Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 149

At Evolution News and Science Today: Why C. S. Lewis doubted the creative power of natural selection

A new biopic, The Most Reluctant Convert, is coming out November 3 on the great 20th-century Christian apologist C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) and John West offers a look at Lewis’s doubts about Darwinism. Lewis is often portayed as “accepting evolution.” But in these matters, read the fine print:

Lewis did affirm that “with Darwinianism as a theorem in Biology I do not think a Christian need have any quarrel.” But for Lewis “Darwinianism as a theorem in Biology” was a pretty modest affair. Contradicting leading evolutionists, Lewis thought the “purely biological theorem… makes no cosmic statements, no metaphysical statements, no eschatological statements.”

Nor can Darwinism as a scientific theory explain many of the most important aspects of biology itself: “It does not in itself explain the origin of organic life, nor of the variations, nor does it discuss the origin and validity of reason.”

So what can the Darwinian mechanism explain according to Lewis?

“Granted that we now have minds we can trust, granted that organic life came to exist, it tries to explain, say, how a species that once had wings came to lose them. It explains this by the negative effect of environment operating on small variations.” In other words, according to Lewis, Darwin’s theory explains how a species can change over time by losing functional features it already has.

Suffice to say, this is not the key thing the modern biological theory of evolution purports to explain.

Noticeably absent from Lewis’s description is any confidence that Darwin’s unguided mechanism can account for the formation of fundamentally new forms and features in biology. Natural selection can knock out a wing, but can it build a wing in the first place? Lewis didn’t seem to think so.

A further indication of just how skeptical Lewis was about the creative power of natural selection appears in a talk he delivered to the Oxford University Socratic Society in 1944. There Lewis stated that “the Bergsonian critique of orthodox Darwinism is not easy to answer.” Lewis was referring to Henri Bergson (1859-1941), a French natural philosopher and Nobel laureate who offered a decidedly non-Darwinian account of evolution in his book L’Evolution Creatice (Creative Evolution).

John G. West, “Why C. S. Lewis Doubted the Creative Power of Natural Selection” at Evolution News and Science Today (October 25, 2021)

It goes on and gets better. Any sort of evolution Lewis believed in would be banned in U.S. schools. Not mindless or materialist enough.

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Science writer asks: Why are medical journals full of fashionable nonsense?

It’s rare for a science writer to be asking that kind of thing but then the writer in this case is Alex Berezow, who would have the good sense to know horsefeathers when he sees them. Much of the nonsense derives from hopping onto a political bandwagon:

The point is that hopping aboard a political bandwagon is good for grabbing attention — and subsequently, funding. We are witnessing a similar phenomenon with respect to climate change. No matter how extraneous a topic, researchers try to tie it to climate change. Job-stealing robots? Climate change. Resurrecting the woolly mammoth? Climate change. Cancer therapy? Climate change. What could climate change possibly have to do with cancer? The latter article provides one example: “[P]eople with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer [a]re more likely to die if their radiation therapy [i]s interrupted by hurricanes.”

It is within this dubious milieu — where any outlandish link to climate change is simply assumed to be scientifically legitimate — that the New England Journal of Medicine recently published a perspective on the importance of “decarbonizing” the healthcare sector. The opening sentence makes a bold claim: “ Nowhere are the effects of climate change manifesting more clearly than in human health.” Really? One might argue that satellite images showing melting ice caps and retreating glaciers are a lot clearer than that — or perhaps the notable increase in the temperature of the planet, or record-breaking heat waves.

While that first statement could be dismissed as poetically hyperbolic, the article’s second sentence cannot be: “Although many people consider climate change a looming threat, health problems stemming from it already kill millions of people per year.” This claim represents a semi-measurable quantity and is either true or false. The authors cited this paper to support their claim, but it appears that none of them comprehended it.

Alex Berezow, “Why are medical journals full of fashionable nonsense?” at Big Think (October 24, 2021)

The paper showed that deaths from cold had declined — a “a net decline in temperature-related deaths” which was the opposite of what the NEJM perspective writers assumed.

Of course, the beauty of science in an age of Woke Correctness is that it doesn’t have to make sense, just be Woke and Correct. And we all just need to Trust the Science more.

