The failure of Intelligent Design
Stephen Jarosek
Dear members,
For some time, I’ve been something of a fan, at least casually, of Intelligent Design (ID). But I’ve always rejected the “human exceptionalism” that is supported on the Discovery Institute’s website. I had assumed that this was a fairly incidental adjunct to their paradigm, and that with a bit of gentle persuasion with the right people, they might be persuaded out of this position. Oh how wrong I was. After having taken a closer look, I now realize that the problem runs deep and is fundamentally quite intractable.
ID provides intelligent, compelling arguments to refute Darwinism and the materialist paradigm… most notably, the entropy problem and irreducible complexity. So it is with considerable disappointment that I’ve stumbled across the following video that so clearly establishes where ID fails.
Mark Levin interviews David Berlinski:
https://evolutionnews.org/2018/04/with-mark-levin-on-fox-news-david-berlinski-talks-evolution-science-progressivism/
Beginning at 19:05, Berlinski says:
There is a vast, inseparable distinction between two kinds of living systems... human beings and all the rest. THAT is something that is rarely noticed, rarely emphasized. The distance between a human being and our nearest chimpanzee like ancestors - common ancestors - is much, much, much greater than the difference between a chimpanzee and a flower. We're talking about a bifurcation in the manifold of biology. Human beings on one side, the rest of the animal kingdom... or the plant kingdom... on the other. These are facts that I think that any untroubled observer... and by untroubled I mean someone who has not previously adhered to any kind of ideology such as Darwinism... would at once recognize. Life is connected, it's in some sense one living system. But profoundly divided between human beings and all the rest.
Really? Human beings and “all the rest”? Human exceptionalism is seriously problematic. At its core is a failure to understand the nature of knowing… how living entities learn and know within the contexts of their ecosystems (and for humans, whose ecosystem is culture). Human exceptionalism fails because it fails to appreciate how the laws of motivation, association and habituation (closely aligned with Peirce’s three categories… firstness, secondness and thirdness) apply to every living organism… from single cells to multi-cells to frogs, bees and ants, to lizards, dogs, birds and humans, to male and female, men and women, to feral humans and domesticated animals. Human exceptionalism dumbs it all down. The “smart” species that has “free will” decides how the not-so-smart are governed by dumb instinct. Human exceptionalism presumes that humans are uniquely capable of arriving at an accurate take on “objective” reality. This is complete nonsense, because to live is to experience the world subjectively… no living entity can have a monopoly on “objectivity”. Ever. Human exceptionalism demonstrates a failure to appreciate the role of imitation in culture, particularly with respect to how humans define the things that matter (Peirce’s pragmatism).
To summarize… human exceptionalism cripples our ability to notice the principles that apply as much to us as they do to any of the living. It is to human exceptionalism that we owe our ignorance regarding free will vs instinct.
I might have mentioned before in this forum about the problem with the cultural narrative that has its origins in Judeo-Christianity. Genetic determinism (NeoDarwinism) is the not-God response to Judeo-Christianity's because-God. "Because genes" is as lame as "because God". Neither explains anything. And it seems that Berlinski has fallen into a variation of the same trap. When ID people, like Berlinski, speak of “intelligent design”, they do indeed seem to imply, quite literally, a visiting meddler with a blueprint and a plan… and not intelligent design in the context of systems or complexity theory, where each choice-making entity can be regarded as an intelligent designer (autopoiesis) in its own right.
The problem with Judeo-Christianity
Smart people in even the most primitive cultures can have an intuitive grasp of the entropy problem without having a word for “entropy” in their language. That’s why they invent their religions. They don’t need to know mathematics or physics to appreciate, at least intuitively, the primal nature of the entropy problem. “Something” must account for the amazing richness and detail of lived experience, and since the mechanics of dumb luck are insufficient to account for it, they invent their gods. Judeo-Christianity represents one such development. And its counter-narrative is the not-god of NeoDarwinism. And in this, it is clear that Berlinski, despite having rejected Neo-Darwinism, has failed to extricate himself from the either/or duality that forms the basis for his thinking. As a secular Jew, he apprehends an “objective” not-god interpretation of an anthropocentric reality as the only alternative to the because-god narrative. Insofar as he comes across as fairly agnostic on the god question, the god/not-god duality that forms the basis of his narrative does not help him… because it denies him the ability to apprehend the interconnected relationships between experience, neuroplasticity, personality, imitation and culture. At 1:55, from the introduction in one of his books, Berlinski makes clear his position on religion and secularism:
I am a secular Jew. My religious education did not take. I can barely remember a word of Hebrew. I cannot pray. I have spent more years than I care to remember in studying mathematics and writing about the sciences. Yet the book that follows is in some sense a defense of religious thought and sentiment. Biblical verses are the least of it.
There are, at least, trillions of billions of planets in the universe. Presumably, advanced civilizations along with not-so-advanced abound throughout this living universe. How might ID factor this self-evident assumption into its narrative? Or do they? When one assumes that humans are the most speshulest snowflake of God’s creation, do they mean the most special of all that lives, throughout the whole universe? Confined to one lone, average blue planet in an average part of an average galaxy of all the trillions of galaxies that comprise the universe? If so, then they might believe just about anything, including unicorns, fairies, goblins and sky-daddies.
“Human beings and all the rest”… There is no redeeming this kind of bold assertion, particularly with the unconditional certainty with which it is declared. Berlinski’s failure is his failure to understand how he is a product of his experiences within his culture. He believes that, through the sheer force of will under the control of intellect, he can stand beyond culture’s reach. No he can’t. He has an accent. He has a body-language. He has a memory. He has a way of viewing the world. These are all the stuff of experience imposing their force onto the wiring of neuroplastic brains and the organization of body-cells. Just as the axioms of motivation, association and habituation apply, in principle, to every other living entity. We must conclude that ID is irretrievably trapped in the god/not-god duality, and if they don’t address it, then there is no saving it. This ID that I once regarded as so promising… in its current form, it is a failure. By contrast, the two main Eastern religions that I am familiar with, namely, Hinduism and Buddhism, seem to have averted this trap, for the most part.
Regards,
Stephen Jarosek
PS: Nice to see that I’m back online with Sadhu Sanga (yet again), after going for weeks (yet again) without receiving emails. Odd.
BMP
From: Stephen Jarosek <sjar...@iinet.net.au>
To: Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, May 8, 2018 12:19 PM
Subject: [Sadhu Sanga] The failure of Intelligent Design
Paul Werbos
Dear StephenNamaste. Thank you for your interesting message. We hope you can remain connected now.To address your P.S.
first, it seems many (including us) are experiencing problems with email, especially from google and yahoo groups. Many changes are being made to the internet to protect privacy and at the same time to allow legalized surveillance.
In that scheme, while all forms of life are essentially sentient or conscious the human form is considered to be capable of not only living harmoniously within its present environment or immediate existence, but has the ability to inquire beyond that to seek the purpose or meaning of its mere existence and the origin of it all.
C. S. Morrison
On 9 May 2018 12:25, "'BMP' via Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D." <Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
BMP> I appreciate the effort of the Christian ID people to deal with the hard questions that the scientific community's materialistic adherents seem to unsatisfactorily dismiss regarding our understanding of biological life and its origins. I think they bring a proper balance to dealing with those hard questions.
CM: A fair point.
BMP: There are demonstrable physiological and genetic differences within the variety of living creatures that inhabit the Earth. We have no difficulty understanding the difference between animals, plants and insects or one animal from another. Humans and non humans are also different. At a social and cultural level humans exhibit what has been called a "second nature" based on a conceptual or thinking reason that is quite distinct from nature in the raw or instinctive behavior. For this reason we observe that humans are much more capable of considerable destructive as well as creative potential in the world than we find in other creatures.
CM: I'm not sure what this has to do with ID. Those differences are accounted for quite well in Darwinian theory. The astonishing distinctness of human society, for example, can be put down to the evolution of language, without which the fluent combining of ideas that allows the human brain to break free from the slavish adherence to instinct that governs other animals' behavior would not be possible. I was interested to note, though, that in his talk in Tucson Noam Chomski was emphasising that how evolution went from the finite communication systems of other animals to the infinite one that humans employ is not easy to explain. He said there are no intermediate steps. I was quite surprised at that statement.
