@Pauluc: Sean I am really confused now. You are on

Comment on A “Christian Agnostic”? by Sean Pitman.

Sean I am really confused now. You are on one hand arguing against a blind faith that would accept Christian faith as based on the revelation of Jesus. You seem to intimate that Christianity must instead be based on evidence and not blind faith but you now seem to be suggesting that the scientific literature in the life sciences is “nothing but blind faith and false extrapolations from very limited examples of evolution in action”.

When it comes to evolution in action beyond very low levels of functional complexity, yes, there is nothing in scientific literature, beyond blind faith, to support the notion that the mechanism of RM/NS is remotely capable of doing the job – nothing. There is no demonstration and there are no relevant statistical models. There is simply no science to support the RM/NS conclusion at all for systems with minimum functional complexity requirements beyond the 1000aa level. There are only just-so stories. That’s it. It is simply assumed, blindly and without evidence to support the mechanism, that mindless mechanisms were somehow able to do the job.

The currently available evidence strongly suggests that this belief in the magnificent creative powers of RM/NS is not only blind, but is completely irrational – directly contrary to everything that is known about protein sequence space and the distribution and exponentially increasing rarity of viable sequences at higher and higher levels of functional complexity.

If you think I’m so obviously wrong, based on the little you’ve read of my ideas online, please do present just one example of evolution in action or a relevant statistical model where the mechanism of RM/NS is shown to likely to produce, in a predictable period of time, any qualitatively novel system of function in a given gene pool which requires a minimum of more than 1000 specifically arranged amino acid residues (to include multiprotein systems where the proteins must be specifically arranged in 3D space). If you find such an example, I’d be very very interested. So far, I’ve been unable to do so.

The only thing you will find in literature in this regard are papers discussing the sequence or structural similarities of higher-level systems compared to the lower-level systems from which it is assumed they evolved. The problem with these papers is that they do not discuss the minimum structural differences required to evolve from one to the other. They do not discuss the statistical problems for RM/NS to produce these minimum structural differences in a reasonable amount of time. They simply assume, blindly, that it happened somehow because they know, from their interpretation of the fossil record, that it had to have happened. They do not, however, have any idea how RM/NS could actually have done what they believe it did in just a few billion years (a drop in the bucket compared to the time that would actually be needed to produce just one qualitatively novel system of function that requires a minimum of just 1000 specifically arranged aa residues (i.e., trillions of years wouldn’t be enough time).

You further seem to have descended into a gnosticism that indicates that there is no need for Christians to do original research and publish and participate in science because all the evidence you need is already in the literature if you can only understand it right.

Original research is great. I’ve published a few papers of my own. There is always and will always be more to learn and understand. However, the relevant concepts regarding levels of functional complexity for protein-based systems, and what happens to the distribution of viable sequences in sequence space at different levels of complexity, have already been published in literature.

Simple basic questions.
1] Do you believe in science as hypothesis testing and is this a route to understanding?

Yes.

2] Can Christians legitimately participate in this activity and publish their findings?

Absolutely.

3] Are biologists doing science in good faith or they all bewitched by the devil and deluded?

I’m sure they are honest and sincere. This has nothing to do with the morality of a person or his/her standing before God. I think that evolutionary biologists are wrong and misguided. They may not understand that what they believe regarding the evolutionary mechanism isn’t really based on science. Regardless of the purity of their motivations however, they are painfully mistaken on this particular topic.

4] How does a simple biologist know which are the just-so stories and which are true?

Just-so stories have no backing by scientific methodologies. They have no testable predictive value since they have no basis in observation or relevant statistical analysis. You can’t actually measure or test the likelihood that a just-so story is more or less true compared to the opposing or null hypothesis.

5] How do you decide which are the evidences that can legitimately be used to build faith and which are not?

All evidences can be used to build faith. It is just that the “evidence” presented must actually have some valid testable, potentially falsifiable, predictive value that can actually be measured statistically vs. other competing options or hypotheses. In other words, there has to be some way to measure the likelihood that your story is more or less likely true compared to other competing stories or hypotheses. It must therefore be testable in a way that produces measurable predictive value.

6] Is there such a thing as Mortons demon and how will I recognize it.

Personal bias is always present and the best one can do is recognize that one’s own previously established biases will always come into play when analyzing new data (see my next post on dinosaurs evolving from birds). I’m not immune from personal bias and neither are you. No one is.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

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Sean Pitman Also Commented

A “Christian Agnostic”?
@ken:

Effective atheist, closet creationist, close to classic IDist or creationist?

Are you sure it is my agnosticism that is changing rather than your opinion of what I am?

I didn’t say that you were effectively an atheist. What I said was that your arguments for agnosticism were effectively atheistic. There’s a difference. Your arguments for God’s likely existence are obviously the opposite of atheistic – certainly not agnostic either.

After all, someone who claims to believe that the existence of God is “likely”, because of ultimate origin arguments, doesn’t match most people’s concept of an “agnostic”.

So, please do forgive me if I am still way off base regarding your true position…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Ken:

You have transported me from an atheist to a closet creationist in the width of a thread my friend. 🙂 I wonder what you will create me as next?

