God’s Intrinsic Probability

This is borrowed:

Whenever considering the various arguments for theism, it is worth asking the preliminary question How likely is it that God exists? Our preconceptions on this issue are likely to colour our assessment of whatever evidence for (or against) God’s existence we encounter. It is therefore worthwhile to attempt to establish the intrinsic probability of theism, the a priori probability that God exists.

If we begin with the thought that God’s existence is highly unlikely, then it is going to take very strong evidence to persuade us that he does indeed exist. Whatever positive evidence for God’s existence we encounter, if we begin with a presumption of atheism then we will expect that evidence to be flawed. We may, as a result, view purported theistic proofs with greater suspicion than we otherwise would.

If, on the other hand, we begin our inquiry with an intellectual openness to God’s existence, then we may find persuasive arguments that others would not. Inconclusive evidence may be deemed acceptable on the ground that it confirms a suspicion that we already had. The issue of the intrinsic probability of theism will thus have an effect on the way that we approach any argument on either side of the debate concerning God’s existence. It is rational to take the probability of God’s existence into account when considering such arguments.

The Improbability of God
It is tempting to think that God’s existence is about as unlikely as anything could be. God, if he exists, is infinite in his attributes; in power, knowledge, and love—in his whole being—God is unlimited. Ockham’s razor, then, which tells us that where either of two explanations will do we should always prefer the simpler explanation, recommends that wherever possible we should avoid postulating the existence of God to explain evidence. If there are two explanations of a set of evidence, one invoking God and the other not invoking God, then the explanation that doesn’t invoke God will always be the more economical of the two; it is more economical to postulate any number of finite beings than it is to postulate one infinite being. The hypothesis that God exists, then, seems to be as intrinsically unlikely as it is possible for a hypothesis to be. Prejudice against theism, it seems, is justified.

It might even be thought that the existence of God goes beyond mere improbability, that it is impossible. Certain of the tradition doctrines concerning God’s nature appear to be self-contradictory, while others appear to contradict each other; several of the arguments for atheism seek to exploit this appearance. If this appearance is to be trusted, then God cannot exist--logical contradictions are not just unlikely to be true; they cannot be true--and we can be confidant that any purported theistic proof contains an error even before we examine it.

The Probability of God
Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the alleged contradictions in God’s nature can be resolved. If this is correct, and God’s existence is possible, then the theist can offer a counter-argument to case for the improbability of God’s existence set out above. This counter-argument is offered by Richard Swinburne in The Existence of God.

Swinburne observes that it is simpler to postulate an unlimited force than a limited force. If one postulates a limited force then one is postulating two things, the force and whatever constrains it. If one postulates an unlimited force, then one is only postulating one thing, the force; there is, by definition, nothing that constrains an infinite force.

For this reason, scientists constructing theories will, unless there is good reason not to, prefer to use zeroes or infinities in those theories. The speed of light, for instance, was assumed to be infinite until experimental data disconfirmed this. Scientists recognise that an infinite force is intrinsically more probable than any great but finite force.

This methodology, Swinburne suggests, can be generalised; an infinite being, he urges, is the most probable kind of being. Ockham’s razor, if he is correct, far from implying that God’s existence is less likely than any other explanatory hypothesis, implies that it is more likely than any other explanatory hypothesis; the intrinsic probability of theism is relatively high.

Thoughts on Dagoods' Objections

(A contribution from Paul regarding Dagoods' responses to Jeff's last post)

Dagoods,

Your arguments are good — right at the top of the philosophical game in some instances — and it's refreshing to find an atheist who actually understands Christianity to some meaningful extent. Unfortunately, I do not see any logical defeaters to Christianity here, only some speculation over metaphysical dilemmas that are beyond our resources to resolve with certainty, possible reasons to reject some commonly held characterizations of God's nature, and a whole lot of grudge against the kind of God you think Scripture is portraying. In fact, it looks very much to me like you are assuming certain principles in order to make your case — principles that would be unjustified were atheism true. As Cornelius Van Til would put it, you must first climb onto God's lap in order slap Him in the face. Let me just throw out a few observations on this discussion.

God and time

This is a very interesting topic and I have many ideas as to how God, time, creation, and immutability might be compatible notions. Some might even be compelling to you, but I will predict that you would still find some grounds for dispute. The problem is that we, being creatures of time and material, have absolutely no means for understanding what the possibilities are for being outside, before, or changed by a creation. And you have yourself admitted that a beginning of time leaves you at a logical impasse as an atheist. It is surely a problem, but I at least find that the concept of something "eternal" "outside" of the creation (however that plays out) does more philosophical work for me than the belief that there is nothing at all.

