists in general, they would have to insist God actively stops it from happening every day (or deny that random heritable mutations occur, or deny that they can help or hinder reproduction).
But this doesn’t make it unfalsifiable, strictly speaking, because it can still be tested like any other empirical claim, similar to how one might “test” 2+2=4.
Sure, that.
Thus, finding some evidence that random mutations are not actually random, but part of some global pattern, might reduce our confidence in the theory of biological evolution (as per Ghazzali’s original challenge, above).
Discovering evidence for some sort of Lysenkoism would also work, but might be harder to achieve, since all the evidence we’d found so far points in the opposite direction.
That depends on how you define ‘system’. Is ‘system’ the entire biological existence of earth? In that case, yes evolution would be a mathematical certainty eventually. But is system a specific species? In that case evolution would only occurr within those species. Defining all biological existence on earth as part of a system that would fit that mathematicl certainty would definitely be a scientific claim and could be falsifiable.
Also, time is another factor. Your explanation logically does not necessitate that evolution has already happened, only that it will eventually happen.
He goes on to tell you exactly what systems: any with random heritable changes that can selectively help or hinder reproduction. This would mean both all life on earth that fits within that definition, and any particular species also under that umbrella.
It seems to me like you’re trying to make a distinction between “microevolution” and “macroevolution” here, but I may be misreading you. If you are, however, notice that thomblake’s process makes no distinction between them; to suppose one but not the other could occur, you’d need a specific mechanism or reason.
No, it necessitates that it is happening and has happened in any such system. The process, that is. You’re correct if you’re just saying that the process may not have resulted in any differentiation at any given time.
I think that is where we differ, it is in the macro-micro evolutionary distinction. That mathematical model does not hold any water if you distinguish between species.
Also, I would say that the word ‘random’ is in essence a philosophical term, not scientific. It is a term of interpretation.
For what it’s worth, I used to draw a distinction between macro and micro evolution. I always argued that it made little to no sense for species to evolve sexual reproduction—and how would that work anyway?
But I remember exactly when I changed my mind. I was in a genetics class, and we were learning about sex pili—they’re basically channels that bacteria can form to pass DNA between themselves. I realized that life (and evolution) are a whole hell of a lot more complicated than I gave them credit for, and that perhaps evolution is the tiniest bit more creative than I am.
You have to at least recognize that you are looking at science using a world-view (philosophy). In this case you see the amazing complexity of life as a product of chance/random events and not because of some genius unseen designer. The beautiful world you are describing could be interpreted as being the product of either, and the science itself would not change. You have chosen to see it through a particular lens. Both lenses are fundamentally not scientific in nature, they are belief structures.
So there’s some seed of a potentially valid point here. Phrased in a Bayesian fashion, if one assigns low enough priors to certain hypotheses, one isn’t going to practically consider those hypotheses unless one has ridiculous levels of evidence. So is something like that happening here?
I think the conclusion is “no”. There are many religious individuals who have no objection to evolution. The objections stand essentially from religions which have creation stories which are important to the theology. For example, in Christianity, the Fall is very important, and you get a lot of Christians who object to evolution. Islam and Judaism have as important theological points that there deity is the creator, but the method of creation isn’t as important, and one sees less objection to evolution in those religions. Among some religions which don’t have any issues of this sort, or have very weak or very seldomly directly intervening deities (such as some forms of New Age religions) one sees close to no objections to evolution (although there are some prominent exceptions such as Deepak Chopra). But in all these cases, there are people who adopt an essentially similar theological standpoint and yet accept evolution, and this includes full-out major denominations such as Roman Catholicism. Now, it is possible that they simply haven’t really adapted a consistent world-view (consistency isn’t a human strongpoint), but that’s an argument that would need to be made in detail.
So this actually isn’t the case. Evolved life doesn’t look like what you might expect from a designer. When we looked at designed objects we see all sorts of commonalities that make sense from a design standpoint: we see efficiency, modularity, and reuse of parts between designs. We don’t see any of those in evolved life.
Large amounts of life-designs are highly inefficient, almost as if they were added haphazardly by evolution. The giraffe’s nerves which loop all the way from the head down through the neck and then back up again to the head are a good example.