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Some at-your-fingertips stats on human–chimp similarity

When you are stuck across the table from the local evolution bore:

The old statistic that we are about 99 percent or 98 percent similar to chimps pertains only to alignable protein-coding sequences. In fact the statistic first originated based upon similarity between humans and chimps in just one single gene! But many non-coding sequences are highly dissimilar, and there are sequences of the human and chimp genomes that are so different that they can’t be aligned for comparison. For example, there are some parts of our genome, such as the human y chromosome, that are radically different from the chimp genome.

Geneticist Richard Buggs has tried to refine the methods for comparing human and chimp genomes. In a 2018 post, he observes that “The percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 84.38%.” In 2020 he co-published an article in the journal Frontiers in Genetics providing a different method of estimating of human-chimp genetic differences, finding that human-chimp genetic similarity is about 96 percent. This paper’s estimate of ~4 percent genetic difference includes both coding and non-coding DNA, but it does not include centromeric DNA. If that DNA were included, the percent of genetic similarity between humans and chimps could drop to as low as ~93 percent, but probably not lower. Computational biologist Steve Schaffner has roughly estimated human-chimp genetic similarity to be ~95 percent. However, one criticism I’ve heard of all current estimates is that they are based upon versions of the chimp genome that used the human genome as a “scaffolding,” potentially making certain sections of the chimp genome more humanlike than they ought to be. This could also artificially inflate the degree of human-chimp similarity.

What this means is that until more accurate and complete versions of the chimp genome are produced, any estimate of human-chimp genetic similarity will undoubtedly be refined in the future, and current numbers may very well be overestimates. Nonetheless, any of the above estimates of human-chimp genetic similarity — 96 percent, 95 percent, 93 percent, 84 percent — carries meaning in different contexts. But what exactly do they mean? 

Casey Luskin, “Human-Chimp Similarity: What Is It and What Does It Mean?” at Evolution News and Science Today (October 20, 2021)

You may also wish to read: But, in the end, did the chimpanzee really talk? A recent article in the Smithsonian Magazine sheds light on the motivations behind the need to see bonobos as something like an oppressed people, rather than apes in need of protection.

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At Mind Matters News, some fun: Would ET intelligences understand the 1974 Arecibo Message?

Arecibo Message

Probably not, says astrobiologist Dirke Schulz-Makuch, who raises the question of whether we could ever really communicate with extraterrestrial intelligences:

In early, easily-mocked sci fi, a little green man points his raygun at an unsuspecting passerby and barks “Take me to your leader.” Fast forward: If the little green man didn’t have the technology to figure out who the leader was before landing, he certainly wouldn’t have the technology to get here.

News, “Would ET intelligences understand the 1974 Arecibo Message?” at Mind Matters News

…

Schulze-Makuch also notes that life forms on Earth don’t all communicate using the same methods:

We humans communicate primarily through language, using sound waves in a very narrow range. This doesn’t even apply to all the animals on our own planet, however. For dogs, the primary means of communication is smell. Cuttlefish and squids “talk” by changing their skin coloration and texture, as well as by their posture and movements. For dolphins, it’s a matter of echolocation, clicking, and whistling.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch, “The Science of Aliens, Part V: How Would They Communicate?” at AirSpaceMag (September 13, 2021)

Then there’s the bee dance that points to sources of nectar some distance away…

One can object that there is a big difference between the sort of animal communications intended to signify food, territory, mating, etc. and x2 + y2 = z2 and e = mc2. If ET received those signals from us — or we did from them – in any interpretable form, it would be clear that an intelligent entity had sent them. They are true and very important — but they are also abstractions.

Takehome: Extraterrestrial intelligences should, however, recognize abstractions like mathematics and physics facts, which could be used to interpret communications.

You may also wish to read:

Where could aliens be hiding technology in our solar system?
Possibilities include the Oort Cloud and Lagrange points, where NASA can park spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption. What astrobiologists are looking for is technosignatures — events and entities that nature did not simply generate apart from some form of thought.

and

Quantum physicist: Aliens may communicate by starlight Terry Rudolph of Imperial College, London, argues that they may have evolved so as to take advantage of quantum mechanics via photonics more easily than we can. Photonics is a form of communication that takes advantage of the fact that light moves faster than electricity.