Any scenarios I might suggest would be merely theoretical, or "true" only in an anthropomorphic sense, and the best I could hope to accomplish is to offer a plausible scenario that would be subjectively compelling to you according to the "language" of logic as you understand it (grounding logic is yet another problem for atheism).

God and morality

I see you either unable to make the distinction between objective and subjective morality or you do not believe that it is ultimately meaningful to do so. Let me first simplify it for you as the difference between personally defined morality (inside the box of the cosmos), and morality that is sourced prior to and outside of the box (imposed upon us and/or woven into the fabric of our "selves"). You may not believe in the objective option, or think the word "objective" to be the best term, but the theoretical distinctions should make sense and seem to suggest some rather profound metaphysical alternatives.

Perhaps you believe that an "objective" morality that is ultimately sourced in a deity is really "subjective" after all — God being the subject. So be it, but that is certainly different in a meaningful way from you and I being the final authority on ethical matters. It also is a meaningless point in regard to your relationship and obligations to that external Subject.

Even if one were to affirm that morality was nothing more than what God decreed, what of that? Is it a "bad" thing to be so? Will you say that God has decreed something evil on any given occasion, as though you had some higher moral law at your disposal by which to judge Him? Indeed, you are judging good and evil at every turn, and the majority of your points seem to be dependent upon the idea that God is not actually good and just. But from where are you pulling your moral standards? You must first presuppose objective morality in order for your arguments to have force, otherwise your complaints simply boil down to, "I don't like your God. He doesn't do things like I think they should be done."

Even so, is it not reasonable to think that what God decrees has some meaningful relationship to His own nature and character? Perhaps you may technically see this as taking the divine imperative horn of Euthyphro's dilemma, but it also seems to make sense of the defense that morality comes from God's essence and not simply from a random series of commands serving no purpose. And even if they were random commands, what am I to say against God? Even if I found that I did not like Him, what victory would there be in defying Him?

Nature of evil

Again, debating over a meaningful definition of "evil" is a fascinating (maybe even useful) exercise, but differences in definitions do not negate the existence of it or its philosophical implications. Perhaps you'd like to argue that it really does not exist in any way beyond personal distaste, which seems warranted by your atheism, but that would seem to undermine your recurrent theme of the injustice of God.

The "genocide" of the Amorites (well, some of them anyway) seems to be the main fly in your ointment. But you load the dice in the very word you use to describe it (like "suicide" for the atonement). I could just as well say that the deaths of every human in history constitutes "murder" on God's part. Why isolate this to one small population of people who happened to depart in a programmed fashion by the chosen agency of the Hebrews as opposed to floods, hail of fire, plagues, and cancer? It seems to me that this is small potatoes in the grand scheme of life and death on this earthly existence.

Might I suggest that your context for understanding these things is as a gnat on a marquis, and you have loaded your judgment down with a hundred presuppositions? You are presuming something about the Amorites, something like innocence. You are presuming that dead children are more tragic than dead adults in a world where life itself is often called "tragic." You are assuming that a work of art that is conscious somehow makes the creator subject to the rights and feelings of that creation. You are assuming that you have enough data about humanity, history, morality, and the plans of God to make a right judgment about this or anything. You are assuming that your own distaste for the elimination of a small group of pagans is even meaningful in the context of a worldview that has only an arguable foothold for the concept of morality.

It may be difficult to determine the broad scope and boundaries of good and evil, but this is why we would necessarily be dependent on God, who must ground it, to tell us Himself. Interestingly, Scripture portrays a God who is very keen for us to trust him and to assure us of his good intentions. I thought on this simply as a young Christian ("of course God is good, why would I doubt that"), but with more life experience and further study of the Scripture I realized there was cause for question, just as you did. This makes it all the more meaningful to find those assurances and evidences of the great lengths He has gone to on my behalf in Christ. He has won my trust and respect, not just commanded it; and He assures me that all things will work for the good of those who love Him, even though He reserves the full knowledge of that plan for Himself alone at this time.

Dagoods, I have good reason to believe the Scriptures on many accounts not covered here. My belief in them is not based on my ability to squeeze every action of God into a category of my own likening. Indeed, the very concept of a God who stands over me in authority is not to my "liking." But if I believe in this God, then I must take what He has revealed as the only possible authority and rescue from what must otherwise be epistemological chaos.

A Logical Attack Answered

Dagwood has a closet full of objections to Christianity (and Theism in general). Since the comment section of his blog has gotten too cumbersome for me I'm responding here. It's going to be hard for me to clearly articulate his challenge here because I hadn't gotten around to getting clarification on his objection seen here.

