Chris
Your sentence: "Naturalism has no direction" seems to be confusing
naturalism with the natural world. Naturalism is issentially a kind of
philosophical/epistemological view. The natural world seems not to have an
ultimate direction, but that's different from evolution. Further, there are
at least two kinds of direction: That imposed from outside, and that that
arises just from the requirements of evolution. Evolution, in a pure sense,
has no GOAL, but that's not quite the same as saying that it has no
direction. A rock falling off a cliff has no goal, but it does have
direction. Evolution necessarily begins simply (in an information-storage
sense) and then becomes progressively more complex (again, in an
information-storage/manipulation sense) up to whatever limits may be imposed
by the physics of the environment. For example, evolution in an ordinary
computer "universe" (such as Tom Ray's) can only reach a level of
sophistication allowed by the amount of memory and the combining capacities
of the components. In a rich enough environment (that is also otherwise
suited to evolution) evolution can go far beyond the information-storage
capacities of even a human being. (In case you are wondering why I keep
mentioning information instead of complexity, it's because it's
information-survival information that evolves; ALL evolution is the
evolution of information-survival information. Sometimes the information is
stored in simple self-replicating molecules, sometimes it's stored in
COMPLEX molecules (DNA, for example), sometimes it's stored on computer
disks, sometimes it's stored in books, sometimes in human memories, but it's
always information, at root, that evolves. Bodies, etc., evolved as means of
helping information to survive.)
But the lack of pre-determined direction of the natural world in naturalist
science is a GOOD thing. Preconceived ideas of direction warp judgement and
objectivity, or TEND to. Further, since the kinds of design theory that most
design theorists are willing to countenance exclude the likelihood of
finding strongly supporting evidence (even if one of them happens to be
TRUE), because they are claims about what happened that offer no means of
distinguishing them from the same events happening naturally. That is,
whether our local universe was designed to be the way it is or it just
happened to be the way it is, the results are the same.
What MIGHT suggest design would be if evolutionary theory predicted
increasing richness in information-storage mechanisms and design theory
predicted a "devolution" in such mechanisms in a certain environment. This
would suggest that somehow the laws of physics that we say must lead to
further evolution are somehow being superceded by something otherwise
unknown (such as aliens or a designer or Q (from the "Next Generation"
series of "Star Trek")). Unfortunately, it could also be some natural force
that has a suppressing effect on certain complex structures, some previously
unknown force that gets "entangled" in complex structures of certain kinds
and somewhat inhibits their function (as in "IQ 83," a classic science
fiction story with just such a theme).
So, EVEN this kind of evidence would be weak.
Another kind of evidence, I suppose, would be something like the discovery
of a massive and mathematically perfect encoding of the actual design of the
universe, with a detailed history of things that have not happened yet and
which ordinary scientific theory says should be EFFECTIVELY impossible to
predict, especially from some remote time in the past, because of the
cumulative effects of Quantum Mechanical uncertainty. Thus, if this document
predicted some very finely detailed event at a precisely determined time and
place involving a specifically measurable decay of a few specific atoms in a
gas that has been hot and chaotic for billions of years, and if that
prediction, and a large number of other equally "unnaturally" precise
predictions, was/were to be found to be as accurate as it is possible for us
to measure, this would suggest that either someone had access to the
Universe's "program" (possibly not a DESIGNED program, though) OR that it IS
designed and precisely directed.
>>
> > Chris
>> Again, I don't see how it can be tested
>
>Some predictions of the theory would be the very fast appearance of life as
>soon as earth was capable of sustaining it.
Chris
What we need is predictions that DISTINGUISH design theory from naturalistic
evolutionary theories. If an evolutionary theory predicted the same thing,
how would the success of such a prediction tend to support a design theory?
It would have to be definitly faster than firmly established conditions of
the time would allow any reasonable naturalistic theory to predict.
Ami
>The direction of complexity
>towards increasing awareness of the surrounding enviroment and increased
>capacity to process that information. I even suggest a far out prediction,
>that if we ever reach the stars, we will find that planets which have had
>life for a certain amount of time will have sentient beings on them.
Chris
Again, naturalists have predicted this for a long time. We still need
predictions that are DIFFERENT FROM naturalistic predictions.
Ami
>This theory is not uncomfortable with the place of conciousness in space
and
>time. Here is a little bit from Andrei Linde in an abstract from the
>Science and the Spiritual Quest conference:
Chris
Again, neither is naturalism uncomfortable with the place of consciousness
in space and time. Indeed, consciousness is predictable. In fact, levels of
mind far beyond current human capacities are predictable, even to us limited
human minds.
>
>http://www.ssq.net/html/a-linde.html
>"It suggests that there may be nothing beyond physics andtechnology in the
>act of creation of the universe. But what if this picture istoo
simplistic?
>Is it possible that we are making a conceptual mistake at themoment when
we
>are making an obvious assumption that the material universe encompasses
>everything? There is at least one place where this could happen. Inour
>picture we completely ignored consciousness, by making the
>standardassumption that it is merely a function of matter, so once we know
>matter, weknow everything.
>
>This assumption becomes less obvious when one considers quantum cosmology
>and finds out that the notion of the evolution of the universe is directly
>linkedto the possibility that the universe can be observed.
Chris
This, if it is true, is definitely not known to be true; even the most
hypermodern physics does not permit this kind of claim, except in a certain
trivial sense (i.e., the particular development of our universe was such as
to produce observers).
>Indeed, it can
>berigorously proven that the wave function of the universe, which
describes
>theprobability of various processes in the universe, is time-independent.
>Theuniverse becomes alive (time-dependent) only when one divides it into
>anobserver and the rest of the universe. The evolution is possible only
>withrespect to an observer."
Chris
This is not true. Evolution can occur in simple molecules that do not
"observe" except in a physical-interaction sense
However, it IS true that the conditions for evolution are roughly the
conditions that can evolve true observers.
>Ami:
>How does observation change the wave function in quantum physics?
Chris
Strictly speaking, it doesn't. But the particle and energy interactions
necessary to observation DO change the wave function, just as ANY physical
interaction does. That is, the state of the wave is different at different
times, though the wave function over all is not changed. In physics, an
"observer" is ANYTHING that interacts with a particle's wave function and
thus causes it to "appear" as a particle behaving in a certain way. Way too
many "New Age" physics popularizers have tried to make "observation" into
something that, AS SUCH, affects the things observe, but it's only the
physical MEANS of observing that does this (whether we capture and know of
the results is irrelevant).
Ami
>Do we
>dare leave this tidbit behind when explaining the direction of evolution in
>the universe? Andrei also mentions that since we have found space and time
>to be interwoven, is perhaps conciousness and matter similarly woven?
Chris
There appears to be no basis for such a speculation, except in a sense like
the sense in which phone calls may, I suppose, be said to be "interwoven"
with the phone wires, switches, and the like, or the sense in which the
computations in a computer are "interwoven" with the computer's hardware.
Ami
>There
>are directions to go with these questions, which science and reason can
>answer. I don't know exactly how to go about this, but then, there are
>things we have found which a few years ago would be impossible to test.