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I just had to toss this in… I just ran across Myers’ May 30 post, Playing God, in which he discusses a Newsweek article on recent efforts to create life in the laboratory. Myers says:

These fellows and others are confident (and rightfully so, I say) that they’ll soon be able to take advantage of molecular technology to build a microorganism from scratch: type a desired sequence into the computer controlling the DNA synthesizer, load up the device with some A, T, C, and G and a set of enzymes, press a button, and a little later you’ve got strands of DNA with your genes written onto them.

And, Myers concludes: “It’s physics and chemistry. Get the recipe right, and that’s all that matters.”

This certainly sounds like Intelligent Design to me, which is possibly why he titled his post Playing God. Unless, of course, he is implying that the biologists working on these projects are non-intelligent beings. 😉

I will say that occasionally Myers at least shows signs of a good sense of humor.

Long ago, in a place far, far away, some great thinkers discovered a cave. This was not just any cave, this was a great cave, much better than the one Plato had found. This cave was truly magnificent – it had natural ventilation, its own natural light source, essentially everything you need (it’s a parable, okay? Work with me on this) to live. These great thinkers began to study the cave, and learned more about the cave than anyone could have imagined; they became exceptionally knowledgeable about the cave and developed wonderful theories about how the cave worked, and even how the cave came to be.

But there was life outside of the cave, and lots of it. There would be periodic reports of goings-on in the cave, to which the outsiders would listen to politely, then turn to one another and yawn, “whatever.”

Now, this little parable is not to annoy or vex anyone, or to oversimplify an issue, and it certainly isn’t a perfect analogy. All I mean to do is illustrate a point with regard to a paradigm known as philosophical materialism. PM, in general terms, is a worldview that presumes that there is nothing which is not of the material world or which is not, given the proper methods and tools, observable and measurable. In this worldview, all issues of faith, revelation or non-measurable experience is inconsequential, and to some, it is outright dangerous.

My proposition is that those adopting a paradigm of philosophical materialism are in less of a position to comment on the world than those who are at least open to other forms of knowledge; science is not the only way to know things. Logic would have to say that someone who chooses only to look at a portion of information is limiting what they know. That does not mean that PMists can’t be experts in their own limited fields, just that they greatly limit their ability to see “beyond the cave.” On the other hand, those who choose only to know spiritual things are not qualified to address issues of science; but, they may prove to have chosen more wisely.

If nothing else, we can revisit Pascal’s Wager, and ask which is wiser: to choose to limit all consideration to only that which is scientifically verifiable, or to at least consider all of the potential interpretations of what is observed? The odds don’t look good for philosophical materialism.

Let’s give them something to talk about…
– Sanjaya Malakar

A question that’s been rolling around my brain for a few days is “of what value is the Darwinist dialog?” Quixote said it well with his comment on yesterday’s post:

Argumentative entropy?

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
—Thomas Aquinas

The concept of entropy is that it is essentially “useless energy.” We know that energy is conserved, but more and more of it becomes useless. Does the conversation also become more and more disordered and useless over time?

Perhaps. However, the real value to me is not to prove anything true or false; in fact, I would say that to attempt that is probably useless, and nothing more than arguments about “foolish controversies” (Titus 3:6). As another of my commentors said, what is true doesn’t “give a crap what you, I, your thermodynamicist or the fossil record says.” No, the goal is not proof; the real value, for me, is in relationship. It is the conversation which I value, and I appreciate blog technology for allowing these conversations to continue.

But, let’s shift the conversation a bit. So far, the focus has been on various aspects of evolutionary theory. However, as I’ve postulated before, I don’t think that evolution itself is the issue; the real issue is God. Evolution has been called “the creation myth of philosophical materialism” for a reason, and the connection between the New Atheists and neo-Darwinism adds support to the notion that this is a religious debate more than a scientific debate (and some scientists are mad at folks like Dawkins and Myers for that very reason).

So, let’s talk about God.

Speaking of challenges to Darwinism:

In the 1860s Charles Darwin proposed a theory of the origin of species. He predicted it would be solidly supported by fossils when enough had been found to fill the gaps. But the fossil record is still just about as gap-py now as it was then: new discoveries are leaving as many empty transitional slots as they are filling. And nobody has yet observed a definite instance of speciation, especially one that involves new structures or functions, in all that time, despite up to 40,000 generations (of animals, bugs, plants, etc.) of trying.
– Tom Gilson

Tom’s blog is called Thinking Christian; it’s a site I visit often, as he usually has some interesting things to say. I like Christians who think about things; we need more of them.

You may also want to check out this; it is a short commentary on an article in Nature about the need to look for intermediate evolutionary life forms (a notable quote: Indeed, in their opposition to evolution, the proponents of ‘intelligent design’ have seized on our current ignorance of intermediates.”).

The issue, however, that I want to discuss is the challenge that entropy is to Darwinism. Entropy has often been raised as a challenge to Darwinism, as the 2nd law of thermodynamics essentially says that everything tends toward entropy or disorder, and this is in direct opposition to the claims that through a combination of random events and natural selection, without any “outside” influence, life began and became more complex and ordered. I’ve read where evolutionists summarily dismiss this argument as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics only deals with temperature distribution. Ah… but does it?

Granville Sewell, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas El Paso, writes in A Second Look at the Second Law:

However, it was soon realized that other types of order can be defined which also never increase in a closed system, for example, we can define a “carbon order” associated with the distribution of carbon diffusing in a solid, using the same equations, and through an identical analysis show that this order also continually decreases, in a closed system. With time, the second law came to be interpreted more and more generally, and today most discussions of the second law in physics textbooks offer examples of entropy increases (or order decreases, since we are defining order to be the opposite of entropy) which have nothing to do with heat conduction or diffusion, such as the shattering of a wine glass or the demolition of a building.

Sewell, being a mathematician, points out that “The second law is all about probability, it uses probability at the microscopic level to predict macroscopic change…” This is then in opposition to non-IDist evolutionary theory, which is “widely accepted in the scientific world as proof that natural selection — alone among all natural forces — can create order out of disorder, and even design human brains, with human consciousness. Only the layman seems to see the problem with this logic.”

So, it seems we are back to a point I made previously, that sometimes thinking too much makes you blind to the basic principle of Occam’s Razor.

Sewell recognizes the common response to this proposition, that the Earth itself is not a closed system, as energy is being received from the sun, etc. The reverse-entropy created by evolution is small in relation to the total entropy of the universe, so it all balances (or unbalances) out. This, however, appears to be mathematical hogwash: “… an extremely improbable event is not rendered less improbable by the occurrence of other events which are more probable.”

Being a mathematician, he is uniquely qualified to comment on the mathematical equations which are the foundation for the theory. As it turns out, the creation of order from disorder is no less improbable in an open system; in fact, the only way for order to increase is for order to be imported into the system! Therefore, he says, “THE EVOLUTIONIST … cannot avoid the question of probability by saying that anything can happen in an open system, he is finally forced to argue that it only seems extremely improbable, but really isn’t …”

The article goes on to point out a number of the other inconsistencies of Darwinism, and how (these are my words, not his) philosophical materialism is a “science of the gaps” approach, and it’s worth reading.

Again, for what it’s worth, a naturalistic approach to evolution has to be doubted in light of Occam’s Razor. That is, unless you presuppose philosophical materialism, because then any simpler, more probable (and some would add obvious) explanation has merely been excluded from consideration.