Richard Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker - Surprisingly Faith Promoting

[Hamilton Porter]

Those articles demonstrate how evolutionary mechanisms can operate to produce a complex result under certain conditions and have been imitated for use in certain engineering applications, not that human evolution is inevitable or even likely, nor that a designer is needed for anything pertaining to biology.

I agree it is possible God could use evolutionary mechanisms. No scientific evolutionary theory precludes that. But those articles don't prove God's influence. The most we can do with those articles is compare God to people applying evolutionary ideas (such as animal breeders), or causing/influencing life, as part of an argument that God could use evolution or intervene without invalidating evolutionary theory. It's more of an apologetic faith-defending argument, not a faith-promoting argument.

Evolutionary algorithms don't show that human evolution is inevitable. That I can agree with. What they do show is that evolution (sexual selection, random mutation, fitness function, natural selection) follows an optimization algorithm and is not a haphazard process. And that is faith-promoting. Sure, reality is messier than evolutionary algorithms, and the results aren't as tidy as the laws of physics. But the author of Genesis recognized as much.

[Hamilton Porter]

Laboratory evidence of the importance of historical contingency:

http://www.pnas.org/...05/23/7899.long

This article actually focuses on the emergence of a particular trait, not speciation. If historical contingency plays a major role even at the level of one highly favorable trait, though, that does not support any strong convergence view or inevitable human evolution.

That is funny. Earlier Lenski reported that the changes were due more to adaptation than to chance. He even contributed as chapter to the Deep Structure of Biology templeton volume. I guess results changed as he allowed it to evolve more generations. The experiment is ongoing, so we'll have to see.

I enjoyed your little biology lesson, by the way.

[Hamilton Porter]

Just to clarify, the view that human evolution is improbable because of historical contingency isn't a philosophical view. It is a scientific one. Like Richard Dawkins' and Simon Conway Morris'. Each, though, has a view of science and religion that is separable from their particular scientific ideas. In principle, I could accept Morris' scientific ideas, stripped of extraneous commentary, without accepting his view of the relationship between science and religion, or his Platonic Christianity.

However, trying to use Morris' or even Dawkins' ideas to justify a belief in creation may reflect the influence of Platonic Christianity for reasons I have discussed. Attraction by non-scientist Christians, whose understanding of various evolutionary topics is questionable, to the semblance of a perfect design inexorably leading to humans may represent the influence of creatio ex nihilo and other elements of Platonic Christianity.

The extent to which Stephen Jay Gould's view of how evolution happens is not originally Gould's is not something I care about too much, except for the purpose of learning more about the view through other scientists.

If you are referring to Non-overlapping Magisteria, there is a reason why I put a comma after "(NOMA)" and before "and underdeterminism in philosophy" in the 3rd paragraph at http://www.mormondia...entry1209167912 I have not got into NOMA in the present thread, but I am aware that NOMA represents an effort by Gould to popularize a view of science and religion that has other sources.

The first and only time I myself encountered "Non-overlapping Magsteria" under that name as required reading was in a biology class. What you're noting is kind of my point. Many biologists and biology students are already aware of "Non-overlapping Magisteria" through Gould, who is an example of an evolutionary biologist who wasn't anti-religious and is relevant to science & religion and evolution discussions for a variety of reasons. Gould's writing is accessible to biology students who may never take a course in the philosophy department. These things are important to note if one's impression of evolution and evolutionary biologists is influenced by Dawkins' high-profile speaking and writing.

Another big problem with Gould & co. is that biologists don't have enough training in math. One semester of the same calculus business majors take? C'mon. I think if Gould took Calculus II and III he wouldn't have described evolution as a drunk man with a wall on one side and a ditch on the other.

[Lament]

Porter replied to me as follows:

"Allen...all principles of evolution ARE included in genetic algorithms. Please check the notes from my neural networks class. Sexual reproduction is in there, as well as adaptation."

AL:

Why should we take your class notes as the ultimate word? That may be the view of your professor, but not of all those standard sources I cited and quoted from. Maybe you could show us HOW such are represented and HOW they work in antennae design.

Further, if "sexual reproduction" were therein (somehow in the design of some radar antennae), how does it manifest itself in the design of production of the antennae?

