Complexity, inevitability, and life — Evolution 2.0 on Unbelievable?

Listening to the latest Unbelievable? show from Premier Radio I was struck by what appeared to be a failure of imagination on the part of Perry Marshall, who was debating evolutionary biologist PZ Myers about the former's recent book, Evolution 2.0. Not being a biologist of any kind I'm unable to comment authoritatively on the actual mechanisms of evolution, but having followed PZ Myers' blog Pharyngula in the past (less so these days) I'm fairly confident he knows what he's talking about when it comes to his own subject. Perry Marshall's background, however, is in engineering and marketing, which on the face of it should make me wary of pronouncements that are outside his field of expertise.

Myers rubbished pretty much everything Marshall proposed, and given the above I'm prepared to accept that Myers is right and Marshall is wrong. The debate was fairly technical, but seemed to me to boil down to Marshall's claim that the “random” part of random mutation is insufficient to explain how evolution works (notwithstanding other aspects of evolution such as horizontal gene transfer).

At one point Marshall stated that the code in DNA could fit on a Compact Disc, and that if you eliminated “junk DNA” the code would be merely ten percent of what could fit on a CD. The core of his argument appeared to be disbelief that such a relatively small amount of information could produce the complexity we see in living organisms today. By comparison he cited the amount of code required to install modern computer operating systems such as Windows 10 and Mac OS X.

Marshall's engineering background has hampered his thinking here. Engineers who design systems, be they engines, bridges, or computer operating systems, need to specify mechanisms in minute detail (or make use of minutely detailed specifications already available) in order to make their systems work. This notion of "engineering ex nihilo" is what in my opinion leads to the essential failure-of-imagination exhibited by intelligent design proponents and creationists (of whom a disproportionately large number are engineers) — “it's all so complicated it must have been minutely designed by an intelligence of some kind.”

But imagine a software programmer who has never encountered fractals is shown a picture of the Mandelbrot set, and is given the task of writing code to generate the same picture from scratch. Without knowledge of the simple equation that produces fractals the picture could indeed be generated, but I suspect the code would be somewhat large. Or imagine a manufacturer of breakfast cereal wants its packaging department to come up with a special gadget to ensure that each carton of cornflakes contains a gradation of flakes, such that the larger flakes are mostly towards the top of the carton and the smaller ones mostly towards the bottom. I'm sure such a gadget could be made, but it's not actually necessary as the cornflakes tend to sort themselves out this way on their own.

Such self-organisation is, in my view, an aspect of the discussion about complexity that is often overlooked. If things inevitably organise themselves in a particular way, trying to make them happen in other ways, against the natural order, will indeed require complex intervention. “Going with the flow” on the other hand, will often require no intervention at all. It seems to me that much of the complexity we see in nature is there because in a given environment, things tend to work out that way rather than any other, just like in a packet of cornflakes.

A small part of the Mandelbrot set

This is applicable in other systems too, such as how you organise your life. For instance, it makes sense to keep things you need regularly in designated places, so that you don't have to embark on a time-consuming search every time you need them. If you need to take something with you when you go out, you could set an alarm on your smartphone to remind you to pick it up at the appropriate time — or you could simply place the item where you will see it when you do go out.

To put this another way: don't expend energy trying to achieve things in spite of your environment. Rather, create, encourage and adjust your environment such that it allows those things to be achieved automatically. (There you go — who'd have thought a debate on evolution would lead to productivity advice and life-coaching?)

UPDATE 2016-01-04: Perry Marshall has published online his transcript of the debate, along with some restrospective comments:
http://cosmicfingerprints.com/pz-myers/
...And here's PZ Myers' response to the comments:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/01/03/perry-marshall-2-0/

UPDATE 2016-01-10: Looks like this will run and run. Perry Marshall has responded to PZ Myers' response to his comments on his transcript:
http://cosmicfingerprints.com/pz-mcclintock/

UPDATE 2016-01-12: ...and PZ Myers further responds here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/01/11/everything-existing-in-the-universe-is-the-fruit-of-chance-and-necessity/ 

UPDATE 2016-01-22: Will this never end? Perry Marshalls's next shot:
http://cosmicfingerprints.com/telorexia/

...And possibly the last from PZ Myers?:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/01/12/my-last-post-on-perry-marshall/

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PZ Myers' blogpost about his encounter with Perry Marshall is here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/01/01/another-day-another-creationist/

An experiment designed to be useless

Now that PZ Myers has had his say, Premier Radio's Atheist Prayer Experiment has become wider known. I suspect most of what's been said about it so far (including by me) was without the benefit of actually reading Tim Mawson's paper on which the experiment is apparently to be based.

