A Very Convenient Coincidence?

Have you ever brought up the massacres of the various peoples in the Old Testament by the Israelites, as ordered directly by God Yahweh himself, in an attempt to show that the God of the Bible (if he existed) wouldn't be quite as "moral" and "loving" as his followers would have us believe?

Have you ever been told, "It was right for that time/for those people," or perhaps, "it was justified because the people God ordered to be killed were evil?"

If so, you may have encountered the conundrum I'm going to explore today: These consequentialist justifications for God's morality can only be true if, in fact, morality is not "objective" but rather "consequentialist."

If "killing is always wrong," inherently --- or "objectively" --- then no amount of consequentialist ethics can ever change that. It would be just as wrong for God to kill thousands of people in the Old Testament as it would be for you or I to kill one, today. But even the sixth commandment --- "Thou shalt not murder" --- implies a consequentialist ethical standard. "Murder" is defined here as "unjust killing," or sometimes as "killing with hatred." The exact definition does vary, but the point is clear: "Do not kill without good reason or proper justification." The very idea that a proper justification exists assumes a consequentialist view of ethics; with true objective morality, there is no "reason why" something is bad, it simply is, and any act which further encompasses that act is also "bad." So right off the bat, the presumption of a "justifying circumstance" assumes somewhat of a consequentialist view.

Either that, or there are millions upon millions --- well, we might as well say infinite --- "objective laws" and "technicalities" which render acts "good" or "bad" --- killing is "okay" if someone is holding your child hostage and there is no other way to save your child, etc. --- but if this is the case, then there is no way for us to discover such truths. They are simply "laws for the sake of laws," and we would have only the "moral information" which was literally granted to us directly by whatever force created them. Which sounds all fine and dandy until you realize, this means we have no way of judging guilt or innocence in complex moral cases --- the best we could do is say, "did they steal? Stealing is bad, so kill 'em." There would be no mitigating circumstances because such circumstances would imply a "leniency" or tendency of change within the so-called "objective law."

Others still try to tautologically define whatever god does as "good" by nature. As has been stated for centuries, this invokes Euthyphro's Dilemma:

Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?

Of course, the versed apologist will simply say, "Goodness is god's nature, god is both judge and executioner." Which simply makes no sense --- god has to be two entities to justify this (otherwise it is a tautology), and yet no apologist willing to use this argument will also accept that god is anything other than a united, supreme, single consciousness. If god is goodness and goodness is god, then that's great, but it still tells us nothing about god. When we tautologically define words into each other like this, we end up turning the very words capable of describing them into tautologies! We might say "god is good," but what does that mean if either word can be replaced with the other? We must still default to yet a third term --- call it "benevolent" --- to describe him. But in order to satisfy the apologist, the term must still be vague enough such that it can be tautologically defined into this nonsense loop of "god's goodness" --- otherwise, if the term is too specific or descriptive, we can judge god's character against it, which demonstrates that there is a standard higher than God, by which we judge God's moral character. And of course, no "god-fearing Christian" will ever be willing to admit that! Hence, any term which could theoretically be used to describe his character, must in some way be tautologically defined *into* his character, lest it take the form of a higher standard outside of God, against which he could be judged.

Tying this back to my original point, though....there are two main routes the apologist takes when defending Yahweh's murderous tendencies in the OT:

(1) "It was okay back then, but not now."

This just screams "subjective moral standard." It implies not only that morality is not essentially objective (because it is not rooted in some quality inherent to the action being judged), but that God's moral standard is arbitrary and subject to change based on his whims. A perfect being that changes? Why is there a need for God's standard to change if it is "perfect?"

(2) "It was okay because those people were evil, and God was passing judgment on them."

I have two responses to this one. First is, please note that in every instance of genocide and massacre in the Old Testament, God and his prophets command the Israelites to kill everyone --- man, woman and child --- and to leave no survivors. This is stressed multiple times, all throughout Deuteronomy and Joshua. And in Genesis, God tells Abraham (in the midst of a rather comical-in-hindsight exchange that drags on for a moment) that he will not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah "on the count of [even] 10," referring to the number of innocent souls within the city. God says, in other words, that he will not destroy the city if there is an innocent soul inside. He then proceeds, of course, to destroy the entire city, with all its men, women and children.

All apologetics aside, stop and think about that for a minute: what city exists, say, today, whose inhabitants are all worthy of death and destruction --- even children? Sure, the Christian says we are all worthy of damnation, but let's be realistic: is there any city that exists today, whose inhabitants you would deem "evil" enough to unanimously destroy? Even the children, who aren't even old enough to really understand what "right from wrong" means? In any sense but the most superfluous, post-hoc "everybody deserves death" blanket justification, this is simply not justifiable. Is there any city on this earth today --- and has there ever been a city --- whose inhabitants are completely, 100-percent "evil" such that even their unwitting children deserved to be stripped of their lives as "judgment?" Sure, if we trust the account of a representative of the guy who *committed* the execution, then of course there was no innocent soul in the city. But then, why do we not see such unanimous resurgence of "sin" today? Even the most "sinful" places such as "Gay California" are generally accepted to have some citizens who do not deserve the death penalty.

