Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 441

Darwinist Jeffrey Shallit asks, why can’t creationists do math?

Jeffrey Shallit

Referencing Jonathan Bartlett’s “Doing the impossible: A step-by-step guide,” mathematician and Darwinian Jeffrey Shallit huffs,

I suppose it’s not so remarkable that creationists can’t do mathematics. After all, almost by definition, they don’t understand evolution, so that alone should suggest some sort of cognitive deficit. What surprises me is that even creationists with math or related degrees often have problems with basic mathematics. …

First, Bartlett calls polynomials the “standard algebraic functions”. This is definitely nonstandard terminology, and not anything a mathematician would say. For mathematicians, an “algebraic function” is one that satisfies the analogue of an algebraic equation. For example, consider the function f(x) defined by f^2 + f + x = 0. The function (-1 + sqrt(1-4x))/2 satisfies this equation, and hence it would be called algebraic.

Second, Bartlett claims that “every calculus student learns a method for writing sine and cosine” in terms of polynomials, even though he also states this is “impossible”. How can one resolve this contradiction? Easy! He explains that “If, however, we allow ourselves an infinite number of polynomial terms, we can indeed write sine and cosine in terms of polynomial functions” …

If one allows “an infinite number of polynomial terms”, then the result is not a polynomial! How hard can this be to understand?

Jeffrey Shallit, “Why Can’t Creationists Do Mathematics?” at Recursivity/Freethought Blogs

We are told that Bartlett will answer shortly.

See also: Doing the impossible: A step-by-step guide Jonathan Bartlett: Often, in life as in calculus, when our implicit assumptions as to why something can’t be done are made explicit, they can be disproven

and

Walter Bradley Center Fellow discovers longstanding flaw in an aspect of elementary calculus. The flaw doesn’t lead directly to wrong answers but it does create confusion.

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Bad news about life on rocky alien planets

types of planets Kepler found/NAA

Researchers are “in the midst of a heated debate” over whether the planets orbiting the 70% of stars classed as red dwarfs are habitable. For one thing, do they have an atmosphere. The question, of course, affects calculations of habitable planets. One researcher is disappointed to report findings that suggest maybe not:

[Laura] Kreidberg, who is also at the CfA, has been in the daily habit of checking for new results from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a space-based observatory hunting for nearby planets that “transit” their host stars—flitting across the faces of those stellar hosts and casting shadows toward our solar system. Among TESS’s first discoveries was the rocky world LHS 3844 b, located just under 49 light-years away, and Kreidberg quickly recognized that it was in an ideal position to test the atmospheric-retention capabilities of red dwarf exoplanets.

Adam Mann, “Scientists mull the implications of an airless alien planet” at Scientific American

Kreidberg’s team estimated that the promising planet had temperatures of –273 degrees Celsius on the night side and 767 degrees C on the day side, which implies little or no atmosphere to moderate it.

So don’t found your Air BnB on catering to aliens just yet.

Paper. Abstract:

Most known terrestrial planets orbit small stars with radii less than 60 per cent of that of the Sun1,2. Theoretical models predict that these planets are more vulnerable to atmospheric loss than their counterparts orbiting Sun-like stars3,4,5,6. To determine whether a thick atmosphere has survived on a small planet, one approach is to search for signatures of atmospheric heat redistribution in its thermal phase curve7,8,9,10. Previous phase curve observations of the super-Earth 55 Cancri e (1.9 Earth radii) showed that its peak brightness is offset from the substellar point (latitude and longitude of 0 degrees)—possibly indicative of atmospheric circulation11. Here we report a phase curve measurement for the smaller, cooler exoplanet LHS 3844b, a 1.3-Earth-radii world in an 11-hour orbit around the small nearby star LHS 3844. The observed phase variation is symmetric and has a large amplitude, implying a dayside brightness temperature of 1,040 ± 40 kelvin and a nightside temperature consistent with zero kelvin (at one standard deviation). Thick atmospheres with surface pressures above 10 bar are ruled out by the data (at three standard deviations), and less-massive atmospheres are susceptible to erosion by stellar wind. The data are well fitted by a bare-rock model with a low Bond albedo (lower than 0.2 at two standard deviations). These results support theoretical predictions that hot terrestrial planets orbiting small stars may not retain substantial atmospheres. (paywall)

See also: Researchers: Toxic Gases Would Slow Emergence Of Life On Exoplanets

Recent Finding: The “Water World” Exoplanets Are Not Habitable Ocean Planets

and (hope never dies)

Researcher: Why Finding Extraterrestrial Life “Now Seems Inevitable,” Maybe Soon

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Do you think calculus texts are as bad as Jonathan Bartlett does?