We don’t see modularity- pieces don’t develop and integrate separately except at a very weak level. Thus birth defects that cause one organ to not grow frequently cause problems throughout the body or at very minimum in neighboring organs.
And we don’t reuse of design pieces except for the very basic aspects that form a perfect nested hierarchy. This is in contrast to for example computers. This would be akin to having only mice on one type of computer, and only joysticks on another, and the only computers with USB drives were a subset of the computers with mice that didn’t overlap at all with some subset of computers with mice with CD drives. But we don’t see that with computers, or cars, or any other designed object that has many different designed versions. They reuse the same ideas and technologies. This is something designers do for obvious reasons: you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. But evolution (aside from some very tiny examples of horizontal evolution where a single gene or small number of genes has been copied over due to viruses and a few neato parasites like my favorite parasite, Wolbachia) doesn’t have that option. Pandas would have a much easier time if they had a real thumb instead of an inefficient bone spur. A direct design would have copied over the great ape thumb over or use a very similar design.
So this really is an example where one can look at what one would expect from design and from evolution and conclude that evolution makes more sense in context. This doesn’t rule out less direct intervention, say a deity setting up life on the planet, letting it evolve and then showing a few thousand years ago to talk to a desert tribe and tell them not to eat shellfish. But that’s a distinct issue from evolution except in so far as that if the same text that claims this deity did intervene also claims that the deity did design everything from scratch, then that’s a reason to maybe doubt the text. But this has nothing to do with belief structures or as the Bayesian would say, extreme priors. This is about evidence.
I don’t think this is actually true of Islam. Muslims in America rank behind mainline protestants in terms of acceptance of evolution, and as far as I’ve been able to determine, majority Islamic countries tend to fall behind even the US in terms of acceptance of evolution.
Yes, that’s a good point. In the rank-and-file there’s a lot lower acceptance of evolution in Islam. This undermines my point somewhat. I suppose one could point out the general lack of acceptance of science and more reactionary settings of a lot of Islam, or point out that anti-evolution sentiment is less major among prominent Muslim scholars and the like, but that’s a much weaker argument, and wouldn’t change the fact that my statement as stated is empirically false.
IAWYC, but I’ve seen pieces of computer code written by humans which do stuff nearly that bad.
Very nice comment, giraffe example is especially appreciated.
I think this part of the objection warrants specific attention.
Yes, the belief could be interpreted that way, and there would still be wonder. But we would have lost something else, which is accuracy. If the only thing we used to evaluate arguments was wonder, then both would be equally valid, but using wonder and not accuracy as a tool of argumentative evaluation doesn’t make much sense. You’re not wrong to point out that other belief systems allow for wonder, and indirectly, this remark leads me to wonder (pun always intended) whether or not it might have been better to use a different word without emotional connotations, because I don’t really see past evolutionary processes as something we should develop emotional attachments to. But don’t mistake wonder for a justification for logical belief.
To claim that the world is not designed because, based on your knowledge of design, it is not a good design is a very weak argument. If the world was designed by a supreme being, your knowledge and His knowledge would be like comparing the intelligence of a rock to a human being. It simply does not compare. All the supposed weaknesses you claim in the design of the cosmos comes from your extremely limited knowledge of reality and cannot compare to the wisdom behind the design of the Creator. Now, this is all the case only if you concede there is a grand designer. If you do not hold that view, then of course this argument does not hold. But as long as you do hold the view, even as a devil’s advocate, you must concede that judging the ‘quality’ and nature of the design as being below standards is rather incoherent. In other words, there may be reasons to those imperfect designs that you are pointing towards that you do not understand. You are not the supreme designer of the universe.
On top of that, it amazes me that a person who knows science will actually think in this way to begin with. That the complexity of a cell, let alone the entire brain, let alone the entire body, would not put you in awe over their design is beyond me. To focus in on those sporadic examples of design that we do not understand and to leave everything else that seems so complicated and fine tuned for life is the ultimate example of how a philosophy is driving your view of science and the world around you.
