Re: [asa] Timaeus--ID isn't "god of the gaps"

I would have thought that it might better be termed a "holding
argument" that becomes no longer necessary if a better explanation
comes along.

For example, some while back on the list, was discussed a paper by
Eugene Koonin that contended that the probability of a minimal
replicating piece of DNA coming together by chance was 1 in 10^1018 -
a staggeringly small probability of the event required to trigger the
whole evolutionary process off (Koonin takes for granted that the
existence of a replicator to start off evolution is all that is
necessary and the rest follows).

He addresses this staggeringly small probability (of it happening
anywhere in the observable universe during its lifetime) by suggesting
that multiverse theories (in particular Everett's Many Worlds
Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics) that allows for staggeringly
unlikely events to occur with probability 1 in a multiverse of
staggeringly many copies (in the rest nothing interesting happens in
the way of life).

However I would say this is at best a "holding argument". It can't be
said to "prove" that the multiverse must be true anymore than the low
probability can be said to prove an Intelligent designer.

My feeling is that all it says is that Koonin's model for the origin
of life isn't good enough, and we need to keep looking for one that
gives a higher probability of life starting off. If such a model
comes up, then we would no longer need to invoke the Multiverse to
explain the origin of life. I guess that's a "Multiverse of the Gaps"
argument.

My point (in my recent post to Mike Gene) is that I don't see how you
can distinguish between a Multiverse explanation and a Designer
explanation.

Suppose such a mechanism is discovered (that makes life likely in a
single universe). What does that do to the Multiverse explanation?
I'm guessing it still remains valid - there WILL be extremely rare
universes where the first replicator molecule comes together by a
chance coincidence of quantum events. However it will be far more
likely that we are in a universe where life arose by the "natural"
process.

Iain

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 8:56 PM, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:
> Timaeus wrote:
> "ID isn't a "God of the gaps" argument".
>
> This assertion continues to be made and I'm trying to understand it. I know
> many "god of the gaps" criticisms aren't stated well and aren't valid as has
> been discussed in this thread. But I'm still having difficulty with the
> heart of this claim. It seems to me that the above assertion can be tested
> in the following way. If the assertion is true, then the ID argument would
> remain intact even if all gaps were to be hypothetically closed. In this
> case, it means that the ID argument would remain valid even if all the
> mutations and variations occurring in the course of evolution were some day
> determined to be within the probabilistic expectations of the laws of
> nature. That is, if none of the steps of the evolutionary process, nor the
> composite collection of them, meets the criteria of Dembski's explanatory
> filter, does the ID argument hold? What does the ID argument look like and
> how does it play out in such an environment of no gaps?
>
> It may well be that ID is a "God of the gaps" argument and the gaps may be
> valid and the argument may be valid. But I'd like to understand the real
> nature of the argument.
>
> Randy

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