"If evolution is derided as 'only a theory,'"

Let us not confuse the issue: evolution is a theory, not a fact or law. It is neither of the latter because it cannot be demonstrated. The staggering body of evidence supports evolution theory, but since we cannot say "here, look at this, evolution is happening right in front of us, right at this moment," we cannot call it fact. Something we can demonstrate is, say, the law of gravity.

But even though it is just a theory, it is by far the best explanation for speciation. It is much, much better than Intelligent Design, or the "fixed and final"--that is, species were created individually by God, as they are, for now and for eternity--explanation of species which did not come from the Bible, but from the Scholastics reconciling Christianity with Aristotle's philosophy; the Scholastics (ie-St Augustine, Aquinas) combined the religion of Christainity with the science of Aristotle.

Aristotle's "scientific" approach to nature is called "teleology"--the study of design or purpose in natural phenomena; or, the use of ultimate purpose or design as a means of explaining phenomena. Couple this with the Christian view that God created everything according to his will, with a definite purpose in mind, and one can easily see how Aristotle's view and the Bible's view coincide.

Sadly, the work of the Dark Ages still influences many religious people.

The beauty of evolution is that it's God's own sign that none of us -even the Christians- are "special."

Andrew I agree with you, but I think you might have misunderstood what a scentific law is. Here is and excerpt from URL on what a law is.

If science does not claim to arrive at absolute, definitive truth, then what are scientific laws? Doesn't the existence of a law imply the existence of a truth, not to mention a lawgiver? And if science does not provide us with truth, does that mean that science does not deal with facts?

There can be a lot of confusion about the concepts of laws and facts within scientific research, and one result has been erroneous impressions not just about what these categories are, but also about how science itself works. That is why it is necessary to take some time to clear up this terminology.

http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/evo/blfaqscilaw.htm

Isn't the main argument put forth by Intelligent Design proponents that the probabilities calculated on evolution having taken place the way the theorists purport is impossible? The quick summary goes: One of the strongest direct evidences against evolution is the existence of innumerable highly complex systems in the universe, systems composed of components occurring in a pattern of "order" rather than disorder. Creationists maintain that highly ordered systems could not arise by chance, since random processes generate disorder rather than order, simplicity rather than complexity and confusion instead of "information." A system requiring such a high degree of order could never happen by chance. This follows from the fact that probability theory only applies to systems with a finite possibility of occurring at least once in the universe, and it would be inconceivable that 10158 different trials could ever be made in our entire space-time universe. Astro-physicists estimate that there are no more than 10 to the 80th infinitesimal "particles" in the universe, and that the age of the universe in its present form is no greater than 10 to the 18th seconds (30 billion years). Assuming each particle can participate in a thousand billion (10 to the 12th) different events every second (this is impossibly high, of course), then the greatest number of events that could ever happen (or trials that could ever be made) in all the universe throughout its entire history is only 10 to the 80th x 10 to the 18th x 10 to the 12th, or 10 to the 110th (most authorities would make this figure much lower, about 10 to the 50th). Any event with a probability of less than one chance in 10 to the 110th, therefore, cannot occur. Its probability becomes zero, at least in our known universe.

Can anyone give an example of another theory where " The staggering body of evidence" supports it yet is appears mathematically impossible? I admit I am no scientist, so perhaps this is standard operating procedure.

Simple statistical analysis of a complex system says that if you took 10 flashcards, with the nunmbers 1-10 on them, that the probability of them coming up in order 1-10 is 100! That 10 to the 158th. And that is for a system with only 100 variables. The human body, for instance, has on the order of 3,000,000 variables alone. That would make its probability of existing by random chance zero.

You don't have the creationist argument right white buffalo and you are conflating two arguments made by creationists.

Creationists argue 1) that entropy(going form order to chaos) argues against the level of order required for life on earth. 2) Life is too improbably complex to have arisen by chance.

The first argument is false because entropy applies to a closed system. A closed system is one where no energy escapes and no energy comes in. Earth is not a closed system, it gets energy from outside, namely the sun. Your version of this argument addresses the universe as a whole. But the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy) is an average. You can have increased order in one part of the universe so long as this is made up for by a greater increase in entropy somewhere else. So as I said, the earth has lots of order, but this is counter-balanced by the fact that the sun is becoming more disordered.

The second argument misunderstands the nature of evolution. Evolution is not a random banging together of particles. Mutations are random, but which mutations are selected follows a rule, namely the fittest mutations are selected. There are also other mechanisms for evolution which include sexual selection and genetic drift. Whats more you don't have to re-invent the wheel, so to speak, with each new species. Evolution builds on order that was already there in gradual increments. These relatively simple rules that evolution follows are sufficient to generate complexity because there are vast amounts of time available for it to take place.

Go take a look at this article. Focus specifically on items 8 & 9 as well as 14 &15. These should answer your concerns.