At this point, your argument really doesn’t amount to anything other than apologetics. In this context, we’ve looked at every single thing that we know for sure is designed, and we can see simple common patterns (which moreover are patterns that make sense for designers to use). It is possible that you are missing part of the point so lets make it clear: most of what I’ve talked about above has nothing to do with “good” or “bad” design. Products that really suck (e.g. Windows ME) show the same basic patterns. The only one of the above that hits on the quality of the design is efficiency. Things like reuse are simply habits of design.
At this point, you are claiming that something is a philosophical presupposition, but even without that class of presupposition, we get the same result by simply looking at the designed objects around us. To then claim that no matter what we see it may or may not be designed makes the claim unfalsifiable.
They aren’t sporadic examples, they are the entire tree of life. To use just one example from my list- we see essentially no examples of reuse of the same designs or parts of designs. And this is true not just for examples in specific body parts (such as the panda’s thumb, or the mammalian eye) but for whole species. In isolated areas like Australia and Madagascar, species have filled nearly identical niches to the niches filled in much of the rest of the world, exactly as you’d expect from evolution, and not what we see human desigers do.
At that point, you have a deity who is not only making things not as a designer would be likely to make them, but you have a deity that is making things in a way that is actively deceptive. The deity has made life which down to the last detail looks old and evolved.
It may help to ask yourself what it would take for you to accept evolution. Is there any evidence that would do so? If not, the problems of philosophical presuppositions would seem to be if anything an issue of projection.
This isn’t a great argument; human designers actually do this all the time. We call it “reinventing the wheel.” We do it often when we’re constrained against merely reusing parts of the same designs — for instance by copyright or personal pride.
Clearly the designer of the octopus eye was forbidden from just ganking the design of the mammalian eye, or vice versa. This is an argument for Semi-Intelligent Design By Committee, and thus for polytheism: the sea-god was either disallowed from copying the design done by the god of beasts, or was too damned proud to do so.
My point is that you can argue rationally about whether there is design in the universe, but you cannot argue whether the design is good or bad. The later is incoherent. Maybe the Grand Designer does want to make things confusing? Maybe he has put evidence of design in the universe, but not absolute evidence for whatever reason He wants? You can make the point that the design is good or bad, but that point has no real consequence to the question about whether there is design in the first place. Thats my point.
Another interesting point;
Do you agree that design does indeed exist anywhere in the universe? Lets say in the form of human design? If you do believe that humans actually do design, and it seems like you do because you are judging the design in nature based on human experience of design, then you have to come up with an explanation of how purely mechanical/physical beings produced this design to begin with?
I’m not arguing about whether design is “good” or “bad”- reuse for example isn’t an aspect of good or bad design. It is an aspect of design, period.
Sure, and maybe the Grand Designer deliberately made all the evidence look like there was no designer, and then the designer is going to reward people in the afterlife who looked at it logically and came to that conclusion.
Or maybe this entire discussion is actually occurring in a simulation in some future transhumanist utopia, after Ghazzali made a bet with a friend that he’d be logical enough that even if placed in the benighted 21st century he’d still reach correct conclusions about the nonsense that is religion. (Apparently you were wrong.)
Or maybe this entire conversation hasn’t occurred, and this message is the last fraction of coherent apparent input to you before your Boltzmann brain dissolves back into chaos.
Etc. Etc. Do you see why this isn’t a useful game to play?
It does though. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That you can construct other hypothetical deities that are more and more convoluted in their behavior says more about your imagination than the likelyhood of their existence. This is especially the case because the deities as described in most classical religions (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism) are explicitly highly interventionist.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Are you asking how humans come up with new ideas? There’s ongoing research by psychologists and cognitive scientists on this, but it isn’t an area I know much about. My understanding is that the current hypotheses suggest that some of it is random borderline nonsense bubbling at a barely conscious level, and that part of the difficulty is recognizing the good ideas and bringing them out to full attention. But again, not my area.
You didn’t address whether there’s any amount of evidence that would convince you that evolution was correct.
First of all, what are you defining as a “world view” and why is that a useful definition to have? It seems like you’re trying to say “You believe things, beliefs are dogmas, you’re being dogmatic”. That is whole manners of cheating.