, if God did change his nature? 1) How would you know? And 2) How could you enforce it not happening? Is the “doctrine of immutability” a greater law than God?Question, Jeff. What could God do that is unjust and why is it unjust?

To be fair, I don't know for sure what he means here and will be guessing as best I can. So Dag, please correct me.

If this is taken as an honest question it deserves an answer. If it's somehow meant to be a challenge then I don't see the logical coherence except in the last sentence. So let me take that one first.

The charge is that the doctrine of immutability is logically incoherent. This could be claimed, also, of God's omnipotence (ie. Can God create a bolder too big for Him to lift?). The simple answer is that God cannot do anything that is logically incoherent. God is logical in His nature — He may be said to be "logic" just as He is "love" — and He does not do anything inconsistent with His nature. Indeed, the very idea of doing something logically incoherent is incoherent. One may say incoherent things (like, "I have a non-existent diamond in my pocket"), but producing instances of them is another matter.

Some examples would be:

• God cannot kill himself
• God cannot create a round square
• God cannot change in essence
• And on...

Do these limitations themselves negate omnipotence? The answer is "No". This is because the concept of divine omnipotence was never understood to mean that God could do the logically impossible.

The first two in the example above are logically incoherent, but why would the third one be so? That takes explaining. The Christian concept of God is that He is the greatest conceivable being. In fact, this formulation of God is relied upon by Anselm in his Ontological argument. Since God is the greatest conceivable Being, to change His essence would necessarily entail becoming less than perfect. Therefore, it's logically incoherent for God (and only God) to change His essence.

Of course there is a Biblical argument to support the concept of immutability, but non-Christians don't want to hear those arguments.

So on to the question: Can God do anything that is unjust?

My answer will be two-fold. First, the answer must be no. The charge from Dagwood (I think) is that this makes God subject to the laws of justice. To say yes would make God less than Just. This puts us on the horns of a dilemma, it seems (also known as the Euthyphro dilemma). Perhaps some would be content to say that it's OK for God to be subject to the laws of justice. But if so, where did these come from? Did they preceed God? Are they more powerful than God? Clearly this raises some issues that would cease to have God being God (remember the definition of 'greatest conceivable Being'?).

The answer is that this is a false dilemma. In Dagwood's own words: "I have to tell you. Whenever I see claims of dichotomies, all my red flags go up. There are too many variables in life." Seems he doesn't want to take his own advice and consider a tertium quid solution.

I prefer the answer given by Aquinas and C. S. Lewis. God is subject to a moral code (God cannot sin) and He does NOT define righteousness any way He pleases. God's immutable nature is that of righteousness. The moral code that He must follow is an essential part of His nature. Therefore, there is no dilemma. He cannot act contrary to His nature, yet He's not subject to something outside of Himself. Righteousness is God, and God is righteous. The laws that then proceed from Him are not arbitrary, but are consistent with His will and nature. Dilemma solved.

Some would argue from there that this constraint to act according to His moral nature constitutes a limitation that is inconsistent with omnipotence. Augustine answered this charge by arguing that 'evil' has no ontological value in itself. Evil is simply the absence of righteousness. Like a donut hole isn't a thing...it's the absence of donut. A shadow isn't a thing, it's an absence of light. Therefore you cannot say that since humans can sin, we can do something that God can't (that's true) and that we are therefore, in some ways, more powerful than God (our sin is only a weakness or a lacking, never a strength or capability).

Now on to the questions that were asked. Dagwood, if there is a proper challenge embodied by these, let me know and I'll try to address it.

First: If God did change His nature how would we know? Well, we loosely addressed immutability above, as well as the reason it must be so logically. Beyond that we have His revelation in the Bible attesting to it. But if the logically incoherent did happen and God changed His nature, I assume He would reveal it to us in the way that He revealed past points of change. The main covenants (Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic...) were periods in time where God changed the rules by which mankind was to operate and men were notified of this. This would not necessitate a change in His own nature or the overarching moral principles, only a further unfolding of His temporal plans for humanity. The only way that God's intimate laws for mankind would remain static is if His purpose and plans for mankind were fulfilled and fixed at our creation.

Second: How could we enforce it not happening? Obviously mankind doesn't enforce anything in regard to God. I suspect something was meant that escapes me and that I can expect an elaboration soon.

There is an important note to add here in regard to God's justice. Dagwood likes to point out Biblical narratives that demonstrate inconsistency in God's behavior. I am not willing to say that on every point of God's behavior that I can subjectively justify it. This is because God has so much more knowledge than I do that I'm incapable in all cases of understanding.

