On Reading the Signature: A Response to Stephen Meyer

January 29, 2010
Category: BioLogos Features

"Science and the Sacred" frequently features essays from The BioLogos Foundation's leaders and Senior Fellows. Today's entry was written by Darrel Falk. Darrel Falk serves as president of The BioLogos Foundation. He transitioned into Christian higher education 25 years ago and has given numerous talks about the relationship between science and faith at many universities and seminaries. He is the author of Coming to Peace with Science.

Dr. Meyer is a philosopher, not a scientist. He is eminently qualified as a philosopher. He has studied at one of the world’s greatest universities and has earned its highest degree. Dr. Meyer is also an expert in communication. Like a number of his colleagues—Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, William Dembski and, dare I say, Ben Stein—he is a master at communicating with his audiences. His book, Signature in the Cell, is a communicative masterpiece. It is because of his skill as a communicator that he and his colleagues have been able to move mountains.

I do not believe, as Dr. Meyer asserts, that he is unqualified—quite the opposite. He is likely more qualified as a philosopher than I am as a scientist. Furthermore, I guarantee you that if I was venturing into his discipline, I would have little of value to say. Dr. Meyer has ventured into my discipline, biology. He is not highly qualified as a biologist, but he’s ventured in anyway. Fair enough. Since he is a great communicator, we should be able to analyze the quality of his arguments.

This brings me to my next point. I believe that Dr. Meyer and his colleagues are sincere. P.Z. Myers, Jerry Coyne, and John Kwok notwithstanding, these people are not out to deceive, they sincerely believe that the mountain they are trying to knock down is a figment of our imagination. The evolutionary paradigm has come about, they believe, through methodological naturalism. When scientists investigate natural processes assuming there is nothing else at work, Meyer and his colleagues believe the scientists get an incomplete picture of how the natural world works. Again, fair enough. Let us be fair too. Let’s keep an open mind.

Are you ready for my next point? Dr. Meyer and his colleagues have a view of reality which is very similar to my own. I assume, for example, that the following Scripture is as central to their existence as it is to mine:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:38, 39

So even if I disagree profoundly with what Stephen Meyer and his colleagues conclude, I must be careful. If this Scripture is true for them too, and if they really are never separated from the love of God, then I must not separate myself from them. If I did, if I pulled away, I would be separating myself from that which matters most of all in life, staying close to God’s love. Dr. Meyer and his colleagues are smart, they are sincere, and we are all bound together within the love of God.

All of this just brings me to my next point: You can be smart, sincere, and loved, but you can also be very wrong about the interpretation of scientific data. Even smart people are sometimes wrong, especially when they venture into a new discipline, such as would happen if I, heaven forbid, tried to venture into philosophy. On page 107 of Signature in the Cell, Meyer describes “specified complexity.” DNA, he says on page 109, contains “specified complexity” because

it contains “alternative sequences or arrangements of something that produce a specific effect.” Although DNA does not convey information that is received, understood, or used by a conscious mind, it does have information that is received and used by the cell’s machinery to build the structures critical to the maintenance of life.

In Meyer’s response to my review, he made a very strong statement. I am amazed that someone who is really smart and equally sincere could make it, but here it is

First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information (especially in a digital form). Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power. Hence, intelligent design provides the best—most causally adequate—explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life from simpler non-living chemicals. In other words, intelligent design is the only explanation that cites a cause known to have the capacity to produce the key effect in question. (Emphasis added)

What is he saying here? First of all he says that intelligent agents are known to produce specified complexity. Of course. But look at what he says next: “no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power.” Surely he doesn’t mean this. Consider the generation of antibody diversity for example. When a bacterium invades the body, a process results in a whole lot of random rearrangements of DNA sequence, and this eventually produces trillions of highly specific antibodies which specifically recognize and bind to the invading bacterial cells. The antibodies are highly specified. They bind only to that one type of bacteria. We go from a state of lower complexity to higher complexity—higher specified complexity! The process that generates this specified complexity is pure chemistry. A set of random processes have generated the highly specified information required to fight the bacterial infection. Surely none of us would believe there is a little “intelligent being” in the body directing the body step-by-step to make the correct antibody. We know it doesn’t work that way. The universe of biology is full of examples of random processes giving rise to specified information. Interested readers are referred to the outstanding book, Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell for a marvelous discussion of how complexity, including specified complexity in living and non-living systems can emerge without the specific design-input of an intelligence.

Now at this point, Dr. Meyer might step in and remind me of our common belief that there is a Mind who established life’s processes, a Mind whose presence is necessary to sustain the laws of the universe. Sure. We both accept that. But that’s beside the point. There are “undirected chemical processes” that produce functionally specified information. If he wants to beg the question by saying that there is a Mind that created the DNA which would ultimately cause the random processes—fine. But, if he does this, I would go back further and argue that if he is going to beg the question this way, he needs to be willing to beg the question all the way back—there could also have simply been a Mind who established the system so that DNA arose through natural undirected processes. We just don’t know how it worked. And that’s my point. The data is simply not in yet. I emphasize again, all that Dr. Meyer has done is identified an area of science that still has many unanswered questions. For sure, it is simply far too early to jump in and say: “Stop the game. You’ve lost. We’ve won. Game’s over!” This, in my opinion, is silly. Let’s just wait and see.

Just because I believe Steve Meyer and his colleagues are really smart, really sincere, and really have integrity does not mean that they cannot also be really wrong. My one hope and prayer—given that they have the first three qualities—is that the day will come when they admit the fourth holds true as well. In the meantime, I will hold them up in prayer and I know they’ll do the same for us.

I would like to thank my colleagues, Kathryn Applegate at The Scripps Research Institute, and John Oakes of Grossmont Community College for helpful comments in my preparation of this response.

We will soon publish a second response from Stephen Meyer. This one will be a follow-up to Francisco Ayala’s post of several weeks ago.

Filed Under:

science, religion, complexity, intelligent design, faith, design, complexity, specified complexity, Stephen Meyer, Darrel Falk, evolution, philosophy, Christianity

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hmm - #3583

January 29^th 2010

Darrel Falk wrote:

“But look at what he says next: “no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power.” Surely he doesn’t mean this. Consider the generation of antibody diversity for example. When a bacterium invades the body, a process results in a whole lot of random rearrangements of DNA sequence, and this eventually produces trillions of highly specific antibodies which specifically recognize and bind to the invading bacterial cells…”

and

“The universe of biology is full of examples of random processes giving rise to specified information. “

I supposed that Meyer was speaking about origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell. I thought that he maybe tried to just say that undirected chemical process has never demonstrated the power to produce information necessary to produce the first life from.

The universe of biology may be now full of examples of “random” processes giving rise to information, but the question was about showing the power to produce “functionally specified information” for the first cell. Your counterexample presupposes existing life forms.
Darrel Falk - #3584

January 29^th 2010

Sorry, Hmm. This is not what Dr. Meyer is saying. His book is very clear on that as was his response to my review.