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Rob Sheldon on the current trend to non-theist intelligent design (ID) theory

We’re talking about Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, claiming at Scientific American that maybe advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang. He can’t say God did it. But he can say that They did it.

Hmmm.

When some people wrote privately to protest that this ET>Big Bang stuff is all just one space bunny too far down the cosmic path, I (O’Leary for News) pointed out in response that Neil deGrasse Tyson (here), Martin Rees (here), and Elon Musk (here) have also suggested that very thing.

Tyson and Musk have great name recko. And yet non-theistic ID is not endangering their careers?

Well, now theoretical physicist Rob Sheldon writes to offer some thoughts on the new-found popularity:

Avi Loeb is a product of post-1947 Israel, where ideology was always important. Enlightenment principles were not going to motivate you to farm the Negev. So instead of the monoculture of scientism, Avi learned how to frame his argument in the ideology du jour to maximum effect. His recent foray into alien ID is a calculated move, and related to his tenure at Harvard. You might say it is a flanking move on the Woke mob.

Neil de Grasse Tyson is far less creative than Avi. He was a “new atheist” when that was in vogue, he’s switched to “alien ID” when that came up. I think he has a desire for the limelight, and instinctively moves where the lights are brightest.

Martin Rees could have been a solid astrophysicist with high profile graduate students. But his promotion to president of the Royal Society, Royal Astronomer and then to the House of Lords, means that his astrophysics must take secondary precedence to his politics. About the time that all these political posts fell to him, he started publishing pop-sci books:

Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology (co-author John Gribbin), 1989, Bantam; ISBN 0-553-34740-3New Perspectives in Astrophysical Cosmology, 1995; ISBN 0-521-64544-1Gravity’s Fatal Attraction: Black Holes in the Universe, 1995; ISBN 0-7167-6029-0, 2nd edition 2009, ISBN 0-521-71793-0Before the Beginning – Our Universe and Others, 1997; ISBN 0-7382-0033-6Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, 1999; ISBN 0-297-84297-8Our Cosmic Habitat, 2001; ISBN 0-691-11477-3Our Final Hour: A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future In This Century—On Earth and Beyond (UK title: Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century?), 2003; ISBN 0-465-06862-6

As you can see, they range from the ID-friendly to the Politically-Correct. In all cases, they attempt to make the argument that science is relevant to politics and even can act as a savior for politics. Then in my view the alien-ID schtick is cynically a rhetorical method of getting a platform with the public to exploit for political causes.

Elon Musk has made a career out of selling his genius. For one example, his Tesla motor company has not yet broken even, and would not exist but for government subsidies. And the government subsidizes it because he is a great salesman, and he works his engineers to the bone, discards them, and recruits more engineers. As a salesman, it is important to be on the cutting edge of every movement. Like BitCoin. Not to stay there, but to make a bundle and move on. For Elon to support alien ID, means it is cutting edge right now, and of course, his support means it will soon be passe. Not because it doesn’t work, but because it’s been milked and there are other cows in the pasture.

All these men saw an opportunity. And the opportunity is the Fall of Modernism. It is the same opportunity we IDers have seen for 20 years now.

(All these views are mine, and are not to be construed as support for any individual. I have not received funding from any of these people.)

Readers?

Rob Sheldon is the author of Genesis: The Long Ascent and The Long Ascent, Volume II .

You may also wish to read: At Mind Matters News: Harvard astronomer: Advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang. Avi Loeb writes in Scientific American that when we humans are sufficiently advanced, we will create other universes as well.

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Jonathan Witt: Why is common descent a better explanation for the history of life than common design?

It’s one of those questions that many never ask because they are so used to hearing the Correct Answer that no other answers surface. And they would not, of course, know objections to the Correct Answer. Anyway, Jonathan Witt raises the common design possibility:

To say that similarities prove common descent ignores a logical possibility: that common features may instead be due to a common design strategy. Think of cars. A Tesla and a Cadillac share many features — four wheels, synthetic rubber tires, brakes, two axles, windshield wipers, headlights. But of course, none of that means that Teslas blindly evolved from Cadillacs, or vice versa. Designers re-use design features proven to work for specific engineering needs, even while they innovate in alternative directions, as Tesla CEO and engineer Elon Musk has with his electric cars.