I'll talk more about the Sin Complex that Christians have later; for now I want to wrap this point up. Christians claim that "objective morality" exists as an inherent quality of certain actions, such as murder, adultery and idolatry. However, if this is true, then these actions must necessarily be qualities of the actions, not of God or some supreme standard. So God can do nothing to change them. This fits in line with the apologist's view of God as "his own standard;" nobody can defy the thing that defines them as what they are, right? Apparently not even God. It would be circular to do so.

And yet, when we take God's standard and apply it to himself, we see that the "wrongness" of these actions is suddenly taken away! Which means either:

(A) "wrongness" is a quality, not of the action, but of God, which removes any need for us to worry about the "wrongness" of our actions (for we're only doing it to please god....and why is it good to please god? This leads us back into consequentialist ethics!)

(B) that God can add or subtract the quality of "rightness" or "wrongness" from an action at will, which renders his so-called "unchanging objective standard" to be completely and utterly arbitrary; who's to say that he could not decide tomorrow to remove the "wrongness" from the act of murder? There would be nothing stopping him from doing so.

Now, the apologist may see (B) and think, "Well, God couldn't take the quality of wrongness away from murder, because that would violate his nature, which is goodness." But see, this contradicts the premise --- that rightness and wrongness are qualities inherent to deeds. If they are qualities inherent to God, not deed, then we are led back to option (A), which leads us back to consequentialist (not "objective supernatural") ethics. Also, it confuses the terms "right" and "wrong" --- the "rightness" of the action is only "right" because God put it there, right? But then, "rightness" is defined as what is inherent to god! So we're tautologically defining "rightness" as "god's will" without actually describing it! Case in point; refer to my earlier statement: any term which could theoretically be used to describe God's character must, in some way, be tautologically defined *into* his character, lest it take the form of a higher standard outside of him, against which he could be judged.

In light of this, it seems like one big, giant, awfully convenient coincidence that what *happens* to be "right" by God's judgment, just *happens* to coincide with our current, consequentialist view of ethics (at least, with regard to murder, theft, rape, violence and abuse in general, etc.). These are, after all, the "evidence" cited by apologists that God gave us morality --- that murder, theft, incest, etc. are all universally reviled by any society which has ever succeeded, and thus they must have been bestowed upon us by God!

Or maybe we've just built them up using a system that works?

In any case, my original point should be clear by now: if it would be "objectively wrong" for God to command the things he commanded in the OT today, then either (A) God is unjust, because he has done these things in the past, or (B) God's standard is changing, arbitrary, and thus irrelevant to us. If it would not be "objectively wrong" but "objectively justified," then God's standard is entirely hostile to us as humans and should not be adopted as any kind of ethical example by which to lead our lives, or around which to build our societies. If, in the third case, it is wrong by a subjective, consequentialist standard, then it is not objectively "right or wrong" at all, but rather just another product of consequentialist ethics. And if that is true, then we have no need for an "objective God of morals" in the first place.

Darwin Day!

I almost forgot; today is Darwin Day!

Happy Darwin Day. Here's to a true and long-lasting appreciation of the giants on whose shoulders we stand :)

Lack of Objectivity = Lack of Morality?

This comes as a sort of footnote to my previous posting, but I wanted to keep them separate for easy reading.

There is a popular assertion amongst theistic "moral objectivists," basically that "atheists have no basis for morality." This is what I want to discuss.

In my previous post I mentioned Hitler. I mentioned the Christian argument that atheism, being a lack of faith (or evolution, being erroneously represented as a "tenet" of atheism), somehow inherently leads to immorality of the kind that allows genocide and racism. This is what most Christian moral objectivists will have you believe:

1) that Christian morality, being "objective," gives us a final judgmental standard that is above human influence (and thus cannot be changed by humans with an agenda), and so if we all play by the objective rules, then anytime someone does something wrong or tries to take power over others and deny them their objective rights, we can safely condemn them based on these rules;

2) that, because atheism does not have this "outside standard," it is thus subject to intersubjective human standards, which can be changed and manipulated to suit an agenda (and further, paradoxically, that this intersubjective standard somehow "becomes" the objective standard of morality). Therefore, based on this worldview, those who seek to "rise above" others by asserting their own beliefs violently will inherently take power, because those who are not violent are obligated to "respect the opinions" of those taking power, because they have no objective basis on which to oppose them.

To keep it simple....the fallacy of this argument is that it assumes the same dogmatic approach to subjectivity as the Christian approach assumes to objectivity.

Hitler's Nazi germany is often touted as an example of this: "if morality is subjective, then Hitler was right to abide by his own subjective opinion, and so if you don't believe in god as an objective moral standard, then you have no way of condemning him aside from your own personal opinion."

What proponents of "objective morality" (OM) fail to acknowledge is that the above statement is twofold:

1) that is an objective statement --- that "Hitler was right" to act on his beliefs. Subjectivity does not translate between individuals; in a world with no objective morality, nobody is "right or wrong" in an objective sense; there is only what people believe. And it's all equal; nobody "has more of a right" than anyone else, so if someone tries to act as if they have more rights than others, then it is only natural for others to take action and "restore the balance" by removing the offender who seeks to elevate himself above others. This is a realist statement as well, but the idea of subjective morality does not contradict a realist worldview; it simply asserts the nature of morality as realistically subjective, like perhaps the preference of a certain flavor of ice cream over another (although the importance of morality is generally venerated much more highly than the importance of ice cream preference; this is a testament to the prevalence of moral judgment as a realistic part of our daily lives. Ice cream preferences, by comparison, do not have that much of an impact on our societies and so come into play much less frequently and powerfully, and so naturally, you won't find too many people who value both judgments in the same).