Porter continued:

"I brought up sonar and genetics only as examples provided by Richard Dawkins on how sophisticated life is. I didn't say that engineers got them by imitating bats, only that the technology is identical. Same thing with genetics. Computer science was developed before the discovery of the genetic code. The point is that life is at least as sophisticated as the technology intelligent beings like us develop. There are, however, ways in which we develop technology by mimicking nature. "

AL:

What you bring up you are responsible for -- especially for particular wording and application. I replied thereto.

The technology is NOT "identical". Again, sound (sonar) and electro-magnetic radiation (radar) are not the same and not produced by the same kind of technologies as each other or as bats, etc. For example, sonar produces and detects sound with ceramic (e.g., barium titanate) and crystal (e.g., ammonium dihydrogen phosphate) transducers. Radar does not; bats do not.

Sonar and radar technologies were not developed by "mimicking nature" (I can tell you that from first hand knowledge). Sonar and echo location of bats and whales (my father was the first to record whale sounds in 1946), etc., may have the same function, but do not use the same technologies. And no equations incorporating "sexual reproduction" or other Darwinian evolution specific concepts were used to develop sonar and radar (both of which were developed prior to any electronic computers; for expl, the first nuclear sub, the Nautilus launched in late '50s, had arrays of about 2,000 sonar transducers all of which were engineered with slide rule).

Genes were being studied before electronic computers. And computer science was in its infancy when Crick and Watson published their very short article with a drawing of the helix structure of DNA. As for the "genetic code" I presume you mean the genome (the first human ones being published in Science and Nature a dozen years ago); yes, computers contributed thereto -- to the analysis and sequencing, not to the theory or basic structure. And algothims incorporating "all principles of evolution" were not used in producing those first multi-color characterizations of the human genome.

Yes, "life" (or nature) is complex, more so than anything humans have yet devised. But that has no bearing on the claims you made in original post.

Again, why don't you actually illustrate your claim that "sexual reproduction" is incorporated into the equations used to design a few radar antennae. (They certainly were not used for most radar antennae which were designed 70 years ago.)

[mfbukowski]

Again, why don't you actually illustrate your claim that "sexual reproduction" is incorporated into the equations used to design a few radar antennae.

Well I don't know about you, but I am an old guy, and when a pretty girl walks into the room my radar tends to pick her up very quickly even though I have been very happily married for over 30 years. In fact, most of the time I wish it wouldn't work as well as it does!

[shalamabobbi]

Maybe this would be useful when given the assignment to talk to a group of single adults.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/345034/title/Wild_snakes_reproduce_without_sex

[shalamabobbi]

Exactly!

For those who didn't "get" that - the words in French say "This is not a pipe." And of course it is NOT a pipe- it is a painted image of what we call a "pipe"- that is the whole point.

Arguably that is echoed by artists like Warhol with their Campbell Soup cans in an art museum. The entire point is that everything is context-dependent to get meaning. Putting a fake can of soup in a museum focuses that - what is the "reality" of such a soup can? In another context it becomes what we call "art"- but why is NOT "art" when it is on a supermarket shelf?

What exactly is the nature of art itself?

Is not everything we do in some sense art if it is a human creation? Both William James and John Dewey talk a lot about that idea.

And this is of course the whole point of that painting and the point of the movement it represents. It's not like I am making this stuff up. I wish I could take credit for it, but of course it is the point of most of 20th century philosophy, directly or indirectly.

But of course Dawkins doesn't get that. He is a scientist and scientists don't think any way but scientifically.

What a shame!

Not content to ruin science with the admixture of philosophy will you now ruin art as well?

http://www.telegraph...revolution.html

[supersnail]

Another big problem with Gould & co. is that biologists don't have enough training in math. One semester of the same calculus business majors take? C'mon. I think if Gould took Calculus II and III he wouldn't have described evolution as a drunk man with a wall on one side and a ditch on the other.

I don't think someone with only a business major level of understanding of math would have been able to write The Mismeasure of Man or even Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. The context of Gould's metaphor is important. Please let me know when you have it in front of you.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "& co." Are you suggesting that evolutionary biologists who disagree with Dawkins and Morris on scientific questions are mathematically uneducated, and that's why Dawkins' and Morris' particular views of the evolutionary process aren't predominant in the field of biology?

I apologize in advance. I don't have much energy for mind reading at the moment, and I'm bad at it.