Secondly, you’re right. It is possible that the universe was intelligently designed. But the Kolmogorov complexity formulation of Occam’s Razor necessarily requires I assign that a very small probability prior. In order to simulate a universe designed by God, a computer must first simulate God, including why ey would create the universe the way that it is, then simulate that universe, as opposed to just simulating the universe.
FWIW, I have heard a more generalized version of Ghazzali’s argument, which goes something like this:
I’m not endorsing this worldview (and I’m probably not even rendering it properly here), but I do believe it to be pretty much argument-proof. You can’t have a rational discussion with someone who denies the value of rational discussions.
That’s not quite true. You can’t use evidence to convince a machine that runs on anti-induction, but luckily humans are at least somewhat intuitively swayed by evidence, even when they claim not to be.
That’s a good point; humans are not perfect “anti-induction machines”. That said, each person who’d presented this argument to me had spent a lot of mental effort during his or her life to embrace and perfect this worldview. In the same way as a rationalist would train himself to use Bayesian reasoning and distrust his biases, the anti-rationalist trains himself to trust his faith/emotions/ESP/etc., and ignore scientific evidence. Thus, even when the anti-rationalist feels the intuitive sway of evidence, he or she will strive to ignore it.
BTW, I’m using slash-separated lists in my posts because I’d heard this argument multiple times, from multiple people, each of whom had a different set of ancillary beliefs. Thus, it seems like this worldview is not tied to any particular religion or philosophy.
Not quite what I am saying.
I do believe in the truth of empirically reproducible results. However, other than stating facts I do not see how these results force me to believe in anything. It is my belief system or personal philosophy that makes me conclude a interpretation of those facts.
For example:
Evolution is seen by many people through the lens of materialism/atheism. That means that while studying evolution these people ASSUME the world has no creator and and is purely physical and closed system, free from anything super-natural....and so on.
In that way, any discovery in biology is treated in this interpretation and millions of dollars of research money is used to search for evidence in that way.
Something as so fundamental to us as consciousness and free will is ignored as illusion because it doesnt fit into these peoples world view of a purely mechanical universe. Where did they get this idea that the universe is purely mechanical and material?? NOT from science, it is from their personal philosophy or belief system. Everything in science is interpreted towards that end.
Those who believe in intelligent design also have their assumptions, and will look at evolution in that way. They will tend to be looking for evidence of a super natural involvement in biology, and dedicate their research dollars in that direction.
For you to accept the intelligent design bias and not see your bias is amazing.
Science is neutral, it is your belief system that interpretes these ‘facts’. The real argument is in the varying philosophies, not in the actual data of science.
Let’s imagine that there exist two universes, M and E. Universe M is purely material. Universe E contains etherial things in addition to material ones. However, the material things that E contains are exactly identical to the material things that M contains, down to each individual quark or cosmic string or whatever everything material is made of. The material objects in two universes are perfectly synchronized; for example, whenever a drop of water falls into a pond in universe M, and identical drop falls into an identical pond in E, etc.
If you were accidentally transported into one of these universes, is there any way you could tell which of them you ended up in ?
If we found in every single mammal a long conserved sequence in its genome which had its own extra code to help conserve it and it spelled out in easy substitution code the entire text of some religious text, you can be very sure that every biologist would stand up and take notice. Moreover, your claim doesn’t really follow since there are many religious biologists (like Ken Miller, a very religious Catholic) who are perfectly ok with evolution and the entire standard understanding of biological history.
Your extreme example of evidence in a creator is a valid point, but only to a certain limit. Maybe the grand creator does not want to make things that obvious? Maybe he puts just enough evidence in the universe for people of sincerity for the truth to be lead to the conclusion of design, and not an inch more? The point is we dont know, and the fact that God is not coming down from heaven and telling us he exists is NOT rational evidence that he does not exist and is not the designer of the universe.
As to those Christians who believe in evolution, they have simply developed a personal theology and see science to that end. They are no different from the other religion views, or no religious view.