The paper, titled "Praying to stop being an atheist", was published in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion in January 2010, and is available as a PDF here:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/a77r315j041p4213/fulltext.pdf

Here's the abstract:

In this paper, I argue that atheists who think that the issue of God’s existence or non-existence is an important one; assign a greater than negligible probability to God’s existence; and are not in possession of a plausible argument for scepticism about the truth-directedness of uttering such prayers in their own cases, are under a prima facie epistemic obligation to pray to God that He stop them being atheists.

It sounds like Mawson is setting up a highly restricted set of circumstances in which his proposal might just have some validity. Or not.

He begins by running through some examples and provisos. He suggests that the atheist considering praying to a God he or she doesn't believe exists is similar to someone in a darkened room who calls out "Is anyone there?" even though they believe they are alone. We get a lot of hemming and hawing around the plausibility of such a belief and the reasons why someone might feel it worth their while to call out, but it all has a flavour of direction, of careful elimination of possible objections, in preparation for declaring some kind of equivalence.

Similarly then, I am suggesting that, as well as agnostics, those atheists who think of the issue of the existence or non-existence of God as an important one and neither assign God’s existence a vanishingly small probability, nor take themselves to have some reason to suppose that their engaging in the process of prayer would lead them to false positives, should engage, insofar as the costs (including opportunity costs; to repeat, this is only a prima facie obligation and there may be other obligations which trump it) are not prohibitive, in praying to God that He remove their unbelief.

That is a typical sentence (one sentence, note). The whole paper is written in this faux-Dickensian style, with an excess of double negatives and subordinate clauses to subordinate clauses, as if attempting to delay the dawning realisation that what Mawson is saying is totally unextraordinary as well as entirely superfluous.

Next we have some exposition on Divine Hiddenness, which is frankly of no help at all. Mawson suggests that the atheist —

...is still justified in conducting the prayer experiment given that the most plausible version of Theism will have as an element that God’s reasons to preserve the general level of hiddenness that he does may be countervailed by prayers of this sort.

Or in other words God might answer the atheist's prayers, or he might not. What, exactly, is that supposed to prove?

Mawson goes on to consider two potential objections. The first is a facile and futile consideration of the utility and worth, in terms of effort and return, of calling out to fairies at the bottom of the garden. Here's one reason why he doesn't think it's worth it:

I do not regard answering the question of whether or not there are fairies at the bottom of the garden as a task of great importance; it has a similar importance, it strikes me, to settling the question of whether aliens with a penchant for leaving crop circles and temporarily abducting the locals are in the habit of visiting the mid-west of the U.S.A.

Mawson should get his priorities right. He's effectively saying that if he had a trivial means of determining whether — despite the inconclusive evidence so far presented — aliens are in fact visiting the Earth on a regular basis, he wouldn't bother. Considering that one of the eternal questions we face is "Are we alone in the Universe?" I think he's being pretty dismissive. He's already based his prospective experiment on the proposition that the existence of God is important. One possibility he ought to consider is that God exists and is an extra-terrestrial.

I might also question his indifference to the possible existence of an entirely unknown species of winged homunculi that nevertheless appear frequently in historical literature. (I would have added that an answer to the fairy-question might also have a bearing on the existence of a supernatural realm, but Mawson has already stated that the fairies he's not going to call out to are entirely natural.) In explaining at length and in detail — two pages of dense explication — why he's not going to call out to fairies, Mawson gives an overwhelming impression of desperately looking for excuses.