However, it's possible in many cases. So here is a stab. Moral imperatives are not as low level as "Don't punch anyone in the nose". They are more general such as "Don't harm people". Well, what if someone is trying to punch me in the nose? Am I justified in punching their nose first to stop them? Most of us would agree it's justified in self-defense. Why? Because there are two competing morals. There is the moral cost of him hurting me and the moral cost of me hurting him. Which one is worse? I'd argue that him trying to hurt me without sufficient provocation makes his moral transgression worse and the overall moral cost of me hitting him first, is less than if he succeeds in hurting me.

That may not have been a great example, so I'll give another one. What if I could take $10 from my friend, and with that money I could provide a starving child with enough food to live for a month. Furthermore, let's assume that this child's starvation is such that she needs food within the next hour to survive. I'd steal the money, but the total moral outcome is far better than if I don't steal the money, thereby allowing the girl's death.

Now imagine that I'm the only one that knows about the girl because I have knowledge you don't. All you see is the theft of the $10 from my friend. You would assume that I was an immoral person. What if, unbeknownst to you, my friend owed me $10? This analogy is ideal for the claim of injustice against God. He's working to bring about the absolute best end result for eternity. He knows the future outcome of actions taken today (or not taken today) and does things that would appear to a finite being as being immoral (say commanding the death of all Canaanites). To top it all off, He owns this world and all the life in it (ala the $10).

Which brings me to a point that needs stressing in regard to the charge that God is unjust. Why is it wrong for us to kill? Is it because human life is precious in some sense? Well, yes. But is this human life precious in a way that is outside of God? (creating a bit of the Euthyphro dilemma again). The primary justification for the value of man is that man is God's creation.

Imagine an artist makes a beautiful sculpture. Now imagine 2 acts: Me walking in his house and destroying it; or the artist walking up and destroying it. The first act is immoral, the second act isn't. It's about dominion. Since God holds dominion over all of creation, He has the right to take human life without the charge of murder.

I know that last statement will make Dagwood tremble with anger. But there's no logical contradiction there, at least as I see it.

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics

Christians are fond of using the argument from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to argue the impossibility (or to be exact, the near impossibility) of evolution occurring naturally.

Over and over again we see evolutionists correcting us by saying that the law only applies to closed systems. Earth is not a closed system because we have energy constantly being applied to the system in the form of sunlight. Earth, therefore, is an open system which isn't subjected to the 2nd law.

The problem is that our intuition SCREAMS at us that order doesn't come from chaos, even if you apply energy from an outside source. So are we simply idiots for continuing to argue from the 2nd law? I don't think so. And neither does this mathematician from Texas A&M.

See Here.

An Observation

If you read headlines or listen/watch the news then you've probably heard about California executing its oldest death-row inmate. Why is this newsworthy? Well, I suppose it's nothing more than the fact that he's old and has one foot in the grave already so people see him as the old man in front of them rather than the murdering scum-bag that ordered the murders of 4 people.

Here's the reasoning behind the appeal of his lawyers. He's 76, he's blind, he's nearly deaf, he's confined to a wheelchair and suffers from diabetes. Therefore, putting him to death constitutes 'cruel and unusual' punishment. In fact, they argued that keeping him on death row itself constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Now, can anyone explain to me why putting someone to death in this condition is cruel and unusual when putting a healthy man to death in the same situation isn't? It's natural that we'd feel more sympathy for this man than we would for a 30 year old tattooed, scary-looking gang-banger. The problem is that the appearance of a man isn't a valid basis for legal pronouncements.

Now, it can be really hard to pigeon-hole people. But it strikes me that those who oppose this man's execution either because they oppose the death penalty, or they oppose it in this case, will be largely left-leaning. It's just a common position on the 'left' of the political spectrum to be against the death penalty.
It's also a 'left' position to be for the right to die. I mean the physician assisted suicide of those who are terminally ill, depressed, or in great chronic pain.
So it stands to reason that there are a large number of people on the left that both support the right to die (euthenasia) and who oppose this death penalty case precisely because the man was so old and so close to death. (note: he had died and been revived in September)

It seems to me that a consistent liberal would actually have to oppose this man's execution somewhat less than they oppose the execution of a healthy, younger man.

No Freedom to Choose in Education

Again, borrowed from the Family Research Council.

Lebec, a small town in California, is named for a 19th century pioneer who died in a fight with a grizzly bear. Residents should not be surprised, then, to find themselves in the middle of another bear fight. When the local school board voted to allow a one-month course in Intelligent Design to be taught as an elective, and under the heading of philosophy, some dissatisfied parents called in Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and went to court. They are trying to block any teaching of Intelligent Design under the auspices of a public school. They oppose it even when students freely choose it. They oppose it even when it's labeled philosophy, not science. "It's scary," says teacher Sharon Lemburg, "I just want to teach. I'm not out for big publicity." It's interesting, isn't it, that liberals defended John T. Scopes in the name of academic freedom and his right to teach Darwin, but are willing to sue to silence Sharon Lemburg?