We see this pattern even across disparate technology platforms. In one case, the wheel is used and adapted for a water mill. In another case, for a gear in a watch. In another case, for a bicycle. In still another case, for a pizza cutter. In yet another, for a truck. And in another, for a self-balancing scooter (aka “hoverboard”).

So, what about with living things? Might a designer of life have used and reused various good design concepts in widely different biological contexts? The only way to jump straight from biological similarities to common descent via blind evolution is to rule out the design hypothesis from the start — to treat it as the idea that must not be considered, the thought that must not be thought. But if we are seeking the truth about the history of life on Earth, we shouldn’t let ourselves be bullied into ignoring one option and accepting the other as unquestionable dogma.

Jonathan Witt, “Forbidden Question: Common Descent or Common Design?” at Evolution News and Science Today

It’s a dogma that provides aid and comfort for many. There are, of course, many reasons for doubt, including the remarkable number of instances of convergent evolution.

Witt offers another example (among many):

If we step back from chromosome 2 in humans and look at genetic evidence more broadly, we find a bigger problem with the idea of the macroevolution of all life from a common ancestor. Finnish bioengineer Matti Leisola and I highlight that problem in our book Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design:

“In 1965 one of the most important scientists of the last century, Linus Pauling, and biologist Emil Zuckerkandl, considered by some as the father of molecular biology, suggested a way that macroevolution could be tested and proved: If the comparison of anatomical and DNA sequences led to the same family tree of organisms, this would be strong evidence for macroevolution.7 According to them, only evolution would explain the convergence of these two independent chains of evidence. By implication, the opposite finding would count against macroevolution.“

So what were the results? Over the past twenty-eight years, experimental evidence has revealed that family trees based on anatomical features contradict family trees based on molecular similarities, and at many points. They do not converge. Just as troubling for the idea of macroevolution, family trees based on different molecules yield conflicting and contradictory family trees. As a 2012 paper published in Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society reported, “Incongruence between phylogenies derived from morphological versus molecular analyses, and between trees based on different subsets of molecular sequences has become pervasive as datasets have expanded rapidly in both characters and species” (emphasis in original).8

Another paper, published the following year in the journal Nature, highlighted the extent of the problem.9The authors compared 1,070 genes in twenty different yeasts and got 1,070 different trees.10

These results are unexpected, even bizarre, on the assumption that all life evolved from a single common ancestor through a long series of small, random genetic mutations over millions of years. 

Jonathan Witt, “Forbidden Question: Common Descent or Common Design?” at Evolution News and Science Today

If you didn’t hear about that, ask yourself why that might be.

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At Mind Matters News: Compassion and religion: Darwin’s unscratchable itches

If one’s research is in a hole as deep as evolutionary psychology is when accounting for compassion, why not stop digging?:

Last Sunday, I pointed to a chapter I wrote in The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos (2021) on evolutionary psychology, best understood as the psychology we have derived from our not-quite-human ancestors.

“Not-quite-human ancestors”? Well, if you believe in conventional evolution theory at all, you must suppose that we have not-quite-human ancestors. Thus, to understand the origin of traits like giving to the Heart & Stroke Fund or subscribing to popular science magazines, we must get back to a point before any such institutions could have existed but there was some sort of dim potential. But we can’t really do that because, as noted last Sunday, there is no such thing as a fossil mind.

Early human minds, from what we can glean of them from ancient culture, don’t count. If we thawed out a Neanderthal from the permafrost from 50,000 years ago and managed to communicate with him, what might happen?

Here’s one possibility: He turns out to love football, beer, and french fries. He really, really wants a deer rifle. He is an awesome companion in a deer blind — very quiet and a good shot. Then, one day, sitting for hours overnight in a snowstorm back at the camp, he starts to tell us about his religion… and how he wishes his now forever-lost woman had understood him better…

Have we really got to the bottom of human psychology? Hardly. He could have been born in Ontario, Canada, in 1964 and stepped out of a deer blind somewhere near Peterborough.

And to the extent that we can interpret early human artifacts and symbols at all, they are human artifacts and symbols.

All extant humans have human psychologies. So how are we to gain hard evidence for a not-quite-human psychology that would help us understand the evolution of basic traits? That’s what naturalists would need to explain traits like compassion and religion in wholly evolutionary terms.