The second objection Mawson addresses is the one PZ Myers raised:

If you tell yourself something every day over a fairly long period of time, will it affect how your mind works? I suspect the answer would be yes. Just the act of making a commitment to a religious belief and reinforcing it with daily rituals and reflection is going to fuck up your head. Most of us atheists have defenses against it — I couldn’t go through this without grumbling to myself that this behavior is bullshit, and it would probably end up making me even more disgusted with religion (if I bothered to do it, which I won’t) — but it could affect somebody who is gullible and impressionable. There’s nothing in this ‘experiment’ that could provide evidence of a god, but there is plenty of stuff to show that plastic minds exist…which we already know.

Mawson's response to this objection (obviously not a direct response to PZ, who posted the above on August 20) is to issue a kind of challenge:

Tim Mawson

Again, the analogy of the darkened room seems to me apposite. It may not be unreasonable to suppose of some people that they are so desperate to find a wise old man in the room that they mistake the echo of their own voice for a reply to their quickly-shouted question. Some suffer from schizophrenia in the best of conditions after all and the sensory deprivation attendant upon entering such a room is hardly likely to improve such conditions. But the vast majority of agnostics and atheists can know of themselves, if they can know anything of themselves, that they are not such people. Most people are able, quite rightly, to remove from consideration as a serious possibility that they will mistake the echo of their own voice for a reply to the question, ‘Is there anyone there?’ when shouted into a darkened room. Similarly, I am suggesting, most agnostics and atheists will be able, quite rightly, to remove from consideration as a serious possibility that they will ‘project’ some fantasy and thus generate false positives by conducting the sort of prayer experiment which I have suggested is otherwise prima facie obligatory on them. 

Or to put it another way, "Hey, atheists! You're made of sterner stuff than this, aren't you?"

Towards the end of the paper Mawson seems to be suggesting that the experiment cannot work:

One point we may see now then is that nothing the theist, agnostic or atheist can have experienced during the process of conducting this experiment will have given him or her any reason to believe that this process of praying to God that He reveal Himself is not truth-directed. Just the opposite; anything he or she will have experienced and even the absence of an experience will have simply increased his or her rational estimation of the reliability of this process in putting him or her in touch with ultimate metaphysical truth. Thus he or she will find himself or herself locked into what he or she will have to consider an epistemically virtuous spiral of prayer, one which ever increases his or her rational faith in God or one which ever increases his or her rational certainty that God does not exist.

This doesn't seem rational to me. Is Mawson saying that whatever the results, and whether you're theist, atheist or agnostic (agnosticism doesn't exclude the other two, by the way) you will conclude that the experiment has brought you closer to the truth? In what way is this at all useful?

Finally he comes back to a point he brought up at the beginning, that an atheist should only carry out the experiment if he or she thinks there is more than a vanishingly small probability that God exists. I read this as saying any atheist who places higher than 6.5 on Dawkins' scale should not participate. Many atheists of my acquaintance would be excluded on that basis, as would I. And we're at that point on the scale because we've already done this experiment. Many of us prayed earnestly in our youth, and beyond, with conclusively negative results. We found no evidence for the existence of God, despite repeatedly asking for it. That is why we're atheists.

Mawson rounds off his paper with a well-known quote from Bertrand Russell regarding lack of evidence for the existence of God, and suggests that Russell should perhaps have asked for some. Personally I'm not inclined to go chasing after evidence for something whose existence is not rationally implied in the first place. There's a simple matter to consider — that of burden of proof.

NOMA, sexism and PZ Myers

The current spat in the "atheist movement" is a cause for some glee in certain theistic quarters, with suggestions that if a reconciliation of the "schism" (currently exemplified between "new atheist" blogger PZ Myers and atheist YouTuber Thunderf00t) cannot be achieved, then the "movement" is doomed.

This, I think, misunderstands the nature of the split. The "atheist movement" was never a cohesive body, and likely never will be. Some Christians are suggesting that the movement's leaders need to make a stand, issue some decrees and whip the dissenters into line, or else the movement will fragment and disintegrate. But atheism as a movement has never been integrated. There's no doctrinal dogma to which atheists are required to subscribe, no articles of faith. The only thing that all atheists have in common is a disbelief in gods. Beyond that, they are as disparate as any random collection of individuals. That such a group could even begin to consider itself a "movement" is, to put it charitably, optimistic.