My problem with ID is that half the theory is missing. Where is the designing taking place? How is the output of the design process then transformed into a working prototype? How does the designer get feedback as to how well the design has worked, etc, etc. At least Darwinian theory doesn't have such a big part missing. On the other hand, I seriously doubt that it can on its own account for the diversity and complexity of life on earth given the time constraints. Hence when the ID people come up with a consistent theory of the nature and operation of the designer their theory requires I might then be persuaded to take their claims more seriously.
Best wishes,
Colin
C. S. Morrison - author of The Blind Mindmaker: Explaining Consciousness without Magic or Misrepresentation.
https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
BMP: As you point out, however, honest introspection and observation of others does seem to confirm that instinct plays an important role even in apparently rational human behavior at an individual and cultural level, and these are not so separable as some might think. However, the differences we observe among species of life regard what some call both their natures and second natures, or if you prefer, their material and spiritual natures. This variety of life tells us something very important about consciousness according to the Vedic tradition that interprets consciousness as determinate of bodily manifestation in conjunction with their understanding of the role of karma and release from it.
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Stephen Jarosek
Dear Bhakti Madhava Puri,
Many attempts have been made in the past to establish the “litmus test” for the key difference between human animals and non-human animals. First there was “animals don’t have culture.” Then there was “animals don’t use tools.” And a string of others… animals don’t have free will… they don’t have a sense of self… they have an “in the present” perception of the flow of time, etc, etc, etc. Assumptions and conjectures abound, perhaps the most prolific being the Darwinian “animals are governed by instinct” (whatever that’s supposed to mean). And so on. But as we looked closer, it became apparent, for example, that animals do have culture, they do use tools, they do have a sense of self, and they can plan for the future… and so on. Upon closer inspection it becomes clear that there is no clear litmus test to distinguish between human and non-human. It’s not either/or. It’s shades of grey. What’s the tipping-point for the human/non-human distinction? Is there one?
The thing that makes human animals different to non-human animals? I can think of one… not either/or but a shade of grey. Culture as a thought. Animals have culture… but their cultures are more like subcultures or tribes than sophisticated interpretations of the world. What is it that makes human cultures thought-like, but animal cultures not so much? Think of the difference between neurons and body-cells. The neural mind-body is equipped to communicate with other neurons. The human mind-body is equipped to communicate with other humans. Neural mind-bodies self-organize within brains. Human mind-bodies self-organize within large cultures, like cities. What is it about the human mind-body that distinguishes it from non-human mind-bodies? Vocal chords and hands… in the first instance. Chimps have hands, parrots have vocal chords… but neither chimps nor parrots are capable of self-organizing into complex culture-as-thought. There is much to unpack here… let’s move on, as this is getting off-topic. [For those who are still interested, the late Thomas Sebeok's interpretation, connecting mind with body with culture and language, is what I am alluding to here]
But here’s the focal point of my vehement objection to human exceptionalism. Our animal natures are always with us. Peirce’s categories are always integral to what we become. More specifically… there is no such thing as instinct, though there are predispositions around which both human animals and non-human animals have to “know how to be”. Let’s repeat that because it’s important, and it is kind of alien to the mainstream narrative… knowing how to be… it relates to pragmatism (Peirce). [Heidegger’s Dasein also relates] And if we are not careful with our knowing how to be, then we can quickly revert to our basest animal natures. Human exceptionalism distances us from the principles that govern all life. Knowing how to be… the question of knowing how to be is irrelevant to human exceptionalism, which assumes that we are gifted with the human condition and this entitles us to wallow in our factual certainties about objective reality, and relax in our smug sense of superiority (at least in this life). Of course as we get morally flabby from our self-indulgences, our flabby, virtue-signalling, pseudo-moral trajectory ensures that our next-life context won’t be so sweet.
The notion of culture-as-thought has big implications for the role of morality and identity. Animals have culture, but not culture as a thought, and so questions of morality have little meaning beyond their associative-habitual reflexes. Again, there is much here to unpack… trying to keep it simple. The moment we think of culture as a thought, we set the stage for an alternative narrative on heaven and hell. Moral and immoral cultures. Questions of courage and integrity relate. What kind of hell is our current global confusion descending to… as we revert increasingly to our basest, most reflexive animal impulses? Groupthink is impulsive-think that does not question anything. Groupthink is the domain of cowards. Groupthink is that lumbering, lurching, heaving miasma of stoopid taking us to hell in a hand-basket.
Bottom line… it does not pay to distance ourselves from our animal natures. We should be humbled by our animal natures… we should fear them. Human exceptionalism is an indulgence that we can’t afford. Human exceptionalism has no place in serious scientific discourse, except in the sort of context in which we are discussing it now (and why it should be avoided).
Kind regards
--
----------------------------
Vasavada, Kashyap V
Dear all,
There are plenty of aguments against ID. You can google for them. One interesting argument is that some 90 to 99 percent of species which were created are extinct now. Do you think a builder whose 99 percent of buildings collapse can stay in business?!
Best.
Kashyap
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Online_Sadhu_Sanga/LOXP123MB0933DDD11C060A6459462189BA990%40LOXP123MB0933.GBRP123.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.
Whit Blauvelt
> The notion of culture-as-thought has big implications for the role of morality
> and identity. Animals have culture, but not culture as a thought, and so
> questions of morality have little meaning beyond their associative-habitual
> reflexes. Again, there is much here to unpack… trying to keep it simple. The
> moment we think of culture as a thought, we set the stage for an alternative
> narrative on heaven and hell. Moral and immoral cultures. Questions of courage
> and integrity relate. What kind of hell is our current global confusion
> descending to… as we revert increasingly to our basest, most reflexive animal
> impulses? Groupthink is impulsive-think that does not question anything.
> Groupthink is the domain of cowards. Groupthink is that lumbering, lurching,
> heaving miasma of stoopid taking us to hell in a hand-basket.
You put that well, and I agree with much of it. Stephen Greenblatt's recent
book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, goes into fine historical detail on
human cultures' dealings in notions of heaven and hell. I'm enjoying reading
it. Even those among us with no professed spiritual outlook deal in ideal
visions of paradise, alongside dystopian visions of failed futures.
One place I'd push back against your thinking, though (thus, perhaps,
showing an aversion to groupthink?) is on your use of the common view of
"our basest, most reflexive animal impulses." The love of parents for their
offspring, for instance, is a base, reflexive impulse, at least among
mammals, possibily even among nesting birds. Cultures of thought can help us
cultivate such love; yet the roots of it are base, wild, an impulsive matter
of instinct. One can argue that cultures as often get in the way of love as
enhance it, and destroy the natural empathies among people rather than
nurture them.
In Buddhism, the "Buddha nature" of each of us is often spoken of as
preceding culture; Taoism has a similar concept, of our minds grasping
reality best when we go beyond language and standard conceptions. Does such
a move involve going higher even than normal human culture, or is it a
relaxing back into the animal nature which has always been as source for us?
And what of the often inexplicable intuition that drives so many scientific
and artistic advances? Is that something that belongs to culture, or
something that, as animals, from our animal nature, we bring to culture?
What do the Vedas say?
Much of the "hell in a hand-basket" threat in our modern world stems from
those who would defend our particular cultures, draw boundaries around them
and try to establish their "purity." Certainly there are times when our
instincts lead us to trouble; but are there also times when our animal
instincts for can save us? Cultures, hardened into ideologies, can threaten
wars and other excesses beyond typical natural dangers.
On the other hand, current American leadership shows instinct without
culture; perhaps it's in the proper blending of the two, rather than any
valuation of one over the other, that presents our best hope.
Best,
Whit
BMP
Some look at the soul as amazing, some describe it as amazing, and some hear of it as amazing, while others, even after hearing about it, cannot understand it at all.
One situated in spiritual realization sees with equal vision one and the same spirit in all, whether a brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog or a dog eater.