2) that in a world driven by subjectivity, while it is true that there is no objective basis for condemnation, there is also no objective basis for action; Hitler "breaks the rules" when he rises to power and begins killing others based on a "higher standard" (the idea that Jews are an "inferior race"). In a subjective world, Hitler has no objective basis on which to make that statement, and thus no objective basis on which to act in the first place. Thus a response to his action is justified on that ground, the realistic ground that "we all have the same (zero) objective rights."

3) therefore, in a subjective world, there must be some standard other than "objectivity" which is used to make moral judgments.

In a way, it all "cancels out" --- since there is no "final objective law," nobody has any special rights that place them 'above' anyone else; we are all "equal" in that we have the same rights (or lack thereof). So when someone says, "In a subjective world, Hitler was right to act on his beliefs," what they're saying is, Hitler was right according to Hitler. According to you, he might be wrong. Hence, it "cancels out" in that you have just as much of a justification to respond as he does to act. If you have no objective basis on which to respond, then he has no objective basis on which to act. Yet, you both have your own subjective judgments, which you are acting on by carrying out this conflict.

In closing....I think the fundamental issue that OM and SM proponents have to work out is not that "there is no basis for morality in a secular, morally subjective worldview," but rather that there is a different basis. Just as it's easy for you to play the reductionalist and say, "If there's no objective morality, I can do whatever I want and you can't stop me," I can easily play the reductionalist right back at you and say, "If there's objective morality, I can do whatever I want and you can't stop me." That is ultimately a game of semantics; in order for any of our judgments about morality to have any value beyond said semantics, they have to accurately reflect the world around us as we experience it, and they have to accurately describe (and predict) moral actions and judgments. They can be "objective" in that sense, in that they have to be based on something, but they cannot be objective in the sense that they come from outside of our perceptions of the world. Because morality is prescriptive, it is, by definition, a statement of subjective judgment about the world --- as I have heard it said, "morality is your answer to the question, 'what should we do?'" It is subjective by nature.

As for the fear of crazy Hitler-esque worldviews becoming dominant for lack of an objective standard condemning them? A healthy dose of skepticism prevents views like that from ever rising to power; for as I explained in my previous post, such hierarchies are only possible because large amounts of people buy into them unskeptically. If every Christian/atheist/etc. in Nazi Germany had skeptically approached Hitler's doctrine of anti-Semitism, then things might have been very different, indeed. If I may be bold for a moment....I suspect this is why Christians in particular are so afraid of Hitler, and thus bring him up so often. They realize that the very system of taking "leaps of faith" and trusting in beliefs and doctrines with little or no real evidence, they fear that, if others are lead away from Christianity, the blind faith that they have been conditioned into by Christianity will lead them to want to blindly have faith in other things besides Christianity; they fear that people will choose to have blind faith (which is what Christians want), but in the "wrong" thing (which is what they fear). Ironically, it is their strongest weapon that is also their greatest weakness, and their greatest fear. Perhaps this is why they stress such a powerful, central focus on one ultimate god --- if your blind faith slips away ever so slightly from that god, it may accidentally stick to something else and become as inseparable from that as it formerly was from god. The answer to this dilemma, in my opinion? Stop stressing blind faith! There is no such risk from healthy skepticism, and skepticism applies even to itself. Always demand answers to the questions that hound you. And if there are none, don't be afraid to admit that. That is my prescription.

But I digress....ultimately, without his legions of followers unskeptically absorbing his every word, Hitler would have been no different than a demented preacher screaming on a street corner. So the important thing for me to stress is that atheism and skepticism are not necessarily the same thing. I don't think people should get a big head just because they've managed to apply skepticism to one area --- I know many atheists *coughBillMahercough* who are also conspiracy theorists and the sort, who seem to think that being an atheist automatically makes you smarter than everyone else. This is hypocrisy; what makes you more adept in the real world is to be skeptical of beliefs held without evidence, not one belief that you may hold that happens to be reasonable.

Just remember --- nobody has ever built a tyrannical regime with millions of followers based on "too much skepticism."

Hitler: Christian, Atheist, or Irrelevant?

Today I want to briefly address this accusation, which seems to pop up quite often in any kind of debate about morality and religion, that "Hitler was an atheist," as well as the subsequent response that "actually, Hitler was a Catholic." This is often labelled in internet debates as a reference to Godwin's Law:

Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies) is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1989 which has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." In other words, Godwin put forth the hyperbolic observation that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope— someone inevitably criticizes some point made in the discussion by comparing it to beliefs held by Hitler and the Nazis.

Most primary sources make it pretty obvious that Hitler was a Catholic. He references "Divine Providence" and "Our Lord Jesus Christ" and Jesus' "struggle" against the "Jewish poison" all throughout his many publicly documented speeches. This is what people will tend to refer to when they say that Hitler was obviously a Catholic.

But there are also Christians out there who insist that Hitler was "secretly" an atheist. The primary source for this conspiracy theory is "Hitler's Table Talk," a series of statements consisting of comments Hitler supposedly made "off-the-record," that were recorded and published at a later date by what are said to be first-hand accounts --- comments that supposedly revealed his "anti-Christian" or at least "anti-religious" motivations.

