Methodological Naturalism Revisited

Faith & Science Conversation
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I think this still gets to part of the issue I’m finding… adding additional requirements or credentials for the nature of the intelligence detected comes across to me as special pleading. Why can we just not recognize something as intelligently designed, regardless of what we know or don’t know about the nature of said intelligence?

Do we hold SETI to these same standards? Are they allowed to examine a radio signal and suspect intelligent agency, even if “there is no independent evidence” of said intelligent being(s)?

What if the radio signal was determined to have originated from a galaxy 500 million light-years away? Do we tell the SETI team that their argument for intelligent agency will be rejected because they are invoking an intelligent agent within the Cambrian timeframe?

No, we don’t hold them to those standards. Why are these standards invoked to discredit or undermine ID, but quietly put away if we move the discussion to SETI?

No, they are allowed to simply recognize intelligent agency, even while having absolutely no further information, or harboring no assumptions whatsoever about the nature of that intelligence, nor the process used to create said transmission, no?

In short, this strikes me as special pleading, I’m afraid. Standards arbitrarily used to discredit the ID method that are not equally applied to other “legitimate” methods for seeking intelligence… though I’m of course open to being corrected. If I am misunderstanding.

62

I would have to disagree. The natural process is incapable of allowing an elephant to give birth to a giraffe. This would be a miracle and a clear indication of supernatural activity.

Let’s assume the development of the first eye spot required 30 gene changes. If you saw a single transition with all 30 gene changes that would be a miracle. But what if God coaxed each one of those changes over a long period of time with each change easily explained by mutation or other mechanism? Designed by God but leaving no fingerprint to say He did it.

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:smile:

Aha! Now the argument I have so often been ridiculed for making is being used! When I say something relatively similar to this I am accused of arguing from “incredulity”… At least it seems you agree in principle with the basic underlying logic! Certain phenomena, if inexplicable by natural processes, and more consistent with intelligent purpose, would be clear indication of something else going on, indeed! Thus far it seems we agree.

Now, when I have made a similar sounding argument … that I do not believe the natural processes available are capable of achieving a certain result, I am challenged to the effect… “name one specific mutation that could not have happened over that period.”

So, out of curiosity, let me turn around and ask you the same… what specific mutation that would be required to turn an elephant’s dna into that of a giraffe in one generation is God incapable of achieving through “natural processes”? Is there any one specific deletion, addition, or change to the animal’s genes that God couldn’t have accomplished through natural means? If not, then you have to admit that such an outcome is “possible” according to the laws of nature, no? As I am told to do when I express my doubts?

Even so, I’m general, I think we are reaching a general agreement. It sounds like we agree there are some things in biology that are clearly within the basic boundaries of what is fully explicable within what we can “natural” phenomena. Then on the other side, there are things (even if just hypothetically) that simply could not be explained by natural processes.

We differ on where we draw the line between the two, of course. I assume that as you look at biology, you see nothing inexplicable from natural laws. I on the other hand see some feats in biology that are in the same “category” you described above, where, to borrow your language, I would say about them, “The natural process is incapable of allowing [them].” It sounds our disagreement is simply over where we would draw that line, but not whether there is such a line.

But I am delighted that it seems we agree thus far, at least.

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As for this, it would depend. In principle, I could see the process you note happening, guided by God through what would be means undetectable and indistinguishable from what we recognize as the regular flow and processes of nature.

But i would personally have to think through the processes involved:

  • What was the precursor to that eye spot gene? Was it already coding a critical gene unrelated to sight? Or was it simply a part of the gene that was unexpressed and unusable. Presumably the latter, as If these 30 mutations ended up destroying a gene critical to organisms survival before it achieved light-sensitivity. Let’s assume they were working on a duplicated section as their raw material, something that would have produced a relatively functional protein, one that serendipitously was similar to those needed to detect light, but which needed yet those 30 mutations.

  • We shall assume that all 30 mutations were necessary before said organism gained any benefit. This seems reasonable, not adjust any protein will work, Granted, once you have some function, natural selection can engage to keep the good and allow increasing improvements. But until you have some initial function, and any benefit, natural selection would not distinguish between the fake code transcribing nonsense and nonfunctional DNA. If so, those 30 mutations just have to show up, in just the right places, with no assistance, no guidance, natural selection can’t help.

  • During the process, given that natural selection can’t help at this stage, the right mutations to achieve this benefit, even if they do show up, won’t necessarily be fixed in the genes… by the time you get another one right, the first one may have mutated to something else.