Subject: RE: [Sadhu Sanga] The failure of Intelligent Design
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Stephen Jarosek
Perfectly stated. ID’s human exceptionalism, by contrast, is of the anthropocentric, “man made in god’s image” variety… it sees only it own exceptionalism, but dumbs down the rest.
C. S. Morrison
On 9 May 2018 21:50, "Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> There are plenty of aguments against ID. You can google for them. One interesting argument is that some 90 to 99 percent of species which were created are extinct now. Do you think a builder whose 99 percent of buildings collapse can stay in business?!
CM: Not if they were all intended to be the finished product. But who made that claim? If lifeforms were being designed by an intelligence (especially one without a brain to manipulate the ideas in) then we should expect to see a lot of experiments: Prototypes built and tried out and then changed with improved versions being the ones with which the designer plays next in the hope of finding further improvements. Naturally the inferior prototypes are left to their own devices and 99 percent of them eventually fail at no loss of face to the designer. In view of this that argument against ID is one of the weakest I've ever heard. Perhaps googling those arguments is not the best strategy. Might be best to examine the claims of the ID people themselves and look for the weaknesses in their arguments. That way you avoid the hurried thoughtless cliches of people motivated purely by their dislike of views that might suggest the possibility of a God.
Best wishes,
Colin
C. S. Morrison - author of The Blind Mindmaker: Explaining Consciousness without Magic or Misrepresentation.
https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
>
> Best.
>
> Kashyap
>
> From: online_sa...@googlegroups.com <online_sa...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of C. S. Morrison
> Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2018 1:02 PM
> To: 'BMP' via Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. <Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com>; Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] The failure of Intelligent Design
>
>
>
>
> On 9 May 2018 12:25, "'BMP' via Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D." <Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> BMP> I appreciate the effort of the Christian ID people to deal with the hard questions that the scientific community's materialistic adherents seem to unsatisfactorily dismiss regarding our understanding of biological life and its origins. I think they
bring a proper balance to dealing with those hard questions.
>
> CM: A fair point.
>
> BMP: There are demonstrable physiological and genetic differences within the variety of living creatures that inhabit the Earth. We have no difficulty understanding the difference between animals, plants and insects or one animal from another. Humans and
non humans are also different. At a social and cultural level humans exhibit what has been called a "second nature" based on a conceptual or thinking reason that is quite distinct from nature in the raw or instinctive behavior. For this reason we observe that
humans are much more capable of considerable destructive as well as creative potential in the world than we find in other creatures.
>
> CM: I'm not sure what this has to do with ID. Those differences are accounted for quite well in Darwinian theory. The astonishing distinctness of human society, for example, can be put down to the evolution of language, without which the fluent combining
of ideas that allows the human brain to break free from the slavish adherence to instinct that governs other animals' behavior would not be possible. I was interested to note, though, that in his talk in Tucson Noam Chomski was emphasising that how evolution
went from the finite communication systems of other animals to the infinite one that humans employ is not easy to explain. He said there are no intermediate steps. I was quite surprised at that statement.
>
> My problem with ID is that half the theory is missing. Where is the designing taking place? How is the output of the design process then transformed into a working prototype? How does the designer get feedback as to how well the design has worked, etc,
etc. At least Darwinian theory doesn't have such a big part missing. On the other hand, I seriously doubt that it can on its own account for the diversity and complexity of life on earth given the time constraints. Hence when the ID people come up with a
consistent theory of the nature and operation of the designer their theory requires I might then be persuaded to take their claims more seriously.
>
> Best wishes,
> Colin
>
> C. S. Morrison - author of The Blind Mindmaker: Explaining Consciousness without Magic or Misrepresentation.
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
>
> <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com</blockquote></div>
Vasavada, Kashyap V
Sorry Colin,
Sorry Colin! Your argument about inferior prototypes and improvements etc. does not support an intelligent agency who knows everything before! It actually supports evolution, natural selection, survival for the fittest etc.
Best.
Kashyap
NYIKOS, PETER
You are immersed in the animal - human divide all through your essays on ID, only you may be like the proverbial fish that does not know what water is because it is its very world -- and as very young children, some perhaps as old as four or five years old, who do not know there is air even though they are constantly breathing it -- and as I was until I was 12, not knowing that light rays that are what I actually see. [Up until then, I thought I saw objects because they were THERE, and my eyes were open, and it wasn't dark.]
No animal has, to our knowledge, formulated the concepts that made it possible for you to type everything you did and to make sense out of it. Sure, we can speculate about how chimps or dolphins or elephants, with just the right kind of input from us, over many generations, might be taught to make sense out of what you wrote. But until that time comes, it is all just speculation, AT BEST, and perhaps it is just plain impossible for any known creature besides a human to understand it.
The case is even better where research level higher mathematics and physics are concerned. Almost all my peer-reviewed research papers (and I have over a hundred of them published, more than half of them with me as the sole author) involve long chains of reasoning that even humans need graduate level aptitude to understand. Can we bring any non-human animal up to that level of reasoning ability in the next ten thousand years? Or ever? Or even to where they can understand secondary school level algebra? I doubt it.
Don't get me wrong -- I believe cetaceans and elephants have methods of communicating that we cannot begin to understand either. But what I wrote is a prelude to my main point: that we understand a great deal about our universe as a whole, including the evolution of stars and galaxies as well as biological evolution, and a huge amount about tiny bits of it, including the molecular biology of the cells that make up our bodies, and including atoms and subatomic particles, ... and I don't think any animal now on earth will ever be able to take in even one percent of what I have taken in of these marvelous things.
I say "now on earth" because I do not rule out other animals, including ape or elephant or cetacean or even raccoon descendants, evolving to be as intelligent as we are. But if that ever happens, it is millions of years away unless intelligent design -- in the form of humans speeding the evolutionary process up a hundredfold or more -- intervenes.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2018 4:04 PM
To: Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [SPAM]RE: [Sadhu Sanga] The failure of Intelligent Design
Dear Bhakti Madhava Puri,
Many attempts have been made in the past to establish the “litmus test” for the key difference between human animals and non-human animals. First there was “animals don’t have culture.” Then there was “animals don’t use tools.” And a string of others… animals
don’t have free will… they don’t have a sense of self… they have an “in the present” perception of the flow of time, etc, etc, etc. Assumptions and conjectures abound, perhaps the most prolific being the Darwinian “animals are governed by instinct” (whatever
that’s supposed to mean). And so on. But as we looked closer, it became apparent, for example, that animals do have culture, they do use tools, they do have a sense of self, and they can plan for the future… and so on. Upon closer inspection it becomes clear
that there is no clear litmus test to distinguish between human and non-human. It’s not either/or. It’s shades of grey. What’s the tipping-point for the human/non-human distinction? Is there one?
The thing that makes human animals different to non-human animals? I can think of one… not either/or but a shade of grey. Culture as a thought. Animals have culture… but their cultures are more like subcultures or tribes than sophisticated interpretations of
the world. What is it that makes human cultures thought-like, but animal cultures not so much? Think of the difference between neurons and body-cells. The neural mind-body is equipped to communicate with other neurons. The human mind-body is equipped to communicate
with other humans. Neural mind-bodies self-organize within brains. Human mind-bodies self-organize within large cultures, like cities. What is it about the human mind-body that distinguishes it from non-human mind-bodies? Vocal chords and hands… in the first
instance. Chimps have hands, parrots have vocal chords… but neither chimps nor parrots are capable of self-organizing into complex culture-as-thought. There is much to unpack here… let’s move on, as this is getting off-topic. [For those who are still interested,
the late
Thomas Sebeok's interpretation, connecting mind with body with culture and language, is what I am alluding to here]
But here’s the focal point of my vehement objection to human exceptionalism. Our animal natures are always with us. Peirce’s categories are always integral to what we become. More specifically… there is no such thing as instinct, though there are predispositions
around which both human animals and non-human animals have to “know how to be”. Let’s repeat that because it’s important, and it is kind of alien to the mainstream narrative… knowing how to be… it relates to pragmatism (Peirce). [Heidegger’s
Dasein also relates] And if we are not careful with our knowing how to be, then we can quickly revert to our basest animal natures. Human exceptionalism distances us from the principles that govern all life. Knowing how to be… the question of knowing
how to be is irrelevant to human exceptionalism, which assumes that we are gifted with the human condition and this entitles us to wallow in our factual certainties about objective reality, and relax in our smug sense of superiority (at least in this life).