Our Jonathan Bartlett (johnnyb) is the author of Calculus from the Ground Up, that is getting great reviews at Amazon. But get this, mostly he hates calculus texts:

I am always amazed when I read calculus textbooks. They are the most dry and boring presentations of mathematics I have ever seen, especially if you realize that calculus offers some of the most amazing insights. Unfortunately, most mathematics texts teach only the mathematics, never the insights. I felt so frustrated by this gap that I wrote my own textbook, in which I try to teach both.

Jonathan Bartlett, “Doing the impossible: A step-by-step guide” at Mind Matters News

He has a serious purpose in discussing the boredom though:

One of the topics that you should learn in calculus is how to solve impossible problems. In the first semester, I always tell students, “Here are some examples of impossible problems, and next semester we will learn to solve them.” As an example of an impossible problem, think of the calculator functions, sine and cosine. It is impossible to write these functions in terms of standard algebraic functions (i.e., polynomial functions). It is literally impossible. It is provably impossible. However, every calculus student learns a method for writing sine and cosine just in this way.

Jonathan Bartlett, “Doing the impossible: A step-by-step guide” at Mind Matters News

                  Jonathan Bartlett

He thinks that learning calculus can help us look past other types of insoluble problems as well.

At times, talking about mathematics, he sounds like Bill Dembski, who founded this blog in 2005.

Also by Jonathan Bartlett on calculus:

Walter Bradley Center Fellow discovers longstanding flaw in an aspect of elementary calculus. The flaw doesn’t lead directly to wrong answers but it does create confusion.

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Remember when dolphins could talk?

dolphin/NASA

So long and thanks for all the fish, and all that? Carl Sagan (1934–1996) And Frank Drake were believers.

Impressed as early as 1949 by the sheer size of the dolphin’s brain, American physician neuroscientist John C. Lilly (1915–2001) was convinced that dolphins could learn to communicate at a human level. Indeed, he thought they were possibly “just as intelligent as humans.” At the time, sheer brain size was thought to correlate with intelligence in a way that is now doubted. In 1960 he founded the Communication Research Institute on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, with the goal of establishing intelligent interspecies communication with dolphins …

The Green Bank Conference (1961), to which Lilly introduced “Dolphinese,” was a serious science meeting. The conferees were “totally enthralled” by the idea that communicating with dolphins would open to door to communicating with innumerable types of extraterrestrial intelligence…

Denyse O’Leary, “Dolphinese: The idea that animals think as we do dies hard” at Mind Matters News

But even though one researcher ended up living in a dolphinarium for six weeks, the dolphins never talked and the research group lost its funding, so they couldn’t keep the dolphins anymore and “At the Miami lab, held captive in smaller tanks with little or no sunlight, Peter quickly deteriorated, and after a few weeks Lovatt received news…”

Thought: If only half the effort put into trying to show that animals are just furry people went into practical stuff like spay/neuter/vaccination programs for feral and semiferal animals that hang around human developments, neither wild nor tame… It can work. But no matter what you do, they do not become people. They would just suffer less from stuff people can prevent.

Further reading on efforts to make animals speak:

The real reason why only human beings speak. Language is a tool for abstract thinking—a necessary tool for abstraction—and humans are the only animals who think abstractly (Michael Egnor)

Elephants who fly—or become “persons”—are magic. Okay, it’s impossible. But then why do thinkers who don’t believe the one believe the other? For decades, researchers were transfixed with the idea of humanizing great apes by raising them among humans and teaching them language. Emerging from the ruins and recriminations of the collapse, philosophy prof Don Ross has a new idea: Let’s start with elephants instead.

and

Researchers: Apes are just like us. And we’re not doing the right things to make them start behaving that way…

In 2011, we were told in Smithsonian Magazine, “‘Talking’ apes are not just the stuff of science fiction; scientists have taught many apes to use some semblance of language.” Have they? If so, why has it all subsided? What happened?

