Potentially Interesting New Book by Eric Hedin

Conversation
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I’ve read the Biocomplexity article you’re talking about, and you’re mischaracterizing what he says there. In any case, we aren’t talking about that article. I named five books by Denton. Which of them have you read? If none, then I suggest you cease talking for the time being, until you have read one or more of them, since the topic I raised was those books in particular.

Why do you say that biological reproduction is unguided? If there is a template that reproduction follows, then that template is a form of guidance. And what instituted that template?

I did not say that the individual living beings were individually designed. Nor does ID say that. But the template may well be. You have said nothing to show that it isn’t, or couldn’t be, designed.

Which does not explain the origin of the flagellar structure from a bacterium which did not have even an incipient part of that structure. You realize, of course, that nothing you are saying here is new to ID proponents, and that you are just repeating standard Darwinist talking points that they have responded to thousands of times before?

No, it’s not misguided, because unless the origin of life can be plausibly explained by unguided processes, design remains the best explanation for it.

Why don’t you read Hedin’s book for some answers to that question? For that matter, you could read your fellow evolutionist Francis Collins, who is very firm that science cannot explain certain things, e.g., the existence of conscience.

You’ve got the right to repeat anything. But no one has the obligation to take your dilettante’s excursions into evolutionary theory seriously.

You’ve made no criticism of Denton’s argument for fine-tuning, as discussed in the books I’ve listed. Let me know when you’ve read those books and produced your criticism, and then we’ll talk.

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Doubtful. @Eddie, you’ve already begged out of such a talk. Your offer to @Faizal_Ali isn’t a serious one.

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So where is the design explanation? To say something is the best explanation entails an actual explanation. So, where is it?

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How am I doing that? Please be specific.

And that “template” consists of biochemical processes that require no direct intervention from an intelligent being.

I understand that. I am not here disputing the ID program as a whole, but just explaining how the analogy to the “design” of a pyramid is inapt to the “design” that ID’ers are usually referring to.

Again: We know that pyramids are designed because natural chemical and physical processes do not give rise to such structures without the direct actions and interventions of human beings.

That is NOT the case for biological structures such as the flagellum.

This, by itself, does not mean that the flagellum is not designed in some other sense. However, it would be an error to say the process by which we conclude the pyramids were designed is the process that ID’ers purport to use to demonstrate the flagellum was designed.

“The best”? Not even close. It’s not even an explanation period, never mind the “best” one, until you guys formulate some model by which design can occur in the absence of evolved beings like humans, then test that model out scientifically.

Until then, the best explanation remains that life arose thru unguided physical and chemical processes, since that is the case with every single thing we know of other than those in which a living thing is involved.

Because I have no reason to believe it is not a crap book. And I have resolved, having reached my mid 50’s, not to waste any more of my precious time reading crap books.

Which does not answer what I asked. But answering questions does not really seem to be your thing, anyway, does it?

Correct. Rather, I made a criticism of the asinine claim Denton made in his simulacrum of a scientific paper, published in that simulacrum of a scientific journal “BIO-Complexity”, that the recurrence of the pentadactyl limb in multiple vertebrate lineages cannot be accounted for by natural selection and, therefore, is better explained by “structuralism” than by any evolutionary mechanisms. A claim that requires nothing more than a high school level understanding of evolution to refute.

But, hey, point taken. So next time one of your ID buddies deigns to criticize some paper written by an evolutionary biologist, I fully expect you jump down their throats and insist they desist until they have read every single word that biologist has written throughout his career in all formats.

Deal?

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Hey, there’s a beam in your eye. Don’t deflect my attention to anyone else’s motes.

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How’s it going with the Nick Lane book? The reading and thinking parts, I mean.

We already know from excerpts that he misrepresents the objective evidence itself with respect to the fraction of sequence space that is functional, so it seems highly unlikely that it was produced by, or will induce, any deep thought.

Careful with those goalposts. We know that Denton doesn’t understand the basics of nested hierarchies, from his dumpster fire of a first book. You’re now tacitly conceding that Denton doesn’t understand structuralism by switching to another subject.

Why should any serious thinker about biology consider such an author beyond that?