Darrel
Mike Gene - #3585

January 29^th 2010

IMO, Dr. Falk scores big points by moving the specified complexity/information discussion to antibody production. Remember folks, you are not born with an immunity to the chicken pox virus – you acquire it through a process biologists have long called ‘specified immunity.’ You acquire this specified immunity because B lymphocytes have the amazing ability to recode their antibody genes to synthesize millions of different gene products and a process of selection is involved to choose the right one for a particular infection. An antibody (and its gene) would certainly qualify as ‘specified complexity’ and ‘information’ that carries out a specific function important for your survival. And the actual process of making antibodies, so that you acquire immunity to various pathogens over your life, does not itself require intelligent intervention.
Mike Gene - #3586

January 29^th 2010

cont…

I would part company with Dr. Falk on a subtle, but important point. He observes that “undirected chemical processes”….produce functionally specified information.” I guess it all depends on how one interprets ‘undirected.’ If we mean “no intelligent intervention required,” okay, no conscious entity has to tinker with the genomes of B cells. But the process of antibody production is *facilitated* at several levels. That is, the architecture of the whole system is an example of mutations and selection that are under CONTROL. And a closer look at the nature of this control comes with teleological echoes.
hmm - #3592

January 29^th 2010

Darrel, I’m not so sure. He emphasized in his book that he was speaking about getting specified information from nonbiological source:

“Experience shows that large amounts of specified complexity or information (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an intelligent source – from a mind or a personal agent. Since intelligence is the only known source of specified information (at least starting from a nonbiological source), the presence of specified information-rich sequences in even the simplest living systems points definitely to the past existence and activity of a designing intelligence.” (p. 343)
hmm - #3593

January 29^th 2010

And in his response to your review the context was (also) the question about origin of the information needed for the first cell:

“The central argument of my book is that intelligent design… best explains the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell. I argue this because of two things… First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information (especially in a digital form). Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power. Hence, intelligent design provides the best… explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life from simpler non-living chemicals.”
Gregory Arago - #3597

January 29^th 2010

“The universe of biology is full of examples of random processes giving rise to specified information.” - Dr. Falk

“The central argument of my book is that intelligent design… best explains the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell.” - Dr. Meyer

[Bolding in quotes is mine]

So Darrel is speaking about ‘processes,’ while Stephen is speaking about ‘origin[s]’?

If so, it might be hard to build bridges between them.

p.s. I don’t agree with Dr. Falk that Dr. Dembski is a ‘master’ at communicating with audiences. Dr. Meyer is much better!
pds - #3598

January 29^th 2010

Darrel #3584,

I think Meyer’s book is quite clear that he is talking about specified information to create the first life. hmm is right.

Mike #3585,

Darrel does not score points by claiming that Meyer is talking about something he is not talking about.
pds - #3600

January 29^th 2010

Darrel you said

“For sure, it is simply far too early to jump in and say: “Stop the game. You’ve lost. We’ve won. Game’s over!” This, in my opinion, is silly. Let’s just wait and see.”

Nowhere does Meyer say this. He claims that ID is the “inference to the best explanation.” That implies to me that the best explanation may change over time, and Meyer even discusses how it has in his book. But that is not a reason not to make any inferences at all or to try to explain things.

You seem to be saying, “Unless there is a non-design natural explanation, don’t explore any explanations at all.” That is just not good science, and it makes no sense.
Mike Gene - #3601

January 29^th 2010

Hi pds,

Hmm quotes Meyer as saying, ““Experience shows that large amounts of specified complexity or information (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an intelligent source – from a mind or a personal agent.”

Antibodies are examples of specified complexity /information that do not originate from a mind or personal agent.
Nathan - #3603

January 29^th 2010

“he needs to be willing to beg the question all the way back—there could also have simply been a Mind who established the system so that DNA arose through natural undirected processes. We just don’t know how it worked.”

Dr. Falk, isn’t this conceding that Meyer is right about our experience telling us that there is an Intelligent Designer? In other words, we look at this dizzying array of complex stuff and we conclude that a Mind established (i.e. designed) the system… By focusing on the fact that there are no known natural processes that we can see (maybe we can conceive of them, but none have played out over 50-60some years) that could produce the building blocks for the first life - and the corresponding positive evidence that we know information must have an architect - it is responsible to conclude that all of this is designed and to proceed accordingly… even if on ocassion one posits “undirected, purposeless causes” when it proves itself useful (i.e. it may serve as a “useful fiction” to think about these laws in terms of them being “undirected” and “purposeless” in the sense that they seem rather autonomous, given their consistency, non-arbitrariness, and seemingly impersonal nature).
pds - #3605

January 29^th 2010

Mike,

The full quote in his post on Biologos:

The central argument of my book is that intelligent design—the activity of a conscious and rational deliberative agent—best explains the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell. I argue this because of two things that we know from our uniform and repeated experience, which following Charles Darwin I take to be the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past. First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information (especially in a digital form). Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power. Hence, intelligent design provides the best—most causally adequate—explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life from simpler non-living chemicals. In other words, intelligent design is the only explanation that cites a cause known to have the capacity to produce the key effect in question.

(cont.)
pds - #3606

January 29^th 2010

(continued)

We need to ask Meyer what he means by “produce large amounts of functionally specified information.” I am sure that he would agree that Darwinian processes can rearrange the information in DNA. My DNA is different from my parents. Was my DNA “produced”? Was it “large amounts”?

Unless we ask Meyer what he means by those phrases, we should not presume that he is talking about anything but the origin of life. In his book, I think he is pretty clear that the “large amounts” he is talking about is what is required for the first life.
Nathan - #3610

January 29^th 2010

I had said: “even if on ocassion one posits “undirected, purposeless causes” when it proves itself useful”

And if I understand what the I.D. folks are saying, they would say that sometimes, even in science, methodological naturalism does not serve as a useful fiction, but more of a harmful one, for example, when it is too broadly applied, or when it is seen as only method by which we can construct theories that are able to explain and predict, i.e. be fruitful.

I like this quote:

“Convergent problems relate to…where manipulation can proceed without hindrance and where man can make himself ‘master and possessor,’ because the subtle, higher forces – which we have labeled life, consciousness, and self-awareness – are not present to complicate matters. Wherever these higher forces intervene to a significant extent, the problem ceases to be convergent”
Schumacher, E. F. A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Harper & Row, 1977, 125.
Nathan - #3611

January 29^th 2010

This man also said:

“Justice is a denial of mercy, and mercy is a denial of justice. Only a higher force can reconcile these opposites: wisdom. The problem cannot be solved, but wisdom can transcend it. Similarly, societies need stability and change, tradition and innovation, public interest and private interest, planning and laissez-faire, order and freedom, growth and decay. Everywhere society’s health depends on the simultaneous pursuit of mutually opposed activities or aims. The adoption of a final solution means a kind of death sentence for man’s humanity and spells either cruelty or dissolution, generally both… Divergent problems offend the logical mind.”
Schumacher, E. F. A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Harper & Row, 1977, 127.

Re: the idea that “Everywhere society’s health depends on the simultaneous pursuit of mutually opposed activities or aims”, perhaps we might include “thinking that uses methodological naturalism AND methodological design”?

-Nathan
Nathan - #3612

January 29^th 2010

“when it is seen as only method”

should say

“when it is seen as the only method in science”
hmm - #3613

January 29^th 2010

Mike,

> “Experience shows that large amounts of specified complexity or information
> (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an
> intelligent source – from a mind or a personal agent.”

“Antibodies are examples of specified complexity /information that do not originate from a mind or personal agent.”

Meyer didn’t claim in the quoted sentence that there couldn’t be any examples of specified complexity /information that do not originate from a mind or personal agent. But he claimed (in the next sentence) that intelligence is the only known source of specified information “at least starting from a nonbiological source”. Antibodies (and their specified complexity/information) are not produced from nonbiological starting place.
G - #3624

January 29^th 2010

Some may think this is just semantics, but I think that there is a difference between what Stephen Meyer is referring to as “information” and the “complexity” that Falk interprets it as. Falk uses examples of specified complexity, such as the antibody example, but that is still a very different example than what Meyer refers to as “information” in the genetic code. The information in the genetic code that Meyer is referring to is almost entirely responsible for the complexity seen in the antibody example, yet the antibodies don’t carry information in terms of Meyer’s interpretation. Meyer’s argument is concerning the underlying cause of the antibody complexity itself, so I think that that example is easily undermined.
Jonathan Watts - #3625

January 29^th 2010

The antibody is a great biological example - and much of the debate above has centered on the fact that it is biological. So let me give an example of a non-biological example of this.

In the lab I can put a random mixture of nucleoside phosphoramidites in a vial, and chemically synthesize DNA of a random sequence. Then I carry out a selection - for example, which of my compounds can bind to a given protein? All of the sequences that bind are amplified (by PCR) and then I do the selection step again. After several rounds of selection, I can do sequencing and one or several motifs emerge that specifically bind my protein (under whatever conditions I do the selection). So I have new specified information generated from a random sequence… it is the “survival” of the chemical species that caused the specified sequence to be separated from all of the other sequences.