The real battle is not in science, it is in these ‘world-views’ that cause us to see science in a particular way. I’m not saying we cannot debate what is the truth, only saying that the debate is a little deeper than saying ‘sciences says this’ or ‘science says that’. The debate is more abstract and rational than it is empirical.
Then you think that God coming down from heaven and telling us he exists is rational evidence that he does not exist or is not the designer of the universe? See Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence.
Sure, that is possible. Then, in the absence of overwhelming evidence for a designer, we have at least two possible explanations for the evidence that we do possess:
1). Cellular replication in general and DNA in particular is a result of natural processes, specifically {insert long explanation here}.
2). Cellular replication in general and DNA in particular is a result of both natural processes, as well as supernatural intervention by an intelligent designer for whose existence we have no evidence.
Which explanation is more likely to be true, Bayesically speaking (yes I know that’s not a word) ?
I don’t think you need to invoke any sort of Bayesian issues there. Just ask which is simpler. You also are going one step ahead of what is necessary because as far as I can tell, Ghazzali isn’t even ok with theistic evolution.
I want to taboo the word “simpler”, because its meaning is vague. “God did it” is certainly a simpler statement than “Here, read this 500-page biology textbook and find out”.
I think my example still applies, though. Ultimately, we still have purely physical things like fossils, DNA molecules, etc. etc.; as far as I understand, Ghazzali doesn’t dispute the fact that these items exist, only the conclusions we can draw from their existence.
Mathematically you have the same problem whether you believe in God or you don’t. If you say that there is no God you must still account for these two questions:
How did the universe begin from nothing, and why?
If the universe did not begin from nothing, what did it begin from and why is it not considered part of the universe so that we say it is the creator of the universe but not an extension of it?
And if you say 2. you still have to go back to one.
The same mysteries are there whether you believe in God or not. It is your world-view, your faith that leads you to conclude in God, not science. For a Muslim, for example, it is his belief in the words of Prophet Muhammad that he is really communicating with God, and so on. For the atheist/materialist it is his world-view that he rejects any kind of notion that a human being has these powers. And so on...
Science itself is neutral on these issues, it must be seen and interpreted by philosophies and beliefs.
The consistent downvoting of your posts should give you some indication that your arguments are not going to be well received here. I don’t intend to continue this discussion further for the following reasons:
I don’t believe you’re here to genuinely arrive at truer beliefs. I think you’re here to try and convert us.
You did not answer the one direct question I asked you to answer (which, among other things, leads me to conclude the above.)
Other people on this site are far more willing to refute your arguments and will do a better job, and have been doing so.
I don’t think you have enough background (have read enough of the sequences) in why I (or LW in general) believes what we believe for you and I to be able to have a conversation productive enough to be enjoyable to me. Most of the ensuing discussion would probably consist of me spending 15 minutes looking up exactly which of Eliezer’s posts refuted the point you made in your most recent post, and linking you to it, at which point, you probably wouldn’t read what I linked to anyway.
Speciation is a well-established result. See for example this not at all exhaustive list. Simply noting that species is a term that exists doesn’t break the models. Moreover, the lines between many species are quite blurry, exactly as one would expect if evolution were correct. This has gotten to the point where the evidence for speciation is so overwhelming that Answers in Genesis, one of the world’s largest young earth creationist ministries, lists the claim that speciation doesn’t occur as an argument not to use.
Shannon and Kolmogrov among others would disagree with you.
That is a factual claim which most here will think incorrect, by default. It should be backed up by evidence and argument rather than simply asserted.
Any number of things. One example would be traits appearing in advance of conditions that would make them favorable e.g. a deep ocean fish developing legs or a reptile developing wings while it is too heavy for the wings to increase the length of its jumps. Another would be one species adopting traits of another through direct transfer of genes, rather than through separate evolutionary lines e.g. a snake using a variety of venom that was previously only in spiders.
I could probably come up with several hundred examples, if you really needed that many. None of them are particularly likely though: there is a huge weight of evidence behind modern evolutionary theory, which means it is almost certainly true.