I find this particularly interested in light of the recent court decision in Dover, PA. In that case the issue was said to be that it was attached to a science class. If it had been attached to a humanities class, or philosophy class it wouldn't have been a problem (or so the detractors claimed). They also said that it wouldn't have been a problem if it had been an opt-in thing...So much for honesty.

Islam and the Forgiveness of Sins

I lifted this from James White's Blog.

The Associated Press is carrying the story of the death of over 300 pilgrims outside Mecca. Note the description of the hajj in this secular report:

Thousands of Muslim pilgrims rushing to complete a symbolic stoning ritual during the hajj tripped over luggage Thursday, causing a crush in which at least 345 people were killed, the Interior Ministry said.
The stampede occurred as tens of thousands of pilgrims headed toward al-Jamarat, a series of three pillars representing the devil that the faithful pelt with stones to purge themselves of sin.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said 345 people were killed. More than 1,000 people were injured, said Dr. Abbasi with the Saudi Red Crescent.
Footage from the scene showed lines of bodies laid out on stretchers on the pavement and covered with sheets. Ahmed Mustafa, an Egyptian pilgrim, said he saw bodies taken away in refrigerator trucks.

Pelting rocks with stones purges you of sin? And this from the religion that has spawned the modern generation of apologists who mock the cross? The article likewise notes that similar stampedes took place in 1990 (1,426 people dead) and 2004 (244 dead). Thousands dying in a mad rush to throw stones at the devil? The contrast again is tremendous: in Islam you throw stones at the devil; in Christianity the very Creator enters into His own creation and gives Himself as the sacrifice that brings forgiveness to all those who are vitally united to Him.

Confirmation Hearings

Well, in honor of the ongoing confirmation hearings on Judge Alito, I thought I'd throw in here a little bit written by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. If you follow these at all, watch for logical fallacies coming from the opposing camp. One of them is mentioned below.

The long-awaited confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr., opened on time today with the sharp rap of Chairman Arlen Specter's gavel. Sen. Specter (R-PA) has been battling cancer for a year, but he has come back looking strong. We don't know yet how Specter will use his great power. For now, we can hope that he will rein in committee liberals when they go over the line in their attacks on Alito. Specter failed, however, to bring that gavel down today on the vicious opening remarks of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Sen. Kennedy's ad hominem attack on Alito and clear falsehoods about the judge's record were shameful, even if expected.

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) spoke for the liberal view when he said, in homely terms, "before we give you the keys to the car, we want to know where you will take us." Here, in a nutshell, is the gaping flaw in the liberal view of the Supreme Court and its powers. They really do think the Judiciary runs the country. They seem to think their only role as lawmakers is to turn thumbs up or down on federal judges--who they admit have the keys to drive the car. Last night, we heard the AIDS activists chanting outside Philadelphia's Greater Exodus Baptist Church: "Under Alito/Our Rights are finito [ended]." That's the rub, too. Note their word: under. In Judge Alito's view we are Under God and Under the Constitution, but we are certainly not under the judges. I believe that is the correct constitutional view. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) politely reinforced that point when he cited the great Chief Justice John Marshall. Marshall was a tremendous jurist, but he limited his powers to the idea that judges "shall say what the law is." They don't write the laws. They don't execute the laws. That's because, as even Franklin D. Roosevelt's friend and appointee Justice Felix Frankfurter noted, the courts function best when they function "within narrow limits."

Second to Ted Kennedy in offensiveness was New York's Chuck Schumer (D). Schumer said his intense questioning of Alito would be fair because the courts will decide "where we pray, how we live, who shall live, and who shall die." Schumer said the Supreme Court gives the "final judgment" because there is "no appeal." Of course, there is an appeal. The American people render a judgment on the role and the record of the Supreme Court. They render that judgment when they elect a President of the United States and when they elect Members of the U.S. Senate. The liberal minority has shown little but contempt for the American people--and for the judgment of American voters--in all they have said and done in these proceedings. All that Judge Alito has ever argued is that elected legislators may make laws on the controversial issues-- provided that they do not violate the U.S Constitution. But in making that judgment, Judge Alito tells us he is a strict constructionist. He offered a brief, simple statement to the Judiciary Committee to close the proceeding for today. He reminded the senators that when he became a judge, he ceased to be an advocate. He was not an attorney, fighting for a particular result for his client. Instead, he said, he took an oath only to interpret the law. That, of course, is why some liberals loathe him.

