I think I understand what you are saying----and I spent most of my life with that same objection----but no.
I had to do a lot of reading and thinking about Molinism before I realized the type of mindset required. (Obviously, it requires grasping at least to a small degree God’s frame of reference.) Yet, the effort is well worthwhile because for the first time in my life, I no longer felt torn by the Calvinism vs. Arminianism conflict.
You see, even my prayers are part of the “reality path” which God had chosen and ordained when the universe was established. For those unfamiliar with Molinism, that will sound to them like I don’t believe in human free will and that everybody is a robot, or an actor chained to a script. But no, free will is very real. (Early Church Father, Irenaeus, explores this Divine sovereignty vs. free will appearance-of-conflict using the Pharaoh of the Exodus to illustrate by means of his clay-versus-wax analogies.)
I won’t try to start an entire complex tangent on a thread about the Discovery Institute and Dr. Swamidass. I retired before I became fully entrenched in Molinist thinking, so I don’t have the kind of thorough familiarity with a subject which I’ve presented in-depth in the classroom. So I would refer readers to Dr. William Lane Craig’s plenteous expositions on Molinism. He can do a far better job of explanation than I can. (However, Bill and I differ on the issue of whether time existed before creation or exists “outside” of the universe. So I’m not saying that he will necessarily address your question the same way.)
It’s a very mind-stretching topic.
P.S. I certainly would agree that various scriptures present God’s actions and perspective with anthropomorphisms. Otherwise, it would be very difficult for people to grasp the basic dynamics of man’s disobedience, God’s grief over man’s sin, and issues of judgment and grace. If we don’t notice that anthropomorphisms are used, we will inevitably be baffled by a lot of appearances of contradictions within the Biblical text. (Is God changeless or does he change his mind? Does God appear to calm down after a while and go soft on the wrong-doer? Does God regret overreacting?)
Me too, but let’s be honest. These people are culture warriors and will never attempt to falsify an ID hypothesis such as those you listed. If they are looking for the truth, they wouldn’t duck from testing even the most trivial hypothesis.
And for others here, “design can be detected” is not a scientific hypothesis.
SF is saying that evolutionary algorithms are used to solve problems in programming, and you’re trying to refute SF by pointing to something completely different–computer simulations of evolution.
It’s interesting that your first reply was regarding algorithms, but you changed that to simulations in your reply to Jonathan. Why?
Are you really unfamiliar with the use of Darwinian algorithms to solve design problems?
At my age, I just don’t have the time and patience to do start-from-scratch remedial tutoring with hecklers in a Kruger-Dunning scenario with such an obvious absence of basic fundamentals in the topic involved. (I might wish I had more patience, but I don’t. So I figure it is more courteous to just defer. This is a nice, generally congenial environment and I want to keep it that way. So sometimes it is best to just make a summary statement and then bow out.)
Probably the most tireless and worn-out argument that arises in these situations is one I hear constantly from science-denialists like Ken Ham, Stephen Meyer, Tas Walker, Jason Lisle, Ray Comfort, and many others of their origins-ministry colleagues: “We have lots of Ph.D. scientists who agree with us and who say that you are totally wrong!” Yes, and I hear that exact same lame argument from 9/11 conspiracy theory groups who claim they have all sorts physicists and metallurgists who have “proven” that the Twin Towers were brought down by “super thermite” in a controlled demolition----and Walt Brown even claims to have lots of equally superior “Ph.D. scientists” who support his neuron-destroying, incredibly lame Hydroplate Theory.
So…tell those unnamed scientists to write their papers and submit them for publication in peer-reviewed journals so that they can show that the textbook and the entire academy has been wrong all along. Then I might care. Until then, I prefer reading more interesting and much better informed academic papers.
Eddie has already said he doesn’t care if the people he cites are taken seriously by the scholarly consensus, because he has already decided that the scholarly consensus is wrong. So basically the same kind of argument Ken Ham uses.
Behold the evolved antenna, the design of which is the product of evolutionary algorithims mimicking Darwinian evolution.
That is an outstanding example, Jon. What a beautiful algorithm! Yet, because the denialists haven’t a clue what any of it means, they always snap back with the mindlessly erroneous “But a human mind wrote the program. So it is still the product of an intelligence!” (Sometimes total ignorance is its own best defense. Sheesh.)
Of course, that is always the problem when dealing with the always-scoff-no-matter-what crowd. They haven’t a clue because they’ve never bothered to learn even the basics. And they refuse to take the time to start at the beginning. Even so, we probably have some readers of this thread who are interested in the simple beauty of this class of programs, so I would recommend this much simpler example: a program which designs “cars”. It is astonishing how little “smarts” are needed in order to run just a little while and produce incredible machines:
I firmly believe that a student won’t truly grasp the power of evolutionary processes until the student’s intuition (i.e., “common sense”) has been trained to accept by countless examples what at first seems intuitively impossible. I liken it to the intuition which allows a nine-year-old to start out by memorizing a multiplication table as a 9x9 grid of “various numbers” and being able to recall and apply them robotically. Yet, over time, the multiplication table becomes an obvious reflection of repeated addition and meaningful groupings/patterns which are intuitively obvious. As intuition matures, the “right answer” becomes “the obvious answer” and an answer which in no way could be anything else!