"Andrew I agree with you, but I think you might have misunderstood what a scentific law is" &c

Tim, thank you for the link. I guess I always understood a scientific "law" as a phenomenon that has never been proven false--not once--not even conditionally. For instance, the "laws" of thermodynamics, where say, "hot always goes to cold, and never cold to hot" or, the "everything tends towards disorder." Whereas a fact would be something like, the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. The distinction between a fact and law should be made clear: a law describes a phenonemon that acts the same throughout all nature--a fact is an accurate, isolated measurement of some kind in Nature. Another example: law: nothing travels faster than light in a vacuum...fact: the speed of light in water is X.

I never knew the history of the term as denoting God the "lawmaker;" thank you for pointing out the peculiar etyomology of this word. But the article is correct at pointing out the dangers of such nomenclature. The word "law" does give the idea of a lawmaker, and I can see how this would contradict with an atheist's/physicalist's* view of nature (I notice that the site you gave me was a sort of "Atheist Times" :) ). But I do think the word can be properly employed as it is in the scientific method; perhaps what it really comes down to is semantics--we can say "law" or another term that means "this phenomenon in nature has always acted this way" such as "damn this a good theory!".

But since language is all we've got to communicate ideas, we should be careful on what words we use!

*physicalist--perhaps my own made up word: someone who believes all natural phenonema act according to principles within in Nature, not dependent on a God, but which still does not discount the idea of a God

Andrew writes: "Let us not confuse the issue: evolution is a theory, not a fact or law. It is neither of the latter because it cannot be demonstrated. The staggering body of evidence supports evolution theory, but since we cannot say "here, look at this, evolution is happening right in front of us, right at this moment," we cannot call it fact. Something we can demonstrate is, say, the law of gravity."

The distinction between a scientific theory and a scientific law is relatively minor compared to the distinction between a scientific hypothesis and a scientific theory. The former two terms are frequently used interchangeably, e.g., Newton's Theory of Gravitation is also sometimes called Newton's Law of Gravitation, especially when expressed in equation form: F = GMm/r_squared. A theory may gradually come to called a law as we become increasingly certain of its validity.

But just because something is a scientific law does not mean that it is cast in stone. Newton's Law of Gravitation was considered to be an accurate description of the gravitational forces operating between the sun and the planets for over a century, having withstood numerous observations and tests of its validity. However, it was unable to account for the precession of the orbit of the planet Mercury and is generally inaccurate at high gravitational fields. It had to be fixed up by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to account for this anomaly.

Likewise, Newton's Laws of Motion had to be modified by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (for motion at speeds close to the speed of light) and quantum mechanics (for behavior on atomic length scales); P-symmetry had to be supplanted by CP-symmetry to account for the lack of parity conservation in certain weak decay processes, etc., etc.

There's a nice introduction to the scientific method and explanation of the differences between scientific hypotheses, theories, and laws here.

Simple statistical analysis of a complex system says that if you took 10 flashcards, with the nunmbers 1-10 on them, that the probability of them coming up in order 1-10 is 100! That 10 to the 158th. And that is for a system with only 100 variables. The human body, for instance, has on the order of 3,000,000 variables alone. That would make its probability of existing by random chance zero. Posted by: white buffalo on January 24, 2005 01:14 PM

See Chapter 3: Accumulating Small Change in Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker for an anticipation and rebuttal of your fallacious argument. Recall that it's the theory of evolution "by means of [gradual] natural selection," not the conjecture of instantaneous creation of a fully-formed adult human. The latter is God's conceit.

"But just because something is a scientific law does not mean that it is cast in stone." &c

Lara--perhaps the confusion between law and theory oftens comes from how we try to sum up natural phenomena in equations. Or perhaps it is again our choice of terminology. You used the example of gravity. It seems to me we can use "law" in two ways to describe something in nature:

1) NATURAL LAW is a phenonema in nature that we have observed never to have been violated--that is to say, is not conditional but universal. We can say GRAVITY is a NATURAL LAW, but we cant specify how to quantify it, or even specify what it IS (an immaterial force??)--either through Newton's "billard ball" explanation, or Einstein's "bent space" explanation. We can say, gravity is a natural law in nature, not to be transcended.

2) SCIENTIFIC LAW would be how science sums up a NATURAL LAW in an equation or explanation. We say GRAVITY is F=GM*m/r^2 and Einstein's equations...much more complex! Newton's law of gravity is useful for calculation on Earth, but not for larger calculations like you said. Since the scienfitic law is coming from humans, it is not infallible. But I dont have a doubt in my mind that the "perfect gravity equation" exists that would be correct in all circumstances, large and small. When we reach that point, it would seem SCIENTIFC and NATURAL LAW would directly correlate.

But these are my own terms, and maybe inadmissible. And even what I call NATURAL LAWS is called such by ME not Nature itself--I guess Nature speaks for itself through its actions :) Yet it does help me understand the difference between nature and science proper.

Any thoughts?

