"Howard J. Van Till" wrote:
>
> >From: Peter Ruest <pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch>
>
> > Are you implying that life and all biological funtionalities emerged
> > exclusively by chance (scientifically speaking)?
>
> Peter, suppose that you observed a perfectly honest gambling casino --
> all games used a form of randomness honestly, no cheating, and no
> "hidden choices" being exercised by the dealers.
> After considerable study you note a pattern: at the end of each day,
> the management goes to the bank with a substantial profit. Question:
> would you say that this outcome occured "exclusively by chance"?
> I have a feeling that my answer to your question would be similar to
> your answer to my question.
I don't know how a gambling casino computes its profit (= bias) from the
individual operations, probably just by a certain predetermined function
of input and possibly maximum output. But the casino metaphor doesn't at
all reflect biology. Geochemistry has no bias for or against life, and
biochemistry has no bias for or against a novel functionality. It's only
after the mutation that selection sets in (if it does at all). And the
mutational biases probably required for life and novel functionalities
to emerge are different for different cases. This means that if this
problem is to be managed by a single predetermined divine function of
the environment, this function would have to be transastronomically
complex, certainly even much more complex than the set of selections
(bias values) which would have to be applied individually whenever
needed ("hidden options"). And we would be back to my question: where
was this function (a tremendous amount of information) stored between
the big bang and the time it was needed - in the creation or only in the
mind of God?
> > On the
> > scientific side, there is no evidence that random processes are
> > sufficient in biology, but there are many indications that they are not
> > (of course, there never is sufficient data to prove this statement, but
> > neither is there for the opposite view).
>
> That's an important point to keep in mind. Wouldn't that preclude the
> claim that "transastronomical improbability" definitively prohibits
> certain key events (required for evolution) unaided by the divine
> exercise of "hidden options"? And, of course, there lingers the
> question about the relationship of the actual probabilities (given all
> possible pathways, and given all possible functional systems) and the
> probabilities that you calculated (considering only certain pathways
> and particular functional systems).
I have never claimed definitive prohibitions - on the contrary, I have
explicitely called these options "hidden", which they wouldn't be if
there could be a proof for their existence. And you seem to have
overlooked that I stated "there is no evidence that random processes are
sufficient in biology, but there are many indications that they are not"
and that after "there never is sufficient data to prove this statement",
I added "but neither is there for the opposite view". As for your
lingering caveats, I have always taken them into consideration in the
(very few) calculations I tried during the last 20 years. Who has the
burden of providing arguments and evidence when a statement made on the
basis of quite a lot of data is opposed by mere conjectures based on no
data whatsoever? A reasonable criticism should address specific
interpretations of the data deemed unrealistic and present some
arguments and evidence why they are. What do you mean by "all possible
pathways" and "all possible functional systems"? The qualifier "all
possible" is a tall order, and I don't think we can deal with it in
biology - or even in physics. But if you just mean "all known", it's
somewhat easier, but then you should specify which ones would have a
significant impact.
> > On the theological side, I
> > don't see any reason to believe God wanted to "keep his hands off" the
> > creation after an initial act, and there is plenty of biblical evidence
> > that he is constantly (or at least very often) active in the affairs of
> > humanity and in non-human creation.
>
> The reality of divine action is not being denied. The question that I
> have been asking is, What kind of action? Traditional supernaturalism
> offers one answer, one that includes "irruptive intervention" or
> "coercive" action that supersedes creaturely action. But opening that
> door strikes me as an invitation to a host of difficult problems in
> the territory of theodicy. Your proposal appears to me to fall
> somewhere in the conceptual space between coercive intervention and
> process theology's divine persuasion.
I don' think you can show "God's hidden options" have anything to do
with coercive interventions. And you know that I don't believe in
process theology; I don't see any points of similarity between divine
persuasion and hidden options, but maybe you can show me some. And I
don't think there is only the space between coercive intervention and
process theology's divine persuasion.
> > You say that physics (including chemistry) given at creation "includes
> > all manner of _potential_ structures & configurations (including
> > potential organisms)". This is obviously true, for else we could not
> > exist. But what do you mean by "formational capabilities for actualizing
> > these potentialities"? Does this just mean that a good (or even
> > universal) computer language is adequate for producing all programs
> > desired?