Of course as we get morally flabby from our self-indulgences, our flabby, virtue-signalling, pseudo-moral trajectory ensures that our next-life context won’t be so sweet.
The notion of culture-as-thought has big implications for the role of morality and identity. Animals have culture, but not culture as a thought, and so questions of morality have little meaning beyond their associative-habitual reflexes. Again, there is much
here to unpack… trying to keep it simple. The moment we think of culture as a thought, we set the stage for an alternative narrative on heaven and hell. Moral and immoral cultures. Questions of courage and integrity relate. What kind of hell is our current
global confusion descending to… as we revert increasingly to our basest, most reflexive animal impulses? Groupthink is impulsive-think that does not question anything. Groupthink is the domain of cowards. Groupthink is that lumbering, lurching, heaving miasma
of stoopid taking us to hell in a hand-basket.
Bottom line… it does not pay to distance ourselves from our animal natures. We should be humbled by our animal natures… we should fear them. Human exceptionalism is an indulgence that we can’t afford. Human exceptionalism has no place in serious scientific
discourse, except in the sort of context in which we are discussing it now (and why it should be avoided).
Kind regards
From: 'BMP' via Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. [mailto:Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2018 1:24 PM
To: Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] The failure of Intelligent Design
Dear Stephen
Namaste. Thank you for your interesting message. We hope you can remain connected now.To address your P.S. first, it seems many (including us) are experiencing problems with email, especially from google and yahoo groups. Many changes are being made to the internet to protect privacy and at the same time to allow legalized surveillance. Due to this, many on this list address members personally as well as through the group. Sometimes that creates problems of directing such messages to the spam folder because they may be detected as mass mailings. We are considering alternatives to the present system. Any suggestions are welcome.
I appreciate the effort of the Christian ID people to deal with the hard questions that the scientific community's materialistic adherents seem to unsatisfactorily dismiss regarding our understanding of biological life and its origins. I think they bring a proper balance to dealing with those hard questions.
There are demonstrable physiological and genetic differences within the variety of living creatures that inhabit the Earth. We have no difficulty understanding the difference between animals, plants and insects or one animal from another. Humans and non humans are also different. At a social and cultural level humans exhibit what has been called a "second nature" based on a conceptual or thinking reason that is quite distinct from nature in the raw or instinctive behavior. For this reason we observe that humans are much more capable of considerable destructive as well as creative potential in the world than we find in other creatures.
As you point out, however, honest introspection and observation of others does seem to confirm that instinct plays an important role even in apparently rational human behavior at an individual and cultural level, and these are not so separable as some might think. However, the differences we observe among species of life regard what some call both their natures and second natures, or if you prefer, their material and spiritual natures. This variety of life tells us something very important about consciousness according to the Vedic tradition that interprets consciousness as determinate of bodily manifestation in conjunction with their understanding of the role of karma and release from it.
--
----------------------------
C. S. Morrison
Dear Kashyap,
You said
> Sorry Colin! Your argument about inferior prototypes and improvements etc. does not support an intelligent agency who knows everything before!
CM: Of course it doesn't! Who said anything about a designer who knows everything before? Human designers don't know everything before, so why should we assume any nonhuman designer that might exist has to know everything before. That just seems to me to be a rather preposterous condition to impose upon a possible designer of life on earth. It seems to me you are setting up a straw man that is easy to knock down. Any REAL noospherian, alien or universewide consciousness that may be playing a role in the evolution of life on earth is almost certainly NOT going to know before hand HOW to achieve the goals it wants to achieve. It is going to experiment. It will stir some chemicals together in a warm little pool and allow the sun to repeatedly evaporate it and see what comes out. Later when the world is full of suitable replicators it will see advantageous changes taking place in one organism as a result of some mutation and try the same mutation in the genes of other organisms in similar circumstances elsewhere in the world. This is bound to result in beneficial mutations more often than would be expected from chance alone. And provided it is able to remember what worked in the past, it will over the ages become more and more adept at knowing which mutations are most likely to work. What we would expect to see is a sort of exponential increase in complexity and the speed of beneficial evolutionary change in the line of prototypes that it is working hardest to develop. Much as we seen in the development of computers. Considering that it took two-three billion years (with very short generations and vastly larger populations) for single celled creatures to become sophisticated enough to combine into multicellular life-forms, only a few hundred million years for the development of all the animal phyla, and only a few hundred thousand generations in vastly smaller populations to evolve the incredibly sophisticated human language capability, there does appear to me to be this exponential increase in complexity typical of the sort of memory effect we should expect from a designer who learns how to do things better with greater experience.
VK: It actually supports evolution, natural selection, survival for the fittest etc.
CM: Although that undoubtedly takes place, it would be a remarkably patient designer who would wait for that to produce the desired results. Instead any designer worth his salt would experiment and try out what works in one organism within other organisms, thereby vastly speeding up the process and not leaving it all to chance. The resultant memory effect is quite different from what purely Darwinian evolution would predict and I think it is much more like what we see in the fossil record.
Since you like cliched arguments against ID. Here is an interesting one in its favour:
If it is probable that there exists a being capable of playing a part in the evolution of life on Earth at no great cost, is it not very reasonable to expect that such a being WOULD do so? After all, life on Earth is as far as we currently know, arguably the most interesting thing happening in the universe. Of course perhaps we only find it interesting because we have evolved to find such things interesting because it helped us pass on our genes to future generation. Alternatively, perhaps the fact that this is good for our genes is a consequence of us being designed to find such things interesting because our designer wanted to create a being that shared the same appreciation of of complex design that was responsible for the wonderful creations she had brought into being.
So whilst I agree that an all-knowing magical designer is not what the fossil record suggests. I think that a powerful being that learns how to do things much as we humans do certainly cannot be ruled out. In fact I think the pattern of exponentially increasing complexity with time (especially when measured in terms of generations) is actually far more consistent with that hypothesis.
Best wishes,
Colin
C. S. Morrison - author of The Blind Mindmaker: Explaining Consciousness without Magic or Misrepresentation.
https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
> Best.
>
> Kashyap
>
>
>
Vasavada, Kashyap V
Dear Colin,
I bet 99.9% of people who believe in ID or creationism will not agree with your idea of designer. Their idea of God is an omnipotent creator and designer who does not have to do trial and error! According to them he just created the whole world in 6 days some 6000 years back! If you are suggesting that the God is just another name for nature, creator of laws of nature like standard model and theory of evolution, then of course even most scientists would not have any problem. But this is not what a common creationist or ID person has in mind! There is a creationist museum in a neighboring state which shows dinosaurs and people existing side by side!
I do not know what percent of British population believes in creationism and ID. But in U.S. according to one survey only 21% of Americans believe in Big Bang Theory , only 27% in 4.5 Billion years old earth and only 31% in theory of evolution! I am talking about the rest of the people!! I do not know what kind of creationist people you have met! I wrote a blog http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/04/hinduism-for-physicists.html after I heard about this survey. I am suggesting that eastern religions do not have this issue. It is mostly brought out by literal interpretation of Abrahamic religious books. I have also written articles against teaching creationism and ID in science classes in schools in local papers.
So I would not have problem with your interpretation of designer.
C. S. Morrison
On 11 May 2018 01:37, "Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear Colin,
>
> I bet 99.9% of people who believe in ID or creationism will not agree with your idea of designer. Their idea of God is an omnipotent creator and designer who does not have to do trial and error!
CM: If so then it is a rather unpraiseworthy (as well as implausible) God they believe in. A God who clicked his fingers and magicked us into being is not the craftsman portrayed in the Old Testament. It is not the God of Genesis who "Let the land produce the wild animals..." etc, and who tried out all the animals to see which would be a suitable partner for man! But how can you be so certain they believe this? Do the ID people support the nutty Creationist museum?
