Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 140

November 15, 2021

Would it be better if more scientists studied philosophy?

Instead of ridiculing it, as Stephen Hawking did?

From a practical standpoint, philosophy requires clear, logical thinking. A person who has a degree in philosophy has therefore shown an ability to think — a useful skill in a world that too often doesn’t seem to do much of it.

Daniel Lehewych, “Is philosophy just a bunch of nonsense?” at BigThink (November 9, 2021)

Remarkably, Lehewych actually notices a key reason many are skeptical of science:

Consider public health messaging during the pandemic, which consisted of a pattern of revelation and back-peddling. Worse, this pattern wasn’t even cohesive among scientists and medical experts: different experts in the same fields were simultaneously saying things about the pandemic that were contradictory and inconsistent. This only served to confuse the public and aggravate hyperpartisanship.

Philosophy, as an activity, can potentially mitigate these deleterious effects. Earning a philosophy degree entails filtering convoluted ideas into plain language. This skill can and ought to be used to aid scientists in pursuing a more scientifically informed public

Daniel Lehewych, “Is philosophy just a bunch of nonsense?” at BigThink (November 9, 2021)

Lehewych interweaves these thoughts with discussion of the anti-philosophy views of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He suggests that scientists study philosophy so as to avoid sounding like “sanctimonious know-it-alls.”

Maybe. Of course, it would also help to be right more often, as that would at least lead to more consistent messaging.

You may also wish to read: At Evolution News: C. S. Lewis and the argument for theism from reason Jay Richards: Natural selection could conceivably select for survival-enhancing behavior. But it has no tool for selecting only the behaviors caused by true beliefs, and weeding out all the others. So if our reasoning faculties came about as most naturalists assume they have, then we have little reason to assume they are reliable in the sense of giving us true beliefs. And that applies to our belief that naturalism is true.

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Published on November 15, 2021 20:34

Why isn’t life being synthesized in a laboratory?

Synthesis of life in a laboratory is intelligent design:

Synthetic biology is liberated from the considerable burden of doing biochemistry under primordial conditions. Now laboratories are free to use whatever means they have available to construct living matter! Indeed, there is considerable optimism that synthetic biology will finally accomplish the “holy grail” of biology, the production of an artificial living cell. Accordingly, a concluding remark of a relatively recent review article on the subject states: “The synthesis of a living artificial cell from components will open the door to many more adventurous lines of research…”[18] However, a more cautious reviewer of the subject states: “…it is important to note that minimal life has not yet been achieved in the laboratory. Does this mean that it is in principle not possible? I do not believe so, although as a scientist it is always good to have a bit of doubt (perhaps we missed something important in our theoretical analysis)”.[19]

This communication points to just such an oversight, the underestimation of the essential nature of the “out-of equilibrium” state of living matter.

George T. Javor, “Synthesizing Life in the Laboratory: Why is it not Happening?” at Geoscience Research Institute (July 26, 2021)

But using intelligent design only means we’ve left the world of fantasy (“it all just sort of happened a long time ago… ”). Here’s an example of a typical real problem: Living cells cannot reach equilibrium because their metabolisms would stop.

Multiple such equilibriums would kill the cell. However, in live cells there are no isolated reactions and the problem of equilibrium is avoided. Rather, chemical events are linked into pathways, so that the products of reactions do not accumulate, but immediately react with another substance.

The end products of metabolic pathways are either utilized immediately or they are secreted from the cell. Moreover, regulatory systems such as “feedback inhibition” help maintain homeostasis.

George T. Javor, “Synthesizing Life in the Laboratory: Why is it not Happening?” at Geoscience Research Institute (July 26, 2021)

Javor notes that you can kill a cell in such a way that all the components are intact but it is lifeless. “In live cells, superimposed on all of the necessary biopolymers is the steady state non-equilibrium dynamics of all chemical events.”

So life consists of dancing as fast as one can while the music is still playing. It’s very difficult to make all this work in an artificial cell.

