Can Darwinian evolution create new functional biological information?

Here’s a great article from Evolution News that explains the trouble that Darwinian evolution has in building up to functional new biological information by using a process of random mutation and natural selection.

Casey Luskin takes a look at a peer-reviewed paper that claims that Darwinian evolution can do the job of creating new information, then he explains what’s wrong with the paper.

Excerpt:

In Wilf and Ewens’s evolutionary scheme there is a smooth fitness function. Under this view, there is no epistasis, where one mutation can effectively interact with another to affect (whether positively or negatively) fitness. As a result, any mutations that move the search toward its “target” are assumed to provide an immediate and irrevocable advantage, and are thus highly likely to become fixed. Ewert et al. compare the model to playing Wheel of Fortune:

The evolutionary model that Wilf and Ewens have chosen is similar to the problem of guessing letters in a word or phrase, as on the television game show Wheel of Fortune. They specify a phrase 20,000 letters long, with each letter in the phrase corresponding to a gene locus that can be transformed from its initial “primitive” state to a more advanced state. Finding the correct letter for a particular position in the target phrase roughly corresponds to finding a beneficial mutation in the corresponding gene. During each round of mutation all positions in the phrase are subject to mutation, and the results are selected based on whether the individual positions match the final target phrase. Those that match are preserved for the next round. … After each round, all “advanced” alleles in the population are treated as fixed, and therefore preserved in the next round. Evolution to the fully “advanced” state is complete when all 20,000 positions match the target phrase.

The problem with this approach is that a string of biological information that has only some letters that are part of a useful sequence has no present function, and therefore cannot survive and reproduce.

Look:

Thus, Wilf and Ewens ignore the problem of non-functional intermediates. They assume that all intermediate stages will be functional, or lead to some functional advantage. But is this how all fitness functions look? Not necessarily. It’s well known that in many instances, no benefit is derived until multiple mutations are present all at once. In such a case, there’s no evolutionary advantage until multiple mutations are present. The “correct” mutations might occur in parallel, but the odds of this happening are extremely low. Ewert et al. illustrate this problem in the model by using the example of the difficulty of one phrase evolving into another:

Suppose it would be beneficial for the phrase

“all_the_world_is_a_stage___”

to evolve into the phrase

“methinks_it_is_like_a_weasel.”

What phrase do we get if we simply alternate letters from the two phrases?

“mlt_ihk__otli__siaesaaw_a_e_.”

Under the assumptions in the Wilf and Ewens model, the “fitness” of this nonsense phrase ought to be exactly half-way between the fitnesses of “all the world is a stage” and “methinks it is like a weasel.” Such a result only makes sense if we are measuring the fitness of the current phrase by its proximity to the target phrase.

But the gibberish of the intermediate phrase doesn’t cause any problem under Wilf and Ewens’s model. Not unlikeRichard Dawkins, they assume that intermediate stages will always yield some functional advantage. And as more and more characters in the phrase match the target, it becomes more and more fit. This yields a nice, smooth fitness function — rich in active information — not truly a blind search.

Not only is there that first problem, but here’s a second:

Wilf and Ewens endowed their mathematical model of evolution with foresight. It is directed toward a target — an advantage that natural selection conspicuously lacks. And what, in our experience, is the only known cause that is goal-directed and has foresight? It’s intelligence. This means that once again, the Evolutionary Informatics Lab has shown that simulations of evolution seem to work only because they’ve been intelligently designed.

This is worth the read. If Darwinian mechanisms really could generate code, then there would be no software engineers. The truth is, the mechanisms don’t work to create new information. For that, you need an intelligent designer.

Filed under: Polemics, Blind Search, Darwinism, Evolution, Feature Space, Fitness Landscape, Future Function, Genetic Algorithm, Information Technology, Intelligent Design, Letters, Mathematics, Mutation, Natural Selection, Naturalism, Origin of Life, Phase Space, Search, Search Problem, Selection, Sentences, Software Engineering, Words

A look at how a former skeptic changed his mind about God’s existence

Reformed Seth sent me this post from the ultimate object blog.

Excerpt:

“There has been some confusion and more than a few requests for explanation about what is going on with my core beliefs. Some time last week, I realized that I could no longer call myself a skeptic. After fifteen years away from Christianity, most of which was spent as an atheist with an active, busy intent on destroying the faith, I returned to a church (with a real intention of going for worship) last Sunday. Although I know I may struggle with doubt for the rest of my life, my life as an atheist is over.