  • Even if you get the 30 mutations in the right place, and have a protein that works, have you wired it to the rest of the organism’s nervous system? If not, you have an organism that has cells that can detect light, but it doesn’t know it has cells that can detect light. You also have to simultaneously be properly modifying the nervous system, connecting the reaction of the light receiving proteins through some rudimentary nervous and/or hormonal communication to the animal’s nervous system, then the animal has to have also fortuitously and accidentally evolved some kind of instinct that responds in a beneficial way to said stimulus… how many coordinated and simultaneous other mutations have to take place across the organism, all of which unaided by natural selection, as until the organism experiences any benefit from light sensitivity, all these modifications are accomplishing exactly nothing.

  • Now, given the way nature typically works, is it realistic that even 30 fortuitious mutations could show up in the realistic timeframes needed? Let’s even say it doesn’t need to be any very specific set of mutations, let’s give thousands upon thousands of options that would work in the 150+ length gene that would accomplish light sensitivity in the protein. Would it be that hard?

This could be a ridiculous comparison, but how hard would it be, over time, to randomly string together a mere 30 letters that corresponded to something im Shakespeare’s works? Again, wouldn’t have to be a specific phrase… any of the countless variety of strings of 30 letters in Shakespeare’s works. The simulator was run, and after 10^35 pages of output, the biggest match was a mere 23 letters.

Not that these are supposed to be analogous… but the question of, “only a mere 30 mutations” sounds simple, until I think about the real likelihood when we’re talking about mutating a 150+ length protein, the odds start getting ridiculous to get 30 gene changes in the just the right coordinated places in order to accomplish this relatively simple process, even over the many multiple generations were are talking about.

So yes, each of those independently examined doesn’t seem odd or extraordinary. But seeing them all together, and in conjunction, starts to get out of the realm of natural and into the obviously intended.

One last example. Let’s say we agreed to this experiment: You sent me a box just full of scrabble letters (I mean, a big box. Huge. Full of like the letters gathered from 100 games or something.) so we start this experiment:

Every day, I blindfold myself, randomly take one letter out of the box and mail it to you in an envelope And you examine what you get in the mail every day to see if you see anything suspicious.

And every day, you examine your letter, and nothing about it seems odd. Every letter you received is not extraordinary in any way. It is a genuine Scrabble letter. And no letter you receive seems improbable. The first day you get a “T” completely ordinary and within the real likelihood of any other letter. The next day you get an “O.” Again, nothing extraordinary about that letter, either,

But you start to notice something… as you start to get more and more letters as the weeks pass, you review what you received in what order. Day 1 was a “T”. Second day and “O.” Third day a “B.” Fourth an “E” (common letter, nothing extraordinary…) but then yoUkeep going… O… R… N… O… T… T… O… B… E… T… H… A… T… I… S… T… H… E… Q… U… E… S… T… I… O… N…

OK, so any particular letter you receive is completely explicable by the rules we set up, and consistent with the basic rules of random probability and distribution. But there comes a point where you will accuse me of cheating, and not selecting these letters “randomly,” and you will recognize intelligent purpose, even if the process was spread out over a long period, and even if every single step, examined independently, would show absolutely no evidence of any such intelligent agency. Would my intelligent agency be “detectable”? Every step along the way any intelligent agency is undetectable, no?

In other words The fact that God’s design may have been spread out across generations, each step undetectable as intentional design, would not mean, to me, that the final product must thereby for that reason be undetectable, as I hope that illustration demonstrates.

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This is not quite your argument. You start with “the process is impossible!” but have no proof that this is so. It would be easy to prove your elephant example would be impossible.

Nothing inexplicable when God is in control. Big difference there.

The 30 was just a random number for example’s sake. It might be 3,000 changes, but it doesn’t make any difference. The changes are all small steps, some in the right direction and some in the wrong direction, but all under the control of God. Again, why would it be any problem for God to direct the steps?

So you agree that God could have used evolution to create the design that we see? And since it is undetectable the theory of evolution can be taken as true if you wish to exclude God. So where does that leave ID?

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Finished? Don’t want to spoil your moment but there are other possible explanations. In addition to it being a divine miracle we should allow that you could be hallucinating what was ‘seen’, your brain is being kept in a vat and experimented on by a mad scientist, or perhaps you’ve just entered the twilight zone. But certainly attributing it to He who can do all things has got to be on the list too. Or we could just cross that bridge when we come to it.