There are no atheist leaders, just some atheists who tend to be more vocal than others. It is in the nature of freethought not to take things on authority alone, so any calls for prominent atheists to grab the movement by the scruff of the neck and shake some sense into it will be for the most part ignored. Atheism will not fragment as a result of this latest hoo-hah because it's already fragmented, by definition.

The current controversy over sexism in the skeptical/atheist movement is, as far as I can see, merely an extension of the well established conflict over non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA). With regard to potential incompatibilities between religion and science we have two factions: on the one hand those who claim that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible — and the source of a great many problems in today's culture — and on the other those who claim that it's possible to find an accommodation between science and religion because they deal with different realms of enquiry. Atheists on each side of the NOMA debate will be forever opposed, because each side has a different way of dealing with religion. Arch-accomodationists will take a pragmatic approach to working with theists, on the basis that theism doesn't deal with scientific matters. Extreme anti-accommodationists will simply refuse to work with theists on scientific matters on the basis that theism does deal with scientific matters, but in an unscientific way.

In the sexism debate, views divide down the middle in a manner similar to the NOMA split. On one side are those who say that sexism is a problem that needs to be addressed (by, for instance, talking openly about it rather than sweeping it under the rug, and by implementing clearly stated harassment policies wherever these might be appropriate), and on the other are those who say that though sexism certainly exists, it isn't a particular problem in skepticism/atheism — any more than elsewhere — and that the current disagreement is a molehill that has blown up into a raging volcano.

I've no idea if what I'm about to write will alienate some of my readers, but I feel I must be open about my own biases on these matters.

Taking NOMA first, though I can see the value of making nice with theists in order to get things done (and because they are people — and therefore deserving of respect and consideration), I see no merit in pretending that science and religion are compatible when even a superficial examination shows they are anything but.

Second, on the question of sexism in general and the problem of sexual harassment at skeptic/atheist events in particular, some women have reported that there is a problem. Are we to ignore this? Certainly not. As a man I don't experience the types of unwelcome attention that are being reported (and have been reported in "the movement" for over a year now) so I can only go by the reports. The fact that some other women have said that in their experience it isn't a problem is insufficient reason for not doing anything.

It seems to me that in both the NOMA debate and the discussions (I use the term advisedly) about sexual harassment, PZ Myers has got it right. His stand on this and other matters speaks of an intellectual integrity that is to be admired rather than dismissed. His uncompromising attitude may well alienate many, but that's because he will not accommodate. Often I find his views quite unpalatable, but as far as I'm aware he always gives his reasons, and I find I usually agree with them.

(I hearby declare that you may unsubscribe/unfollow/block me now.)

Religion delivers what people want — but only to a few

Organised religion isn't about belief. It isn't about redemption. It isn't about morality or the fate of one's immortal soul. Organised religion is about power — the power of an anointed elite over everyone else.

There are are countless examples of this power — the Catholic Church is one, the Anglican Church is another, the two dominant Muslim sects, Sunni and Shia, are yet others. In all these examples we have a priesthood (the anointed elite) who presume to tell the unanointed what they are allowed to do.

In the politics of interpersonal and social dynamics there's one thing prized above all others, and it's not happiness, wealth or health. It's sovereignty. What people want most of all is not to be told what to do by someone else, and the surest way of achieving this objective is to become the person who does the telling.

Organised religion has the ideal hierarchy for this, because once someone is a member of the elite, their word goes, by virtue of their status, and it matters not one jot whether their authority is grounded on fact or fantasy — the religious elite commands power by arbitrary decree. Its members' assertions are largely unquestioned even when entirely lacking objective substantiation. In the past this elite has not expected to be challenged, and when in these more enlightened times it increasingly is challenged, religion has no real answer, falling back on tradition and the status quo.

"Accommodationists" — those atheists who maintain that religious and non-religious folk can engage in constructive dialogue with each other — are against such challenges, stating that the likes of Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers do atheism a disservice by being so stridently and militantly opposed to religion. Accommodationists maintain that there need not be conflict between religion and science. Well, maybe constructive dialogue is possible between the religious and non-religious — just not on the subject of religion.