VK: According to them he just created the whole world in 6 days some 6000 years back! If you are suggesting that the God is just another name for nature, creator of laws of nature like standard model and theory of evolution
CM: Nope. If that were all I was suggesting why bother calling it a creator? What I am suggesting is that the rate of beneficial mutations in at least one germline have been speeded up due to the effect of a real conscious entity intelligently experimenting and remembering what worked with the goal of creating intelligent creatures.
VK then of course even most scientists would not have any problem. But this is not what a common creationist or ID person has in mind! There is a creationist museum in a neighboring state which shows dinosaurs and people existing side by side!
>
> I do not know what percent of British population believes in creationism and ID.
CM: Is it really fair to conflate these two distinct positions? I doubt very many Britons are creationists but suspect the number of ID and theistic evolutionists is increasing because such a view seems to better explain the facts.
Best wishes,
Colin
C. S. Morrison - author of The Blind Mindmaker: Explaining Consciousness without Magic or Misrepresentation.
https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
VK: But in U.S. according to one survey only 21% of Americans believe in Big Bang Theory , only 27% in 4.5 Billion years old earth and only 31% in theory of evolution! I am talking about the rest of the people!! I do not know what kind of creationist people you have met! I wrote a blog http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/04/hinduism-for-physicists.html after I heard about this survey. I am suggesting that eastern religions do not have this issue. It is mostly brought out by literal interpretation of Abrahamic religious books. I have also written articles against teaching creationism and ID in science classes in schools in local papers.
Stephen Jarosek
Hi Colin,
I don’t understand what insights a creator/designer provides as to the nature of existence. What phenomenology explains His motivation to be? Why should He care to create life? Where is His workshop? What tools does He use? Does He have hands with which to wield a hammer or use a soldering iron? Does he have eyes with which to read a blueprint?
Many of us might be receptive to a God as a unity, as Kashyap suggests, in the laws of nature around us. It would make more sense for God’s emergence to be bootstrapped with the emergence of the universe as a unity, not as a meddler in a workshop working to a blueprint. God and the universe as one. Or maybe a systems-theory view of nested hierarchies, where autopoiesis (self-organisation) can be considered a form of creation/design. But not god as a visitor in some kind of workspace.
I’m not big fan of Richard Dawkins, but he does have a point when he asks, sarcastically, who created god? A god-god? Then who created god-god? A god-god-god? God as a creator makes no sense and explains nothing.
Isaac Newton provided the axiomatic framework for a physics that did not make sense at the time. Now it makes perfect sense, and we bear witness to its relevance in our engineering and technological achievements. We need a similar awakening with the life sciences. What axiomatic framework does God the Creator/Designer relate to? Here’s my prediction… whatever the right theory is, it MUST make sense… and we will know it when we see it. A godly designer does not make sense. There is no phenomenology that explains his motivations or existence.
And you raise the topic of mutations again. Natural selection based on mutations violates the principles of entropy, as the tendency to disorder. Nobody’s proven the relevance of mutations to evolution. Pure, unsubstantiated conjecture. Calvin Beisner, with reference to the work of RH Byles, dispenses tidily with the mutation mumbo jumbo:
https://www.icr.org/article/270
Regards
--
Stephen Jarosek
WHIT BLAUVELT >” The love of parents for their
offspring, for instance, is a base, reflexive impulse, at least among
mammals, possibily even among nesting birds.”
This is an interesting and very relevant point. And just for clarity, allow me re-iterate… I do not accept that there is any such thing as instinct – instinct is a false distinction, a red herring and responsible for much of the broken narrative around our life sciences. But is it fair to trivialize this kind of parental love as an “impulse”? Or does it point to something deeper? I think it does. This ties in with Paul’s observation:
PAUL WERBOS >”Above all, the human form -- the mundane body form with DNA and all -- is NOT in a stable state. It is much less capable as it stands of living in harmony with its environment than the vast majority of other organisms on this planet. That is our problem here today. It reminds me how my friend Yeshua says "GOD is an acronym for Grow or Die." Civilization as we know it, with the ways of thinking we have relied on in the past, are simply not sustainable.”
We are all products of our culture to an extent that is invisible to the vast, overwhelming majority of people. We depend on cultures to keep our identities suspended and alive. If we are removed from our cultures in any kind of permanent way, then our notion of self, for the vast, overwhelming majority of people, collapses.
I’ve mentioned before in this forum about the importance of imitation. I’ve been blessed with the experience of growing up amid a mix of two very different cultural backgrounds with very different languages… Australian and European. As different as oil on water. And so I know all about the importance of imitation in a very practical sense. Imitation of the wrong options is the basis for the vast majority of problems. Trying to make sense of which culture to imitate is not easy. A dominant narrative in Australia is this myth of the relaxed, easy-going, fun-loving Australian. This is a complete myth, a subjective interpretation not grounded in any solid, objective facts. Contrary to the implications of “easy-going”, taken at face value, the Australian cultural narrative is not a broadband narrative comprising many possibilities, but a narrowband narrative comprising very limited possibilities. Australia is more accurately described not a classless society, but as a single-class society, and the “easy-going” narrative confines options to a narrow bandwidth of possibilities. It is very easy to inadvertently step beyond the bounds of this narrow cultural bandwidth and get yourself into trouble, and people visiting Australia from countries like America or Europe don’t get it. They can’t get it. Ever. They might think that they do, but I know that they never will. Indeed, nobody gets it, not even the locally-born, irrespective of their backgrounds.
According to Buddhists, desire (Tanha) is the source of all problems. On this, they are wrong. Tanha is downstream from imitation. Tanha relates to thirst, desire, longing, greed… craving… I would like to add to that definition fear, and the fear that your cravings might not be met. Tanha is secondary to imitation. It is imitation (pragmatism), in the sense of “knowing how to be”, that first establishes the things that matter… the things that you should desire and fear. Incorrect imitation is the source of all problems, not desire. If you choose the wrong role model, or if you incorrectly imitate your chosen role model, then that plants the seeds of divergence. Regarding the seeds of divergence… celebrity psychologist Jordan Peterson recently made a comment along these lines, in one of his video clips (damn, I should have saved it when I saw it, I can’t remember which one it was now). He made the point that you only have to be a little different from the norm, to have people react to you aversely, and thus have what started out as a minor difference amplify to a big difference… and have you eventually spin off onto a very different behavioral trajectory away from all cultural norms. No, desire is not the source of all problems… imitation is. Of this, I have no doubt whatsoever.
Why are the truths of cultural reality, particularly as they relate to imitation, invisible even to the locals? This is because to grow up imitating from your surrounding cultural narratives is to accept your culture’s options, its terms, its definitions… and most importantly, its assumptions… the assumption that your culture is “real”. It’s a form of hypnosis that lulls you into accepting what is real. Complicity. The company we keep. All the choices that we make from our culture come back through our culture to reinforce what we choose to be. Or, if we imitate incorrectly, to further isolate us. Like a body fights invading germs.
The topic of feral children is particularly interesting in this regard. Children raised by wild animals from infancy, such as the wild-boy of Aveyron raised by wolves, first learn about the things that matter, by imitating them from their wolf-families. No doubt, there are many hoaxes to have to wade through when trying to establish the verity of these feral-child legends. But some of them are credible, and the wild-boy of Aveyron was perhaps among the first to be examined critically by physician Jean Marc Gaspard Itard. Another interesting one to follow up on is the case of Oxana Malaya. Though she was not raised by dogs from infancy, her exposure to dogs in childhood, to the exclusion of human influence, has had a remarkable impact that is documented in videos.
Ultimately, my view is that all psychological problems (excluding obvious functional injury or physical disease), from neurosis to psychosis, are ultimately problems of imitation. Like instinct, neurosis and psychosis are false distinctions… red herrings that obscure from view the importance of imitation and the choices that we make. Thomas Szasz seemed to be going in a similar direction to mine, in this context, with his books The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and The Manufacture of Madness (1970).