The primary motivator in my change of heart from a Christ-hater to a card-carrying Disciples of Christ member was apologetic arguments for God’s existence. Those interested in these arguments may pursue them in the comments section, but I don’t want to muddle this explanation up with formal philosophical proofs. Briefly, I grew tired of the lack of explanation for: the existence of the universe, moral values and duties, objective human worth, consciousness and will, and many other topics. The only valid foundation for many of those ideas is a personal, immaterial, unchanging and unchangeable entity. As I fought so desperately  to come up with refutations of these arguments – even going out of my way to personally meet many of their originators, defenders, and opponents  – I realized that I could not answer them no matter how many long nights I spent hitting the books. The months of study rolled on to years, and eventually I found an increasing comfort around my God-believing enemies and a growing discontent and even anger at my atheist friends’ inability to kill off these fleas in debate and in writing, an anger that gave birth to my first feeling of separateness from skepticism after reading comments related to a definitively refuted version of the Christ Myth theory, the idea that Jesus Christ never even existed as a person at all. Line after line after line of people hating Christianity and laughing at its “lie,” when solid scholarship refuting their idea was ignored completely. It showed that the motive of bashing and hating Christianity for some skeptics wasn’t based in reason and “free thinking” at all, although it would be unfair to lump many of my more intellectually rigorous and mentally cool skeptic friends in this way.

As time went on, I reverted the path I traced after giving up Christianity so long ago: I went from atheist to agnostic to … gulp … *leaning* in the direction of God, to finally accepting that he very well could exist, and then to coming out and admitting (quietly) He did exist. After considering Deism (the belief in a God who abandons His creation), Islam, Hinduism (yes, Krishna, don’t laugh), Baha’i, and even Jainism briefly, I have decided to select Christianity due to its superior model for human evil and its reconciliation, coupled with the belief that God interacted with man directly and face-to-face and had *the* crucial role in this reconciliation. This, of course, doesn’t prove that Christianity is absolutely true (although I can prove that God exists), but rather reflects my recognition that Christianity is exactly what I would expect to be the case given that God exists.

I feel guilty when I read posts like that… I think to myself “you shouldn’t be so mean to people who disagree with you, maybe they are like this guy – honestly thinking things through and willing to change their minds”. Sigh. I feel so guilty right now.

I really like what he had to say about reconciliation, though. I feel the pressure to reconcile people to God through Christ’s offer of forgiveness – that’s why I work so hard on apologetics, and to have money to buy people things they need for their studying. To really get people to be reconciled, you have to be convincing. You have to be persuasive. And you can’t do that without having studied the arguments and the evidence.

I also agree with him about the reconciliation. The resurrection is a good argument, but it’s inductive – it’s the best explanation based on the historical bedrock that we have. But what clinches the case for Christianity in the end is Christ descending from his glory to suffer with us – and for us, too.

In case any of you haven’t read my testimony, it’s right here.

Seth also found evidence that this guy really was a skeptic before. (That link goes to John Loftus’ “Debunking Christianity” web site)

Filed under: Commentary, Apologetics, Arguments, Atheist, Barriers, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, Defense, Evidence, Former, Goal, Honesty, Lapsed, Motivation, Offense, Purpose, Reconciliation, Search, Seek, Skeptic, Truth

Can computers become conscious by increasing processing power?

There is a very famous thought experiment from UC Berkeley philosopher John Searle that all Christian apologists should know about. And now everyone who reads the Wall Street Journal knows about it, because of this article. (H/T Sarah)

Searle is writing about the IBM computer that was programmed to play Jeopardy. His Chinese room example shows why no one should be concerned about computers acting like humans. There is no thinking computer. There never will be a thinking computer. And you cannot build up to a thinking computer my adding more hardware and software.

Excerpt:

Imagine that a person—me, for example—knows no Chinese and is locked in a room with boxes full of Chinese symbols and an instruction book written in English for manipulating the symbols. Unknown to me, the boxes are called “the database” and the instruction book is called “the program.” I am called “the computer.”

People outside the room pass in bunches of Chinese symbols that, unknown to me, are questions. I look up in the instruction book what I am supposed to do and I give back answers in Chinese symbols.