I've no objection to religious faith, as long as those who profess it do not impose their beliefs on others who don't share them. It's in the nature of religious belief, however, that it must impinge on the rights and duties of everyone it touches, otherwise it's not much of a belief. It's this inevitable encroachment that persuades me that the accommodationists are wrong.

It's true that there are many religious moderates who profess a religious faith of some kind, at the same time as accepting the findings of science. But it seems to me that religious moderates are either suppressing their faith, or else they aren't truly committed to their belief. Accommodationists who claim that science and religion are compatible — on the basis that there are many excellent scientists who are also religious believers — are missing the point. It's quite possible to hold any number of incompatible beliefs, even if those beliefs are obviously inconsistent with each other. One can believe, for example, that the human mind is an emergent property of the amazing but entirely materialistic complexity of the human brain, while at the same time believing that we all have free will. These two ideas may be incompatible, but people can still simultaneously believe them both. Just because we believe something, however, it doesn't follow that our belief is true.

Despite what religious moderates maintain, organised religion does make specific claims about the nature of reality — claims that are plainly incompatible with scientific knowledge. Religious moderates may suggest that their scripture is not intended to be interpreted as making such claims, even if a superficial reading of scripture reveals that it does indeed make such claims. This, of course, is where the theologian steps in, like a mafioso's lawyer, to contend that though the text in question appears to be at odds with reality as we have come to know it, an "alternative" reading will reveal that the words actually mean something else. (It doesn't matter what the words mean, as long as the chosen meaning can be made to fit.)

But theology doesn't appear to be based on anything solid. Rather, theology¹ appears to be entirely fabricated — arbitrarily — from nothing. It's like the scene from the film Cruise of the Gods in which a fan of a hit science fiction TV series delivers a lecture explaining the hidden meaning behind the names of all the fictional characters. Unfortunately for this fan's thesis the writer is in the audience, has had a bit too much to drink, and explains that in fact he named all his characters using anagrams of the items on the menu of his local curry house.
_____________________

1. For a comprehensive analysis of why sceptics and atheists need not be concerned with theology, see Chris Ray at Factonista.

There is a line to be drawn — why I'm against "accommodationism"

Most people who meet me would, I think, consider that I'm a fairly easy-going chap, not prone to outbursts of vitriolic invective or uncompromising rage.

I'm usually prepared to accommodate people's foibles and make allowances for mild idiosyncrasies. This makes for a quite life, without avoidable friction. And it's fine as far as it goes. It's fine if others are prepared to be included in the give and take. But being easy-going doesn't mean you need to be a doormat. There comes a time when easy-going ceases to be a beneficial strategy. When others won't play by the rules, and take advantage of someone's attitude of tolerance, that's when the normally meek and mild need to take a firm stand.

Nowhere is this more important in today's multicultural world than in matters of belief — especially unsubstantiated belief. That's why, in the matter of the current belief/non-belief/accommodationist debate, I'm firmly on the side of Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers.

"Accommodationism" is all very fine and dandy, but it doesn't work. Giving leave to those who proclaim unsubstantiated belief to have sway over matters that are capable of objective substantiation simply opens the gate to mysticism and woo. Whether it's "alternative" medicine being endorsed by the National Health Service, or the validity of moral edicts derived from ancient scripture, those of us who base our lives on what is objectively true have a duty to point out unsubstantiated assertion, especially if someone is attempting to influence decisions that will affect other people. It's no good attempting to excuse behaviour of this sort with words of conciliation. Unsupported, dangerous nonsense should be stamped on, forthwith.

Believers in woo can be left to wallow in their fantasies, but the moment they become purveyors of woo they implicitly open themselves to public scrutiny, and we should not be shy in calling them on anything that appears to fail the evidential test. Assertions not grounded in evidence should be brought into the light of rational analysis, even to the extent of naming and shaming. The purveyors of woo, be they magical thinkers or faith-based dogmatists, should be made to account for their claims or else withdraw them. Those who refuse should be publicly shunned.

"But your reality isn't the only one," they say. "What's real for you, isn't necessarily real for us." OK, fine. Show me your "reality". Show me, in particular, what makes you think it's real. Show me the evidence. If you won't, then don't expect me or anyone else to give it credence.