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What Neanderthal jewelry means

We are offered five examples of talents, including sprinting, swimming, art, jewelry, and fires:

Eagle talons found at a Neanderthal site in Croatia displayed cut marks and wear patterns that suggest these were worn as jewellery; beads, shells and feathers that would have been threaded into necklaces have also been unearthed at other sites. David Frayer at the University of Kansas views this as clear evidence that Neanderthals made and wore personal ornaments, with no evident practical use.

Laura Potier, “The five: surprising talents of the Neanderthals” at The Guardian

It’s not just that the ornaments did not have a practical use. They probably expressed something. Eagle talons, for example, might imply something about the person who wore them, in the same way that a peace sign implies something about the wearer today. But it may have implied the opposite thing. It is, at any rate, evidence of a human mental life.

People did not always think about Neanderthals that way because in a Darwinian scheme, someone has to be the subhuman and it might as well be him.

See also: Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents

A deep and abiding need for Neanderthals to be stupid. Why?

Was Neanderthal man fully human? The role racism played in assessing the evidence

and

In any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman. Otherwise, there is no beginning to human history.

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Can a simple triangle disprove materialism?

Edward Feser, in a podcast discussion with Michael Egnor, offers this illustration:

Michael Egnor: How are humans able to reason, use logic, and think abstractly? Neuroscientists presuppose that our minds are entirely material things. But do you think it is possible to have abstract thought that has an entirely material basis?

Edward Feser: No, I don’t think it is… For example, we have the general abstract idea of triangularity, of being a triangle. And it’s one that we convey in words, like the words of a definition like “a triangle is a closed plane figure with three straight sides.”

When we grasp that formal nature of being a triangle, we are grasping something that is totally abstract. It applies to every single triangle that has existed, does exist, will exist or, for that matter, could exist, whether it is a triangle drawn in ink, whether it is a triangle drawn in sand, whether it is a triangle you construct by putting three sticks together, whether it is a triangle formed by the side of a pyramid, the idea or the concept is entirely abstract.

And part of the problem of identifying that with something going on in the brain is that anything that is taking place in a material object, let’s say, a symbol or a material representation encoded in the neural firing pattern of the brain, anything like that is always concrete or specific, or individual, as opposed to abstract or completely general, the way that a concept is.

“A simple triangle can disprove materialism” at Mind Matters News

See also: Why Abstract Thoughts Cannot Arise From Material Things (Michael Egnor) Consider the chiliagon.

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How Materialist Fundamentalists Are Like Christian Fundamentalists

In a comment to PaV’s recent post about the insurmountable problem the Cambrian Explosion presents for Darwinism, materialist fundamentalist Seversky writes:

the Cambrian Explosion is no longer such a problem for Darwin’s theory

Of course this is nonsense of a high order, which has been refuted 10,000 times including in the very post Sev was commenting on.  My point in this post is not to add a 10,001st refutation.  Rather, I will discuss how fundamentalists of whatever stripe are able to insulate themselves from what non-fundamentalists would consider glaringly obvious conclusions from the observed data.

Consider two examples:

1. Seversky’s assertion above

2. A Christian fundamentalist who asserts the universe is just a few thousand years old

Neither Sev nor the young earth creationist (“YEC”) care that their assertion is wildly inconsistent with the observed data.  Why is that?  The answer is really quite simple: 

With both, their religious commitments trump the
observations. 

The YEC’s commitment to a particular interpretation of the Bible compels him to view all evidence through that lens, and if the evidence (from distant starlight for example) seems to contradict the conclusion his religious commitment compels, then so much the worse for the evidence.  He will explain (read “explain away”) the evidence that contradicts his conclusion, and he cares not one wit that his explanation is not plausible to anyone who does not share his religious commitments.