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Yes, I believe that an educated scientist, as opposed to a mere high-grade technician, will have devoted at least some thought to the philosophical foundations of science itself, and of his particular branch of science. So there should be some discussion, somewhere along the line, of such larger questions. Bacon, Descartes, Kant, etc., who worked out the very conception of science you and others here are championing, certainly spent a great deal of time thinking about the philosophical foundations. Educated religion scholars, historians, scholars of literature, sociologists, etc. all spend at least some time on such large methodological questions. It’s the understanding of the greater framing that makes the difference between true theoretical knowledge (in the original Greek sense) and mere craft-knowledge.

If there were more discussion of the larger questions, I think that much of the friction around origins questions could be reduced. It’s the sense that closure has been invoked on important large questions that generates frustration and anti-science sentiments. I don’t have any problem with evolution, in the sense of descent with modification, but I do have a problem with the way evolution is often surreptitiously (and sometimes quite explicitly) tied to an overall atheist/materialist metaphysics and a scientistic (as opposed to scientific) epistemology. And the only way to show the problem of such intellectual moves is by talking openly about the big questions: what is science, what is “cause”, how are the modes of knowing related to each other, etc. If that kind of conversation can’t be had in a typical science class, even for five minutes per semester, then Hedin and people like him are perfectly justified in taking the conversation into courses that focus on the relationship of science to other kinds of knowledge.

And if you found a pyramid on Mars, and assuming that you could rule out that humans built it and transported it to Mars (or secretly travelled to Mars centuries ago and built it there – Leonardo da Vinci, anyone?), what would be the rational conclusion about where the pyramid came from? Accidental jumblings of rock and sand on Mars caused by asteroid impacts, earthquakes, and cosmic rays? You would find that plausible? I do not think you would. I think you would say that it was designed by an unknown intelligent agent. I think you would infer that this unknown intelligent agent must have existed, because otherwise the pyramid could not be there. And I think you would agree that the fact that you have no clue who the agent might have been would not weaken your design inference in the slightest.

I’m not.

Good. We agree. But apparently Coyne and Stenger don’t, and they feel so strongly about it that, at least in Coyne’s case, they are willing to employ specious arguments based on constitutionality to prevent the airing of well-thought-out intellectual positions that they happen to disagree with. It’s a dangerous new development in the university world when a scientist or scholar, unable to persuade other scientists and scholars to adopt his own view, calls in lawyers, or even threatens to do so, to veto teachings put forward by his fellow academics. There is already too much of an intellectual chill in American universities, for ideological reasons, without adding the chill of legal challenges.

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Since I don’t endorse “IDcreationist thinking,” and don’t even know what it is, and since your post is peppered with references to it, I will simply ignore most of your post.

I’ve never denied that scientists do hypothesis testing, or that such testing requires thinking, even difficult thinking. But it doesn’t require the meta-level thinking I’m talking about.

Mind-reading again. Since Faizal hasn’t read even a single one of the books on fine-tuning, you can’t possibly know how I would respond if he actually read them and responded to their contents (re fine-tuning) instead of yapping about evolution, which I wasn’t talking about in relation to Denton’s arguments. We’ll see what happens if and when he reads them.

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LOL. @Eddie, I’ve read Denton’s books (most of them, at least), I gave a concise but very accurate summary of Denton’s arguments in Nature’s Destiny, and you chose to avoid further discussion. Why would anyone believe you would do anything different for anyone else in this discussion?

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I repeat, where does the template come from?

No, you don’t know that, strictly speaking. There are atheists who seriously argue that given an infinite number of universes, then eventually all physically possible things will happen somewhere, on some planet or other. So unless you can prove that it is physically impossible (not just unlikely) that a pyramid could ever form anywhere without the intervention of intelligent beings, you don’t “know” that intelligent agency is necessary. And I doubt you can meet that onus. Yet it’s the onus you put on ID people. It’s not enough, in your mind, that no known process generates life from nonlife, and that even things far less complex than life have never been generated except through intelligent agency. You demand that the ID people prove that it’s impossible for life to form without guidance, and when they can’t prove that it’s impossible, you say it’s more reasonable to believe in a chance origin of life than a designed one. You don’t apply the same “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard to the origin of life question that you apply to the origin of pyramids.