For more on this, look up “in vitro selection” or SELEX on Wikipedia or other sources.
Jesse - #3628

January 29^th 2010

I think the concept of “methodological naturalism” is sometimes misunderstood. It’s not a restriction applied to science, but rather inherent in science itself. Let me explain.

The scientific method defines “nature” as “anything science can investigate.” It doesn’t matter if that’s bacteria, atoms, ghosts, or whatever; if the scientific method can be applied, then it is considered “natural.” So then, whatever science CAN’T investigate is not part of nature.

Therefore, scientists aren’t saying “Intelligent Design is not a natural process, so we aren’t going to study it,” but rather, “Since ID is not falsifiable, the scientific method can’t be applied, so science has no way to study it.” Or something like that.
Gregory Arago - #3630

January 29^th 2010

Jesse,

I still mean to respond to your post in another thread. But let’s be crystal clear. Knowledge ‘produced’ in philosophy of science absolutely ‘proves’ there is no such entity called ‘the scientific method.’ This is a fanciful myth! There are multiple scientific methods practiced in various sciences. Do you dare say that anthropology is not a science?

Thus, what is inherent in ‘science’ is a debatable claim and not something ‘provable’ simply by asking ‘natural-physical scientists’ the question: ‘what is science?’

Philosophers are ‘scientists of totality’ & are much more qualified to discern what ‘is’ science than are scientists themselves.

Falsifiability is one criterion. Probably you know this comes primarily from Popper in the English literature on ‘demarcation.’

A key question here is: can methods that focus on non-natural things be considered ‘scientific’? The problem of reductionism comes in immediately. Is ‘science’ reducible to a ‘nature-only’ scenario? Is the only alternative to ‘natural’ possible ‘the supernatural’? Personally, I don’t think so. I think ‘science’ can study ‘non-natural’ & also ‘non-supernatural’ things. But what does that mean?
Jesse - #3632

January 29^th 2010

Hi Gregory,

I think you have a point. Perhaps I should have specified “natural sciences”? Does what I said make sense then?
I don’t really know anything about anthropologists. Do they do science too? *joke*

Still, is the origin of life something that can be investigated by anything OTHER than natural sciences?
Mike Gene - #3634

January 29^th 2010

Hi hmm,

You write, “Meyer didn’t claim in the quoted sentence that there couldn’t be any examples of specified complexity /information that do not originate from a mind or personal agent.” But that is how I would interpret “Experience shows that large amounts of specified complexity or information (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an intelligent source – from a mind or a personal agent.” If specified complexity *invariably* originates from mind, then it would seem to me there couldn’t be any examples of specified complexity /information that do not originate from a mind.

As for antibodies being produced by a biological source, we can get to that in due time. But let’s pause and take this in. Doesn’t antibody production give us reason to think that the origin of specified complexity/information does not require a mind?
Mike Gene - #3635

January 29^th 2010

Hi G,

You write, “The information in the genetic code that Meyer is referring to is almost entirely responsible for the complexity seen in the antibody example, yet the antibodies don’t carry information in terms of Meyer’s interpretation.”

I’m not following this. The genetic code simply maps nucleotide sequence to amino acid sequence using 64 three-base codons. It is used in the production of *every* protein. Why do you think it is “almost entirely responsible for the complexity seen in the antibody example?” Antibodies are produced because of controlled recombination and mutations.
Mike Gene - #3636

January 29^th 2010

Hi Jonathan,

You write, “In the lab I can put a random mixture of nucleoside phosphoramidites in a vial, and chemically synthesize DNA of a random sequence. Then I carry out a selection - for example, which of my compounds can bind to a given protein? All of the sequences that bind are amplified (by PCR) and then I do the selection step again. After several rounds of selection, I can do sequencing and one or several motifs emerge that specifically bind my protein (under whatever conditions I do the selection). So I have new specified information generated from a random sequence… it is the “survival” of the chemical species that caused the specified sequence to be separated from all of the other sequences.”

Indeed. A truly clever designer would take this process and embed it into life itself. The trick would be to take the act of selection, which is guided by mind, and structure the architecture of life to serve as a proxy for the mind. Of course, this would mean there was a significant intrinsic dimension to evolution.
Jonathan McLatchie - #3645

January 30^th 2010

Unfortunately, Dr. Falk succeeds in making a category mistake with regard to antibody specificity and its purported relevance to the issue of specified complexity and the origin of life. There is absolutely no parallel between the two scenarios. Antibody specificity results from the decoding of information of the pathogenic invaders and reacting in a pre-programmed way. It maintains a database of previously-seen pathogenic agents. The immune system is programmed to use a search/trial-and-error technique in order to devise antibodies to pathogens. This is in stark contrast to origin-of-life scenarios with which Meyer’s book is concerned.
pds - #3655

January 30^th 2010

Mike #3634,

I am kind of surprised you keep flogging this horse. I think Meyer would say that the immune system shows signs of coming from a mind. He would likely say that a mind can pre-program a system that can produce antibodies and some degree of new information like the immune system can. But the immune system already has lots of the same kind of specified information stored in it. Inorganic chemicals do not.

You seem to be reading Meyer uncharitably and trying to force his words into another context that he did not intend. Having read your posts and comments at Telic Thoughts, this does not seem like you.

Are you still defending Falk or trying to make some other point? About front-loading perhaps?
Mike Gene - #3657

January 30^th 2010

Hi pds,

Falk is correct in pointing out that antibodies show that mind is not directly required for the production of specified complexity and information. The main objection is that Meyer is exclusively focused on the OOL. Very good. So we would posit that the original cells were designed, but they were designed in such a way that biological processes (mutations and selection) could generate specified complexity and new information. In other words, the original cells were designed, and then subsequently evolved. That is, if a mind “can pre-program a system that can produce antibodies and some degree of new information like the immune system can,” it can, to some degree, “pre-program” evolution in a similar fashion.

In other words, while arguments from specified complexity and information may apply to the origin of life, they fail as arguments against evolution.
Vincent Torley - #3658

January 30^th 2010

Dr. Meyer writes:

“First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information… Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power.”

Note that Dr. Meyer says “large amounts.” But how large is “large”? On page 294, Dr. Meyer writes:

”[T]he probabilistic resources of the entire universe equal 10^139 trials, which, in turn, corresponds to an informational measure of less than 500 bits. This represents the maximum information increase that could reasonably be expected to occur by chance from the big bang singularity to the present - without assistance from an intelligent agent.”

How much specified information is created by the generation of antibody diversity?

According to the 1997 paper, “Deriving Shape Space Parameters from Immunological Data” by D. J. Smith et al. (which can be viewed online), the shape space for antibody diversity is no larger than 10^16. That equates to about 50 bits, which is far short of 500.

Dr. Falk has failed to offer a genuine counterexample to Dr. Meyer’s claim about the very limited power of unintelligent processes to generate specified complexity.
Gregory Arago - #3659

January 30^th 2010

Mike Gene contends: “Mind is *not* directly required for the producing of SC and information.”

His view is simply a mess it seems, in terms of philosophy of science! Let it be noted that Mike Gene is on record a few years ago as saying that ‘intelligent design’ has *nothing* to do with philosophy or with theology. Oh, how the tables have turned!

“the original cells were designed, and then subsequently evolved.” - Mike Gene

O.k., so then ‘mind’ was required for ‘designing,’ and then ‘no mind’ was required for ‘evolving.’ Is this correct? TIME is irrelevant. ‘Design’ without ‘mind’ is non-sensical, is this right, Mike?

Mike Gene wants to be a front-loaded, intelligent design, evolutionist who believes in Creation…& everyone likes their own (rabbit) flavour of ice cream!