The imitation of Jesus plays an important part in Christian traditions. Did this emphasis on imitating Jesus somehow manifest in the Occidental cultural narrative, which led to the Renaissance, and the European contributions to the sciences and the arts? The emphasis on imitation as first cause over desire. Somehow that got lost in translation, but its impact has been profound. With the crisis facing Europe at the moment, it might pay to revisit the role of imitation and the choices we make, within the context of culture and the Christian narrative. But please… let us keep indulgences, like human exceptionalism and notions of God as bearded sky-daddy with a blueprint under his arms, out of it.
So… getting back to Paul’s observation regarding stability. We are suspended within our cultures. Our motivations from within are suspended from the culture without, like a puppet is suspended on strings. When we go on a holiday, we experience a change in mindset, and when we return, we are reminded of the enormous effort that is sometimes required to swing back into “normal” gear. This is not an artifact of neural “programming” or instinct. It is not an “adaptive response” of natural selection. It is a fundamental expression of the dependence of who we are on the culture within which we are suspended, like puppets on strings. A holiday removes us from our usual strings. When we return from our holiday, we need to look around for the strings that we left on the ground, behind us… and that sometimes requires considerable effort.
And, getting back to Whit’s observation about parents… we might better appreciate why primary nurturers, who most often happen to be mothers, are so important.
Regards
Vasavada, Kashyap V
Dear Colin,
Interesting discussion we are having. As I said I have no problem if some people believe in consciousness guided evolution. But as far as I am concerned, creationism vs evolution case is closed. The fossil and DNA evidences are clear cut. There is no compromise on the fact that evolution took billions of years and humans evolved from lower animals, all the way from single cells. As I said I do not know about Britain, but I have been in U.S. since 1960 and am familiar with the developments in U.S. There were monkey trials and numerous court battles about teaching creationism (Literal genesis account) in science classes until quite recently. I have participated in writing articles against this in local newspapers. You are complaining about conflating creationism and ID. But their story (at least in U.S.) “evolved” over the years!! They started with 6 days creation 6000 years back and then as evidence mounted and they lost court battles, kept on changing their story and some of them started using the word ID! You might look at this article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_and_evolution_in_public_education_in_the_United_States
I am not a biologist for sure. But basic ideas of evolution are integral and very useful part of biology and medical science. I am sure you know that experiments with colonies of bacteria and evolution of drug resistant bacteria verify this. So basic idea of evolution seems to be ok. There may be numerous changes in theory of evolution as new data comes up. But that is the nature of science. Nothing is final and written on stone. After all there will be changes in theory of relativity, quantum theory and standard model also. But in any case we will not permit teaching of biblical genesis (creation of universe 6000 years back all at once) in science classes for sure! If that is distortion of truth in bible, that is for them to resolve! As I said, eastern religions do not have any such problem.
Best Regards.
BMP
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 4:30 AM
C. S. Morrison
On 11 May 2018 15:09, "Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu> wrote:
But in any case we will not permit teaching of biblical genesis (creation of universe 6000 years back all at once) in science classes for sure!
CM: I think we are definitely in agreement on this point! However, I do wonder what those surveys of the masses really prove. What difference does it make if a lot of people want to believe our ancestors walked with dinosaurs? That isn't going to affect the science textbooks. I reckon if you did a similar survey of people and ask them why they think astronauts float in space, the vast majority will say it is because there's no gravity! The majority will be wrong and ignorant on a whole lot of issues. Why do these statistics really matter? I see nothing wrong with discussion in science classes of the cases that the ID people bring up as proposed counterexamples to the Darwinian hypothesis. That can only provide an opportunity for the Darwinians to demonstrate the power of Darwinian evolution. And if it happens that there is no satisfactory Darwinian explanation for some observations about life on Earth then I think it is a very good thing for people to be aware of those problems. It may after all turn out that on the really important issue of whether or not there is a creator, the ID people may be right and the vast majority of scientists totally wrong (despite being right on trivial issues like the age of the earth).
VK: If that is distortion of truth in bible, that is for them to resolve! As I said, eastern religions do not have any such problem.
CM: I may be wrong but do the Jains not believe that there was no moment of creation. That time in our universe goes back to infinity? If so such a teaching conflicts with the Big Bang theory and the age of the universe for completely the opposite reason than the biblical creationists. For the latter the age of the universe is way too short, but for the former it is billions and billions of times too long.
Best wishes,
Colin
>
> Best Regards.
>
> Kashyap
>
>
>
> From: C. S. Morrison [mailto:cs...@hotmail.co.uk]
> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 3:24 AM
> To: Vasavada, Kashyap V <vasa...@iupui.edu>
> Cc: Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: RE: [Sadhu Sanga] The failure of Intelligent Design
>
>
>
>
C. S. Morrison
On 11 May 2018 13:15, Stephen Jarosek <sjar...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
> Hi Colin,
>
> I don’t understand what insights a creator/designer provides as to the nature of existence. What phenomenology explains His motivation to be? Why should He care to create life? Where is His workshop? What tools does He use? Does He have hands with which to
wield a hammer or use a soldering iron? Does he have eyes with which to read a blueprint?
CM: All good questions. But I believe they can be answered within the realm of rationality when the facts about our consciousness are treated scientifically as products of designerless natural selection (a necessary initial assumption). Let me try. Firstly, I believe a scientifically consistent theory of consciousness will entail a universewide consciousness that experiences everything there is and never forgets (never stops experiencing the past). I also believe it is impossible to explain the organisation of our qualia unless our consciousness makes choices that our brain has evolved to use. So like us, this universewide consciousness should be expected to be capable of acting in a way informed by those memories. As for its motivation phenomenology, I'm glad you have pointed out that motivation is ultimately a feeling. Consequently I see no difficulty with this cosmic consciousness having a sense of pleasure at the emergence of something new (Perhaps she also has a sense of sadness at the appearance of suffering). And since she automatically remembers that sense of pleasure, what more motivation is needed? Interestingly such motivation would have to be a fundamental feature of this being. As far as the workshop is concerned, we're in it. Since She experiences everything and never forgets, She has no need of sense organs (which are only needed by beings that require to bring data about something outwith the conscious part of their brain into their consciousness). And since the changes she brings about are microscopic mutations in DNA molecules, she doesn't need hands or tools. All she needs is the natural microscopic effect upon her environment that the proposed theory of consciousness would predict her to have. As far as the blueprints are concerned, a structure in another part of one of her vast subjective fields could act as the idea of what she wants to create. Another intriguing possibility is that the goal of Her creation is her sense of Herself.
SJ: Many of us might be receptive to a God as a unity, as Kashyap suggests, in the laws of nature around us. It would make more sense for God’s emergence to be bootstrapped with the emergence of the universe as a unity, not as a meddler in a workshop working to a blueprint. God and the universe as one. Or maybe a systems-theory view of nested hierarchies, where autopoiesis (self-organisation) can be considered a form of creation/design. But not god as a visitor in some kind of workspace.
CM: Although I totally agree with the view that God and the universe are one, I find this idea of a God that does nothing at all rather unlikely. A deistic couch potato that just watches the panoply of emergence because he lacks any sense of motivation is neither exciting nor useful. It cannot explain anything or make any potentially testable predictions. And it seriously begs the question why. Why would such a being NOT interfere in evolution? And if it can't do anything what is the point in postulating it at all? Our picture of the universe is just as satisfactory without it. The reason I think the universewide being predicted by my theory of consciousness is needed is because I think there are facts that cannot be accounted for by any other explanation and will require the activity of that being to provide a full and satisfactory explanation. The extraordinary timescales and productiveness of evolution life on earth is one of these.
SJ: I’m not big fan of Richard Dawkins
CM: I am
SJ: but he does have a point when he asks, sarcastically, who created god? A god-god? Then who created god-god? A god-god-god? God as a creator makes no sense and explains nothing.
CM: I disagree. This being could be eternal and relatively simple in structure -pure consciousness. And as I have said I think there are facts it will be needed to explain.