You may also wish to read: Jim Tour’s Wild West challenge: Go ahead. Make a cell. Make a cell, win the Nobel…

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Published on November 15, 2021 19:59

Casey Luskin: The mytho-history of Adam, Eve, and William Lane Craig

Craig got swapped into the production at the last minute… Seriously, Luskin is reviewing, over a series of posts, William Lane Craig’s In Quest of the Historical Adam. Long a defender of orthodoxy, Craig seems to want to prune the orthodoxies he is expected to defend:

You’ll never find a specific sentence in Craig’s book that says, “Genesis 1-11 makes statements that are factually and historically wrong,” but a careful reading shows this is what he believes and intends to argue. Craig argues that Genesis 1-11 contains, in his words, various “inconsistencies” and “fantastical elements” that “if taken literally, are so extraordinary as to be palpably false” (pp. 104, 203). This is certainly a major part of his conclusion that parts of Genesis are “myth.”

Because God can perform miracles, Craig is careful to justify excluding miracles from those elements that he considers mythological, “fantastical,” or “false.” But he doesn’t seem to apply this rule consistently, and many of Craig’s judgments here seem subjective. That is, they appear to be based upon his personal feelings about what a reasonable God would do, much like Stephen Jay Gould’s dubious arguments from incredulity about how a “sensible God” would never create certain features of biology. (The Panda’s Thumb, p. 20.) For example, Craig believes that God walking in the Garden in Genesis 3, the lack of an explanation for the origin of Cain’s wife in Genesis 4, or Satan speaking through the serpent, represent “inconsistencies” or “fantastical elements.” But many Christians would not see these elements as problematic in any way. It’s also difficult to see how Craig’s form of subjective analysis could prevent many other stories throughout the rest of the Bible from suffering a similar “mytho-historical” fate — for example Egyptian magicians performing miraculous signs in Exodus, or even Satan possessing certain figures in the Gospels.

Casey Luskin, “Is Genesis “Mytho-History”? As a Guide to Scripture, William Lane Craig’s Book Falls Short” at Evolution News and Science Today (November 9, 2021)

But the pruning process in which he is engaged can never really stop. The “sensible God” is most likely the one looking back at us from our medicine cabinet mirrors.

You may also wish to read: William Lane Craig on Adam and Eve as less intelligent than us Whatever else Craig’s view is, as Luskin notes, it is a far cry from the Scriptural traditional assumption that the unfallen Adam and Eve were our betters and that we have all deteriorated as a result of sin. Adopting Craig’s view is bound to have worldview consequences.

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Published on November 15, 2021 19:27

Isn’t cheating in science journals just part of survival of the fittest?

The way David Coppedge puts it at Creation-Evolution Headlines, that’s a reasonable question.

Predatory publishers’ latest scam: bootlegged and rebranded papers (Nature). We’ve mentioned the problem of predatory journals before (13 Feb 2021, 2 Aug 2018). Now, they are evolving (by malicious intelligent design) to get around efforts to stop them. Why write bogus science when you can steal and rebrand other scientists’ work? It has already passed peer review, so cheaters can dodge efforts to root out fake science. The materialist pro-Darwin rag Nature is flustered about this trend, but what can it do? Isn’t this an example of survival of the fittest or evolutionary game theory in action? Maybe it’s just an evolutionary arms race. Nature believes that evolutionary arms races emerge from time to time, like bees against wasps, butterflies against birds, or moths against bats. Those symbioses are not right or wrong. They just are. Why are not predatory journals examples of the same phenomenon?

David F. Coppedge, “Character Flaws Give Big Science Woes” at Creation-Evolution Headlines (November 13, 2021)

If it’s only wrong when we do it, that must be because we are not just animals.