There is a line to be drawn, and it's here. I'm an easy-going chap, most of the time. Rant over.

Thoughts on the Thunderf00t - Ray Comfort discussion

After some ignominious shenanigans concerning his (surely not serious) request for a $100,000 honorarium (payable to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, no less), Ray Comfort took up Thunderf00t's offer of a recorded discussion. Here is the result - 90 minutes of YouTube video well worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/p/762A731FA12BCB57

(via The Atheist Blogger, from whom I also nicked the playlist embed code)

Some random thoughts after viewing:

Ray Comfort doesn't understand evolution - this is clear from his failure to engage in the basic concepts. He says he doesn't believe evolution is true (elsewhere he repeatedly describes it as "a fairy tale for grownups"), but if he doesn't understand it he's attacking a straw man - whatever he thinks evolution is, rather than what it actually is.

Given what he's said (and published), this isn't surprising, but it raises an interesting parallel with his own reasons for believing in God. During his discussion with Thunderf00t he mentioned that there was much in the Bible that he didn't understand until he accepted Jesus Christ into his heart as his personal Saviour. Relative to this he's previously stated that the evidence for the existence of God is available to everyone - all they need to do is do as he did: open their hearts to the Lord.

Atheists who have honestly tried this route, without the promised revelation, are told they're obviously doing it wrong. This is a self-fulfilling/defeating prophecy - just like the mediaeval dunking stool used to test witches. Any suspected witch who uses her craft to survive the test is proven guilty and shall not be suffered to live. If she drowns she was clearly innocent - no powers, no witch, and she will be set free to live her life in peace, unmolested. Unfortunately she's already dead.

With most atheists the "you're doing it wrong!" excuse understandably won't wash - it's a "heads I win/tails you lose" kind of reasoning.

Ray's argument in this part of the discussion also seemed equivalent (though with less sophistication) to the reasons given by theologians who object to Richard Dawkins' refutation of "simplistic" theism. A theologian will claim (with suitable snootiness) that the religion Dawkins attacks is "not my religion", and will then expound on some abstruse and intensely personal - but most importantly incomprehensible - faith (usually with profligate redefinition of terms), to the extent that the only other person who could share it is God. PZ Myers satirised this style of theology in his Courtier's Reply.

One could argue, however, that atheistic objections to theology are similar to creationists' simplistic objections to evolution. We complain that the likes of Ray Comfort have no real grasp of the principles of evolution, though they decry it as fictional. Conversely, many a theologian has complained that Richard Dawkins has no real grasp of theology, while at the same time he decries the subject as vacuous.

Of course, there is a crucial difference between the two disciplines. Evolution (by random genetic mutation and natural selection) is documented science that makes predictions (such as what we should expect to find in the fossil record) and so far its principles have not been disproved. In fact, each new discovery whether in genetics, paleontology or any other evolution-related field, has further confirmed evolutionary theory, to the extent that it is as near to a scientific fact as the theory of gravity. Theology, on the other hand, appears to be entirely made up. Theologians of a particular creed may agree on a core set of theological principles, but these result from consensus only, and cannot be falsified. This would be all fine and dandy for literary criticism, but for telling us anything at all about the real world, or the people in it, it's useless.

UPDATE 2009-08-02: A good summary of the discussion here:
Angry Astronomer: Ray Comfort vs. Thunderf00t

George Hrab on the "abrasiveness" of Dawkins and Myers

George Hrab, musician, atheist, sceptic, recently answered a query on his Geologic Podcast about the so-called abrasiveness of "militant atheists" Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers.

Relevant audio clip (4'02" 1.9 MB) here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/341826217/GeorgeHrab_on_DawkinsAndMyers.mp3

(Warning: strong language.)

Get the whole 46-minute show here:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/geologicpodcast/GeologicPodcast106-Mar05-09.mp3

Incidentally, George also wrote and performed the theme song for the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, and has released an accompanying video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF2HG1PVZok


Despite appearances, Geo's production team for this video was minimal in the extreme (consisting of, amongst no others, himself).