Now for reasons of brevity, I won't go into the actual truth or falsehood of either of these claims. What I want to discuss here is the reasoning behind these claims --- the points they were invoked to defend against, and their effectiveness toward that end.

Hitler is almost unanimously mentioned as an "atheist" in circles where fundamentalist Christians want to equivocate between "science" or "evolution" or "atheism" and genocide. Ben Stein has famously compared evolution to the Nazis, saying that "science leads you to killing people." Hitler is almost always trogged out to support this accusation --- the implied sentiment is, "Hitler is what happens when you accept evolution."

So when, say, an atheist brings up Hitler's public mention of Christianity, God, Jesus, Divine Providence, and the Christian roots of anti-Semitism, or the fact that the buckle of each Nazi uniform read Gott Mit Uns (God With Us) and asks the theist, "what is the explanation for that if Hitler was an atheist?" The response will be, "Hitler was secretly an atheist, but he used Christianity in order to deceive the public so he could carry out his master 'Darwinist' plan."

This is where I want to come in and say: even if we assume that this accusation is 100% true --- that "Hitler was a secret atheist using Christianity as a front for his conspiracy to 'commit Darwinism'" is a 100% accurate reflection of reality --- it remains true that Hitler would not have been able to do even that if there did not exist a ready and willing followership of Christians ready to accept this "front."

Seriously, stop and think about that for just a few seconds: simply by accepting the idea that Hitler could successfully use Christianity as a front implies that there are a large number of Christians who would agree with such a front. The very idea that "using Christianity as a front" for the Holocaust would have any degree of success whatsoever can only be true if a large amount of Christians are willing to support it. What would have been the use of Hitler "pretending to be Christian" if Christians everywhere had unanimously spoken against the Holocaust and the Jewish genocide? The very idea that such people could be exploited hints at the notion that the ideas commonly attributed to Hitler himself (such as genocidal anti-Semitism) found ground for common acceptance within the Christian populace.

If the Nazis had all been atheists, or even just openly anti-Christian, then there would have been no need for Hitler to "feign Christianity" in order to "exploit" the atheist populace. He would just say, "Hey, we're all atheists, let's take over the world and commit genocide!" There would be no need for such a "front" as Christianity. The idea that such a front would even be necessary insists that Christianity was, in fact, the dominating mindset within Nazi Germany.

Before I make my closing point, I want to say that in casual conversation (or in internet debate), I make it a point not to bring Adolph Hitler and the Nazis up as a counterpoint to anything not already pertaining to Nazism, as to me it reeks of reductio ad absurdum. I personally do not believe that "Christianity made Hitler do it," or that "evolution/atheism made Hitler do it." I have another reason entirely why I believe the Nazi efforts were successful to the extent that they are, even if Hitler's ideology was ultimately idiosyncratic (which it clearly was not). So do not read this as an accusation of either party in that respect.

I believe that regimes like the Nazis (or the current regime in North Korea) are possible not because of "evolution," or even because of "Christianity," specifically. It is my understanding that such regimes come to power because of the effect that irrational faith has on people. Keeping in mind that there are two kinds of faith --- faith established through testing experience, such as the faith you have in a friend or certain family member; and blind faith, the kind we talk about when we say "leap of faith," the kind of faith that people assert to believe in God or in ideas that have not been demonstrated or tested --- I am talking about the latter of the two, blind faith.

For if you take the position that is implied by the Christian defense against Hitler --- that the German masses were really good-hearted, but ultimately unwitting, victims to Hitler's propaganda machine, and were simply being used by Hitler under the guise of "Christianity" --- then it follows that *something* made them believe in Hitler and his cause, in spite of its asserted "deviance" from accepted Christian norms. Today's Christians assert that there is simply NO WAY WHATSOEVER to justify anti-Semitic genocide using the Bible or Christian beliefs, so it cannot be a reason derived from the beliefs themselves (otherwise the entire point of this defense would be useless; even if Hitler WAS using Christians, it wouldn't matter because their beliefs would've overlapped with his anyway, rendering this justification self-defeating). So from a Christian perspective, it couldn't be a rational position; a critical angle would have lead them to oppose Hitler.

So accepting the offered Christian defense against Hitler, and removing the possibility for a skeptical approach to Hitler's ideas on behalf of the Christians serving under him, the only possibility that remains (and that can account for such widespread, zealous and unquestioning support in spite of supposedly "differing" religious ideas) is blind faith. Hero worship. Savior mentality. Hitler was the "saving grace" of the German state and economy; therefore his ideas were perfect and not to be questioned.

Sound familiar?

Let me say in closing that it is not my intent here to argue from scratch that "the Nazis were motivated by Christianity," or to say that "Christianity inherently leads to Nazism and genocide;" I'm not quite as shameless as some of my Christian contemporaries that I would make such a bold and crass blanket statement. However, if we follow the line of reasoning, used by Christians who invoke this argument against atheists, to its logical extreme, then we will see that indeed, the Nazi regime could not have happened without Christianity.

Once again, I'll say it: This is not my argument, this is my response to the arguments made by Christians that evolution or atheism necessarily leads to Hitlerian/Nazi ideology.