This sentence does not make sense to me. It appears to confuse processes of manufacture (how things are made) with processes of inference (how ID proponents reason about origins). Or if it doesn’t, I don’t know what it means. In any case, it’s obvious that the way a flagellum is made within a living organism is different from the way a pyramid is made; no one questions that. What’s not clear is where all the templates come from that allow flagella and other parts of organisms to come into existence. The right parallel is not between a pyramid and a flagellum, but between a pyramid and an organism. How is that organisms exist at all? Given that once they exist, they can reproduce, but what could bring them into existence in the first place, without any designing agency? No satisfactory answer to this question has been provided.

All we know for certain is that in every other case of complex entities in the universe (complex in the sense ID people mean it), design is needed. If design is not needed for the origin of life, then that is the only such case of the (de novo, as opposed to organic-evolutionary) origin of a complex thing in the universe. There is an intellectual problem here which cannot be ignored.

A metaphysically open-minded person will admit that it is logically possible that life could have originated either by design or without design, and would not have an a priori preference for a non-design explanation. But you do appear to have an a priori preference for a non-design explanation.

The philosophically trained scientist would ask himself, “Why do I have this preference? Is this preference based on reason, or is it a product of prejudices I hold regarding causality, teleology, chance, etc.?” An unphilosophically trained scientists will just plow on ahead, assuming that non-design is the right answer, and all his “hypothesizing” and “testing” will be conducted within the assumption of non-design. He will ask “Which non-design account is the best one?” not “Whether a non-design account is automatically superior to a design one.”

Paul Nelson has discussed this methodological/philosophical problem at length in several essays. I have never seen his discussions referenced here, and certainly have never seen them responded to in a serious way.

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Errors in one argument are compatible with depth of thought in other areas. Newton, Boyle, Descartes, etc. all made errors at one time or another, yet all were capable of deep thought. I’d rather read a book where 10% of the material is deep and makes me think, but has some errors, than a book which has no errors, but is shallow all the way through and doesn’t make me think.

Epistemological error again – typical of science students, it seems. You can’t tell from a book published in 1985 that a scientist didn’t change his mind on many questions between 1985 and the next book in 1998. To know that, you would have to read the 1998 book. And he might have changed his mind on other questions by the time of the later books.

No, you gave an inaccurate and slanted summary. And of course such a summary can’t capture the cumulative force of the overlapping arguments. And the cumulative force becomes even greater in his four more recent books, which include more recent data about the universe, chemistry, life, etc.

Do I expect Denton will convince you or any other atheist here? Of course not. Apparently you and others here are deaf, because I’ve said dozens of times I’m not trying to convince you guys. I was asked what was the evidence for fine-tuning. I said tons of it was found in Denton’s books. I did not say that Denton’s arguments were such that every human being would be forced to accept his conclusions. I said that he provided evidence for fine-tuning, period. How strong that evidence is, each reader must decide for himself. But those who won’t even read it aren’t entitled to an opinion. So Mercer and T. aquaticus aren’t entitled to an opinion. But they think they are. Which is why they would fail in any Arts program.

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I’d also like to know why @Eddie thinks I need to read Denton’s books in order to discuss the ideas Denton discusses in his (Denton’s) own paper, and moreover why “Eddie” is unable to discuss them, having the additional advantage of having read all of Denton’s other writings as well.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that “Eddie” realizes my criticism is on target and is finding a convenient excuse to avoid addressing it. Very, very difficult indeed.

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And I would expect scientists, as opposed to someone who has studied religion and natural theology, to be able to think.

LOL. You mean to tell me five minutes out of a whole semester spent discussing scientific epistemology would “reduce much of the friction around origins questions”? Total bs.

Of course, Hedin wasn’t just discussing scientific epistemology which I agree has value, but promoting pseudoscientific bs with a religious agenda too. That said, I still do agree with you that in an elective course he should have the freedom to do that, provided he’s not being paid by taxpayers for it.

We’ve had this exact discussion before. Call me when you find a pyramid on Mars.

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All fine-tuning arguments are crap because they don’t actually solve the problem they are proposing to solve. They merely push it back a step.

Instead of the observed being the outrageously unlikely outcome of some chance process, some agent with the outrageously unlikely desire to create the the outcome is posited instead. Either way, we are still left with something outrageously unlikely obtaining by chance or brute fact.