I’ve had undergrads who spent a half hour simply playing with that “genetic cars generator” software and exclaiming in so words: “Evolution finally really makes sense to me! It’s just math! It’s inevitable!” I tell them: “Welcome to the biosphere, a wonderfully creative place where life finds a way [see Jurassic Park] ---- because math wins.”
which is entitled: Automated Antenna Design with Evolutionary Algorithms
And the next time Stephen Meyer or some equally confused IDist or Young Earth Creationist starts spinning “probabilities” sprinkled with exclamations like “What are the chances of X evolving?”, show them the stochastic realities in Section III.B entitled TDRS-C Results.
I feel like generating a slogan-style quotable quote:
Real Evidence. Real Science. It’s a beautiful thing.
I’m quite interested in this question of the criteria for discerning design, and I would like to explore the topic further with you, if you don’t mind.
Let’s take a look at Meyer’s argument from inference. (I am rephrasing it in my own words because I am traveling and do not have access to the Meyer volumes on my shelf. If I do not state his argument accurately, please feel free to correct it.)
Premise 1: The genetic machinery of DNA is an information-encoding and processing system similar to other well-known information-encoding/processing systems.
Premise 2: Those similar information-encoding systems (e.g., human language, software) are the product of intelligent agency and design.
Conclusion: The genetic machinery of DNA is the product of intelligent agency and design.
One of the interesting things about this argument is: how do we measure the similarity?
Suppose I try to refute the argument by offering 5 different ways in which genetic machinery is dissimilar to software code. An ID proponent could always reply:
“But we do not expect 100% design similarity. The intelligence that created genetic machinery is vastly greater than ours, so the designs are expected to be somewhat dissimilar.”
ID proponent: “For 10 dissimilarities, I will not destroy the inference to design.”
Me: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of dissimilarities is 20?”
ID proponent: “For the sake of 20 dissimilarities, I will not destroy the inference to design.”
Me: “May you not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if fifty dissimilarities can be found there?”
ID proponent: “For the sake of 50 dissimilarities, I will not destroy the inference to design.”
In this situation, the inference to design cannot be falsified. No dissimilarity could be marshaled to falsify the inference to design, because the ID proponent can always argue that the dissimilarity is the result of dissimilarities in intelligence.
Now if it cannot be falsified, it is completely a matter of philosophy and faith. Something that cannot be falsified cannot possibly be considered a matter for scientific methodology.
I’m not sure where you think this is taking you … but I’m a Molinist at heart as well… and I don’t see the logic of your rejection.
When God speaks to his devoted (… or even to those who oppose him …) he is not speaking to them IN THE FUTURE … and he is not speaking to them IN THE PAST.
When he speaks to you, or me, or some Koresh-like messiah … he is speaking in the NOW. He can make all the plans he wants … with all the foreknowledge you might ascribe to God … but it is his children that keep him from being a mirage of Deism …
I’m not trying to sound dismissive. Of course, an infinite God who is omnipresent in all of the spatial dimensions as well as in the temporal dimension does have the ability to operate at any particular point within that coordinate plane----but that does NOT thereby make God bound by any of those dimensions.
So I guess I don’t see the logic of your rejection any more than you don’t see the logic of mine.
God said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” He didn’t say he was the God of the patriarchs.
What is all the more incredible is that even a lot of ACM members (Association of Computing Machinery) who consider themselves expert on the algorithm revolutions of the 1970’s and 1980’s are not always aware of how many elite programmers working in proprietary/secretive environments were applying evolutionary algorithms to problems almost out of desperation when they lacked the massive parallel computer/supercomputing behemoths that the DOD and NSA took for granted. (I saw three-man programming teams at small DOD-subcontractor shops running circles around the high-paid code-jockies who were spoiled by computer hardware that everybody else salivated over.) They were well ahead of the curve and sometimes had to watch others get the limelight of publishing the first paper on this and that innovative technique—yet I knew from various contract jobs where I reviewed grant proposals for DOD and National Weather Service that some of those published breakthroughs in algorithmic elegance in ACM Journals had actually already been on the job in corporate America for several years but nobody wanted to risk loss of proprietary advantage. (And they lacked the legal departments to defend what would be stolen if the word got out.)
More recently, I’ve been amazed at the use of evolutionary algorithms to “virtually evolve” things like the genomic archetectures which can give perennial plants (eventually in nursery grade bushes and trees) maximum light-emitting properties for providing security and safety lighting for six to eight hours after sundown. The optimum “genomic designs” drive “gene guns”, basically prototyping light-emitting plants which gain luminosity in steps of about 0.5% to 0.8% per development month. And I think about this example every time I see someone post a forum topic like “Evolutionary Theory Has No Practical Scientific Benefits”.