A Defense of Naturalistic Evolutionary Theory

(This is the original draft of an essay I was challenged to write for a Creationist website; I'm posting it here in its entirety as I had to significantly modify it to fit the word count requirement for my submission. If the site chooses to upload my abridged essay, I'll update this post and put the link here.

Likewise, if anyone wants to correct me on anything, feel free. I'm studying biology right now for college prep, and so if nothing else this is a good opportunity to practice expressing ideas and to learn things and fix mistakes.)

I was recently challenged to summarize the "best evidence for macro-evolution" that I could find in as few words as possible. However, as it is impossible to comprehensively discuss evolutionary theory in just one small paper, I will simply touch on some of the universals --- common misconceptions, objections and arguments, incorporated into what I hope will be seen as a sort of basic overview. In fact, as many of the objections I encounter tend to be based on a misunderstanding of some aspect of evolutionary theory, I'm hoping that simply explaining it to the best of my understanding and ability will help dispel many of the myths about, and objections to, evolution.

WHAT EVOLUTION IS NOT

Before I get started, let's discuss what evolutionary theory is not; evolutionary theory is not a statement of "morality." Evolution is a statement of what we believe happens. It says nothing about whether what happened was "good" or "bad" or "prescriptive." It is simply a descriptive theory of the development of life on earth. There is no real or necessary moral component to evolution, so this essay will not be addressing moral objections to evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory says that evolution happens whether we want it to or not.

Also, evolution is not concerned with "random chance" as a driving force. In fact, natural selection, the primary driving component of evolution, is the exact opposite of random chance: it is the principle by which nature favors that which helps something survive and reproduce, and rejects that which makes survival and reproduction more difficult. Nothing "random" about it.

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

Now, let's start with one of the most common objections: How did the first life arise, according to evolution? This is a simple question; evolution does not have (nor does is require) an answer here. Evolutionary theory can be tested whether life was created by an "intelligent designer" or whether it arose naturally. So I will not go into much detail here, except to say that any life which was formed naturally would have to be simple by definition, thanks to the law of probability (simplicity begets simplicity --- if the first life were complex, it would require an origin as complex as itself, probably moreso, conditions which are exceedingly improbable). However, even if the first life was some kind of miracle that had been zapped into existence rather suddenly, then evolution could still be tested; the only predictions that a naturalistic theory of evolution makes about the origin of life are: (1) it was simple; and (2) that it was the ancestor of every creature that exists on earth today.

How do we know (2) is true, you might ask? We can observe that all life on earth is related from one simple fact, which we will discuss more in a moment: we are all made of DNA. DNA is the basic building block for life as we understand it. There has been no discovery of any other life on earth (or anywhere else) that is not built on DNA. Even bacteria and viruses have DNA. The simplest and the most complex organisms have DNA. If we ever do discover a form of life which does not have DNA as its foundation, then we will have a counterexample to the claim that all life on earth is related; according to most naturalistic abiogenesis theories, the formation of the first life probably only happened once, or during a very short "window" of time --- put that together with the long, long time it would take for evolution through natural selection to produce varation and speciation, and you will see that it was not likely that very many sources of life sprang into being naturally, at separate times. In fact, a naturalistic origin of life almost requires a startling degree of improbability; if a naturalistic origin to life were very probable, we would be seeing a lot more of it, wouldn't we? So it's safe to hypothesize that there was probably just one (or very few) "original ancestor(s)." If the generation of life from nonliving matter is so very improbable, then this ancestor(s) would (naturally) have to be the origin of all other replicating life on earth. This self-replicating organism would eventually give rise to the first "population," or group of organisms of the same species.

All that is required for natural selection, the foundational aspect of evolution, to take effect is a self-replicating (or "reproducing") population, such as the one described above. Once we have a self-replicating population, we have "competition" for resources --- against nature, even against other organisms (organisms sometimes compete even against their own genetic relations or family, without even realizing it, such as siblings who have to share food). With such a simple organism as the first natural life, this competition would of course be very simple, almost poetic --- the organism might not even be aware that it is competing --- but by the simple fact of its existence (and its continued efforts, guided by natural, unthinking chemical processes), it "competes," with nature and with others of its kind (whether or not it "means" to), for the resources which drive these processes.

INCREASING COMPLEXITY: New Information

At this point, some people raise the objection, "how does a simple life-form become more complex?" They have a particularly odd way of phrasing it, by asking, "how can new information enter the genome?"

The best way to answer is through example: take hemoglobin in human blood. All of our globin genes are related to each other (that is, moreso than to any other gene in the body). They appear to have "speciated" from a single "parent" globin gene at some point, within our great great great (times a bajillion) ancestor. At some point, that globin gene duplicated, probably because of a mutation, and made "copies" of itself. Over time, these benign, redundant genes mutated separately on their own, until they adapted to each other's presence within the same chromosomes, isolating into two "clusters," the alpha and beta clusters. This splintering process continued again to give us the zeta cluster and the alphas used in adult humans. Further, this mutation happened far back enough along our descent that evidence of it is visible in many nonhuman species --- species which were descended from the same common ancestor as humans, the ancestor in whom these mutations took place! That is certainly an odd phenomenon --- or it would be, if we did not have evolution to explain the connection.

So the simple answer to the information question is: one gene suffers a benign mutation, creating a copy of itself. Later, that copy mutates further, but in a different way than the original, creating "new" information.