Denyse O’Leary, “Compassion and religion: Darwin’s unscratchable itches” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Stop digging? The hole evolutionary psychologists are digging IS the enterprise. Any motive that didn’t merely spread selfish genes would be invisible to them.

You may also wish to read: There is no such thing as a fossil mind. A chapter on evolutionary psychology in Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith (2021) looks at the curious discipline of evolutionary psychology. If our behavior is said to stem from our prehuman past, not from our present circumstances, evolutionary psychology is a discipline without a subject.

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Did Francis Collins or Anthony Fauci have any role in the slow torture death of beagle puppies in Tunisia?

As now alleged? Many Americans, scared by COVID-19, treated the medical bureaucrat as some sort of trusted family doctor, despite the shifting, contradictory looniness of government responses. And Francis Collins, of course, is the famed Christian evolutionist…

Thus, most people probably don’t want to hear this story. But, assuming it holds up, at least some of us had better. Some U.S. legislators want answers:

White Coat Waste claims that 44 beagle puppies were used in a Tunisia, North Africa, laboratory, and some of the dogs had their vocal cords removed, allegedly so scientists could work without incessant barking.

Leading the effort is Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), writing a letter to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) saying the cordectomies are “cruel” and a “reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds.”

“Our investigators show that Fauci’s NIH division shipped part of a $375,800 grant to a lab in Tunisia to drug beagles and lock their heads in mesh cages filled with hungry sand flies so that the insects could eat them alive,” White Coat Waste told Changing America. “They also locked beagles alone in cages in the desert overnight for nine consecutive nights to use them as bait to attract infectious sand flies.”

Christian Spencer, “Bipartisan legislators demand answers from Fauci on ‘cruel’ puppy experiments” at The Hill (October 22, 2021)

This story was circulating in Canada more than six weeks ago and we learn why the dogs’ vocal cords were removed:

WCW said that the dogs were being “eaten alive” by the flies.

As part of the study, sedated dogs were locked in cages in the desert for nine consecutive nights, where starved sand flies were free to feed on them.

In July, WCW published an exposé that found the NIAID sent $424,455 of taxpayer money to the University of Georgia for experiments focusing on infecting beagles with parasite-carrying flies.

14 House GOP members wrote a letter in late July to the National Institute of Health director Francis Collins, who oversees the NIAID, demanding answers on why taxpayer money is being used for overseas animal research.

Hannah Nightingale, “Cruel experiment forcing dogs to be ‘eaten alive’ by sand flies funded by Fauci’s NIAID” at PostMillennial (September 1, 2021)

The story originated the same day at The Federalist:

Unlike the first beagle experiment, the most recently uncovered one was performed overseas in Tunisia where, according to WCW, “the NIH has no oversight and there are no laws protecting animals used in experiments.”

In the Tunisia study, the researchers starved the flies to make them hungry and “the sand flies were then allowed to feed on the sedated dogs…”

In a second part of the Fauci-funded experiments in Tunisia, experimenters locked beagles in cages alone in the desert for nine consecutive nights, using them as bait to attract infectious sand flies.

Evita Duffy, “Watchdog Report: Fauci’s NIAID Funded Experiment Forcing Dogs To Be ‘Eaten Alive’ By Infected Flies” at The Federalist (September 21, 2021)

It would be good to hear that it isn’t true but The Hill is taking it seriously.

The Babylon Bee has the right take on the overall problem here:

“Puppy torture is science,” said Fauci angrily. “So is grafting baby scalps onto lab mice and engineering viruses that kill millions! I AM SCIENCE! I AM GOD!!!” Fauci then threw back his head and laughed maniacally at the sky…

According to several sources, millions of progressives have quietly thrown away their Fauci pillows, candles, and plush dolls.

Health, “Fauci Says Attacking Puppy Torture Is An Attack On Science” at Babylon Bee (October 23, 2021)

We’ve been warning for some time that “Trust the Science” is going to take a huge — and well-deserved — beating among intelligent people. This’ll help that along.