Lara - The math of the creationists' challenge to evolution does not imply in any way that something has to go from not existing to existing for the math to be valid. The impossibility of the math still exists if you assume you start with some portion of a final product (system) already in place as natural selection implies, and are simply moving stage by stage forward. In a 1,000,000 variable system, even if 700,000 of those variables are in place and the final 300,000 need to be correctly determined via natural selection in order for the system to correctly function, the probability of that occurring is 0. And the conditional probabilities of complex systems evolving to correctly function together (take the interconnectedness of multiple organs - liver, gall bladder, etc. - that can emit toxins into the bloodstream and disrupt the functionning of other systems - say the brain) introduces another level of complexity that the math says is impossible.
I'll check out your suggested reading. Thanks. Always interested in learnng something new.

buffalo, did you read the information Chris linked to? Here is the relevant section:

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

I did read the entire article, Norm. And I ordered the book recommended by Lara from Amazon this morning. But this section doesn't refute the creationists math argument. Adaptive evolution is not argued by anyone. Adaptive evolution does not display the characteristics in question - moving from simple to complex. Adaptive evolution, or natural selection, keeps aspects that already exist. The math applies to mutations - moving from a shoulder socket structed like a bird which moves in a flapping motion only to that of a mammal which also moves forward and backwards. There's nothing adaptvie about that. That's a mutation. And so it is kept going forward because it works - granted. But what about that move? It's mathematically impossible that all those random mutations would add up to a functioning series of complex systems.

Buffalo, I'll let others with more knowledge respond but I believe the point is that different mutations can result in a functionally equivalent outcomes which would dramatically alter the element of chance.

Buffalo you write, "Adaptive evolution does not display the characteristics in question - moving from simple to complex. Adaptive evolution, or natural selection, keeps aspects that already exist." But You are missing the point of 8 in the article I linked to and norm quoted. Yes mutation is random, the point about natural selection is that any small random mutation that ends up being useful is kept and built on. The others are discarded. This just is keeping aspects that already exist and the incremental building process allows complexity to be created out of simplicity.

Your example of moving from a bird wing to a mammal is irrelevant and misleading because that is not the course evolution took. Birds are not ancestors of mammals, so mammalian shoulders sockets did not evolve from wing shoulder sockets. The common ancestor of birds and mammals are amphibians. After amphibians birds and mammals represent different and independent evolutionary paths.

Thanks Chris, that's helpful. So evolution progresses from simple to complex. Are there other natural processes that do the same?

Buffalo

Yes, let me give you an example. Birds flying in a formation. This happens not because the front bird is the leader and he somehow communicates where to go to the others, but because each bird follows a simple rule in reaction to the bird next to him. A whole bunch of birds just following one simple rule gives rise to the complex behaviour of flying in formation.

Another example is these beautiful sand ripples in the saharan desert. Their is this complex design created out of just a few simple physical principles. I will try to find a link to an image for you.

Despite his militant atheism, Richard Dawkins really is good at explaining this stuff. He addresses your concerns in a very clear way in The Blind Watchmaker and in Climbing Mount Improbable. Give those two books a gander if you get time. You might also look at a book on complexity theory. James Gleick's Chaos is a readable and popular choice.

I have been reading the articles here on OGM for quite a while and decided to finally participate in the discussion. Now I don't claim to have too much background knowledge on intelligent design, but the main crux of it seems to be that some intelligent agent designed life on Earth. But I was curious as about the probability question. If the agent were to be contained with the universe, would the probability of it existing be just as unlikely as life forming on Earth by random chance, or do we have to assume that all candiadates for agents are beyond the universe, and are effectively the creators of the universe, so basicly God?

Andrew,

Natural Law means something quite definite and different in philosophy and law, though. I should say "the laws of Nature" or "how Nature works/behaves" for what you are trying to get across. A little clumsy, maybe, but it has the advantage of being unambiguous and not inviting confusion.

Thanks Chris, that's helpful. So evolution progresses from simple to complex. Are there other natural processes that do the same? Posted by: white buffalo on January 25, 2005 02:06 PM

Self-organization is quite common in nature. A host of examples of it may be found here. Some of the more interesting ones for our discussion are (temporal) oscillatory behavior and (spatial) pattern formation in Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions and the spontaneous formation of lipid bilayer membranes.

One of the more intriguing recent discoveries is summarized in this report in Nature: Mineral brew grows 'cells'. (I can e-mail you a pdf of Maselko and Strizhak's J. Phys. Chem. article, if you're interested.)

The generation of these complex patterns or forms is not as counter-intuitive as might appear at first glance. There are invariably energy sources, thermal or concentration gradients, or other driving forces propelling the system into self-organization. The Laws of Thermodynamics are not violated.

———————————————————

"Lisa, get in here . . . In this house we obey the Laws of Thermodynamics." —Homer Simpson reprimanding Lisa for having built a perpetual-motion machine.

I was looking for more information on Richard Hardison's computer program (which to my mind only proves that he has a slow computer) when I ran across this article:

Here

I think it's an excellent response to the Scientific American article that Chris cited. I was going to post here why I thought Hardison's simulation was beyond completely useless but the article sums up my arguments fairly succinctly. Take a look at if if you get a chance.

Satan and his demons took a brief break from burying dinosaur bones to confuse the faithful. On his break he stole the URL I'm sure I put in on my last comment. Not to be so easily thwarted I've added it again, here:

part 1: http://www.ridgenet.net/~do_while/sage/v6i10f.htm

part 2: http://www.ridgenet.net/~do_while/sage/v6i11f.htm

Thanks Norm for the heads up.