SPECIATION: "Macro-evolution"

And now, moving on, we come to the crux of the matter: speciation. This essay was written with the assumption that you accept what is called "micro-evolution," so I won't go into detail about that or about artificial selection (dog breeding is a great example of both "micro-evolution" as well as artificial selection), but rather, I'd like to discuss what is normally seen as the logical result of "micro-evolution," called "macro-evolution." Whereas micro-evolution consists mostly of mutation and genetic drift, both of which can be demonstrated easily in just a few generations of selective breeding (such as with dogs), macro-evolution is what happens when this takes place over a much, much longer period of time --- as the title implies, "macro-"evolution is the stacking-up of large amounts of these traits with time, such that they displace the "norm" of a population (or even drive two or more populations apart). Many people have a hard time accepting "macro-evolution," but strangely, accept "micro-evolution." I've been asked to present the "evidence" for macro-evolution, but since I think this rejection of "macro-evolution" is due in part to a significant misunderstanding of what macro-evolution is, I will first diverge and explain that a little bit.

Macro-evolution is otherwise referred to as "speciation" --- the "splintering" of a population into two or more sub-populations of different "species." The common misunderstanding comes from the use of the word "species" --- a "species" in the biological sense is not necessarily a completely different (or even radically different) creature from its parent population; rather, there are a few basic criteria used to determine what sets apart different "species" in similar populations. Given my strict word limit, I'll only focus on one, the simplest --- the "Biological Species Concept," under which a "species" is defined simply as "being reproductively isolated from other species" (which simply means, "they cannot or do not interbreed"). Further muddling the situation is the definition of "reproductive isolation," which, in evolutionary theory, does not necessarily even have to be literal reproductive isolation --- there are many cases of "speciated" birds which fit the technical definition of "reproductive isolation" from one another, and yet in theory are still capable of interbreeding. This also happens with flowers; flowers tend to only reproduce with their own "species," although many are capable of (and sometimes take part in) reproduction with other species (this is called "cross-pollination" or "hybridization"). The fact that they can technically interbreed, though, does not make them the same species. So in order to truly appreciate what is meant by "speciation" in evolutionary theory, one must understand how a "species" is defined. Also important, though, is how speciation occurs.

SPECIATION: Reproductive isolation

Reproductive isolation happens when a population is divided (usually by a natural barrier, like a mountain range or a lake or ocean) into two or more sub-populations, which then adapt separately. An example would be an insect, which latches onto a bird or mountain-dwelling animal near the base of a mountain range; the insect's host travels across the mountain range to the other side, and the insect finds its new home there (or somewhere along the way). That insect goes on to form a new "population" in a separate location, and ultimately, that population adapts (through natural selection) to its location in a way that is different from the way the original population adapts. Over a long period of time, these two populations will drift so far apart that their mating rituals may no longer overlap; across a much, much longer period, interbreeding may even become completely impossible, as with the Oenothera gigas, a form of evening primrose which, although artifically selected, was done so to such an extent that it was no longer capable of interbreeding with its parent species.

It's very important to understand, though, that what happens here is not the spontaneous generation of a brand-new "species;" "speciation" in this sense refers specifically to the branching off of individual populations from the "parent" species, which then become reproductively isolated (whether socially or biologically).

MUTATION AND GENETIC DRIFT

However, speciation is not the only form of "macro-evolution." Over a long period of time, small, accumulated mutations can cause significant changes even within a single population. A couple things to remember when talking about mutations within a single population:

(1) "mutations" simply means errors in gene copying, usually during embryonic development; mutations are a lot more frequent than you might think, given the sheer size of most genomes, although most are benign (have no effect on the creature's survival and reproduction), and so they are inconsequential. But some are harmful (and therefore their carriers are more likely to die, and so natural selection "weeds them out" and they disappear from the population), and others still are helpful, which means that they are "favored" by natural selection because their carriers are more likely to survive and pass on their genes;

(2) positive mutations which occur tend to be accepted into a population with time, through an observed phenomenon called "genetic drift;" over time, successful mutations become more and more frequent in the population until they displace the norm, becoming the new "average."

VESTIGIAL EVIDENCE

There is more to this line of thinking than just theory, though; if two organisms are speciated from a common ancestor, then there should be some evidence of this --- some sort of "vestigial" biological trace of the offspring species' relationship to the ancestor (though not usually to each other --- contrary to popular objections, contemporary species (such as humans and apes) do not evolve into or from each other). A prime example of such a vestigial relationship is the connection between the laryngeal and vagus nerves of the giraffe, and the vagus nerve of the shark --- in the shark, the vagus and laryngeal nerves travel along what would be the neck in a mammal, passing along the arterial arches that connect to the shark's heart. It's a very straightforward process with no diversions. However, the giraffe's laryngeal nerve makes a rather large detour along its neck (over 10 feet in the case of a tall giraffe), around and through several other major organs, before connecting to the vagus nerve near the base of its neck, by the heart. This seems odd --- the functionality would be improved manyfold if the nerves connected closer to their point of inception, as they do in the shark. So why the detour? As things stand, the giraffe can barely utter an odd noise because of the odd path of its laryngeal nerve. This relationship makes a bit more sense when we realize that sharks don't have a neck, whereas mammals do. Somewhere along the line of evolution from their common ancestor, the elongation of the giraffe's neck came into conflict with the functionality of its laryngeal nerve, and a trade-off was made, whereas the shark never had this problem because it never evolved a neck. A similar odd case happens with the path of the vas deferens from the testis to the penis in the human male --- the vas deferens drapes noticeably over the ureter from the kidney, a vestige from the descent of the testis from its original position much higher up in the body.