Anyway, Dawkins, while disagreeing with Gould on other points, wrote:

Gould is certainly right that human chauvinism, as an unspoken motif, runs through a great deal of evolutionary writing. He'll find even better examples if he looks at the comparative psychology literature, which is awash with snobbish and downright silly phrases like 'subhuman primates', 'subprimate mammals' and 'submammalian vertebrates', implying an unquestioned ladder of life defined so as to perch us smugly on the top rung. Uncritical authors regularly move 'up' or 'down' the 'evolutionary scale' (bear in mind that they are in fact moving sideways among modern animals, contemporary twigs dotted all around the tree of life). Students of comparative mentality unabashedly and ludicrously ask, 'How far down the animal kingdom does learning extend?' Volume 1 of Hyman's celebrated treatise on the invertebrates is entitled 'Protozoa through Ctenophora' (my emphasis) -- as if the phyla exist along an ordinal scale such that everybody knows which groups sit 'between' Protozoa and Ctenophora. Unfortunately, all zoology students do know -- we've all been taught the same groundless myth.

This is bad stuff, and Gould could afford to attack it even more severely than he attacks his normal targets. Whereas I would do so on logical grounds, Grould prefers an empirical assault. He looks at the actual course of evolution and argues that such apparent progress as can in general be detected is artefactual (like the baseball statistic). Cope's rule of increased body size, for example, follows from a simple 'drunkard's walk' model. The distribution of possible sizes is confined by a left wall, a minimal size. A random walk from a beginning near the left wall has nowhere to go but up the size distribution. The mean size has pretty well got to increase, and it doesn't imply a driven evolutionary trend towards larger size.

As Gould convincingly argues, the effect is compounded by a human tendency to give undue weight to new arrivals on the geological scene. Textbook biological histories emphasise a progression of grades of organization. As each new grade arrives, there is temptation to forget that the previous grades haven't gone away. Illustrators abet the fallacy when they draw, as representative of each era, only the newcomers. Before a certain date there were no eucaryotes. The arrival of eucaryotes looks more progressive than it really was because of the failure to depict the persisting hordes of procaryotes. The same false impression is conveyed with each new arrival on the stage: vertebrates, large-brained animals, and so on. An era may be described as the 'Age of Xs' -- as though the denizens of the previous 'Age' had been replaced rather than merely supplemented.

Edited September 14, 2012 by supersnail

[mfbukowski]

Not content to ruin science with the admixture of philosophy will you now ruin art as well?

http://www.telegraph...revolution.html

Yep- I actually met Salvador Dali one time in New York, and I signed a dollar bill and gave it to him- that was about the most "Dada/Surrealist" thing I could think of at the moment.

One of my great unfinshed projects was getting a Masters in Art History- I got through the course work but the reason I quit was that I was taking it to get into the gallery business and it turned out that I got into it before I finished school and hated trying to do business with artists!

It was as bad as trying to talk philosophy with scientists!

Edited September 13, 2012 by mfbukowski

[shalamabobbi]

There are, however, ways in which we develop technology by mimicking nature.

Cool post. Thanks.

Here's another that you might find interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/04slime.html?ref=evolution

[supersnail]

That is funny. Earlier Lenski reported that the changes were due more to adaptation than to chance. He even contributed as chapter to the Deep Structure of Biology templeton volume. I guess results changed as he allowed it to evolve more generations. The experiment is ongoing, so we'll have to see.

I enjoyed your little biology lesson, by the way.

This chapter,

http://books.google....lution"&f=false

is not in conflict with

http://www.pnas.org/...05/23/7899.long

I will explain why later if I have the time. It has to do with that Gould never denied parallel evolution (or instances of convergence for that matter).

Even if those two writings were inconsistent, scientific findings are always tentative, and I would expect a good scientist to acknowledge when the wind has shifted. After all, science is not supposed to be based on faith (not even Aristotelian "faith"), and vice versa.

By the way, the 55,000 generations mark was recently passed.

Edited September 14, 2012 by supersnail

[Lament]

Porter:

"There are, however, ways in which we develop technology by mimicking nature"

AL:

Whether expls can be found is irrelevant to what you asserted. You made a specific claim about a particular application, which I refuted. The point is that the original argument you made does not hold up. Perhaps another approach would achieve your goal. One that is more modest and limited in scope and focused just on the point (Dawkins is inadvertantly faith promoting or whatever). It is the extra stuff which undermined the purpose or your original post.