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I’d beg you again to indulge me for the sake of the argument… what specific mutation, or other process, makes this actually impossible, rather than merely extremely improbable?

No problem at all for God to direct the steps… point only is, as per my Scrabble illustration, there comes a point where the just right accrual of just the right mutations in the face of the ridiculously overwhelming odds against that happening would begin to be detectable as something very intentional going on, even if every individual step, judged by itself, didn’t seem particularly improbable or extraordinary or inconsistent with what we would expect given basic natural laws.

I have no particular scientific or philosophical objection to “theistic evolution” per se, it being distinguished from EC. Theistic evolution and EC I understand essentially being distinguished by whether God somehow “directly” intervened at places to lead to certain achievements, or used strictly natural means indistinguishable from the natural processes.

So yes, God could certainly have used the evolutionary process as we call it. My only core objection is that, if I notice that process, time and time again, churning out stunningly brilliant marvels of engineering far beyond our ability to understand much less replicate, which would have taken the evolutionary process ridiculously fortuitous and at times fortuitous multiple
coordinated rewiring, I don’t think this is any longer what I’d call “undetectable”, whether or not it took place in one generation (as per my elephant-giraffe) or a million (as per your eye spots).

Your eye spots, as I think about them, are a perfect example.

The reason you think the elephant-giraffe thing “impossible”, I imagine, is not that you can point to any particular mutation in the sperm or egg cells of the parents that are inherently physically or chemically impossible, but clearly having that number of mutations happen just so, just right, in the very short amount of time involved is clearly ridiculously absurd. It would approach 1 in a googolplex or magnitudes beyond.

But the mere 30odd mutations seem far more likely, in the realm of probability, especially if we imagine them stretched over 100,000,000 generations. This all of a sudden doesn’t sound so improbable.

But even so, this is far harder than it sounds at first… a mere 30 letters in a row out of all of Shakespeare’s writings? Shouldn’t be so hard especially with our computing power, and the many, many trials. And after 10^35 pages, still no luck. In all honesty, have you ever played with the numbers, to see for real how likely it is to get 30 required mutations, unassisted by natural selection, out of a 150 or 200 length protein?

It is just that i mess with some of those numbers too, and realize that, even assisted by natural selection, there still have to fortuitously arise large numbers of coordinated mutations across biological systems for certain new features to arise at all. And given the ridiculous amount of mutations possible across those 100,000,000 generations, I realize that in developing a protein that is sensitive to light that would need 30 specific mutations (or various combinations of 30odd mutations even), the odds of getting just those specific ones pale in comparison with all the other alternatives that blind chance could have arrived at. and then how many coordinated mutations must simultaneously happen, again unaided by natural selection as any benefit requires the creature not simply to have light-detecting proteins, but also have those proteins communicating with the rest of their particular cell, and those cells reworked so as to provide that information to the nervous system of said organism, and the organism rewired in order to develop an innate instinctive reaction beneficial for survival based on recognizing said light, etc. sounds simple at first, but once I realize how complex the process is, the odds against it just so happening to come out in such a fashion start to approach one in a googol.

So sure, merely getting 30odd necessary mutations sounds simple and feasible for nature to do, especially if each small step is guided by God, and I’d agree so far that each small step would certainly be undetectable if influenced by any intelligence.

But just as my Scrabble experiment would show, there comes a point when looking at the larger process, the fortuitous result after fortuitous result that shows premeditation and foresight even… that I can no longer say any intelligence in the process is “undetectable”. Clearly, at some point, even assuming evolution took place as is assumed by small steps, I would think it is legitimate to notice there are some shenanigans going on.

I think Dawkins’ weasel simulator is relevant here. If you look at any one step of the process, in isolation, no one could detect any purpose, teleology, or design in the process.

No one could look at

WDLTMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P

And see it change to

WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO P

And think there is anything going on more than strict random letter substitutions. Any “design” happening here is so subtle and indistinguishable from entirely random mutations. But once you get to

METHINKS IT IS LIKE I WEASEL

In a mere 40 generations, you certainly are right to recognize someone is stacking the deck.

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The elephant’s immune system would attack the foreign body of the garaffe.

Have you ever heard of a drunkard’s walk? You keep looking at the final step and saying how improbable it is that we arrived here. Yet when you look back over that path taken to get there there is no indication that the path taken was done with any intention of arriving at the end point. The path is not a relentless movement toward a final goal.