Suppose I get so good at shuffling the symbols and passing out the answers that my answers are indistinguishable from a native Chinese speaker’s. I give every indication of understanding the language despite the fact that I actually don’t understand a word of Chinese.

And if I do not, neither does any digital computer, because no computer, qua computer, has anything I do not have. It has stocks of symbols, rules for manipulating symbols, a system that allows it to rapidly transition from zeros to ones, and the ability to process inputs and outputs. That is it. There is nothing else.

By the way, Searle is a naturalist – not a theist, not a Christian. But he does oppose postmodernism. So he isn’t all bad. But let’s hear from a Christian scholar who can make more sense of this for us.

Here’s an article by Christian philosopher Jay Richards.

Excerpt:

Popular discussions of AI often suggest that if you keep increasing weak AI, at some point, you’ll get strong AI. That is, if you get enough computation, you’ll eventually get consciousness.

The reasoning goes something like this: There will be a moment at which a computer will be indistinguishable from a human intelligent agent in a blind test. At that point, we will have intelligent, conscious machines.

This does not follow. A computer may pass the Turing test, but that doesn’t mean that it will actually be a self-conscious, free agent.

The point seems obvious, but we can easily be beguiled by the way we speak of computers: We talk about computers learning, making mistakes, becoming more intelligent, and so forth. We need to remember that we are speaking metaphorically.

We can also be led astray by unexamined metaphysical assumptions. If we’re just computers made of meat, and we happened to become conscious at some point, what’s to stop computers from doing the same? That makes sense if you accept the premise—as many AI researchers do. If you don’t accept the premise, though, you don’t have to accept the conclusion.

In fact, there’s no good reason to assume that consciousness and agency emerge by accident at some threshold of speed and computational power in computers. We know by introspection that we are conscious, free beings—though we really don’t know how this works. So we naturally attribute consciousness to other humans. We also know generally what’s going on inside a computer, since we build them, and it has nothing to do with consciousness. It’s quite likely that consciousness is qualitatively different from the type of computation that we have developed in computers (as the “Chinese Room” argument, by philosopher John Searle, seems to show). Remember that, and you’ll suffer less anxiety as computers become more powerful.

Even if computer technology provides accelerating returns for the foreseeable future, it doesn’t follow that we’ll be replacing ourselves anytime soon. AI enthusiasts often make highly simplistic assumptions about human nature and biology. Rather than marveling at the ways in which computation illuminates our understanding of the microscopic biological world, many treat biological systems as nothing but clunky, soon-to-be-obsolete conglomerations of hardware and software. Fanciful speculations about uploading ourselves onto the Internet and transcending our biology rest on these simplistic assumptions. This is a common philosophical blind spot in the AI community, but it’s not a danger of AI research itself, which primarily involves programming and computers.

AI researchers often mix topics from different disciplines—biology, physics, computer science, robotics—and this causes critics to do the same. For instance, many critics worry that AI research leads inevitably to tampering with human nature. But different types of research raise different concerns. There are serious ethical questions when we’re dealing with human cloning and research that destroys human embryos. But AI research in itself does not raise these concerns. It normally involves computers, machines, and programming. While all technology raises ethical issues, we should be less worried about AI research—which has many benign applications—than research that treats human life as a means rather than an end.

Jay Richards is my all-round favorite Christian scholar. He has the Ph.D in philosophy from Princeton.

When I am playing a game on the computer, I know exactly why what I am doing is fun – I am conscious of it. But the computer has no idea what I am doing. It is just matter in motion, acting on it’s programming and the inputs I supply to it. And that’s all computers will ever do. Trust me, this is my field. I have the BS and MS in computer science, and I have studied this area. AI has applications for machine learning and search problems, but consciousness is not on the radar. You can’t get there from here.

Filed under: News, AI, Algorithm, Artificial Intelligence, Body, Computer, IBM, Jeopardy, John Searle, Machine, Machine Learning, Materialism, Mental, Mind, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Search, Soul, Strong AI, Substance Dualism, Turing Test, Watson, Weak AI

William Dembski discusses irreducible complexity and co-option

William Dembski explains what the debate on origins is really about.

About the speaker:

Dr. Dembski has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago where he earned a B.A. in psychology, an M.S. in statistics, and a Ph.D. in philosophy, he also received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1988 and a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996. He has held National Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.