How does Mike Gene ‘measure’ the supposed ‘intelligence’ that he believes is ‘pre-programmed in/by evolution/ID/creation’ to give it some kind of ‘intrinsic teleology’ in the biotic sphere?
Nick Matzke - #3668

January 30^th 2010

Mike Gene and Falk are right about this. Meyer’s argument depends on the absolute generalization that only mind can produce specified complexity, i.e. specific functional sequences. He makes this assertion again and again in his book and elsewhere. He says it’s our uniform experience, and thus all we need is the existence of specified complexity to infer the action of a Mind, even with absolutely no other evidence. I.e. Meyer specifically says ID is the only explanation with Causal Adequacy, and because it’s the only explanation, ID also meets the “Causal Existence” criterion for Inference to the Best Explanation.

However, there actually are numerous known cases of unintelligent natural processes generating new functionally specified sequence. Antibodies are one, but the evolution of new genes with new functions, which is supported by masses of literature and observation, is another—one which Meyer completely ignores, and which the ID movement almost completely ignores.
Nick Matzke - #3669

January 30^th 2010

[pt 2]

In the library stacks we have the evolution of new venoms with different specificities, the evolution of metabolic pathways to break down human-invented compounds never seen before in nature, the evolution of camouflage that eerily matches the background environment, the evolution of proteins that specifically bind invaders or invadees, or specifically dodge such binding, etc.

Meyer knows about this at some level, so inconsistently, at some places in his book, he hedges, and asserts that he is only talking about the origin of specified complexity/information from non-biological sources. But if he concedes that natural processes can produce information at all, then his universal generalization that information = intelligence, upon which his whole argument depends, is totaly shot.
Nick Matzke - #3670

January 30^th 2010

[pt3 ]

(A second exception to “natural processes can’t create information” is Meyer’s own admission that random processes can generate a small amount of information. So much for his Law of Conservation of Information. Instead what he has to argue is that, yes, natural processes can build up a small amount of information, but that this process always has strict limits. This directly implies that a system with information level X has **memory** such that the system remembers that it has reached its information limit, and there is no way another random event can add any more information. Otherwise, information could gradually build up with no obvious limit, e.g. via a selective process. But the idea that a system, e.g. a sequence, has this kind of memory of where its intrinsic limit is, is ridiculous on its face.)
Nick Matzke - #3671

January 30^th 2010

[pt4/4]

Meyer didn’t really do the following, but one could re-frame his argument to say “no natural processes are known to produce self-replicating systems” and then argue that only intelligence can produce self-replicating systems. But do we have uniform, habitual experience that intelligence goes around producing self-replicating systems? Oops: nope, not really. I’m pretty sure it is true that no human intelligence has ever produced a nontrivial, wholly self-replicating system from scratch, i.e. on the level of a cell, or even on the level of an RNA ribozyme that can replicate itself and other arbitrary sequences.

These are fatal, crashing problems with Meyer’s argument, they are obvious to most biologists, and they are the primary reason Meyer’s work ain’t gettin’ no respect from the scientific community. It’s the same old half-baked creationist “information” argument that creationists have been spinning since literally the 1960s. It’s not even new pseudoscience.
Jonathan Bartlett - #3673

January 30^th 2010

Dr. Faulk -

I take issue with your description of the processes of antibody diversity generation. While there is some statistical randomness at play, I would say that the specificity in the process is huge. The parts of the antibody gene are segregated into matchable parts (V, D, J, and C), which are rearranged in specified ways, whose rearrangments are managed by the RSS signal between each part. In addition, after recombination, the cell can generate DNA which are needed to make the final protein fold better (Sanz and Capra PNAS 84(4)).

During the mutation afterwards, the mutations are focused on that gene only, and, for that gene, it focuses on the complementary-determining region and skip the C region (which attaches to the B cell, and thus would be counterproductive to mutate) (Papavasiliou and Schatz Cell 109(2 supplement 1)).
Jonathan Bartlett - #3674

January 30^th 2010

[continuing…]

To call this orchestration “random” just because it isn’t 100% deterministic is an abuse of the term. It has never been the position of ID that nothing can find a solution within a search space which _utilizes_ randomness. But rather that this only works when the search space has already been narrowed by information. This process works only because, rather than mutations happening at random throughout the cell’s DNA, they only happen within a well-defined scope - a scope that _matches_ the environment problem that it is trying to solve.

This is the focus of Dembski’s work on Active Information, started with his No Free Lunch book and continuing in the papers he has done with Dr. Marks.

If the process were not so constrained, it would not work. This is the results of not only the work on the immune system, but also those of bacteria - when you mess up the genes in the SOS pathway, evolution does not occur. The evolutionary definition of randomness is that “one of the central tenets of Darwinian evolution is that mutations are random with respect to the needs of the organism in coping with its environment” (Templeton, “Population Genetics and Microevolutionary Theory”, 2006, pg 3).
Mike Gene - #3675

January 30^th 2010

Hi Vincent,

You write, “According to the 1997 paper, “Deriving Shape Space Parameters from Immunological Data” by D. J. Smith et al. (which can be viewed online), the shape space for antibody diversity is no larger than 10^16. That equates to about 50 bits, which is far short of 500.”

Then what does this say about the shape space for antigen diversity? Keep in mind that a rabbit can make an antibody that will specifically react with any protein from any species on this planet.
Jonathan Bartlett - #3676

January 30^th 2010

[in summary…]

Your example is actually one that contradicts the evolutionary definition of randomness - the gene which is modified is not random with respect to the needs of the organism, and neither is the are of the gene which is mutated. This is excluded well over 99.99% of the genome. How a mutation directed to the correct 0.01% of the genome is considered “random with respect to the needs of the organism” just because, within that 0.01% there is some variability, is completely beyond me.
Mike Gene - #3677

January 30^th 2010

Hi Gregory,

You write, “His view is simply a mess it seems, in terms of philosophy of science! Let it be noted that Mike Gene is on record a few years ago as saying that ‘intelligent design’ has *nothing* to do with philosophy or with theology. Oh, how the tables have turned!”

What I have long maintained is that my views about ‘‘intelligent design’ are not some repackaged, previously held theological or philosophical position.

“O.k., so then ‘mind’ was required for ‘designing,’ and then ‘no mind’ was required for ‘evolving.’ Is this correct?”

Nope. I never used the word ‘required.’ I’m simply reacting to the many claims here that Meyer was focused exclusively on the origin of life.

“‘Design’ without ‘mind’ is non-sensical, is this right, Mike?”

Yes, design without mind is nonsensical.
Mike Gene - #3678

January 30^th 2010

cont…..

“Mike Gene wants to be a front-loaded, intelligent design, evolutionist who believes in Creation…& everyone likes their own (rabbit) flavour of ice cream!”

Indeed. And the four flavors do not contradict each other and make for ice cream that is much more tasty than any other brand.

“How does Mike Gene ‘measure’ the supposed ‘intelligence’ that he believes is ‘pre-programmed in/by evolution/ID/creation’ to give it some kind of ‘intrinsic teleology’ in the biotic sphere?”

I never claimed the ability to measure the supposed intelligence.
Nick Matzke - #3680

January 30^th 2010

“The evolutionary definition of randomness is that “one of the central tenets of Darwinian evolution is that mutations are random with respect to the needs of the organism in coping with its environment””

Do you have any evidence that the mutations in the immune system cells of a rabbit developing immunity to virus A are guided towards target A? And that the mutations in a different rabbit are guided towards a different virus B?

No. The mutations are random. Most of them don’t work. Only 1/3 joinings of two antibody segments even produces a sequence that is read in-frame. 10^16 trials to generate a few good binders is not an efficient strategy. Diseases killed rabbits (and us) all the time before modern medicine, when the immune system wasn’t fast enough.

It is true that the mutation *rate* is nonrandom, and that the immune system genes have various mechanisms to increase the rate of mutations in the developing antibody receptors.
Nick Matzke - #3681

January 30^th 2010

But—*because* the process is nonintelligent—most of the mutations don’t work. Only those few that have stronger binding proliferate. It’s process with random trials followed by nonrandom selection, based on binding specificity.