Sev’s commitment to a different religious view, namely, metaphysical materialism, compels him to do the same sort of thing. Sev is serenely indifferent to the fact that his assertion is wildly inconsistent with obvious facts.  Sev is following in the footsteps of a long line of Darwinian fundamentalists.  Robert F. Shedinger recounts how this phenomenon has played out from the very beginning of the Darwinian project:

It is well known that August Weismann became one of the strongest early supporters of Darwin, viewing natural selection as the sole mechanism of evolutionary change (against Darwin who retained a role for Lamarckian mechanisms). But what led to Weismann’s support of natural selection? In an article published in a 1909 anthology marking the 50th anniversary of the Origin of Species, Weismann surprisingly states that his support for natural selection is not based on evidence but on what he calls “quite other grounds.” Later in the essay, these “quite other grounds” become apparent. As Weismann writes, “We must accept it (natural selection) because the phenomena of evolution and adaptation must have a natural basis.” But Weismann freely admits that he cannot bring forth a formal proof of it or calculate the size of variations and their selection-value. He has clearly assumed natural selection for ideological reasons. Evolution must have a naturalistic basis.

There you have it.  The religion comes first; the evidence comes second, if it comes at all.  For a Darwinian fundamentalist like Sev, Darwinism is simply a logical deduction from his religious commitments.  For a YEC, a universe that is only a few thousand years old is simply a logical deduction from his religious commitments.

Sev’s logical deduction allows him to say “the Cambrian
Explosion is no longer such a problem for Darwin’s theory.” 

The YEC’s logical deduction allows him to say “starlight from
the most distant stars is only a few thousand years old.”

And if the rest of us respond to such assertions with palms to our collective foreheads?  SEV and the YEC would say that is only to be expected.  Since we are wrong about the religion, it not surprising that we are wrong about other things too.

UPDATE: After I posted this it occurred to me that in fairness I should point out that for all their similarities, there is one huge difference between Sev and a Christian fundamentalist. The Christian readily acknowledges his faith commitments and the influence those commitments have on his worldview. In my experience, materialist fundamentalists like Sev are insufficiently self-aware to understand that they even have faith commitments, much less the effect their faith commitments have on the way they filter the data.

SECOND UPDATE: Upon further reflection it occurred to me that some people might read this post as bashing fundamentalists. Allow me to assure you that it is not intended as such. Some of the people dearest to me in the world are fundamentalists. See here for my take on the YEC position.  The fundamentalist position (either materialist or Christian) is not necessarily false. Perhaps God really did create the universe with only apparent age. Perhaps the universe sprang into existence spontaneously from nothing. I cannot prove that neither thing happened (though the YEC position does have the advantage of not being logically incoherent and undermining free will and reason itself). My point is a modest one. Given fundamentalist metaphysical premises, fundamentalist conclusions are compelled. And to most fundamentalists (all?), their metaphysical premises trump mere observations.

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Why do atheists need to deny free will?

Eric Holloway takes on a reader’s question:

Reader: Harris basically reduces everything to atomic physics and says all causality happens there, so the world is deterministic (i.e. no free will). While I vehemently disagree with that idea, I do respect that at least he can articulate himself well.

Do you have any thoughts on the matter?

Eric Holloway: A deterministic physical world does not imply that free will doesn’t exist. Look at it as an argument in four steps:

Free will is not deterministic.The physical world is deterministic.?Free will does not exist.

Harris needs to fill in missing step 3 to arrive at his conclusion. One possible premise is that the physical world is all that exists. But, Harris would need to demonstrate that point. It isn’t obviously true.

— Eric Holloway, “Why do atheists still claim free will can’t exist?” at Mind Matters News

Maybe Harris will clarify matters.

Maybe they’ll be throwing snowballs in Hell’s kitchen.

[Wait! The devil is at the door, trying to borrow a snow shovel. maybe Harris will explain too…

If apes are people, we aren’t (but that’s the point, right?)

If apes were really like people/Hannes Richter, Unsplash

Many people don’t take the time to think out the implications of the “apes are people” movement:

We live in profoundly anti-human times. Progressive cultural movements across a broad array of issues, from bioethics to environmentalism, seek to push us off the pedestal of unique value in both culture and public policy.

Many academics, biological scientists, and evolutionary philosophers have joined the anti-human crusade. Most recently, a “manifesto” published in the science journal Human Evolution declares that chimpanzees and bonobos (together, the two species constitute the genus Pan) should be considered legal “persons,” “emancipated” from human control, and granted fundamental, legally enforceable “rights.”

“Apes Are People Too”

How do the scientist and philosopher authors justify their “apes are people too” conclusion? By blatantly anthropomorphizing the animals’ natural behavior — an approach pioneered by the primatologist Jane Goodall, who attributed thoughts and motivations to the animals she wrote about in the science papers she published. (Unsurprisingly, the preparation of the manifesto was supported, in part, by the Jane Goodall Institute.) The manifesto authors assert, for example, that chimpanzees and bonobos have “culture” and “language” and that therefore they should be viewed as morally equivalent to primitive human hunter-gatherers.