[Lament]

Curious, Lenski's essay on "Chance and Necessity in Evolution" does not cite Jacques Monod's 1970 book/essay on the same topic and with similar title ("C & N ... Modern Biology") and cited by Supersnail above and to which he provided a web address.

My recollection is that there was also a book with Chance and Necessity in the title by a physicist (but I can't check it right now because all my philos sci books are currently packed in boxes for moving).

[Hamilton Porter]

I don't think someone with only a business major level of understanding of math would have been able to write The Mismeasure of Man or even Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. The context of Gould's metaphor is important. Please let me know when you have it in front of you.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "& co." Are you suggesting that evolutionary biologists who disagree with Dawkins and Morris on scientific questions are mathematically uneducated, and that's why Dawkins' and Morris' particular views of the evolutionary process aren't predominant in the field of biology?

I apologize in advance. I don't have much energy for mind reading at the moment, and I'm bad at it.

Anyway, Dawkins, while disagreeing with Gould on other points, wrote:

No, I am suggesting this of all biologists, Dawkins included (except maybe geneticists and some theorists). I haven't read any of Gould's works but from skimming Mismeasure of Man there doesn't appear to be any deep statistical analysis.

My issue with the drunkard's walk is not with its accuracy (the analogy is true) but with its connotations. If Gould had more math he would know that for some problems, in order to find the solution you need to have the computer spit out some random number and measure then move towards the optimal solution. It is actually conscious problem-solving, not some tipsy-turvy journey.

I'm looking at PhD programs in neuroscience right now and they require at most two semesters of calculus and one semester of statistics (Good for me, that makes me more competitive!). Bio majors can take the same calculus class business majors take.

[mfbukowski]

But for me it seems obvious that discussing Evolutionary theory is not about science, it is about the nature of theories. Scientists do not study the nature of theories, they study the nature of science.

They study, with blinders on, WITHIN the particular way that science LOOKS AT reality without questioning that they are looking at "reality", when indeed all they are looking at is the scientific INTERPRETATION of reality and think it's the only way of seeing it.

Science is about the practical task of sifting through data and coming up with experiments dealing with the "hammer and nails" of cobbling together a scientific understanding of data.

Scientists are like carpenters making measurements, cutting up the data as one would a piece of wood, fitting pieces together, finding a piece which will fit properly, and deciding if one needs to trim a theory here and there to make it all fit together.

I see Darwin as an architect in this process- and maybe Gould as a remodeler of the old building that needs an upgrade, cutting out a wall here and deciding to put a new beam there because the original design caused some sagging in one corner of the building.

But then you have the urban planners who decide if such a building should even get the permits to have the remodeling done or if it should be demolished completely. The urban planners are not smarter than the architects or the carpenters, they just have a different perspective and point of view and are looking at a bigger picture than the others. They decide if the historical structure is worth saving, or if it even fits into the way the city is going. These guys I think are the philosophers. Again- they may even be dumber than the carpenters, but they are just looking at the problem in a different way, and each in their own ways have their blinders on and are fixated on one perspective.

Would you want a carpenter to make urban planning decisions without being trained in the discipline? Would you want to rely on an urban planner to check the structural integrity of your house or make you some cabinets?

If you would allow that to happen, only new developments would get approved by the pretend carpenters to give the carpenters more work, and all the new houses built by the untrained urban planners pretending to be carpenters would fall down in a few years and hurt people.

Give Dawkins a nice lab somewhere and put him to work. Get him out of the philosophy business- he doesn't belong there. He's hurting people who don't know any better.

[mfbukowski]

By the way, the 55,000 generations mark was recently passed.

How did they calculate that?

[Hamilton Porter]

Cool post. Thanks.

Here's another that you might find interesting.

http://www.nytimes.c...l?ref=evolution

Awesome man, thanks for sharing.

[shalamabobbi]

I'm looking at PhD programs in neuroscience right now and they require at most two semesters of calculus and one semester of statistics (Good for me, that makes me more competitive!). Bio majors can take the same calculus class business majors take.

Ah, excellent! If your going into cognitive, bottoms up!

[media=]

[Robert F. Smith]

I should clarify that I don't believe in a dichotomy between science and the LDS religion. The ideas of abiogenesis have not to my understanding hit any roadblocks.

This is a good summary of where the field is at.

[media=]

That is not an accurate summary at all. For an up to date summary see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120918162220.htm . Abiogenesis (archebiosis) and Special Creation are both entirely lacking in credibility. Transmission is the third rail and the only way which is unhindered by both LDS religion and standard science.