The lecture:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Summary (snark is in italics)

What is evolution:

• Is it enough for Christian students to just retain their faith in college?
• Or should Christian students seek to transform their universities?
• The word “evolution” refers to a unguided, purposeless, undirected process
• Living organisms are not designed, they just appear to be designed
• Therefore, it is an atheistic theory – there is NO ROOM for God
• Random variations and natural selection can do the creating of life without God
• Nothing about evolution suggest that God had anything to do with it

The appearance of design:

• The cell is a nano-engineered information processing system.
• The cell has engineering, e.g. – signal transduction, message passing, etc.
• There are molecular machines similar to man-made machines, but less efficient
• E.g. – the bacterial flagellum which has 40 parts
• These molecular machines have minimal complexity – all the parts are needed
• can’t build a molecular machine step-by-step – all the parts must be present and integrated

How does evolution try to explain molecular machines:

• The standard naturalistic response is “co-option”
• Each intermediate step has pieces that are used for other purposes
• I.e. – Subsets of the parts can have different functions
• For example, a subset of the bacterial flagellum can be used as a syringe
• The subset, called the Type-3 secretory system, has only 13 parts
• The problem is that evolutionists don’t show all the steps, and all the functions
• For this to be a good response, you need a smooth path from 1 part up to 40
• Each step of the path has to have a working system with a different function
• But the atheists don’t have the path, or the intermediate functions
• It’s like arguing that you can walk from Seattle to Tokyo via the Hawaiian islands

Is the bacterial flagellum a cherry-picked example?

• There are no detailed molecular pathways for any biochemical systems in the cell
• The atheistic response is to speculate that pathways will be found as science progresses
• The pathways are unobservable entities, just like the multiverse and the Cambrian precursors
  

Where does the machinery to create proteins come from?

• The molecular machines are composed of proteins
• The proteins are manufactured by copying protein-building instructions from the DNA
• The instructions are carried to the build site by messenger RNA
• The build site is called a ribosome
• The DNA requires proteins to build, so there is a chicken-and-egg problem
• The problem is that protein transcription systems require everything in place
• There is no materialistic theory about how to build this step-by-step

So what do the molecular machines tell us about how life began?

• The problem of the origin of life is the problem of the origin of information
• What needs to be explained are the functional sequences of parts
• The sequences are identical to sequences of letters that make sense
• The atheist has to say that material processes can create the information
• The problem of finding sequences of amino acids or proteins is a search problem
• A blind search of the space of possible sequences is not efficient
• even with lots time, parts and trials, you can’t converge on functional proteins
• information is required and the only known producer of information is a mind

Bill is one of my favorite people. He’s smarter than practically all of the atheists who dominate the universities. But because he is an outspoken Christian, he never gets the recognition he deserves. He just keeps plugging away on his research. He doesn’t make excuses.

What is intelligent design?

• R.C. Sproul interviews Stephen Meyer on Signature in the Cell
• Stephen Meyer explains what intelligent design is in a CNN editorial.
• Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell in top ten science books on Amazon.com
• Stephen Meyer debate against Michael Shermer on Lee Strobel’s TV show

Related DVDs

Illustra also made two other great DVDs on intelligent design. The first two DVDs “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” and “The Privileged Planet” are must-buys, but you can watch them on youtube if you want, for free.

Here are the 2 playlists:

• Unlocking the Mystery of Life (12 videos in a playlist)
• The Privileged Planet (12 videos in a playlist)

I also recommend Coldwater Media’s “Icons of Evolution”. All three of these are on sale from Amazon.com.

Related posts

• The origin of the universe from nothing
• The fine-tuning of the cosmological constants to permit life
• The fine-tuning of the galaxy, solar system, and planet to permit life
• Origin of the building blocks in the simplest replicating cell
• Origin of biological information in the simplest replicating cell
• Sudden origins of all major body plans in the Cambrian explosion
• Irreducible complexity in molecular machines
• The limits on what natural selection and random mutation can do
• Peer-reviewed paper says there is no atheistic explanation for the Cambrian explosion
• Does the Cambrian explosion disprove Darwinian evolution?