These examples are important for more than just showing evolutionary vestigial relation, though --- they also demonstrate the fallacy of the term "de-evolve." Natural selection is not a "directional" force in the sense that artificial selection is; it does not move "one way" and then "back up." No, natural selection cannot back up; it is self-correcting, but it always works with what it has. This is the binding principle of evolutionary theory which allows us to prove the relationships of organisms through common descent --- because evolution cannot "retrace its steps," it always leaves a trace of evidence where it has taken place. Vestiges exist in all creatures, which help point us towards a common origin.

The "God" of Science versus the God of religion

One more thing I'd like to discuss while I'm at it, is this odd habit people have of trying to "prove God with science" (or vice-versa). You may or may not be familiar with the "Teleological Proof," which is one of the go-to arguments "proving" that the Christian God exists. I will open this posting with a cartoon from SMBC which demonstrates the fallacy of this reasoning in fewer words than I am probably capable of using:




This argument can also (but doesn't always, necessarily) draw on the fallacy of "specified complexity" as well; from wikipedia:

1. Nature exhibits complexity, order, adaptation, purpose and/or beauty.
2. The exhibited feature(s) cannot be explained by random or accidental processes, but only as a product of mind.
3. Therefore, there exists a mind that has produced or is producing nature.
4. A mind that produces nature is a definition of "God."
5. Therefore, God exists.

Note how the assumption stated in #2 appeals directly to the "specified complexity" fallacy?

But I digress. What I want to address is the fact that, yes, there is a scientific opening for something to exist beyond this universe. It is entirely possible that some force we have yet to discover is what set this universe in motion. However, let me clarify what I mean (and do not mean) by that statement:

1) I do NOT mean that there is room for a god that actively influences the universe today;

since we are talking about a god that can (supposedly) be proven by science, I am going to address this from a physical perspective: our universe is basically one giant closed Thermodynamic System, and the law of conservation of energy tells us that energy can never be created nor destroyed, it can only be transferred. So by these laws, it is theoretically possible that our universe is not the only closed system that exists, but due to physical limitations, if there are other universes that exist, we can never interact with them physically because our spaces are not connected. So that's basically unknowable.

If there existed such a being as a god that acted physically, then this should be easily demonstrable --- any incident in which this god interacted with our universe would cause a disruption of the laws of physics, however temporary, that could be detected in some way (a sort of "supernatural footprint;" I want to attribute that term to Richard Dawkins, but I cannot find a proper citation, so I'll leave it uncredited for now).

Because the system of our universe is closed and stable --- which is to say, every system within it and every bit of mass or energy within it (along with all of their reactions to one another) is mathematically accounted for --- if some force were to intercept any of those processes, it would interrupt them in such a way as to disrupt what should be the natural, physical laws of interaction; such an interception would, in other words, cause things to behave in a way that should not, physically speaking, be possible. That point in time should, at least in theory, be detectable in some way.

On the other hand, if it is NOT detectable --- if the interactions of 'god' with the physical universe are indistinguishable from the natural laws, or if he does not interact with the universe physically --- then god's interactions are not provable by scientific means, because there is no way to tell whether a given event is simply the result of nature following the laws of physics, or of god working through the laws somehow.

Keeping in mind, it's possible that such a god could interact with the universe in a non-physical way --- if you wanted to argue for the existence of some other dimension of which we are not aware --- but I will not touch on that here because it is unknowable and thus not worth discussing from a scientific perspective. The argument I presented above only applies to a god whose existence can be confirmed physically.

2) I do NOT mean that any god of any specific religion exists;

Off the top of my head, I'll refer to Christianity here. The Christian god says that we were created 6000 years ago, at the same time as the planet earth, the universe itself, all life and all laws within it. We can demonstrate that humans and the earth are significantly older than 6000 years, and that many life forms have come and gone since the time it was created; the theory of evolution explains how all life on this earth has changed significantly since it first began, and various dating techniques (such as tree ring dating, carbon-14 dating for small periods of time, etc.) can be overlapped to give us a picture of a planet that is very old, indeed. Not even considering the age of the universe itself, the Biblical literalist account of Genesis has been demonstrated to be scientifically inaccurate. So as I understand it, it is impossible for the legends of Judeo-Christian origin to be literally, specifically true, given what we know about the planet and the universe. Therefore it would be odd to proclaim that the god who supposedly said these things exists. Some god may exist, and maybe he did say something to some humans somewhere which was recorded at some point, but it's possible that if he did, the humans got it very wrong or twisted it of their own accord. In any case, it's unknowable and therefore cannot be proven (or disproven) scientifically.

With that out of the way....