Back in April 1990, when Alito was nominated for the position he now holds on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Sen. Kennedy said to him during his confirmation hearings, "You have obviously had a very distinguished record. And I certainly commend you for your long service in the public interest. I think it is a very commendable career and I am sure you will have a successful one as a judge." Alito has done so. Senator Kennedy was right the first time.

Evidence Contrary to Evolution - Information Theory

Absolutely everyone agrees that biological systems give the appearance of being designed. In fact, there's agreement that 'design' requires a designer with intelligence. The disagreement comes in when we discuss the question of whether or not biological systems really are designed.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was an objective scientific measure of what constitutes 'design'? Well, there is. It's found in the discipline of Information Theory. William Dembski is perhaps the most well-known proponent of using information theory to judge whether biological systems are the product of an intelligence (it's universally assumed that information content only comes from intelligence).

The genetic code itself is ideal for the study of informational content. The code is made up of a long sequence of 4 repeating nucleotides very much like a short alphabet. In information theory, there are two attributes that both must be contained by some pattern to be considered to contain information. These 2 attributes are complexity and specificity. Here is an example of a string of highly complex symbols:

lkaklsfdoiuwernlkjnahiasvfoias

Notice that this string of data is complex in that the number of different combinations that could occur here (using a 26 character alphabet and 30 characters) is huge. So this fits the complexity test. But what about specificity? Is there anything specified about the seemingly random string of letters? No. A bunch of letters layed out this way randomly does not contain information.

Here is something that is very specified, yet not complex:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

There is no reason to assume information here because, although highly specified there is nothing complex about a recurring string of characters.

This on the other hand:

once upon a time there lived a

Is both complex (huge number of different possible arrangements) and specified (the arrangement is far from random). Now in this case, the specificity is defined by English grammar. If you were to see an apparently random string that was the result of an encryption algorithm, how could it be distinguished from random characters? Well, even an encrypted string of data can be detected to be informational via information theory. There are algorithms that can detect specificity even in the absence of understanding the rules of that particular specification. For instance, when an encrypted transmission is received by the NSA, they can first analyze it to determine if the message is actually meaningful before embarking on the task of trying to break the code.

Now, when applied to the genetic code that drives all living things can we say this is information? Does it contain the property of specified complexity? The answer is yes. There is definitely complexity. No one denies that the genetic code is huge in terms of the number of different possible codes available. Each living organism since the beginning of time (forgetting Dolly and other cloning experiments) has had a unique DNA signature.

The real question is whether the DNA code is specified. Well, that's hard to deny since we know that there is really a very small subset of possible DNA codes that would result in a living creature. For example, take the DNA of an egg and randomly scramble it. What are the odds you could fertilize it and get a living chicken (or living anything)? Very nearly zero.

Since DNA can be proven to be highly complex and highly specified, the debate is really over the premise of information theory. Can 'information' arise naturally? The burden of proof lies with the evolutionists because there is no example known to man. It would be committing a logical fallacy to look at life on Earth as an example since it would be begging the question.

According to William Dembski, this problem is intractable in that future scientific knowledge cannot change the outcome of the answer. He says it's an ontological rather than an epistimological issue.

Evidence Contrary to Evolution - Irreducible Complexity

You've been living in a cave the last few years if you haven't heard the term 'Irreducible Complexity' (IC). IC, in a way, is a revival of the hundred year old Watchmaker argument introduced by William Paley.

What Paley said, using the analogy of a watch found on the beach, is that certain things are obviously the product of a designer. The argument consists of more than that, but that's the best one-sentence synopsis I can come up with. Atheist David Hume, a contemporary of Paley's, was generally credited with successfully discrediting the Watchmaker argument. The weakness is that it's an argument from analogy. The analogy isn't valid, Hume argued, because living organisms are not machines.

Well, fast forward to the last ten years and the great leaps made in the relatively new field of microbiology. We now know exactly how some living organisms work, down to the sub-cellular level. We've seen cells and found that they are machines! This is no analogy anymore. The revival of this design argument stems from this new information.

IC is often described by the analogy of a mousetrap. You can design a wide variety of mousetraps, but if you were to design the simplest mousetrap possible you'd end up with those very cheap traps that consist of a wood platform, the bar that springs shut, the spring that gives it tension, and the latch and trigger. If you were to take away any one of those things then you would have a mousetrap that is not functional. It's irreducible in the sense that if you reduced it even one more step it would be non-functional.

Since we know that biological systems, at their lowest level, really are machines; and since we know that these machines are built component by component via sequences of DNA; and since the neodarwinian model of evolution works through the accumulation of successive mutations, we can conclude that if there are any irreducibly complex biochemical systems found in any living creature anywhere that this is an example of tweaking by an intelligence.