Filed under: News, Amino Acid, Atheism, Atheist, Bacterial Flagellum, Bill Dembski, Biochemistry, Biology, Blind Search, Cell, Chemistry, Christians, College, Darwinism, Design Inference, DNA, Evolution, Faith, Function, God, Informatin, Intelligent Design, Life, Materialism, Mind, Minimal Complexity, Molecular Machine, Nano-Technology, Naturalism, Phase Space, Process, Protein, Purposeless, Random, Religion, Ribosome, RNA, Science, Search, Search Problem, Sequence, Specification, Undirected, Unguided, University, William Dembski

Friday night funny: Daily Show, roommates, Wolf Blitzer, Google

First, left-wing radical Jon Stewart mocks media bias on ACORN! I don’t like him at all, but this is funny.

A funny list for Owen

The list of 101 things to do to your college roomate.

My favorites:

12. Every time you wake up, start yelling, “Help! Where am I?!” and run around the room for a few minutes. Then go back to bed. If your roommate asks, say you don’t know what he/she is talking about.

26. Keep a tarantula in a jar for three days. Then get rid of the tarantula. If your roommate asks, say, “Oh, he’s around here somewhere.”

27. Tell your roommate, “I’ve got an important message for you.” Then pretend to faint. When you recover, say you can’t remember what the message was. Later on, say, “Oh, yeah, I remember!” Pretend to faint again. Keep this up for several weeks.

44. Move everything to one side of the room. Ask your roommate if he knows how much an elephant weighs, and look at the floor on the empty side of the room with concern.

52. Scatter stuffed animals around the room. Put party hats on them. Play loud music. When your roommate walks in, turn off the music, take off the party hats, put away the stuffed animals, and say, “Well, it was fun while it lasted.”

57. Start dressing like an Indian. If your roommate inquires, claim that you are getting in touch with your Native-American roots. If your roommate accuses you of not having any Native-American roots, claim that he/she has offended your people and put a curse on your roommate.

78. Set up about twenty plants in an organized formation. When your roommate walks in, pretend to be in the middle of delivering a speech to the plants. Whisper to them, “We’ll continue this later,” while eyeing your roommate suspiciously.

89. Drink lots of lemonade. Talk obnoxiously for hours about how much you love lemonade. Then, one day, paint your face yellow. From then on, complain about how much you hate lemonade.

96. Make pancakes every morning, but don’t eat them. Draw faces on them, and toss them in the closet. Watch them for several hours each day. Complain to your roommate that your “pancake farm” isn’t evolving into a self-sufficient community. Confide in your roommate that you think the king of the pancakes has been taking bribes.

#96 is my all-time favorite. This is for Owen, who loves to read lists of funny things.

Wofl Blitzer on Jeopardy

Third, ECM sends me these videos of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer failing miserably on Jeopardy.

Excerpt:

Richter won the game with an incredible $68,000 total. Delaney racked up an creditable $9,300. But Wolf’s final score was -$4800. Yes, negative $4,800.

It’s very difficult for a Jeopardy contestant to come up enough wrong answers to go that far in the hole. It takes great effort and even greater ignorance.

I think that the left-wing media are probably the least educated and informed people on the planet.

Giant bird hounds policemen away

ECM sends this hilarious story. I love birds, but maybe not THIS bird.

Michele Bachmann videos

These are not really funny, but they are fun.

Michele debates with some stupid old men about tariffs:

Michele debates with leftist Geraldo Rivera about health care:

If you want to see and hear more Michele, click here.

Obama discovers the Internet

Last, check out this piece by Scott Ott. (H/T Scrappleface)

Excerpt:

Just a day after White House “green jobs czar” Van Jones resigned amid controversy over his radical views, the Obama administration said it had discovered a new vetting tool called “Google” that also revealed that the president’s “public option” health insurance proposal may be socialist as well.

“You just type a few words into this rectangle,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, “Click a button and information suddenly appears on your computer screen. When we did that, we were shocked to learn that Van was a socialist, and that the keystone of the president’s health reform plan probably is too.”

Happy Friday!

Filed under: Humor, Alex Trebek, Andy Richter, Barack Obama, College Roommate, Daily Show, Dana Delany, Funny list, Google, Hot, Jeopardy, Jon Stewart, Left-Wing Media, List, Media Bias, Michele Bachmann, Obama, Roommate, Search, Socialism, Van Jones, Wolf Blitzer