You may also wish to read: Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. SteakUmm on the philosophy of science The thing is, the saucy social media team at Steak-Umm has a point: What does it mean to say that science is “true”? Was all the contradictory nonsense barked at us during the COVID pandemic “true”? That isn’t even possible. Yet all the barkers will insist that whatever stuff they said was “science” and we will, it seems have to believe them on that one. But with what outcome… we shall see.

and

Springer Nature retracts 44 “utter nonsense” papers. As we’ve noted earlier, it’s getting to the point where “Trust the science!” is sounding more ridiculous all the time. It’s like saying “Trust the mountains” or “Trust milk.” It’s not a rational response to a lot of what we face just now.

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Published on November 15, 2021 18:45

November 14, 2021

Commentator Eric Metaxas asks, Is atheism dead?

If it is, atheists had better start believing in life after death, But seriously,

Eric Metaxas was on Patrick Coffin’s show recently (November 9, 2021):

#256: Is Atheism Dead?—Eric Metaxas

In this Episode You Will Learn

– Why Metaxas decided to take the fight, so to speak, to the scientists

– The miraculous properties of water

– The staggering unlikelihood that the moon’s (small) size and distance to the sun (huge size) would line up as appearing to be the same dimensions as seen from earth

– The conversion to theism (at a bare minimum) of high profile atheists Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Antony Flew

– Why atheists are often bitterly opposed to even the idea of God

– An array of incredibly fascinating facts hidden in nature that point to God as First Cause

– The difference between the God of the philosophers and the Father of Jesus Christ

– Reasons why faith is reasonable and not contrary to reason

Fine-tuning keeps coming up in this context. Guess they’ll have to make a law against talking about it.

Come to think of it, we don’t hear much these days from the once ultra-fashionable New Atheist movement.

Not to be snarky (okay, just a bit snarky) the profanity meter had to be recalibrated recently to detect much lower amounts after New Atheism began to wane. The Unhinged Ranting on Blogs phenomenon fared likewise…

Maybe it’s just hard to fight Something with Nothing.

You may also wish to read: How did new atheism become the “godlessness that failed”?

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

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Published on November 14, 2021 19:45

New introduction to intelligent design at YouTube, Part 2: Molecular biology

1: Introduction Part 2 (October 12, 2021), by John and Sandy Palmer

Part 2 introduces the foundational concepts of Intelligent Design. Evidence from molecular biology over the past 60 years completely upends Darwinism.

You may also wish to see: New introduction to intelligent design at YouTube Part 1. Palmer: Part 1 begins with the basic concepts of Darwinian Evolution. Darwin’s theory related to heredity, but the science behind genetics was a mystery in his day. Darwin’s assumptions about heredity have proven to be mistaken.

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Published on November 14, 2021 18:56

Multiverse theory makes science obsolete

Even Ockham’s Razor can’t mow down an infinite expanse of nonsense.

Steve Meyer, author of The Return of the God Hypothesis, offers a summary of the problems:

Proponents of the Multiverse Theory have their answer, groaning under the weight of strained conjectures. But Meyer here neatly explains why the theory fails, in two important respects, precisely where the inference to theism — the God Hypothesis — succeeds.

David Klinghoffer, “Stephen Meyer: Let’s Compare Intelligent Design and Cosmic Fine-Tuning with the Multiverse Theory” at Evolution News and Science Today (November 9, 2021)

David Klinghoffer notes, for a buzzier riff on the same theme, check out an episode of Science Uprising, “Fine-Tuning: You Don’t Suck.”:

You may also wish to read: Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel tries banishing the Kalam Constant Siegel may be confusing the Kalam Constant with the Shazzam! Constant. What’s really interesting is that he thinks he must answer Meyer’s arguments at all.

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

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Published on November 14, 2021 18:40

At Mind Matters News: Astronomer: We can’t just assume countless Earths out there

Marcelo Gleiser points out that the fashionable Principle of Mediocrity is based on faulty logical reasoning:

He concedes that the Principle can be quite sound under controlled circumstances: If most balls in a box are red, you are more likely to randomly draw a red one. Where stars are otherwise alike, the Principle can be useful for making probability decisions in astronomy.

