@Pauluc: I do indeed think you are wrong but you

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

I do indeed think you are wrong but you have introduced so many caveats and defined so closely and narrowly what you are looking for that it becomes futile and meaningless to offer any specific response.

I don’t get your objections here? Are you suggesting that it is impossible to tell the difference in functional complexity between different types of systems? – like the difference between a protein-based function that requires a single protein of just 10 specifically arranged amino acid residues vs. one that requires a minimum of 10,000 specifically arranged residues within 50 different specifically arranged proteins? Can one not tell the difference here? – as to which one is more functionally complex?

Do you really not understand that some things are more functionally complex than other things? What is so hard to understand about this simple very basic concept?

If a system requires more specifically arranged parts to work to produce a given type of function is it not clear that this type of function is at a higher level of complexity compared to a different type of function that requires fewer parts or less specificity of the arrangement of parts?

This isn’t rocket science you know. These simple concepts have been described in published mainstream literature. Also, the nature of sequence space, to include the exponential decline in viable vs. non-viable sequences for sequence spaces that contain systems at higher and higher levels of functional complexity has also been described in literature.

Not to mention our private emails concerning your low view of scientists, dating and ice cores initiated after you censored my post on this site.

I never censored your posts on this site to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps Shane inadvertently deleted some of your posts?

In any case, back to the topic actually at hand, all I’ve asked you to do is to present any example of evolution in action producing any novel system of function beyond very low levels of functional complexity – i.e., a system that requires a minimum of more than 1000 specifically arranged amino acid residues.

It’s a very simple concept. Why act like you don’t know what I’m talking about?

What I find particularly disappointing in this thread is first that you attack a Erwin a scientist who has rigorously and actively tried to understand dating methods and attempt to reconcile this with his understanding of the Gospel but secondly that you now wish to set yourself up as the arbiter of what is real science and yet be so unwilling to propose and test your hypotheses in the only arena that matters the peer reviewed literature.

If you can’t answer my very simple question, just say so. Otherwise, you know as well as I do that mainstream literature is not unbiased with respect to what it will and will not publish on this topic in particular. Just ask Richard Sternberg or Stephen Meyer what happens (Link).

Beyond this, the relevant information regarding the creative powers of RM/NS beyond very low levels of functional complexity has already been published, as already noted for you.

As far as Erv Taylor is concerned, he goes around attacking the most basic goals and ideals of the Seventh-day Adventist Church regarding the literal 6-day creation week in particular, suggesting that those who believe in such fairytale nonsense are either completely ignorant or in some other way self-deluded to the point of living in Alice’s Wonderland (his own words). Yet, he himself is even more inconsistent in his acceptance of the existence of God and of Jesus as the Son of God, born of a virgin woman, and raised from the dead after three days to go back to Heaven to intercede with the Father on our behalf.

I’m simply pointing out the rather obvious inconsistencies of Dr. Taylor’s position here – which seems to be lost on you since you have also been fooled into believing that mindless mechanism can somehow build men out of mud given enough time and raw undirected energy.

If you don’t see the difference between just-so story telling and science, if you don’t see the need for real scientific hypotheses to be based on measurable predictive value (i.e., some form of statistical odds analysis), then you simply don’t understand how science really works – and neither does Erv Taylor.

Concerning your fixation with the numerology I can use R and bioconductor probably better than the average biologist but like lawyer jokes the adage about “lies, damn lies and statistics” resonates because it has some basis in reality. Biologists use statistics to decide what is the likely among the possible processes and hypotheses. Statistics and mathematics are tool in biology not the reality. Particularly annoying I find the abuse of post hoc probabilities which are largely meaningless and depend on the rigor of your definition of the dependent variables proposed as precedent to the outcome. Bayes and the savy gambler understood the real purpose of statistics.

I know you don’t like statistics and think statistical analyses of hypotheses are all suspect and subject to manipulation for various agendas, but if you don’t have some sort of backing to produce some kind of predictive value to support your hypothesis as superior to competing hypotheses, you’re not doing science.

And, we aren’t talking post-hoc probabilities here. We are talking about making meaningful predictions of the creative potential of the mechanism of RM/NS at various levels of functional complexity. The concept of functional complexity has been well defined in literature. I’m not simply making up my own definitions here. Different levels of functional complexity occupy different types of sequence space. The sequences spaces that contain higher-level systems have an exponential reduction in the ratio of potentially viable (and beneficial) protein sequences. This produces a statistical effect on the odds of evolvability of functionally novel protein-based systems which can be used to make scientifically valid predictions as to the effectiveness of RM/NS at a given level of functional complexity over a given span of time. These predictions can be tested and potentially falsified – as with any valid scientific hypothesis.

Such is not true for your just-so stories about how RM/NS must have done the job in the past even though you have no observable higher level examples nor do you have any statistical basis for your stories that can actually be used to produced useful predictive value for your assumed mechanism. Therefore, in what sense of the word are your just-so stories for the creative powers of RM/NS beyond very low levels of functional complexity “scientific”?

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