Simply put, if you took the mousetrap and started with a platform, spring, and bar alone you'd have a mousetrap that doesn't work and wouldn't be selected via the evolutionary process. This is a case where, in theory, multiple independent and random mutations would have to accrue without being selected out before you'd have the functioning system.

The problem is even worse in fact. In many systems the intermediate steps not only are non-beneficial, but immediately fatal. I won't go in to the detail (you can find it on the web) but the best example may be blood clotting. Clotting operates through a rube-goldberg type of system of steps with checks and balances. If any one gene in the blood-clotting process doesn't work, it doesn't create the necessary protein and the organism is immediately dead. Gradualism cannot explain blood clotting (at least the blood clotting we see in nature).

This argument is logically sound. The real debate is whether or not anything we see in nature is truly irreducibly complex. What the evolutionists hang their hats on is the idea that genes can originally do one thing, get accidentally copied to a redundant, non-active gene, then undergo mutations in the inactive gene site, then later in the evolutionary process accidentally get activated with the mutations in place operating with a new function.

Beyond this general sketch of how the process might work, NO specific testable theories have been proposed to explain the development of any of the IC structures identified.

The debate won't be over for a long time, but as it stands, regardless of what each side claims, the IC challenge has not been satisfactorily answered. It currently appears as though there are irreducibly complex biochemical structures in nature. And as William Paley said over a century ago, these structures are the hallmark of design. And design requires an intelligence. It's a proven case that nature doesn't produce complex designs (except of course in evolutionary biology...or so they say).

Evidence Contrary to Evolution - Repeated Evolution?

Another piece of evidence contrary to evolutionary theory is repeated evolution. Since the engine driving evolution is random mutation we should expect the outcomes of the process to be unique.

Gould has said:

“…No finale can be specified at the start, none would ever occur a second time in the same way, because any pathway proceeds through thousands of improbable stages. Alter any early event, ever so slightly, and without apparent importance at the time, and evolution cascades into a radically different channel.” Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

This makes sense if we draw an analogy. Consider writing a book with a random word generator. Say you want to rewrite the story of the Tortoise and the Hare using this random word generator. To do so, at each point in the writing process you go to the generator and get a word. If the word is grammatically correct and flows the story properly, then you take it and begin the search for the next word. If not, you throw it out and ask for another random word. Your selection process is much like natural selection and the word generator is like mutations.

You can see that using this analogy we would end up with thousands or perhaps millions of grammatically correct stories that do convey the meaning behind the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. In our analogy, being correct grammatically might equate to having a genetic code capable of biological life and telling the story sufficiently might be analogous to having survivability in the ecosystem.

You can see how each of these 'stories' then would be distinct and no two people doing this exercise would be expected to end up with the same story word for word.

This is how evolution is said to proceed and so Gould's pronouncement is correct. A prediction of evolutionary theory is evolutionary uniqueness.

Now some would give more credit to natural selection than is warranted and would claim that the same ecosystem demands one and only one evolutionary pathway and would therefore end up with the same adaptation resulting over and over again. I don't see these claims being made by serious biologists, but rather Internet pundits so perhaps it doesn't need to be refuted. However, this analogy should serve as a refutation of that position. We can find any number of anecdotal examples that show vastly different creatures surviving in the same ecological niche.

In the last 10 or so years there has been a revolution occurring in evolutionary biology. Genetic sequencing has allowed for an objective way to measure the similarity and dissimilarity of species. Rather than using the mistaken approach of homology (visual similarity) scientists can now determine the closeness of organisms in evolutionary terms by looking at the 'programming' of these organisms.

What has resulted is an anomaly that can't be explained by evolutionary theory. We have a large and growing set of examples where similar species were assumed to have common ancestry based on morphology who are now known to have no common ancestry to speak of.

What this means is that, somehow, we have the same designs showing up repeatedly even though the supposed mechanism is said to be random and unrepeatable.



Consider this picture. These are various species of cichlids from two lakes in Africa. At first glance you'd assume these species come from common ancestry when the two lakes were somehow attached. You'd be wrong. According to genetic analysis all of the fish from their respective lake are more genetically similar to each other than their look-a-like counterpart from the other lake.

I once debated this point with a PhD evolutionary biologist. He did NOT question the assertion that evolution should be unrepeatable. Rather, he took issue with one particular example. If you read the article linked to in the title, you may have noticed the example of Mangabeys. This scientist had worked (I assume during his PhD thesis) on primates. He said that the morphological similarities between drills, mandrills, and baboons could be accounted for if they had shared a common ancestor that exhibited the trait (which could have gone recessive in their immediate ancestors).