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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Berkeley scientist and center director resigns over MIT’s deplatforming of exoplanet scientist

Further to the note Friday re Dorian Abbot’s exoplanets talk at Princeton — a talk banned at MIT because he’d offended the Woke somewhere else — a prof has resigned from U Berkeley, fed up, overall, with science being run by the Woke:

David Romps, director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center (BASC), publicly resigned Monday over his concern that the school excludes scientists based on their political beliefs.

Laurel Duggan, “Top Berkeley Scientist Resigns, Says School Excludes Scientists Based On Political Views” at The Stream (October 19, 2021)

Romps had wanted to invite Dorian Abbot to speak at his school too but that turned out to be a no-no.

Note how little difference facts of science make in these matters — whether Abbot has anything to say that contributes to our knowledge does not matter of the Woke are displeased.

Darwinism was the original Wokeness in science — immune to fact-based critique. The people who thought that that didn’t concern them are now formally wrong. It’s everywhere now.

Big beneficiaries: The war on math and the war on science. Other beneficiaries?: Crickets.

Well, okay. Other beneficiaries will be Woke mediocrities, sending science down a hole of ineffectual Correctness.

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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Sabine Hossenfelder: No way to tell if the universe was fine-tuned for us — Rob Sheldon partially agrees

First, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder:

The relevant part of the argument goes like this: It’s extremely unlikely that these constants would happen to have just exactly the values that allow for our existence. Therefore, the universe as we observe it requires an explanation. And then that explanation may be god or the multiverse or whatever is your pet idea. Particle physicists use the same type of argument when they ask for a next larger particle collider. In that case, they claim it requires explanation why the mass of the Higgs boson happens to be what it is. This is called an argument from “naturalness”. I explained this in an earlier video.

What’s wrong with the argument? What’s wrong is the claim that the values of the constants of nature that we observe are unlikely. There is no way to ever quantify this probability because we will never measure a constant of nature that has a value other than the one it does have. If you want to quantify a probability you have to collect a sample of data. You could do that, for example, if you were throwing dice.Throw them often enough, and you get an empirically supported probability distribution.

But we do not have an empirically supported probability distribution for the constants of nature. And why is that. It’s because… they are constant. Saying that the only value we have ever observed is “unlikely” is a scientifically meaningless statement. We have no data, and will never have data, which allow us to quantify the probability of something we cannot observe. There’s nothing quantifiably unlikely, therefore, there’s nothing in need of explanation.

Sabine Hossenfelder, “Was the universe made for us?” at BackRe(Action) (January 16, 2021)

Now experimental physicist Rob Sheldon:

I’ve weighed in on the debate occasionally, usually siding with Sabine. We don’t have a probability distribution for these constants, and probably never will. When we invoke one, such as [commenter] Blais’ attempt to ask about the probability of a probability function, we are playing God. So bite the bullet and do it—play God.

“Why do we have such a loving God who cares about us? In the space of all probable Gods, what is the probability that we get this one?”

Now that I have phrased it that way, you can see the problem with the cosmological fine tuning argument. It assumes we have some ability to judge God. For some people that’s no problem, for others that is deeply disturbing. That’s why I side with Sabine.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

If, and Blais makes this same point, the cosmological constants actually ARE explainable by physical processes, then they aren’t fine-tuned at all. A magnetic field in the early Big Bang can explain a half-dozen of the fine tuning constants. Then we can get on with the true business of science and consider the laws that arranged it this way, and move away from hypotheticals about fine tuning.

Does this remove the cosmological fine tuning argument from supporting ID?

Absolutely not. In Stephen Barr’s book “Modern Physics and Ancient Faith”, he argues that the symmetry behind the laws of physics needs explaining too. We never get away from explaining. The deeper we go, the more profound it gets. As in the discussion of Hindu metaphysics that the earth is supported on the backs of 4 elephants and they in turn stand on a great turtle, the question was raised “what is the turtle standing on?” and the reply was “It’s turtles all the way down”. In the same sense we physicists can say, “It’s design all the way down.”

So we reach the same conclusions, but without the shortcut about “probability distributions of cosmological constants.” Even though I agree with Sabine about the fine tuning argument, I disagree strongly with her about the significance of the design we see in the world. “It just is” is not an explanation.

Rob Sheldon is the author of Genesis: The Long Ascent and The Long Ascent, Volume II.

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