But the probability of life on other planets presents us with a very different situation: The Principle assumes, in the absence of any evidence, that Earth is typical in terms of its properties and life forms, not simply its position. And that is what he sees as an unwarranted assumption:

News, “Astronomer: We can’t just assume countless Earths out there” at Mind Matters News (November 14, 2021)

A quick look at our solar system neighbors should dispel this notion. Mars is a frozen desert; if it had life in its early years, it didn’t offer enough stability to support it for very long. The same applies to Venus, now a hellish furnace. Farther away, there are many “Earth-like” exoplanets, but only in the sense that they have a similar mass and orbit a star at a distance that is within the habitable zone, where water, if present on the surface, is liquid. These preconditions for life are a far cry from life itself.

Marcelo Gleiser, “The mediocrity of the mediocrity principle (for life in the universe)” at Big Think (October 6, 2021)

Realistically, he notes, life must exist on a planet for a long time before the ways it changes a planet’s atmosphere could be detected from many light years away. Intelligent life may take longer and be far more tenuous. Put another way, on our own planet, water bears can survive many catastrophes that humans cannot. But they don’t think or seek to communicate with anyone and likely never will.

More.

Takehome: Marcelo Gleiser notes that the starting point of the Mediocrity Principle assumes countless Earths. That’s not a conclusion from evidence. It’s bad logic.

You may also wish to read: Physicist: Copernican Principle doesn’t make Earth insignificant. That, Marcelo Gleiser says, is a philosophical attitude, unrelated to the science. Theoretical physicist Gleiser notes that we’ve only begun to point huge telescopes at exoplanets. There are too many unknowns to be sure of our status.

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Published on November 14, 2021 18:10

New Book by UD Author

I am pleased to announce my new book, “Learn to Program with Assembly” (Amazon link here)!

This is a computer programming book using 64-bit x86-64 assembly language. It is based on Linux, but a Docker image is available that you can use to program through Windows or a Mac.

For those unaware, assembly language is the “lowest level” computer language – essentially the language of the computer itself. Today, it’s largely considered a “dark art”, but I’ve found that the people who are the best programmers of higher-level languages are people who have some familiarity with assembly language. Basically, learning assembly language teaches you how to conceptualize what the computer is actually doing when you code.

The book, in addition to basic assembly language, covers all sorts of “under the hood” aspects of how computer programs work, including memory allocation (malloc/free – a version of malloc is implemented in the book), garbage collection (a simple garbage collector is implemented in the book), shared libraries, position-independent code, object-oriented programming, exception handling, and other features of modern programming languages.

This is the 64-bit sequel to my semi-famous first book, “Programming from the Ground Up”.

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Published on November 14, 2021 16:54

It Was Predicted

We now have the highest inflation in 30 years. This was entirely predictable. In fact, I predicted it. See my post from April 20, 2020. Hang on. We are just getting started. The new “infrastructure” bill that just passed is the monetary equivalent of pouring gasoline in a dumpster that is already on fire. You go from this:

To this:

Believe me. I am not claiming any special insight. My conclusions were a combination of paying attention and making common sense deductions from observations. If you see someone opening the spigot on a fire hydrant, you are not a genius if you predict the street is going to get really wet. If the government says they are going to dump more money into the economy than ever in the history of the republic with no end in sight, you are not a genius if you predict that is going to lead to inflation.

And there really is no end in sight. Hang on boys and girls. We are in for a wild ride. The days of the dollar as we have known it for the better part of a century are numbered.

One of two things is true. The people running the country are really really stupid or they specifically intend the entirely predictable consequences of their actions. I don’t think the people running the country are that stupid. Which is not to say there are not some really stupid people in Congress; that certain bartender cum congresswoman springs to mind. But they are a small minority. I am fairly certain that the intelligence of the people running the country is distributed on a normal curve. There are some extremely smart ones; most are average; and there are some extremely stupid ones (e.g., AOC).

And since I do not believe this is the result of stupidity, I must conclude that the incipient destruction of the dollar is not a bug of their policy prescriptions. It is a feature. I believe it is a feature for the reasons I discuss in the linked post.

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Published on November 14, 2021 13:44

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