I conceded that with Mangabeys his counter argument was plausible. This claim could be tested, of course, by sequencing the DNA of these various species and identifying whether they are close enough to be related by a common ancestor. Also, those closer relatives should show the gene(s) that code for the common trait being non-coded.

Also, this response doesn't solve the problem for all species. You can't claim that wings were a trait shared by the common ancestor of bats and birds and that this common ancestor gave rise to rodents that lost the wings.

Even back before we could sequence DNA, this evidence was staring us in the face. What about marsupials? Either this form of reproduction evolved independently many times (unthinkable) or the forms exhibited by them did. Consider the marsupial wolf, the marsupial lion, marsupial bear...and what about possums and all the other marsupial 'rodents'?


See the article linked to the title for more examples of repeated 'evolution'.

Punctuated Equilibrium

I thought I'd make a post on the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium (PE). This is a theory that was proposed by Gould and Eldridge to explain the fossil evidence. According to evolutionary theory, evolution proceeds slowly and gradually. The problem is that the fossil record shows repeated bursts of novelty happening instantaneously in geological terms.

I think it's important to point out that the fossil record is one of the failed predictions of evolutionary theory. Does the revised theory of PE solve this conundrum?

Well, the thought is that evolution tends to occur when a somewhat smaller group of a certain species becomes isolated from the larger group. This isolation could be due to a few reasons, but the simplest to conceptualize is their becoming isolated by geography. During this isolation (on the order of millions of years), speciation occurs due to the evolutionary process. This 'new' species is more capable of survival and reproduction than the ancestor species was. Something then happens to release this new species in to direct competition with their parent species resulting in the extinction of the parent species.

This spread is thought to occur so fast in geological terms that it makes it appear as if the old species died and the new species replaced it very rapidly.

While being logically sound, this theory has a few problems.

One problem, perhaps minor is that a smaller, isolated breeding population does make it easier for speciation to occur. That is, a beneficial mutation can spread throughout the population faster. But at the same time, mutations are happening less often because there are fewer individuals to have mutations. So the length of time for the population to have a single occurrence of a beneficial mutation increases. And need I mention that beneficial mutations are outnumbered by detrimental ones by such an obscene amount that mutations guarantee the extinction of a species? But that's not a beef specific to PE, so I'll drop it.

Another problem, is that evolution has never been seen in the fossil record. Don't you think that just one species, in one location, at one point in history would have had their little isolated evolution hole fossilized for analysis? But no, evolution was always happening somewhere else.

What about the difficulties of having isolated breeding populations in the ocean? This is where all early life was evolving anyway. How do you keep fish in the ocean isolated? And during the paleozoic and Mesozoic periods we had one supercontinent. This doesn't preclude the possibility of isolation, just makes it far less likely than we might think.

Of course there is the snowball event that preceeded the Cambrian which completely rules out PE or any evolution preceeding the Cambrian Explosion.

And now for what I consider the logical defeater of PE. Keep in mind that evolution is proceeding at a constant pace. By this, I mean that mutation rates are somewhat constant. I'm aware they vary from species to species, from location to location (within the genome), and they vary by locaiton on Earth (due to more and less radiation from radioactive decay in the crust) and I could name a few more, so I'm not ignorant of this subject. However, when figured over Earth's history, mutations are always happening and it's a simple statistics game to say evolution is always proceeding at some average rate.

We can also say that the factors that result in isolation of a group are randomly spread over Earth in both space and time. So if PE were correct, we would see a new species suddenly burst in to the fossil record, but we'd see this happening at a constant rate (with random fluctuations). You see, a certain fish might become isolated in an inland sea, a certain marsupial might become isolated in a mountain valley...a few million years later and wham! A new species of fish hits the fossil record, or a new marsupial hits the fossil record.

But how can we explain what the fossil record actually shows? The fossil record shows hundreds, or thousands of new species hitting the fossil record all around the Earth at the same time. Punctuated Equilibrium cannot be used to explain why new species are unleashed on Earth all at the same time in such large batches. To reiterate, this cannot be so because the conditions that result in isolation will be randomly distributed over time and space, as well as the mutations themselves, as well as the conditions that unleash these isolated populations back in to the world.

Punctuated Equilibrium stands defeated by the fossil record.

Evidence Contrary to Evolution - Abiogenesis

Since I'm cataloging evidence that runs contrary to evolution, I didn't want to leave out the biggest challenge there is. In fact, this challenge is so big, that I will boldly proclaim that this one alone is functional proof that something/someone started life on Earth.

I don't need to cover the issue of abiogenesis because my friend Paul just did so in a series of articles. So please refer here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Conclusion