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Firstly, I very much appreciate everyone’s dialogue here. I feel this has been more constructive than other discussions in the past, and I appreciate everyone’s engagement.

Let me toss out the hypothetical illustration I’ve used before, as I think this illustrates at core my issue with MN and how it does or doesn’t play out. Not sure if @Mervin_Bitikofer, @jpm, @MarkD, @Boscopup, @Bill_II, or any others have heard this before, but if you follow my difficulty here, you will understand the basic core of my difficulty with MN, however it is defined or understood. Given our productive dialogue so far, this may be of further benefit…

————

So, let’s say an archaeologist digging in Sinai finds a small fragment of a stone. Barely legible, but certainly there, unmistakable, are small scratches that clearly read, in a very ancient Hebrew, the letters: “L’ YHYH LK ‘LHYM ‘CHRYM ’L PNY”… “you shall have no other gods before me.”

From all that I read here, it seems that the scenario is this:

  • If the archaeologist believes these letters to have been carved by a human (perhaps by Moses himself), then his recognition of those letters is legitimate, and scientific, and reasonable. He is invoking a “known” cause, an intelligence with which we are familiar. And as such, if he claims to see evidence of intelligent agency in those letters, he is perfectly legitimate in so doing.

  • However, if for some reason, that archaeologist suspects that this may well have been the tablet carved by the hand of God himself… then everything (magically?) changes. To borrow Steve Schaffner’s criteria above, this archaeologist’s conclusions about these markings being the result of an intelligent agent ought be rejected as they are “invoking” an unknown intelligence, one with which we are unfamiliar. His belief can make no predictions. He is appealing to unknown methods of carving…and as such, it is illegitimate for him to recognize any intelligent agency in the Hebrew sentence on that rock fragment.

?

Now, I would agree 100% that we should reject the archaeologist’s argument if he were, in fact arguing that the particular agent was in fact God himself. So far, so good. Science can’t do that. At that point we would be jumping from science to theology.

But science can and ought to determine if these scratches are or are not the result of intelligent activity, no?

I think it beyond self-evident that the archaeologist is completely legitimate in reaching a more modest conclusion, that being that the Hebrew sentence is the result of (an unspecified) intelligent agency. And so long as he does not make any specific claim… even if he believes them to have been carved by God, he is perfectly appropriate to publish and document his evidence that these scratches are not simply the result of natural forces, but they are the result of a mind, of intelligent agency.

It seems to me patently obvious and self-evident… if a person comes across a rock fragment with a clear Hebrew sentence on it, one should be able to recognize it as the work of an intelligent agent regardles of what one believes, knows, suspects, hypothesizes, doesn’t know, doesn’t believe, or the like about the specific nature or identity of that intelligence. if it is Hebrew letters, making a sentence, then it is the result of intelligent agency. And it doesn’t matter if that intelligent agent was in fact God, an angel, or a hyper intelligent shade of the color blue. It wouldn’t matter if the archaeologist believed it had been carved by God or a person. Hebrew letters forming a sentence are the result of intelligent agency regardless of what one does or doesn’t believe, or suspect, about the identity of that intelligent agent.

Can we all agree that far at least?

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No problem here. Those carved letters and all other text in any form are the result of an intelligent agent, whatever that agent’s intent may have been in making them. So stipulated.

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But of course. And the letters I noted in our scrabble experiment are essentially just as likely (or unlikely) as any other combination of 30 letters I would have randomly picked out. But if you objected and said I was cheating, how convincing would my “drunkard’s walk” argument be to you… that getting “TOBEORNOTTOBETHATISTHEQUESTION“ is just as possible a stopping point on our drunkard’s walk, with essentially the same probability, as “HEFPEQUFGKVIRFRAITGHEPTOHISURN“

So if, for for instance (just making numbers up), for every googol number of combinations of our 30 hypothetical mutations, only 1,000,000,000,000 of them would lead to an astounding trait like light sensitivity, while all the others would result in something deleterious, uninteresting, or relatively unremarkable even if functional… but that astounding trait was the one that happened to arrive… you’ll forgive me for being as suspicious of the “drunkard’s walk” explanation as you would hopefully be if I made the same claim about our scrabble experiment?