There is no question that chimpanzees are remarkable animals, and we certainly should treat them humanely. For example, they are highly social, and so it is cruel to isolate them in cages.

Wesley J. Smith, “Chimpanzee Liberation? Why Animal Rights and Human Rights Cannot Coexist” at Evolution News and Science Today:

In the war on human exceptionalism, you and I are in the sights. Diminishing human exceptionalism, and thus human rights is a problem for some but a solution for others. It is a very promising market for oppressive bureaucracy.

One factor that helps diminish awareness of the fact of human exceptionality is the promotion of “buzz” concepts around animal intelligence that are not supported by the histories of disciplines and fall apart under scrutiny. But any time one fails (apes can be taught to talk!), another rises, seamlessly, in its place (elephants can be taught to communicate via high tech!). No one ever calls any of these people to account.

No, it is not a conspiracy. It’s just a genuine belief among people who take their unrealistic beliefs seriously:

A look at some of the “buzz” concepts that keep impossible ideas alive: Researchers: Apes are just like us. And we’re not doing the right things to make them start behaving that way… In 2011, we were told in Smithsonian Magazine, “‘Talking’ apes are not just the stuff of science fiction; scientists have taught many apes to use some semblance of language.” Have they? If so, why has it all subsided? What happened?

and

Elephants who fly—or become “persons”— are magic Okay, it’s impossible. But then why do thinkers who don’t believe the one believe the other? For decades, researchers were transfixed with the idea of humanizing great apes by raising them among humans and teaching them language. Emerging from the ruins and recriminations of the collapse, philosophy prof Don Ross has a new idea: Let’s start with elephants instead.

Also: Human-ape similarity shows humans are exceptional. If man is an animal biologically, but so unlike an animal cognitively, the obvious implication is that some aspect of the human mind is not biological. (Michael Egnor)

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Has Google become a cult?

It is beginning to meet many of the definitions of one, which matters to those of us who use the search engine:

Project Veritas announces that a new rebel Googler has sent nearly 1000 documents on algorithm bias to the DOJ. While we prepare a news story on Zach Vorhies’ revelations, it may be worth asking why one of the world’s largest companies has developed what appears to be the atmosphere of a political cult… Tiku offers an account of the underlying intensity that went well beyond the needs of a sound strategy for helping stranded co-workers:

“Finally, to a remarkable extent, Google’s workers really do take “Don’t Be Evil” to heart. C-suite meetings have been known to grind to a halt if someone asks, “Wait, is this evil?” To many employees, it’s axiomatic: Facebook is craven, Amazon is aggro, Apple is secretive, and Microsoft is staid, but Google genuinely wants to do good.

Nitasha Tiku, “Three years of misery inside google, the happiest company in tech” at Wired “

Wait. All the other companies that these employees might have ended up working for have lost their way morally? In 2017, ex-Google engineer James Damore, who was fired for suggesting that men might be better suited to tech jobs than women, described the atmosphere as “like a cult”.

Denyse O’Leary, “Is Google a cult? Or does it just act way?” at Mind Matters News

It’ll get crazier. Stay tuned.

Earlier stories in this thread:

A closer look at Google’s search engine bias If Google’s CEO honestly believes that there is no bias, that is, in itself, a big part of the problem Pichai is arguing against the nature of writing algorithms itself—not a good position for a computer guy to be in.

What others are saying about the new Google insider’s revelations The documents’ authenticity is not in dispute. What to do about them is another matter. Perhaps we cannot have a realistic discussion of the problems Google.gov creates unless we start with a willingness to pay for search engine services. That allows us to bargain as equals with respect to terms.

Whistleblower says Google called police to do a “wellness check” on him. He can be seen doing a perp walk on the sidewalk in front of his house on the video; some portions transcribed here. In the documents Vorhies unearthed, Google seemed to be “intending to scope the information landscape so that they could create their own version of what was objectively true.”

and

Google engineer reveals search engine bias. He found Google pretty neutral in 2014; the bias started with the US 2016 election (Gregory Coppola)

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