>
> No, a computer language does not have the capabilities for doing
> anything. It cannot produce a program, for instance.
Of course, I didn't suggest a computer language was more than a tool for
the programmer to use. But try to consider the idea of a parallelism
between God's planning the evolution of a biosphere and his generating a
program executing this development! Formational capabilities of small
molecules for actualizing cells, organisms up to humans - present from
the beginning of the universe? What type of mechanism could this imply?
Doesn't it require a script in some language - divine or "natural"? God
must have "programmed" the production of life, organisms, humans. Or he
must have programmed a full "biosphere-generating system" - an even much
more difficult proposition. Where is this script? In God's mind or in
nature?
> Atoms, molecules and cells, on the other hand, do have capabilities to
> act, including the capabilities to form novel structures. Atoms of H,
> C and O, for example, have the capabilities to interact and form the
> molecules of formic acid, acetic acid, ethyl alcohol and
> glycolaldehyde observed in molecular clouds in the spiral arms of our
> Galaxy.
This is why I don't have any problems with your concept of creation's
functional integrity in the fields of physics, chemistry, and astronomy.
But biology, consciousness, and spirituality are _not_ reducible to
physics, unlike chemistry and astronomy. And going from nonliving to
living systems is where computer (and other) languages,
structural/functional information, and selection among
transastronomically many possibilities come in. Given the right
conditions, the formational capabilities of quarks automatically produce
atoms, and those of atoms produce molecules (like the simple organic
ones found in space), but in these contexts, there are virtually no
choices or selections, thus the information content of the products is
negligible. The algorithms for specifying them in absolute detail are of
minimal size. But selections are of essence with living systems, whose
information content is huge. A hurricane racing through a junkyard, or
even 4 billion years of changing climate, won't produce a jumbo jet.
Therefore, those formational capabilities are just preconditions for the
existence of the building material, but are by far insufficient for
building biological systems, which are much more complex than a jumbo
jet. You mention cells having capabilities to act. But tell me how a
prebiotic Earth carrying virtually no information (in the above sense)
can "self-organize" to grow a biosphere, or even just a single cell?
> The active capabilities of material systems contrasts radically with
> the inability of language elements to do anything except at the hands
> of an external agent.
Language (written in nucleic acids) has meaning, which is absolutely
necessary for life. And in the whole system of the cell, it can
certainly do a lot. But the problem is: can a piece of such meaningful
language emerge out of nowhere? Try simulating it, using a realistic
model of biological evolution! And try it for the emergence of a
self-replicating chemical system!
> > Then you still need the programmer doing it. If the programmer
> > had the entire program with all details in his mind, before ever
> sitting
> > down at the keyboard, this just implies that this information was _not_
> > yet in the computer as it was made. It's not very meaningful to talk of
> > the programmer "compensating" for something "lacking" in the computer
> > construction, when the initial intention was to build a universal
> > computer.
>
> I don't see the relevance of the computer language & computer
> metaphor. (See last comment)
Consider the difference between a functional and a non-functional DNA
sequence!
> > What does your expression mean in the biological realm, in
> > scientific (not theological/philosophical) language?
>
> By "expression" I presume you mean: But what do you mean by
> "formational capabilities for actualizing these potentialities"?
Yes.
> My hypothesis is that the creaturely system to which God has given
> being (which includes atoms, molecules, cells, organisms and every
> physical, chemical and biological thing they are capable of doing) has
> the capabilities to actualize -- without divine intervention -- every
> type of life form that has ever appeared on the face of the earth. Of
> course, atoms, molecules and cells are themselves systems actualized
> from even simpler components.
>
> Howard Van Till
If I understand you correctly, this means, in scientific language, that
life and all its complexity - up to humanity - arose by purely natural
means and in an undirected, random way, by self-organization of chemical
compounds available on the prebiotic Earth into living systems, by the
emergence, out of nothing, of an ever-growing functional complexity of
the living systems, by means of the action of environmental natural
selection and chance on living systems. Now, this sounds thoroughly
deistic. Where is God's continual providential action? He doesn't seem
to have anything to do after the big bang. I don't believe you are a
deist, but I don't understand the link, in your view, between
"formational capabilities for actualizing these potentialities" and
scientific reality in the realm of biology.
Peter
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