As demonstrated in the SMBC cartoon, it is possible, even for someone who is purely a materialist, to believe in a scientific "creator god" who caused the universe to begin to exist. However, the implications of using this as a proof for god's existence must be understood --- the god inferred by scientific necessity (the 'god' that may have created physics) would likely not be the same as any god claimed by any religion today. Such a god would probably not be personal, like the Christian god; it would not likely actively involve itself with the contemporary universe; the most that we can actually say about this god is that it exists, and that it must (by definition) be as energy, un-creatable and un-destroyable. If we do not assume that much, then it defeats the purpose to assume it in the first place, for we're left with the assumption that such a god can be created, can cease, and therefore had to have a creator itself who was infinite (to avoid an infinite regress of gods who were created by gods who were created by gods, and so forth).

No...a scientific 'creator god' has only two known qualities --- it created the universe, and it can neither be created nor destroyed. That second one may sound familiar; this is because it is also a property shared by the energy that exists in this universe. That's interesting, isn't it? Let's see how far we can extend that analogy without contradicting ourselves:

- God can not be created or destroyed; neither can energy
- Therefore god has always existed; energy has always existed, then, too
- God created the universe; so....did energy create the universe?

One has a slightly more scientific grounding if one wants to claim that energy itself is god, or some extension thereof. For energy seems to have all of the properties of god as far as its nature, and yet it also fuels the interactions within our universe. But notice if we extend the analogy further:

- Energy is uncaring, unfeeling and impersonal....so is god uncaring, unfeeling and impersonal?
- Energy is bound by the laws of physics and cannot behave uncharacteristically....so is god bound by the laws of physics? Can he behave uncharacteristically and defy his own nature?

Odd implications. But also strangely realistic; these are all very possible statements of god. In fact, in my arguments with apologist Christians like Frank Turek, I've been confronted with the argument that God can't defy or change his own nature, and that god essentially is equivalent with the laws of physics and the universe (i.e. the laws are part of god's essence or nature). So the more we extend the analogy, the more we begin to see god as a sort of "robot" (for lack of a better term), a being that does not make decisions, per se, but rather operates "on rails," doing whatever its nature commands it to do....much in the same way that the systems within our universe behave. Physics are not held in check by intelligent life; they run independently of it, obeying their nature and not changing. So could the same be true of god?

I'd tell you, but as an agnostic atheist, I believe god's existence (or non-existence) is ultimately unknowable. It's just something to think about, I guess @_@

--Tim

Specified Complexity

I want to talk about something today that's been coming up a lot in conversation lately: the aspect of the pseudo-scientific theory of "Intelligent Design" known as "Specified Complexity."

UPDATE (1/14/11): I have added new information to this post, indicated below.

If you're not familiar with the subject, it's most famously touted by the "analytic philosopher" Bill Dembski. It's more commonly demonstrated as "the watchmaker argument." It basically states:

1. The complex inner workings of a watch necessitate an intelligent designer.
2. As with a watch, the complexity of X (a particular organ or organism, the structure of the solar system, life, the entire universe) necessitates a designer

I knew from the first time I heard this argument that there was something wrong with it. But I've always been hard-pressed to put it into simple language (as I have a tendency to drone on and on and go off on tangents). Today I will attempt to do just that --- I will explain why this argument is nonsense in as few points as possible:

1) The only reason we know that a watch must have been designed is because we know in advance that a watch was designed; as such, it is impossible to cite this argument without first referring to something which we know prior to be designed (such as a watch). Ergo, it is the prior knowledge of design which allows us to infer that it was designed, in the first place.

2) Therefore, it is not the function of the device which leads us to assume that it was designed, but rather the fact that we know it to have been designed.

3) Ergo, we do not infer specified complexity based solely on the functionality or complexity of the object; for "specified complexity" is defined not by the functionality or complexity of the object, but by the fact that it was designed. We infer specified complexity based on whether or not we know if something was designed.

In short, specified complexity is completely circular. There is simply no logical or mathematical proof which demonstrates that complexity (of any extreme) necessitates a designer. We require prior knowledge of design in order to infer whether it was designed; we cannot use such proof to conclusively infer that something which we do not know a prior to be designed was designed.

In summation: "Specified complexity" is not useful as a predictive tool; it is only useful in hindsight, which means that it can only be used to judge things which we already know to be designed or not designed. Which means that it's redundant, and therefore basically useless --- a "hypothesis" which requires the knowledge it supposedly "predicts" in order to predict it.

UPDATE: In Information Theory, it is said that if information being transferred is already known in advance of its transfer, then no information has actually been transferred. Wikipedia gives a solid example of this in strict numerical form:

Suppose one transmits 1000 bits (0s and 1s). If these bits are known ahead of transmission (to be a certain value with absolute probability), logic dictates that no information has been transmitted.

This is where "specified complexity" falls short. The question is, "is something which is complex, necessarily designed?" Yes, the watch is complex, and yes, it is designed; but is the watch complex because it was designed, or is it designed because it is complex? If it is designed because it is complex, then why? Why does complexity necessitate design? If we say, "because things which are complex are designed," then we are again begging the question and equivocating:

(1) Why does complexity necessitate design?
(a) because complexity cannot arise naturally; it's too improbable.

(2) Why is complexity too improbable to arise naturally?
(a) because the only things we know of that are complex were designed.

(3) How do we know that those complex things were designed?
(a) because we observed them being designed; ergo, we already know they are designed before making this inference.

The "information" contained in the conclusion, 3a, is already available before the inference is made. Therefore the "information" is redundant and Specified Complexity is a fallacy according to information theory.

--Tim