It’s amazing to me so many religious people are so infatuated with that class of supremely terrible arguments.

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@Eddie, since you decline to explain, I believe it is safe to say my summary of Denton’s scholarship is spot-on. You certainly haven’t offered an iota of contradictory information. I am very certain that you cannot.

“More recent data…”??? @Eddie, methinks 'tis you who haven’t really read Denton’s books, especially his newer ones.

Also, “cumulative force…”? Stringing together a long list of incredulous claims is no way to make forceful arguments, about life, nature, or pretty much anything.

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Sour grapes.

And yet you did. You are presenting your opinions as facts.

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My dear Eddie, your Great Thinkers of ID have directly substituted “design proponent” for “creationist” in a book. Should I believe their literal conflation of the terms or a vague denial of it from a cranky pseudonymous guy?

There is zero evidence to suggest that Hedin’s misrepresentation was an error.

Eddie, is today’s news, if true, a very serious ethical breach?

"…an independent panel of medical experts that was helping oversee the vaccine’s clinical trial in the United States said the company had essentially cherry-picked data that was “most favorable for the study as opposed to the most recent and most complete.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/business/astrazeneca-vaccine-questions.html

And if they are errors, not unless they are acknowledged and dealt with at the time the author is informed of them.

I would too, but you’ve presented nothing to suggest that there is any depth to Denton’s books.

If said author doesn’t forthrightly acknowledge “changing his mind” (here, it is a lack of depth in understanding), it’s a harbinger of further shallowness, as is the fact that the person relentlessly touting him here from behind a pseudonym has shown no depth of understanding of biology.

Which is a silly response.

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We owe our progress in science to such mere high-grade technicians. The day job is essential. Without PhD level scientists designing detectors, assembling racks of equipment, collimating particle beams, and bringing their focused expertise to the team, advance in understanding would fall precipitously. Not every legitimate scientist wants to divine ultimate truth.

Steven Weinberg’s concise essay “Against Philosophy”, argues that philosophical foundations can be distracting to the enterprise (although it is ironically evident that he himself has deeply engaged with a great deal of contextual thought).

There are many atheist/materialist philosophers, so I would be dubious that the outcome of examining such big questions would lead to any shifting towards a more teleological view. As well, in the current climate, modes of knowing is more often discussed in regards to a post modern perspective which is askance to science perceived as constructed by western white males, and defined by colonialism and sexism, so good luck with the classical Greek and scholastic epistemologies. The conversation may not have moved in the direction you would prefer.

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Don’t know. It’s irrelevant to this discussion.

Now you’re just being silly. I feel no need to respond to this, because I’m sure everyone else here can see where you went wrong there.

Not at all. Please quote a single place, in all my writing anywhere, that I have done that.

No confusion. That is exactly the point. We determine that pyramids are designed because we know that they can be manufactured by humans, and that there are no natural processes of which we know that produce such structures. It has nothing to do with “irreducible complexity” or “complex specified information” or any of the other meaningless catchphrases ID creationists are fond of throwing out.

An even more illustrative point is stone arrowheads. When these were first discovered in Europe they were thought to be of natural origin because of anecdotes that they were found on the ground after lightning had struck. Also, it was not known that ancient people had made stone tools and in part it was presumed they hadn’t because there was no mention of this in the Bible, interestingly enough.

As it happened, there had actually been stone arrowheads from the New World collected in the Vatican’s collection, but this had been forgotten. Once it was determined that people were still creating and using such tools, and further historical records uncovered of their use in ancient Britain, it was accepted that these were in fact designed.

That is an actual example of how design is detected in real life by investigators. Again, the ID method bears no resemblance to this method, which requires knowing the process by which the artifact was manufactured, and that it was not produced naturally. ID Creationists makes the rather different claim that things in the natural world can also be designed. And, in theory, they may be able to demonstrate that. But that would require using a process different than the one we use to determine that pyramids, messages spelled out in pebbles on a beach, or Mt Rushmore were designed.

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And the phony thing about ID is that in real science, we study the who, when, where, and how of designed objects. ID stops with “detecting” design, while cowering from those questions, because it’s just a way of sneaking creationism into public education.

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