[shalamabobbi]

That is not an accurate summary at all. For an up to date summary see http://www.scienceda...20918162220.htm . Abiogenesis (archebiosis) and Special Creation are both entirely lacking in credibility. Transmission is the third rail and the only way which is unhindered by both LDS religion and standard science.

That carbon compounds exist in the *vacuum* of space has been known for some time. All that does is shift the origin of precursor material back a bit. How that material forms into proto cells is a separate area of study.

The article you cite does not support transmission in the sense that you are upholding. There are no self-replicating entities in space.

The problem with this viewpoint is that of suggesting that complex physical life forms simply exist from all eternity, like intelligence and pure element whatever that is. Science does not agree with anything simply existing forever with the possible exception of whatever gave birth to the big bang. (We'll have to wait for a theory that succesfully combines QM with gravity to know more there).

[mfbukowski]

That carbon compounds exist in the *vacuum* of space has been known for some time. All that does is shift the origin of precursor material back a bit. How that material forms into proto cells is a separate area of study.

The article you cite does not support transmission in the sense that you are upholding. There are no self-replicating entities in space.

The problem with this viewpoint is that of suggesting that complex physical life forms simply exist from all eternity, like intelligence and pure element whatever that is. Science does not agree with anything simply existing forever with the possible exception of whatever gave birth to the big bang. (We'll have to wait for a theory that succesfully combines QM with gravity to know more there).

That's where God's Father comes in anyway.

[shalamabobbi]

That's where God's Father comes in anyway.

Before he goes and quotes Fred Hoyle again I better disprove QM by quoting Einstein.

God does not play dice with the universe.

There, Q.E.D.

This is a relic of the LDS habit of quoting GAs of course. We might learn something by observing those instances where they quote us in general conference.

Most of the photons of the universe are in the cosmic microwave background. Note the following that there is a way to experimentally confirm the inflationary aspect of the big bang theory by measuring the polarization of the CMB.

http://cosmology.ber...Bpol/CMBpol.htm

http://background.uc...sion/polar.html

[media=]

http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.1181

http://space.mit.edu...larization.html

http://www.rssd.esa....ANCK&page=index

http://legacy.kek.jp.../2011/08241301/

[mfbukowski]

Before he goes and quotes Fred Hoyle again I better disprove QM by quoting Einstein.

There, Q.E.D.

This is a relic of the LDS habit of quoting GAs of course. We might learn something by observing those instances where they quote us in general conference.

Most of the photons of the universe are in the cosmic microwave background. Note the following that there is a way to experimentally confirm the inflationary aspect of the big bang theory by measuring the polarization of the CMB.

http://cosmology.ber...Bpol/CMBpol.htm

http://background.uc...sion/polar.html

[media=]

http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.1181

http://space.mit.edu...larization.html

http://www.rssd.esa....ANCK&page=index

http://legacy.kek.jp.../2011/08241301/

Wow.

That will keep me busy for a little while.

Quick response on the first few minutes: Love the Seti movie logo. Dots getting selected and magnified. Selective observation of data.

Church says she is speaking about "how we DESCRIBE the composition of the universe"

Describe- that's an important word.

[shalamabobbi]

Wow.

That will keep me busy for a little while.

Quick response on the first few minutes: Love the Seti movie logo. Dots getting selected and magnified. Selective observation of data.

Church says she is speaking about "how we DESCRIBE the composition of the universe"

Describe- that's an important word.

Even though I responded to your post, this was intended for Robert who I believe has a fringe model(of the universe) he's adopted and convinced himself to be reasonable by leaning upon Hoyle..

[Alvino]

Everybody and everything is improbable.

Let me just say that this, if true, would destroy science. I can't understand how you could believe this in the first place.

God exists out of necessity, not probability.

By which I take it that you are not a Mormon, correct? Do you know what "necessity" means in modal logic? It means that God exists in every possible world. That is, you can't even coherently conceive of God not existing and not fall into a contradiction. The Mormon God is rather easy to conceive of not existing so he isn't necessary.

Facts on the ground necessitate a creator. Eg, dawkins asks, if god has always been there, why not just say dna has always been there? because we know it hasn't.

DNA is a bad example but if you are going to say, without much justification, that God is a necessary being, why not say that universes and life forming are constituted as such that they are necessary to come up?