Imagine. By studying the evolutionary processes which surround us in such profusion, software engineers have implemented the mathematics of evolution and used the concept to solve design problems in virtually every field where there are daunting problems to be solved. To see that expertise turned around and get applied to “synthetic genomes” which basically bypass nature and directly fabricate the kind of optimized organism we need—and without waiting thousands of generations to do so—is one of the grandest examples of man improving on nature by applying nature’s own tricks.
Yes, the fact that these applications have become so commonplace and have spawned a rapidly growing industry makes evolution-deniers look even more archaic than they did in 1965 when grand denialist Henry Morris first spoke at my church. It’s now a half century later and that kind of ignorance continues—but seems a hundred times as pathetic as it did then.
Jonathan_Burke can certainly speak very ably for himself but because you are challenging me on the same topic, I will briefly address it:
Do you doubt differential calculus as well? I think it is sheer bluff. Even though it is used in various industries, is taught at virtually every university, and calculus textbooks abound in libraries and bookstores, if someone doesn’t understand differential calculus, then I suppose they might as well declare that it has no validity or doesn’t even exist----and then fold their arms and demand that the rest of the world “prove” differential calculus to them.
Alternatively, one can use a search engine like Google or visit a library and discover that differential calculus exists and is actually extremely useful. And while the skeptic is already there in an investigative capacity, they could research additional topics and discover that the algorithms which both Jon and I cited with concrete examples are NOT “sheer bluff.” Yes. They exist.
As to your unicorn challenge:
If I told you that unicorns exist, and you did say “Find me one example!”, I would send you to either Google or a local zoo----where you could see for yourself without demanding that other people do the research for you. You would discover that the unicorn (Latin for “one horn”) is also known as the Indian Rhinoceros, and was assigned the scientific name “Rhinoceros unicornis.” (The two words together mean “nose horn” and “one horn”, an excellent description of the animal.) When the KJV Bible was published in 1611, “unicorn” was the common name virtually everyone used when referring to the Indian rhinoceros. When travelers brought back to Europe stories of the unicorns they had seen in their travels to India and the spice routes, they didn’t have any photographs to show, so it was easy for illustrators to misinterpret “It looks like a horse with a single horn on its nose” and imagine the horse as a pixie pony.
So instead of your usual rants on these forum threads about how you don’t believe us—or the science academy in general for that matter about all sorts of established science----why not do your own research? Your constant demands that we provide remedial tutoring has rarely been successful for you.
Many of us enjoy a good debate and a diversity of opinions. But science-denialism which obstinately rejects reality and well-published scientific methodologies and discoveries which have been available for many years in peer-reviewed journals and countless editions of university textbooks, well…that kind of denialism is just plain boring. And it serves no purpose. Why not educate yourself on the various topics that you don’t understand and then come back here and raise questions about aspects of the science which you find difficult? At least learn the terminology and a few simple definitions. (And when you keep telling us that you know unnamed PhD scientists who agree with you, that only serves to remind us that nearly every field has a 0.1% fringe that will agree with just about any wackadoodle pseudo-science imaginable, from flat-earthism to 9/11 controlled demolitionism to anti-vaccination rubbish. No thanks. Not interested.)
Jonathan_Burke already posted a link to an outstanding example of how the algorithms you deny are used to design antennas for NASA’s space probes. Did you read the article? (You don’t have to answer that question for me. Because you simply deny peer-reviewed science at the slightest whim, we have nothing to talk about.)
The fact that you don’t believe such design projects even exist tells me that you don’t care about peer-reviewed science, which explains the defiant pattern I’ve been seeing in so many of your posts. That is certainly your right to reject science and to demand that we spend time trying to convince you. But it is also my right to ignore that demand and go discuss more interesting topics with people who are not science-denialists and deniers of peer-review itself.
When you don’t wish to make the exertion to read Jon’s link and educate yourself on well-documented science, why should I waste time tutoring? The industries based upon such algorithms are going to go right ahead making discoveries and go on designing solutions to complex problems. They will keep building lucrative products whether you “believe in” them or not. The scientific discoveries will continue with or without your “skepticism.”
Yes, you have the right to doubt anything you wish to doubt. And I have the right to ignore what I consider a waste of my time. Thus, I will continue to treat your posts like I do all posts on these forums: I skim and select the comments and topics which interest me. And I ignore the others—because there are only 24 hours in my day and I have to set priorities.
Even so, I hope that you will adopt a less defiant and more productive approach in the future and perhaps start raising interesting topics which everyone will be happy to discuss. You are always welcomed to do that. In the meantime, I must politely decline and allocate my time to other posts.
I can scarcely imagine a more appropriate illustration of blind skepticism than “Find me one example of a unicorn!” There are thousands of examples of unicorns and all one has to do is consult reference resources, start learning what the word means, and start investigating what the science-academy has determined in the course of peer-reviewed research. Everyone else does it. You can too.
In the same time interval that one expends denying knowledge, one can actually acquire it.