There is a problem of threshold in this debate. There have been anomolies found in the fossil record that don’t seem to make sense, but they are not deemed extreme enough by the scientific community to warrant any damage to evolution. The hypotheticals you have suggested are very extreme, do they have to be that extreme to warrant a hit on evolution or can less extreme finds also warrant questioning? I would like to see the scientific community come up with more specific parameters as to what would be considered: A. minor damage to the theory, B. major hit on the theory, and C. evidence that would make the theory most likely untenable. We do this for almost every other science, except evolution.
My suspicion comes down to the fact that evolution is the natural conclusion of a world view that is part of a necessary dialectic. Either existence happened by chance, or by design. There seems to be no third or fourth way. We are limited to these two conclusions and nothing else. Therefore any hit on a theory that advocates one, is a support for the other. I think this pushes scientists (even sub-consciously) to view evolution almost as a belief system rather than a science.
I addressed this here, but I missed a few things. For one, I address the extremity of the hypotheticals in the linked post, but I didn’t point out, also, that these things seem extreme because we’re used to seeing things work out as if evolution were true. These things wouldn’t seem extreme if we had been seeing them all along; it’s precisely because evolution fits what we do find so well that evolution-falsifying examples seem so extreme. Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian would probably not seem so extreme to a creationist; it’s what they’d expect to find (since all species supposedly lived alongside one another, AFAIK).
For two:
I don’t think that follows. A hit on a chance-favoring theory could be a “hit” in such a way as to support a different chance-favoring theory, rather than any favoring design.
Can you point out some ways that scientists view evolution as a belief system rather than science?
I don’t think you can assume that all critics of evolution believe all animals lived alongside one another. I doubt they are all evangelical Christians.
You are correct that a hit on a chance-favoring theory could be a support for another chance-favoring theory, but that is only if there are other chance-favoring theories competing with eacother in at least some way. When you have a theory as monolithic in nature as evolution, it is for all intents and purposes THE chance-favoring theory. Things could change in the future though, and maybe another chance-favoring theory could at least get some foothold. However, as long as we are in our current situation any support of evolution is a hit on design theories in general and vice-versa.
Some beliefs that are usually incorporated to support evolution are:
-The world is purely physical/material in nature
-There is no such thing as real agency (free will)
There is no real purpose/meaning in the universe
These are philosophical/belief points that directly or indirectly help a persons belief in evolution. If for example a person does not accept that all of existence is physical in nature, then he is more likely to question the ‘evidence’ of evolution. If he further believes in free-will (real free will) then he is even more likely to question evolution. And if he believes there is a purpose to the universe....and so on.
I’d be curious where you can point to these being used as evidence for evolution. You won’t see them in any major biology textbook. Note that even if they are used that way that doesn’t become a problem with evolution by itself.
This statement is probably true. But why is it true? It doesn’t have anything to do with evolution as an issue and primarily has to do with the fact that most classical religions have creation stories and other aspects which make evolution uncomfortable for them, and people who are religious form a substantial overlap with people who make claims about non-physical or non-material existence. Similar remarks apply to your other bits. These are people who are unhappy with evolution not because of evidence but because it goes against their theological predilections.
Biology textbooks reflect the belief that “The world is purely physical/material in nature” by not even entertaining the possibility that there could be a super natural cause for anything. Any natural activity is assumed to have a physical/material cause. This is philosophy, so it may not be physically written out that way in the biology textbooks, but everything in the textbooks points to this major world assumption.
Same with the issue of free will. Any act by a species is seen in a way that needs to be explained in chemical/biological/mechanical manner. There is no room for this mysterious/other-worldly notion called free will.
Same with the idea that there is no real purpose or meaning to the universe.
As for this statement:
If for example a person does not accept that all of existence is physical in nature, then he is more likely to question the ‘evidence’ of evolution.
It is not necessarily true because of specific theological beliefs only. Lets say a person has absolutely no theological beliefs from any religion, but he does not automatically assume that all of existences is physical/mechanical. That person, because of this world view by itself, now all of a sudden has a higher chance of rejecting evolution than someone who only believes in a physical/mechanical world view.
The real debate is on the level of philosophy, not science. That is because ones science is driven by his philosophical interpretations....whether he realizes it or not.