What have I done? – besides point out that someone who claims that God’s existence is “likely”, based on arguments for ultimate causation requiring a God-like intelligence and creative power, isn’t what most people would call an “agnostic”?

In short, your “agnostic” arguments are the very same ones used by atheists like Dawkins and Hawking and your “God likely exists” arguments are essentially the same ones used by IDists and creationists. How then can I be faulted for suggesting that you’re not really an agnostic or an atheist? While you’re not a classic creationist or IDist by any means, you seem to me to be, at least for now, far closer to such than to pure agnosticism… which is a very hard position to hold, in its pure form, for very long I would think. Certainly Hawking couldn’t do it for long. Eventually one decides, like you, to try to figure out which way the turtles seem to be going…

Of course, you could end up falsifying my hypothesis… 😉

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Ken:

Now I think Hawkings thinking about our universe has evolved since he wrote Brief History of Time, because he is looking at turtles ( metaverses) a level or two upwards. However Grand Design implies grand designer doesn’t it. Can design ever be mindless?

Yes, Hawking has apparently evolved, or devolved if you prefer, from the position of agnosticism to atheism since he wrote A Brief History of Time.

As far as your question as to if a “design” can be “mindless”, the answer to that question is yes – depending upon what you mean by the term “design”. As far as we can tell, anyway, what appears to be “mindless nature” does in fact have certain creative powers (discussed further below).

Who or what created the matter for the first turtle? Ever seen a turtle appear out of nothing, ex nihilo?

This is exactly the reason why many scientists and philosophers have come to the conclusion that the “first cause”, whatever it may be, had to itself have been eternal. Of course there are those, like Hawking for instance, who argue that something can indeed come from nothing… but that belief certainly isn’t scientific in that it is not testable in a falsifiable manner and has no useful predictive power.

I told you I was intrigued by Intelligent Design and Deism didn’t I? And I still say that creation of the original matter for the original universe out of nothing is not a rational proposition. Why? Because science and mathematics can not explain infinity, first cause or infinite regress. And philosophy doesn’t seem to do much better (Munchhausen Trilemma).

Now you’re sounding like a creationist 😉

Can turlles read? For their sake I’ ll state it again: when the atheists, sceintists or philosphers rationally explain to me how ‘original’ matter and energy, that ultimately led to intelligent life, arose out of the mindless void, then I’ll become an atheist.

Me too! The only difference between you and I is that you are impressed with the unlikely appearance of original matter/energy out of nothing without a pre-existent eternal intelligence, while I am also impressed by the origin of the informational complexity needed to get otherwise random non-directed energy/matter to produce useful stuff. Consider that the origin of useful information is just as problematic for the atheistic mindset as is the origin of basic energy/matter itself (By the way, atoms and basic atomic particles are informationally rich, as are the fined-tuned fundamental constants of the universe).

If a faith construct ever satistifactority answers my questions then I’ll join that religion. (All come up relativistically short so far).

Science itself is a faith construct. You cannot make any conclusions as to the likely nature of empirical reality without taking a leap of faith, to one degree or another, beyond that which can be absolutely known.

This was Wesley Kime’s point in arguing that faith and science are forced to walk hand-in-hand. This is also the point of well-known philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn. You simply cannot avoid taking on a “faith construct” of some kind – no one can. The only choice any of us really has is which faith construct to take on…

Part of the problem is what we mean by mindless. Can a human mind know the mind of God?

Not in totality of course since we are finite and God, by definition, is infinite. However, we can known what God has given us to know about himself. In other words, we are capable of comprehending certain limited aspects of God.

What may appear as mindless nature may not be mindless at all if we figure out the Grand Design. I think both Einstein and Hawkings understood and understand this dilemma. In fairness and with great respect I think in what you and Dr. Kime in your own way are trying to do as well: marry faith to science for a more fuller and optimistic view of reality. Please note, especially my friend Wes, that I have stated that this is laudable. Not toying around here, I mean what I say.

Faith and science are already married since one cannot exist without the other. It is just that some fail to recognize when they are in fact taking leaps of faith.

Beyond this, you seem to be making the same point that the founders of modern chaos theory made. In short, randomness cannot be proven. What appears to be a random sequence from one perspective may actually be determined by a simple formula from another perspective. The same thing is true about what appears to be the result of a mindless mechanism. Ultimately, from a different perspective, the same phenomenon may have been known or produced by some deliberate purpose.

The problem, of course, is that our perspective is limited. We can only deal with the limited information that we currently understand. So, the best we can say is that certain phenomenon appear to be the result of apparently mindless mechanisms while other phenomena (like highly symmetrical polished granite cubes, or your automobile) much more clearly require the input of deliberate intelligence.

Might I be stretching the boundaries of agnosticim in saying that even though I cannot prove it – because ultimate creation ex nihilo and infinite regress makes no sense to me – the case for an ultimate grand designer/ force makes more rational, ‘likely’ sense?

You are definitely stretching the boundaries of agnosticism to argue for God’s “likely” existence. This is why I have been saying for some time now that you are not a true agnostic. You are a closet creationist to at least some degree. You present some of the very same arguments used by intelligent design advocates and even creationists in favor of the very likely existence of a God or God-like intelligence behind it all.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com