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Certainly true and agreed. In reflecting on that example this morning, I am reminded of how often we say things like, “God’s hands are on that,” or “That has God’s fingerprints all over it.” The difference in that and inscribing on rocks is that we know the mechanism of how rocks are carved, and the physical process involved, whereas meeting our future spouse at a college fraternity mixer is a little more vague in means and mechanism. God may be the ultimate cause of both, but science isn’t going to prove it, though it may give an indication of where and what people group carved it. And I think that is where EC and ID part: ID tries to make primary causation science, where EC relegates primary causation to metaphysics. Certainly, at the level of primary cause, there is agreement.

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So one other point for consideration…

If someone was a committed and devout atheist, would it be appropriate, scientifically, for such a person to examine biological life, and conclude that it bears the hallmarks of design, rather than being in explicable by strictly natural/unintelligent/indicted processes?

As whatever potential or hypothetical designer that he would consider would clearly be in no way supernatural?

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Oh geez, there’s no such thing. An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in gods. “Committed and devout” is projection.

I don’t accept the assumption that those two things are mutually exclusive. But the answer to this disjointed question is basically yes, it is perfectly appropriate for an atheist to be open to seeing design in biology. You note correctly that the designer need not be supernatural. I would add that there need not be a designer to explain design.

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I dislike these kinds of questions, as they presuppose a conclusion that may not be true. For example, “Would it be appropriate for a lactose intolerant person to examine the moon scientifically and conclude it was made of Roquefort cheese?” Certainly, but it is not going to happen. That stretches it to the extreme, but the principle is the same.

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I can’t imagine why an atheist would seriously consider that life was designed. If an atheist has taken gods off the table then he can only be talking about the design work of advanced aliens. But the advanced aliens could not themselves have been designed except by earlier, still more advanced aliens. Without appealing to the supernatural, from whence comes the first designers?

Also saying that something was designed is little more than a rough sort with little depth of detail or explanatory power. We still don’t know how it was designed or by whom. So it is no argument in favor of design that a full natural account has not been given, when the design hypothesis is every bit as lacking.

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Apparently, that is exactly what Francis Crick did propose…

Francis Crick (who co-discovered the structure of DNA with James Watson) and Leslie Orgel once proposed that life on Earth was the result of a deliberate infection, designed by aliens who had purposely fled mother nature’s seed to a new home in the sun. Crick repeatedly addressed the question of the origin of life between 1971 and 1988 (I am currently working on a historical study of Crick and Orgel’s theory of Directed Panspermia and its reception).
Crick and Orgel proposed their Directed Panspermia theory at a conference on Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, organized by Carl Sagan and held at the Byuraka Observatory in Soviet Armenia in 1971. This theory which they described as an “highly unorthodox proposal” and “bold speculation” was presented as a plausible scientific hypothesis. Two years after the conference they published an articlein Icarus on 1973.
Crick and Orgel were careful to point out that Directed Panspermia was not a certainty; but rather a plausible alternative that ought to be taken seriously.

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You should expand your imagination, by reading Dan Dennett. I don’t believe that “life was designed,” but I recognize design. The premise of your remarks is that design requires a designer. That premise is pure assumption, and it seems to me the only support for it is semantic.

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No projection intended or involved. I was simply using the term I have oft seen atheists use as a positive self-description. If you object to the term, I fear you have an uphill battle in convincing atheists to refrain from using it. It is apparently not very uncommon…

https://www.amazon.com/Very-Best-Richard-Dawkins-Atheist-ebook/dp/B00YB1AM98

…In his short autobiography on the Nobel website, Boyer referred to himself as a “devout atheist,”

”I am a devout atheist – nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator.”

https://theologycorner.net/blog/mennonerds/word-framed-world/a-devout-atheist-suffering/

https://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/what-would-an-atheist-chaplain-do-1.2847435

There are no atheists in foxholes, the old saying goes. Yet it now emerges that there are atheists in the U.S. Army. And some of them are demanding they be given chaplains. As a devout atheist, I confess to mixed feelings about all this.

As a confirmed, even devout, atheist I have more beliefs than you can shake a stick at. Central to them is my belief that there is no God. And it’s that central, overwhelming conviction that human existence is without intrinsic purpose or meaning that motivates my life.

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That is exactly what I was thinking: design = product of a designer. There certainly can be regularity, symmetry and pattern in nature but I wouldn’t think to call them “design”. Oh well. But I think that is exactly what ID has in mind.

Might need to look at something by Dennett. Anything you’d recommend for his ideas about consciousness and AI?