As for the origin of the adaptive immune system’s RAG, RSS, etc., the evolutionary explanation is well-established, well-tested, and deeply embarassing to e.g. Behe at the Kitzmiller trial. See:

Andrea Bottaro, Matt A Inlay & Nicholas J Matzke (2006). Immunology in the spotlight at the Dover ‘Intelligent Design’ trial. Nature Immunology 7, 433 - 435 doi:10.1038/ni0506-433

...and many more links:
http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/evo.imm.html

But even if you (inappropriately assuming your conclusion) decide that the immune system was intelligently designed to be able to evolve specified complex sequences through random mutation and natural selection, but you refuse to believe that other forms of random mutation and natural selection cannot evolve new specified complex sequences, you’ve still got problems, because we have direct evidence that the evolution of new genes with new functionally specified sequences is easy and common for natural evolution.
Nick Matzke - #3683

January 30^th 2010

E.g.:

Long et al. (2003), “The origin of new genes: glimpses from the young and old.” Nature Reviews Genetics. Freely available on google scholar, although pointing a link to google seems to be interpreted as spam…
Jonathan Bartlett - #3686

January 30^th 2010

Nick -

The formation of new genes is easy *with information*. It is not easy *in the absence of information*. Most interesting mutations that have been found, were later found to be guided by highly specific mechanisms. That doesn’t mean that they are 100% specific - I don’t know anyone who is claiming that. But the question is - which side does it lean to? Sure, it takes a lot of trials to find the right mutations within the 400 base pairs that has to be searched, but that’s several orders of magnitude easier than the 4,000,000,000 base pairs that would have to be searched without the information. If the information was wrong, the answer would never be found, because it was searching the wrong area. The other thing to keep in mind is that the problem is exponential. So, if we are searching for 3 base pairs, then the search space is 1 in 4*10^6 for the first case, and 4 * 10^30 for the second case. That’s 24 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE DIFFERENCE.

In addition, remember that, because of the C region, these genes already know how to properly attach to the B cell. Thus, the entire pathway, save one piece, already exists, and the organism is setup to search for that piece in very specific ways.
Jonathan Bartlett - #3687

January 30^th 2010

Nick -

If information is in the driver seat, then it isn’t natural selection. Natural selection is the shorthand for the modern synthesis because “natural selection” was assumed to be the driving component of innovation and direction of evolution. However, as has been pointed out, information reduces the search space by 3,999,999,600 base pairs, and selection takes care of the remaining 400 (though the analogy to natural selection is tenuous, because it is a program, not a struggle for life, that tells whether or not the given sequence should be selected). So, clearly, in this case, it is not “evolution by natural selection” but “evolution by information inside the organism”. Sure, some sort of selection has a role, but it is comparatively small. Therefore, to call this an instance of “evolution by natural selection” would be quite absurd, given how small of a role that selection of any sort plays.
Nick Matzke - #3688

January 30^th 2010

Where you are getting your search space of 4 billion nucleotides from? That’s just bizarre. We are talking about the abilities of a natural process of trial and error to generate functionally specific sequence. Creationists always through up chaff about the immune system, and totally ignore the mass of scientific literature showing (a) how it is a (unguided!) mutation and selection process, and (b) how the adaptive immune system itself evolved. Scientists aren’t going to take you seriously if you just ignore the hard work produced and published by thousands of them over decades.

But like I said, if you don’t like the immune system, you still lose, because various experiments and natural examples show that the evolution of specific binding sites doesn’t require searching that big a space of variation. It’s just not that hard. See references here:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/10/full-text-of-th.html
Jonathan Bartlett - #3693

January 31^st 2010

“Where you are getting your search space of 4 billion nucleotides from?”

The size of the human genome.

“totally ignore the mass of scientific literature”

I summed up the scientific literature. How is that the same thing as ignoring it?

”(a) how it is a (unguided!) mutation and selection process”

Again, you have not told us why we should think that a narrowing of the search space from 4,000,000,000 nucleotides to 400 should be considered unguided.

“if you don’t like the immune system”

Don’t like it? I love it! I just think that your description of it is misleading.

“evolution of specific binding sites doesn’t require searching that big a space of variation”

That’s correct—when there is information already in the cell telling it how best to mutate, it narrows the search space. That is specifically what the research of Dembski and Marks shows. If it doesn’t search that big of a space, then it is evolution by information, not evolution by natural selection.
Nick Matzke - #3694

January 31^st 2010

The only way the search space would be 4 billion nucleotides would be if 4 billion specified nucleotides were required to bind an antigen. But actually you only need 50 amino acids or so to achieve binding, and not even all of those have to be specified. Not even the ID guys claim what you claim.

PS The size of the human genome is ~3.5 billion nucleotides, and probably 90%+ of it is non-specified sequence, i.e. structural or junk.

PPS: If you don’t address the literature I referenced showing that binding sites and new genes are easy to evolve, and thus information is easy to evolve, then there is no reason for the scientific community to take your argument seriously.
Jonathan Bartlett - #3695

January 31^st 2010

“The only way the search space would be 4 billion nucleotides would be if 4 billion specified nucleotides were required to bind an antigen.”

This is incorrect on several levels. I am not talking about creating a whole new binding site. I’m only talking about the much simpler procedure of finding the 3 or so base pairs that need to be modified to achieve a new binding from a similar one in somatic hypermutation. The search space, for neo-Darwinism, is the whole genome. Why? Because, if natural selection is true, then “mutations are random with respect to the needs of the organism in coping with its environment” (Templeton). For selection to be the primary cause the mutational mechanism should be random with respect to which base pairs need to be modified. But it is not. It is focused, out of the whole genome, on the 400 base pairs that might be useful. Therefore, the primary cause for the mutation is information, which tells the cell which subset of the 4,000,000,000 base pairs in the genome need to be searched.

And, as I’ve said, genes are very easy to evolve, if the cell already has the information to tell it where to look. Thus, it is evolution by information, not evolution by natural selection.
Nick Matzke - #3696

January 31^st 2010

Ah. Well that makes a little more sense. The mutations are still random though, there are just more of them in the hypermutating regions. If you decide to call the hypermutating region specification “information”, you still have to acknowledge that the specified sequence that produces an antibody binding site to a particular is not encoded anywhere in the hypermutation location specification. That information, the particular sequence that produces the binding site, has been generated by the mutation-selection process, it didn’t exist before in that genome, and thus a natural, unintelligent random-mutation and selection process can generate new information.

The same process can happen anywhere, it just takes generations for organisms, instead of days/weeks for immune system cells. Which everyone knew already.

I suppose you’re now going to argue that it is just inconceivable that evolution could produce a high-muation region in the right part of the genome in a certain cell line? 1 in 3.5 billion is just so wildly improbable we have to ignore the scientific explanations in the library, and conclude IDdidit?
hmm - #3698

January 31^st 2010

Mike Gene wrote:

“Doesn’t antibody production give us reason to think that the origin of specified complexity/information does not require a mind?”

I don’t think so. First, it is an example of raising the complexity/information, but not of the origin of it. Second, I don’t believe that anything could exist without God. That’s why I believe that also antibody production requires a mind of God to exist and to work. And (because I don’t favor God of the Gaps theology, and see need for Him only in some places, but not in the others) I don’t see any evidence for the claim that origin of specified complexity in our world wouldn’t require a mind.

Nick Matzke wrote:

“Do you have any evidence that the mutations in the immune system cells of a rabbit developing immunity to virus A are guided towards target A? And that the mutations in a different rabbit are guided towards a different virus B? No. The mutations are random.”