SJ: Isaac Newton provided the axiomatic framework for a physics that did not make sense at the time. Now it makes perfect sense, and we bear witness to its relevance in our engineering and technological achievements. We need a similar awakening with the life sciences. What axiomatic framework does God the Creator/Designer relate to? Here’s my prediction… whatever the right theory is, it MUST make sense… and we will know it when we see it.
CM: Darwinian evolution makes great sense to me (mutations and all). I just think it assumes infinite timescales and allows remarkable sequences of astonishing coincidences, both of which will become unnecessary if there is a universewide creative consciousness meddling in the background.
SJ: A godly designer does not make sense. There is no phenomenology that explains his motivations or existence.
CM: As I said, I disagree with this. Nobody really knows what phenomenology is. I have what I think is a workable theory and that theory does suggest that such a being exists and could have suitable phenomenology.
JS:> And you raise the topic of mutations again. Natural selection based on mutations violates the principles of entropy, as the tendency to disorder. Nobody’s proven the relevance of mutations to evolution. Pure, unsubstantiated conjecture. Calvin Beisner, with reference to the work of RH Byles, dispenses tidily with the mutation mumbo jumbo:
CM: i suspect the vast majority of biologists would not agree with this statement. A tendency to disorder only applies to a closed system. Life on earth is not a closed system being constantly bathed in energy from the sun that is distributed and eventually captured and filtered into useful forms through atmospheric, geological and ultimately biological processes.
Best wishes,
Colin
C. S. Morrison - author of The Blind Mindmaker: Explaining Consciousness without Magic or Misrepresentation.
https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
>
> https://www.icr.org/article/270
>
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> From: online_sa...@googlegroups.com [mailto:online_sa...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of C. S. Morrison
> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 9:24 AM
> To: Vasavada, Kashyap V
> Cc: Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: RE: [Sadhu Sanga] The failure of Intelligent Design
>
>
>
>
> On 11 May 2018 01:37, "Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Colin,
> >
Kun Ádám
A question to those who understand the US: Is this whole creationism
debate about how to smuggle biblical teaching into the classroom? Do
kids learn about the Bible during literature class, or history or
philosophy? Or don't they have religion classes?
In Europe (or at least in Hungary) the Bible is widely discusses in
classes. But definitely not in science class!
>
> On 11 May 2018 15:09, "Vasavada, Kashyap V" <vasa...@iupui.edu> wrote:
>
> But in any case we will not permit teaching of biblical genesis
> (creation of universe 6000 years back all at once) in science classes
> for sure!
>
>
>
Ádám
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C. S. Morrison
Dear Professor Puri,
Point taken. Thank you for the very eloquent and thoughtful rebuke! I humbly and unreservedly apologize to those I may have offended. No-one can know for certain whether some belief is wrong or right. All our brains can ascertain are probabilities based on the information available to us. So you are right. It was the wrong choice of word. And as I said to Kashyap, why should it really matter if people wish to believe out ancestors walked with dinosaurs?
Best wishes,
Colin
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Siegfried Bleher
Dear Colin,
Does your theory take into account the learning that is handed down from one generation to the next through epigenetic changes? I am referring to recent renaissance of Lamarck’s initial discredited ideas about evolution. Such propagation of changes in gene expression seems to amount to a positive feedback mechanism that accelerates the pace of evolution.
Best regards,
Siegfried
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Vasavada, Kashyap V
Yes in public schools in U.S. , they can study bible as an optional subject in literature or philosophy classes. In private schools there are lot of options. In religious (parochial) schools there are courses about Christianity, Judaism etc. This is all fine with me. In churches , synagogues and mosques, they can discuss anything they want under constitutionally allowed religious freedom. All we scientists want is that they should not force school and college teachers to teach their theories in science classes. Scientists should be able to say what is science and what is not science. Other people should not be able to use their political power to define what is science! Happily courts have agreed to this principle!
Best.
Kashyap
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From: online_sa...@googlegroups.com [mailto:online_sa...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Kun Ádám
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To: Online_Sa...@googlegroups.com
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C. S. Morrison
Thanks Siegfried,
That's a really good point. My views on the speed of evolutionary change are a hunch rather than a theory at the moment, though that hunch is backed up by a theory of consciousness that does appear to allow the existence of a universewide consciousness
that could meddle with the evolution of life on earth. The question for me is simply this: Has there been enough time for chance to bring about the astonishing number of beneficial mutations that must have taken place? If there has then there isn't any reason
to posit any such meddling. If there hasn't then there is. I am sure this issue could be tackled empirically now that so many genomes are sequenced and mutation rates are known. However apart from the Nilsson and Pelger simulation of the evolution of an
eye I am not aware of any attempts being made to ascertain the expected timescale of a particular development under the assumption that the mutations are happening at random (though I have not had time yet to explore this issue).
If my hunch is right the issue will probably not be getting investigated for fear that the predicted timescales will turn out to be too great.
The other reason for my hunch is the very clear impression you get from the fossil record of an exponentially accelerating rate of evolutionary innovation. Although that might just be an artefact of my lack of familiarity with the complexity of the problems bacteria evolved to solve over the first three billion years of life on earth, considering how short bacterial generations are and the vastness of the populations, it seems to have taken a remarkably long time for multicelled lifeforms to emerge. Your point about epigenetic changes speeding up evolution would be relevant in this context if we should expect this effect to be more pronounced among multicelled lifeforms than among bacteria.
But like I said, is it not possible to produce reliable statistical estimates of the expected timescales for the evolution of particular features based on genome lengths, mutation rates and defensible assumptions about population sizes, etc? If anyone knows of such studies I'd be very interested.
Best wishes,
Colin
C. S. Morrison - author of The Blind Mindmaker: Explaining Consciousness without Magic or Misrepresentation
https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Mindmaker-Explaining-Consciousness-Misrepresentation/dp/1541283953
Stephen Jarosek
Dear Colin,
Thank you for your thoughtful outline. Two points are particularly noteworthy.
The entropy problem is nontrivial. The entropy that you are describing in the context of closed vs open systems is thermodynamic entropy. The tendency to disorder is, more generally, a degrees-of-freedom problem, and Shannon entropy is one classification of this problem. The failure by mainstream biologists to address the entropy problem is analogous to an engineer refusing to accept the principles established by Isaac Newton. Mainstream biologists do not address the entropy problem because the extent of the breach is not obvious to them… they make assumptions about chemistry, for example, as being capable of overriding the entropy problem. However their onus of proof remains outstanding. Theists, by contrast, often do seem to have some appreciation of an entropy problem, but rely on invoking a creator to address it.
Your pronoun for God is “she”. God is more accurately interpreted as both male and female. In English, the default general pronoun, “he”, might not be entirely satisfactory, but implementing “she” instead of “he” specifically designates God as female. Along these lines, a single pronoun in the Finnish and Hungarian languages applies to both genders, and the Swedish agenda of introducing the Finnish “Hän” into their language as “Hen” would be agreeable, were it not so politicized.
Regards
Kun Ádám
It is know that mutation rate is not the same for all parts of the
genome, and it is not constant over time, furthermore different
mutations have different probabilities. Thus, models based on a
uniformly randomly chosen nucleotide flipped to another picked by an
uniform distribution, and repeating it for millions of years is just not
what we observe.
See the book by James A. Shapiro titled "Evolution: A View from the 21st
Century".
And we still know very little about genotype to phenotype maps. So we
can model genome evoluton, but how would we know if a mutation gives an
improvement in a peptide or not?
Artifical selection experiments usually show that we can evolve what we
want in a short time.
best wishes,
Ádám
Whit Blauvelt
> about how to smuggle biblical teaching into the classroom? Do kids learn
> about the Bible during literature class, or history or philosophy? Or don't
> they have religion classes?
Generally, through high school, American students in public schools learn
very little of literature, and that does not include classical religious
texts of any kind. As for history, there is even less taught in public
schools, for fear of offending anyone by taking sides with one or another
historic group. Philosophy is not taught at all, as fans of both religion
and technology generally agree that philosophy is a dead-end road.
My wife teaches at a state liberal arts college. The students arriving from
public high schools, mostly from New England in this case, have on averge
very little reading comprension, let alone any capacity in weighing or
forming concepts. The universality of education in America papers over
what's largely a joke. Except at the most elite colleges, the task is to
remediate the total lack of real education up until the kids' arrival there.