Of course nobody knows what the plan (of God) is. And it may be impossible to show evidence for guiding without knowing what the (God’s) purposes are. But ignorance of the purposes is not the proof for the claim that mutations are not guided at all. It is just argument from ignorance.
Mike Gene - #3702

January 31^st 2010

To balance things out here, I should mention that Professor Jerry Coyne had a tantrum about this thread. He lashed out against Darrel as follows:

“But BioLogos, in its shameful pandering to religion, is simply an embarrassment to the community of biologists. In their insistence that faith and science are mutually reinforcing, and their unwillingness to entertain any evidence to the contrary, people like Falk are impediments to the advance of rationality. As Szostak says, “belief systems based on faith are inherently dangerous, as they leave the believer susceptible to manipulation when skepticism and inquiry are discouraged.””

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/accommodationists-vs-creationists-we-all-lose/

Coyne is confused. He possesses this primitive, tribalistic mindset that essentially states, “If you are not an enemy of my enemy, you are my enemy.” It is this form of extremism, coupled to reliance on emotional rhetoric and simplistic stereotypes, that are “are impediments to the advance of rationality.”
Mike Gene - #3703

January 31^st 2010

I should also point out that while Coyne uncritically embraced the sentiments of Dr. Szostak (since they echo Coyne’s hatred of religion), I think it important to apply critical thinking across the board. I did this with Szostak’s comment (someone who values critical thinking had to do it). See the fourth comment (and follow-ups) in this thread:

http://biologos.org/blog/signature-in-the-cell-a-follow-up/

How is it that such intelligent and successful scientists can come to embrace such irrational positions?
Nick Matzke - #3710

January 31^st 2010

Hi Mike—in the other thread, Szostak said:

However, I suspect I must part company with you in that I believe that science and religion actually are irreconcilable. In my view a scientific world view is one based on continuous questioning and therefore a search for more and better evidence and theories; faith in the unknowable plays no role. I think that belief systems based on faith are inherently dangerous, as they leave the believer susceptible to manipulation when skepticism and inquiry are discouraged.

in response to Szostak, you said:
Nick Matzke - #3711

January 31^st 2010

Oh, the rich irony of Dr. Szostak’s final paragraph. His ham-handed perceptions of religion and religious people are clearly rooted in stereotype, as, contrary to his understanding, the journey of faith is filled with continuous questioning and a search for a better understanding. Take this issue itself. Many Christians continually question the relation between Christianity and evolution (and all that both entail) in an attempt to reach reconciliation. Yet Dr. Szostak has declared all such efforts to be doomed as he “believes” they “actually are irreconcilable.” What happened to his spirit of continuous questioning?

Isn’t it fair to say that much of his position is probably motivated by (a) experience with the anti-science attitudes of fundamentalists and perhaps certain other religious groups, and (b) his personally being unconvinced by theistic arguments, thus he puts them in the same category as other wrong beliefs, like homeopathy and whatnot?
Nick Matzke - #3712

January 31^st 2010

I disagree with much of Szostak’s position, but I think we have to say it is fairly easy to see how a scientist could end up taking his position, after lots of provocation from fundamentalists and the like, and lots of claims about confidence in theism (from fundamentalists and nonfundamentalists) without the kind of empirical support that a scientist would hope to see in other areas.
Jonathan Bartlett - #3714

January 31^st 2010

“the specified sequence that produces an antibody binding site…is not encoded anywhere in the hypermutation location specification…[it] has been generated by the mutation-selection process”

Yes

“and thus a natural, unintelligent random-mutation and selection process can generate new information.”

No. It has an unintelligent *component*. The process as a whole is directed by information. That a small amount of information can be produced is part of ID (see No Free Lunch, or pretty much anything by Dembski, for a quantification).

“The same process can happen anywhere, it just takes generations for organisms, instead of days/weeks for immune system cells.”

It can happen anywhere *where there is information to limit the search*. You keep forgetting that part.

“it is just inconceivable that evolution could produce a high-muation region in the right part of the genome in a certain cell line?”

Well, it could, if it had adequate information. But that would require more, not less, information. See Dembski’s “Searching Large Spaces”.

As I’ve said, this is evolution by information, not evolution by natural selection. Natural selection plays a role, but it is greatly overshadowed by information’s role.
Gregory Arago - #3715

January 31^st 2010

Jonathan,

I’m getting the impression that you are giving to ‘information’ some kind of ‘agent-like’ force. Do you know if the concept duo ‘information selection’ has been considered in biology? You speak of ‘evolution by information,’ in contrast to ‘evolution by natural selection.’ Has there been a published article in a natural scientific or philosophy of biology journal on this topic?

Personally I’m unconvinced by N. Matzke’s pejorative label ‘fundamentalist.’ In my view and experience one can be a ‘fundamentalist’ and also ‘pro-science.’

As a former basketball player, I believe that every beginner should learn ‘fundamentals.’

If Szostak or Coyne or Matzke dismiss the value of theological or philosophical knowledge, that is their prerogative, their loss. Just because they are ‘scientists’ is no reason for me to respect them as ‘holistic’ thinkers, as persons.

WIth curiosity,
Gregory
beaglelady - #3717

January 31^st 2010

Nick Matzke,

It’s good to see you here!
Nick Matzke - #3718

January 31^st 2010

No. It has an unintelligent *component*. The process as a whole is directed by information.

What’s the directing information in the case of a new gene evolving by mutation and natural selection acting on a gene duplicate? I would say mutation and selection are providing the information, there.

That a small amount of information can be produced is part of ID (see No Free Lunch, or pretty much anything by Dembski, for a quantification).

I’ve read everything of Dembski’s. Nowhere is there an explanation of why, or how, an information-building process has a memory, such that adding up to 150 bits is possible, but adding 1 more bit (or 100, or 1000, etc.) later on is impossible, because the system “remembers” that it already hit the limit of 150 bits.
Gregory Arago - #3719

January 31^st 2010

This is indeed the question for Dr. Falk if he would dare to answer it. What’s or Who’s directing the information? Is it *just* nature alone?
Nick Matzke - #3720

January 31^st 2010

Personally I’m unconvinced by N. Matzke’s pejorative label ‘fundamentalist.’ In my view and experience one can be a ‘fundamentalist’ and also ‘pro-science.

I agree that many fundamentalists *think* they are pro-science. But if someone thinks the earth is e.g. 6000 years old, and persist in that belief in the face of the available evidence, then they are not really pro-science. At the very least, I hope you can see that many scientists would find it annoying to be confronted by such people, and that repeated encounters with this degree of religiously-motivated antiscience could sometimes push them towards being skeptical of religion in general, particularly if they don’t know much about the complex, internecine theological distinctions among e.g. Christians of various sorts.

If anyone is wondering where the emotion in the New Atheist movement comes from, I think it is indisputable that a good chunk of it, although obviously not all of it, comes from the numerous intellectual travesties committed by creationists.
Bradford - #3725

January 31^st 2010

A response to Dr. Falk’s response:

http://telicthoughts.com/on-falks-response-to-meyer/
Jonathan Bartlett - #3730

January 31^st 2010

Nick -

“What’s the directing information in the case of a new gene evolving by mutation and natural selection acting on a gene duplicate?”

As an example, Nylon-eating bacteria are an example of evolution-by-information. First, note _which_ gene duplicated - it was one similar to what was needed. Second, there were 140 point mutations. If the mutation rate was that high in the rest of the genome, it would have killed the bacteria. In other words, the sequence space was restricted to the likely area where it would do good. Finally, location of the frameshift was interesting. It is extremely unlikely, from a chance perspective, for an antisense strand to have no stop codons of the length found here. According to Yomo et al (PNAS 89:3780-3784) “...the location of the NSF just coincides with the ORF for EIII, and the reading frame for the NSF shares the same triplet as that for the ORF. These results imply that there may be some unknown mechanism behind the evolution of these genes…”

So, again, also in the case of gene duplication, it appears to be evolution by information. Natural selection probably had *something* to do with it, but it is comparatively minor role, compared with the action of existing information.
Jonathan Bartlett - #3731

January 31^st 2010

“Nowhere is there an explanation of why, or how, an information-building process has a memory, such that adding up to 150 bits is possible, but adding 1 more bit (or 100, or 1000, etc.) later on is impossible, because the system “remembers” that it already hit the limit of 150 bits.” [note it’s actually 500 bits, but 10^150]

I think you’ve misunderstood the problem. It *is not* the case that 150 bits is easy. I think a search space which is searchable by the world’s best machines in a reasonable amount of time is somewhere on the order of 40 bits. However, what you seem to be missing is that the reason these are specified in bits is that they are *orders of magnitude*. They are log2 of the probability. Therefore, if you have two searches, each with 40 bits, that’s 41 bits. If you do three searches, that’s 41.5 bits. If you do four searches, that’s 42 bits. If you do 100 searches, that’s 46.6 bits.

The problem is that 500 bits is Dembski’s estimate for the probability of the universe, meaning that no search or combination of searches could add up to 500 bits. The measurement is essentailly orders-of-magnitude measurements, so they don’t just “add up”.
Darrel Falk - #3735

February 1^st 2010

3719 “This is indeed the question for Dr. Falk if he would dare to answer it. What’s or Who’s directing the information? Is it *just* nature alone?”

Dear Gregory,
All that happens, occurs within the context of fulfilling the creation command. John 1:3 makes this wonderfully clear in a manner that is consistent with the entire body of Scripture: “Through him all things were made…” Colossians 1:17 emphasizes this further—“in him all things hold together.” So there is no such thing as “just nature,” not if you believe in the God of the Bible. With the Psalmist we say ” Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me…”
Darrel Falk - #3737

February 1^st 2010

cont.

The question, as I see it Gregory, is not, (as you pose it), who is directing the information. Rather the question is two fold:
1. Is God directly manipulating the formation of information as we would do if we were building a robot or a computer? Or is God, because He is God, allowing it to build itself to some extent in a manner analogous to the way we experience God’s Spirit in our lives?
2. Can we use scientific tools and reasoning to demonstrate that what has happened would not have happened without God?
I don’t know the answer to either question and that’s okay. There is no scriptural or scientific reason to favor a particular answer. I can wait.

Steve Meyer, on the other hand, thinks he knows the answer to both. I’m with Habakkuk, I"ll stand at my watchpost.

Blessings my friend,
Darrel
Nick Matzke - #3751

February 1^st 2010

I think you’ve misunderstood the problem. It *is not* the case that 150 bits is easy. I think a search space which is searchable by the world’s best machines in a reasonable amount of time is somewhere on the order of 40 bits.

It doesn’t matter what increment you use. Let’s say you think the gene duplication + mutation + selection process can only add 10 bits of information to a genome. Well then, just repeat that 50 times and you’ve beaten Dembski’s limit of 500 bits.

However, what you seem to be missing is that the reason these are specified in bits is that they are *orders of magnitude*. They are log2 of the probability. Therefore, if you have two searches, each with 40 bits, that’s 41 bits. If you do three searches, that’s 41.5 bits. If you do four searches, that’s 42 bits. If you do 100 searches, that’s 46.6 bits.

Evolution isn’t really a search so this is a weird way to phrase it.
Nick Matzke - #3752

February 1^st 2010

You seem to be using one of the Dembskian infuriating, question-begging definitions of “information” where you have to know the probability of something before you can decide how much information it has. But in this thread, we are talking about Meyer’s definition of information, which is simply functionally specified sequence. On this definition, the new amount of functionally specified sequence would scale linearly with the number of bits required to store that new sequence. If you like, you can say that any sequence which is already represented in the parent gene is not new information. It doesn’t matter. The new chunks of functional sequence are new information, and thus a natural process, mutation and seleciton, can produce new information, and there is no reason to think there is a limit to this process, because some new mutation/selection event can always occur and add a “bit” more.

All this is through completely prosaic, well-understood, boring natural processes. It is the ID guys who are trying to insert weird, mysterious, unsupported limits to this process.
Nick Matzke - #3753

February 1^st 2010

Re: NS having a “minor role”—doesn’t matter. Even if NS can only add 1 bit of information at a time to a genome, just repeat for millions of years and you’ve generated lots of new information. This doesn’t prove that natural processes could cause the origin of life, but it dang well disproves Meyer’s contention that intelligence is required to produce new information/“specified complexity”, which is the key plank of his argument. And this fatal problem, not nasty mean bias, is why Meyer and ID will not get taken seriously by scientists, and rightly so.

Re: nylonase—I vaguely recall the frame-shift thing was a mistake and actually it’s just a case of the more standard gene duplication-mutation mechanism. E.g. if you BLAST nylonase you get lots of non-nylonase relatives. But then I also recall there are several different nylonases so I might be confused…
Gregory Arago - #3764

February 1^st 2010

Hi Dr. Falk,

I value that you can offer ‘more than just science’ in your approach to the world and beyond!

It is one thing to do science, and another to promote scientism.

It is one thing to study nature, another to promote naturalism.

You write: “there is no such thing as “just nature,” not if you believe in the God of the Bible.”

Well stated! But how far do you go with this?

Can one ‘do science’ and keep an eye or ear out for what is ‘more than natural’?

As a non-natural scientist, I do this all of the time.

What if your 1) instead asked if ‘God can create information’ and if 2) included ‘intuition’ (i.e. “reason in a hurry”) and ‘myth’? Would it be bad for demarcating?

Meyer’s philosophy is in *some* ways more powerful than your science. Which ways are those? Or is it impossible that philosophy can answer what science can’t? I doubt he feels as certain as you suggest.

Watchful, G.
Mark Winslow - #3796

February 2^nd 2010

I’ll go with Lamaitre on this one in the same vein as Falk: “He [the Christian researcher] knows that not one thing in all creation has been done without God…. [However,] Omnipresent divine activity is everywhere essentially hidden.” Science simply tells us (those who believe in a Creator) how God did it. Regardless of probabilities, surely God can let natural processes run their course in the creative process.
Jonathan Bartlett - #3800

February 2^nd 2010

Nick -

“Re: NS having a “minor role”—doesn’t matter.”

Actually, it does. Precisely what experiments are supposed to produce are an increase in knowledge. If all of the interesting mutations that we can experiment with are primarily information, then that removes any epistemic reason why we should believe that they operated differently in the past. Certainly someone *could* belive that, but they would have less scientific justification than someone who did not, based on our present experience of information. This means that it is more scientific to call it “evolution by information” because “evolution by information” is the process that we know about through experimentation. “evolution by natural selection” may have happened, but it is not revealed in any present experiments about interesting mutations.
Jonathan Bartlett - #3802

February 2^nd 2010

“Even if NS can only add 1 bit of information at a time to a genome, just repeat for millions of years and you’ve generated lots of new information. “

Again, you need to actually take a look at the math. If natural selection adds 1 bit of information at a time to a genome, and does so each day for 20 billion years, at the end of it you will have 42.7 bits of information (because it is an order-of-magnitude measurement).

Evolutionists often appeal to the vast age of the universe as justification for their improbable claims. But the nice thing about mathematics is that you can use it to evaluate claims that would otherwise be incomprehensible. While it might seem that adding 1 bit of information each day for 20 billion years would certainly add up to something past Dembski’s 500 bits, my trusty calculator calculates it to be 42.7 bits (the calculation is log2(365 * 20000000000) if you want to try it on your calculator).

If you want to put your faith in vast eons of time, that’s your business. But if you want it to be science you had better pull out your calculator and start looking at the numbers.
Jonathan Bartlett - #3831

February 2^nd 2010

Gregory -

“You speak of ‘evolution by information,’ in contrast to ‘evolution by natural selection.’ Has there been a published article in a natural scientific or philosophy of biology journal on this topic?”

Not with that wording, but there are several making that point. Some of the ones I’m familiar with are Wright’s “A Biochemical Mechanism for Nonrandom Mutations and Evolution”, Caporale has several. Her book, The Implicit Genome, is fantastic. A great paper is “Mutation is Modulated: Implications for Evolution” (reviewed here. Shapiro has made similar claims in his conception of “natural genetic engineering” (see “Mobile DNA and Evolution in the 21st Century”).