Private schools in America are a far different matter. Literature, history
and philosophy are all considered vital, living subjects essential to
humanity. Private schools, however, are sharply divided between the
Christianist ones, which despise science, and those offering traditional
liberal education to children of the elite, which tend to be too busy with
the great literature of recent centuries to be much concerned with the Bible
as literature, although some go there. Off to one side are the Catholic
schools, where both science and Bible are taught.
These are generalizations. I know people who've learned well on all those
tracks. And I've known Ivy League graduates who learned nothing more than
the mannerisms of their class. It's the proportions which are different.
Best,
Whit
BMP
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] The failure of Intelligent Design
Kushal Shah
Dear Colin
Namaste. The respect and humility that comes through your message is greatly appreciated and is something that I, and I hope, we all can admire. If we can even have a hint of how the spiritual self-determination of humility, tolerance, respect, and love influences our intelligence, we would recognize how much our conceptions of truth derive their form and genesis from within that milieu.Self-determination, self-realization, or self-actualization require a focus upon the internal realm that constitutes our spiritual nature. The saints and sages who cultivated those noble qualities within themselves had an intelligence and rational ability that could comprehend ideas that would be far beyond the scope of imagination for those who did not have or even know how to access or cultivate those qualities. How could this even be explained to them in a way they might understand.So we have rely on the good qualities that may lie dormant within hearts and pray or hope that these spiritual principles may be awakened and brought back into consciousness so that they may be cultivated and bear fruit. Even the rationality within the concept of creation, which seems so foreign and contrary to materialism of modern scientific thought, can be seen to have perfect justification when we know enough about the relation of identity between thought and being, that modern science and philosophy has totally forgotten or misconceived.The fact that finite thinking is different from that which it thinks, is the very quality that makes it finite. That is why we cannot create or bring anything into being merely by thinking it. We can only think about things that already are and manipulate them in different and newer ways. But If one can understand that there must consequently there is a God Whose thinking is identical with God's being, then the mere Will ("Let there be light") is enough to establish its being or manifestation. It doesn't even require clicking God's fingers, which would be an activity for a far lesser being.An intelligent and educated discussion about the relation of good qualities and their influence on the kind of intelligence that is consequently formed is always important to consider. In other words, it is not only the truth of which one is convinced but the attitude that underlies its formation as much as the rationality or, in most cases, rationalization (which is quite a different thing) by which it is established and held to be true. it is only when we become clearly conscious of this that a completely revolutionary concept of knowledge can be introduced that will make what we think of as knowledge today will be seen for what it is. That will be explained at the appropriate time, as they say, when the time is right.Thank you again, Colin. You have my utmost gratitude.Humbly and respectfully,Bhakti Madhava Puri
From: C. S. Morrison <cs...@hotmail.co.uk>
To: "'BMP' via Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D." <Online_Sadhu_Sanga@googlegroups.com>; "Online_Sadhu_Sanga@googlegroups.com" <Online_Sadhu_Sanga@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: [Sadhu Sanga] The failure of Intelligent Design
Dear Professor Puri,Point taken. Thank you for the very eloquent and thoughtful rebuke! I humbly and unreservedly apologize to those I may have offended. No-one can know for certain whether some belief is wrong or right. All our brains can ascertain are probabilities based on the information available to us. So you are right. It was the wrong choice of word. And as I said to Kashyap, why should it really matter if people wish to believe out ancestors walked with dinosaurs?Best wishes,
Colin
Send from Huawei Y360
On 11 May 2018 16:24, "'BMP' via Sadhu-Sanga Under the holy association of Spd. B.M. Puri Maharaja, Ph.D." <Online_Sadhu_Sanga@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Dear Colin
Namaste. It is not acceptable on this list or anywhere for that matter, to disrespectfully refer to your understanding of other theological conceptions as "nutty" or otherwise in derogatory terms. Your stereotyped understanding or misunderstanding of what some Christians may understand by God and creation belongs to you, and not to them. Although I may not support many of their notions, a respectful critique of others' ideas should be afforded to them, as much as you would like to be treated in return. Isn't that the Golden Rule: love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
It may be difficult to understand that one's particular conviction about what for them constitutes the last and final truth is merely a partial perspective and may be, and probably is, totally wrong - because we are imperfect, finite knowers. The metaphor of the blind men and the elephant was meant to point this out. Understanding that one's own viewpoint is merely that, creates the possibility of getting beyond or transcending one's own perspective. But to get to that point one has to be ready to examine the boundaries, both initial and final, within which our own conceptions are formed.
This is difficult for individuals to accomplish on their own, therefore being open to hearing the viewpoints of others, or if one is fortunate enough, to hear from one who has transcended the false egoic level of viewpoints altogether, will be helpful to us.
The idea of God as a being, fails to understand what is meant by the concept of God. Sometimes God is referred to as the Supreme Being, as if God were like the biggest mountain alongside other small ones. This is a failure to understand that the ontological meaning of God is that Who is identical with Being itself, i.e. that whose concept and being are identical. Some call this onto-theology.
Those who have adopted the metaphysics of the logical positivists [logico-empiricism] conceive the truth as the material world. The onto-theologians conceive the truth as God. The conflation of these two ideas leads to pantheism.
Logical positivists as atomic materialists must presuppose evolution as the truth. It is a result of or consistent with their metaphysical stance. That presumption is not necessary for the onto-theologians.This may be understood most intuitively if we imagine living, moving and having our being in God. Just as the metabolism and development of the various processes going on within your body are not evolutionary by nature, so too the spiritual moments within God are not governed by external contingencies that evolution implies.Of course, adaptions do occur within our bodies, as well as within species.
Humbly and Respectfully,Bhakti Madhava Puri
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Bruno Marchal
On 11 May 2018, at 22:03, Siegfried Bleher <SBl...@msn.com> wrote:Dear Colin,Does your theory take into account the learning that is handed down from one generation to the next through epigenetic changes? I am referring to recent renaissance of Lamarck’s initial discredited ideas about evolution. Such propagation of changes in gene expression seems to amount to a positive feedback mechanism that accelerates the pace of evolution.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Online_Sadhu_Sanga/DM3PR1201MB0975CA2F4E1B64231B759DACA29F0%40DM3PR1201MB0975.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.
Siegfried Bleher
Dear Bruno,
Thank you for your remarks about evolution. I agree it is harmful to social progress to convey incorrect information to youth—the incorrect information becomes all the more entrenched in their minds when they are exposed early. I do feel, however, the primary intention of faith-based efforts to educate is to convey the importance and meaning of faith, not to subsume science (in most cases). Although sometimes such approaches begin with an assumption (mostly incorrect and unfortunate in my mind) of the incompatibility of faith with science. The reason I say ‘mostly incorrect’ is that, for the most part, questions of faith deal with issues outside the realm of science (at least ‘hard science’). There is self-consistency in the explanatory models and predictions and observations coming from the scientific method (including conclusions we can draw from carbon dating) that set a high bar for faith-based challenges. On the other hand, if those who teach the importance of faith pay close attention, they will notice that their argument is not really with science as such, and its results, but rather with science when science overreaches its own boundaries, as represented by axioms or other starting assumptions embedded throughout its process. The incompatibility lives in the gap between the limitations of science and the reach of consciousness. That is not to claim this gap is unbridgeable, although it may be in the limit. This gap appears many places, and very glaringly so in the mysteries surrounding the measurement problem and in quantum entanglement, for example.
One question that occurs to me regarding the emergence of physical laws is whether your approach is able to show how competition can give rise to Hamilton’s principle? That is, that classical particles always follow trajectories that minimize action integrals. This is a nonlocal result for the spatial form of the action integral, and a teleological result for the time integral of the Lagrangian—all still for classical mechanics. Of course, quantum particles stretch this somewhat, but mostly follow the same pattern.
Sincerely,
Siegfried
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On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2018 8:07 AM
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Kushal Shah
Dear Siegfried,
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