The problem, as I see it, is that most biologists have little knowledge of information theory, and most information theorists who want to apply information theory to biology are IDists, and are not let in the door. (note that most bioinformatics does not quite qualify in this manner, because it is only using information resources to examine biology, rather than examining biology _as_ an information resource).
Gregory Arago - #3837

February 2^nd 2010

Interesting. Thanks for that, Jonathan!)

Something to follow-up on, even as a non-biologist…
cist - #3844

February 2^nd 2010

Fine, micro-evolution. These are simply adaptive sub-sequences of non-adaptive sequences. Its as simple as that, and its computer engineering 101. Its stuff we know intuitively that biologists brag about before they even brag about it.

Question is, what exactly has been refuted here? Please point it out to me!
Douglas - #3849

February 2^nd 2010

“most information theorists who want to apply information theory to biology are IDists”

Such as who? Are you claiming that Dembski is an ‘information theorist’? His contribution to this area of mathematics is as close to zero as makes no difference. Meyer? His contribution to information theory is precisely zero. Who exactly are you referring to? Information theorists who are actually involved in the field recognise that information theory poses no problems to evolution, only misuses of it by people who aren’t actually working in the field do.

http://recursed.blogspot.com/2009/01/test-your-knowledge-of-information.html
Jonathan Bartlett - #3858

February 3^rd 2010

Douglas -

The problem with your web link is that there is a difference between syntactic and semantic information. Dembski was attempting to quantify semantic information. Quantifying syntactic information is beside the point - who care if a quantity of information increases if that quantity is meaningless? The quantities you are dealing with have to do with channel capacity, not functionality. Semantics requires syntax, but goes beyond it.

Dembski and Meyer’s primary contribution is not _in_ information theory (though Dembski’s active information is a contribution), their primary contribution has been in applying information theory to other avenues. As science gets more expansive, one of the key jobs is going to be bridging disciplines, and taking insights from one to the other. The problem is that people in nearly every discipline are entrenched with certain ways of thinking, and it is difficult for people from other disciplines to accept criticism from outside. Nonetheless, this is a critical part of science in this day and age.
Moshe Averick - #3860

February 3^rd 2010

“Consider the generation of antibody diversity….a set of random processes have generated the highly specified information required to fight the bacterial infection”

A human being is a DNA based organism. The entire construction and direction of the human body -including of course the immune system- is ultimately controlled by instructions in the DNA. Meyer’s entire point is that the most reasonable conclusion as to the origin of the digital code in DNA is an intelligent designer. Once you have genetic instructions you can have an immune system that will fight all types of bacterial invaders. When Falk calls this “a set of random processes” he seems to have entirely missed the point.
Nick Matzke - #3862

February 3^rd 2010

Again, you need to actually take a look at the math. If natural selection adds 1 bit of information at a time to a genome, and does so each day for 20 billion years, at the end of it you will have 42.7 bits of information (because it is an order-of-magnitude measurement).

So apparently your counterargument relies on 1+1 not equalling 2. Or the specified functional DNA sequence “AT” not having twice the information of the specified functional DNA sequence “A”. This is where I get to declare victory.
Douglas - #3863

February 3^rd 2010

Jonathan. you are just using meaningless combinations of words. Since it is mathematically trivial to demonstrate how evolutionary processes create new information, anti-evolutionists have to resort to “oh, that’s the wrong sort of information” type arguments. Neither Dembski nor Meyer appears to actually understand information theory. I’ve have seen Meyer specifically say that its use is to determine whether something was caused by intelligence. That’s not what information theory is at all, not even in the slightest. That is only how it is misused by pseudoscientists with a religious agenda.
If Demski’s or Meyer’s claims were even slightly accurate, and had some real-world value and application, they would be used by mathematicians in other areas. However, they aren’t. The terms thrown around by them have no rigorous mathematical or scientific definition, and aren’t used anywhere else. They are only used by religious apologists to argue against evolutionary theory.
Douglas - #3864

February 3^rd 2010

I might as well make my own obviously equally fallacious argument using meaningless terms.

Only natural processes are known, from our uniform and repeated experience, to produce ‘functional chaotic interdependence’.
Living organisms possess functional chaotic interdependence.
Therefore living organisms were produced by natural processes.

QED
Jonathan Bartlett - #3867

February 3^rd 2010

“you are just using meaningless combinations of words.”

The difference between syntax (combinations of tokens) and semantics (functional definitions) is not meaningless.

“Since it is mathematically trivial to demonstrate how evolutionary processes create new information, anti-evolutionists have to resort to “oh, that’s the wrong sort of information” type arguments.”

With Shannon or algorithmic information (both syntactical measurements), the quantity of info increases most if I add functionless, random garbage. Therefore, according to these measurements, I would be “increasing the information” if I killed the organisms with junk. Clearly, these measurements aren’t measuring the same thing that we are interested in when we want to know how much info has been created by evolution.

“If Demski’s or Meyer’s claims were even slightly accurate…they would be used by mathematicians in other areas”

Dembski’s ideas are actually used in the development of ideas of randomness in mathematics. If I remember, Eagle’s treatise on randomness relies on Dembski quite a bit. Dembski and Marks are being published in computer science journals which deal with adaptive systems - because their work does apply.
John Mulholland - #4046

February 7^th 2010

The Templeton project on “The Emergence of Biological Complexity” and similar studies are suggestive.

The central killer problem for evolution is entropy. How do we go from something simple to something complex - from fluids and dirt to increasingly complex creatures? Entropy says we could never go this direction - i.e., energy is lost at every stage, and degradation and chaos follow.

However, scientists studying the Big Bang find a cosmos that has spun off increasingly complex entities and systems from a tiny bundle of energy and a few elements. Polkinghorne, Gingerich, and others encourage us to have greater confidence in God, go on doing our science, not racing to insert “an iintelligent designer” whenever we run up against a puzzle that baffles us

Stephen Meyer seems to have “jumped the gun” with his theories of “iintelligent design”.
John Mulholland

On Biological Complexity - http://www.templeton.org/what_we_fund/core_funding_areas/science_and_the_big_questions/life_sciences/11737.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-01/jtf-jtf123005.php
http://www.vcu.edu/csbc/ , etc
Moshe Averick - #4094

February 8^th 2010

Falk writes, . “The data is simply not in yet.”

To state that the data is simply not in yet, is in my opinion, a gross misrepresentation of state of Origin of Life research.

As Dr. Klaus Dose stated in 1988, “More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life…have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on earth rather than to it’s solution” . If anything, the problem has grown exponentially since then, as new discoveries are made about the “simple” microbe and it’s fully digital genetic code.

Meyer has simply stated the obvious; namely, that super-sophisticated digital codes are the product of intelligence. Falk disagrees but provides no reasonable alternative except “MAYBE, it arose through an undirected process” . The “MAYBE” argument is dangerously close (if not identical) to the “if pigs could fly” argument.

I would be curious to find out how long Dr. Falk is prepared to wait, before coming to the obvious conclusion.
Pedro M. Rosario Barbosa - #26654

August 22^nd 2010

I may disagree with Dr. Falk regarding Dr. Meyer. Yes, he may have studied in the best universities and may have a PhD in philosophy, but as a philosopher (especially in my field which is epistemology and philosophy of science), we can recognize in Meyer’s statements non-sequiturs. Dr. Falk showed one example of this non-sequitur reasoning, and how Meyer’s statements beg the question. I may also add that any good philosophy of science student, even with BA degree, will see the huge problems of introducing any sort of supernatural explanation in science as being destructive of the field. In fact this reply has shown that Dr. Falk is more capable of dealing this subject philosophically than Stephen Meyer.

A really good and eminent philosopher would have been far more careful than Meyer in making such statements. Not only would he be criticized by biologists, but by philosophers as well.
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On Reading the Signature: A Response to Stephen Meyer

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