Take a listen to this "debate" between Stephen Meyer and Peter Atkins. The interviewer is Justin Brierley, and creationist Mark Haville, who is bringing the film Expelled to the UK, also joins them.
Some comments: Meyer was polished and smooth, but quite rude. Atkins stumbled a bit and didn't always make his points effectively.
Meyer repeats his claim that
2:01 "If you're trying to explain an event in the remote past, you should be looking for causes that are known to produce the effect in question."
He omits a very important point. You don't look for arbitrary causes; you look for causes that you have reason to believe existed at the time. Humans can make mountains, but that doesn't mean when we examine Cambrian orogeny that we should seriously consider humans as a cause.
The burden is on intelligent design advocates to show that an "intelligence" existed in the distant past before they can invoke it as a cause.
2:30 "What we know from experience, from our uniform and repeated experience, which is the basis of all scientific reasoning, is that information comes from an intelligent source ... whenever we trace information back to its source, we always come to a mind, not material process..."
This is completely false, as I have shown. Atkins should have given an example, like weather, to show that this is false.
4:15 "Instead of responding to arguments that we're making ... we get this kind of name-calling, creationists in cheap tuxedos, religion masquerading as science..."
This is completely bogus. Even though they consider intelligent design to be nonsense, many scientists have taken their valuable time to explain, in detail, why the arguments are wrong. The problem is, this has no effect on committed creationists like Meyer. It doesn't matter to Meyer that the arguments in his BSW paper have been debunked; you won't see any retraction by Meyer of his bogus claims or any acknowledgment that his arguments were wrong.
Meyer knows perfectly well about books like Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism and Mark Perakh's Unintelligent Design. And he knows perfectly well that these books do respond to the arguments of intelligent design creationists.
As for name-calling, Meyer would have more credibility if it weren't for the incessant name-calling emanating from his side. Those who support evolution are repeatedly denigrated by intelligent design creationists, who routinely compare evolutionary biologists to Nazis, Soviets, and the Taliban. Meyer himself has compared Ken Miller to a Nazi.
6:39 Meyer rambles on without letting Atkins making his point.
7:13 Atkins correctly says Meyer is wrong about information, but gives as his examples of information "structures emerging without an agent actually generating the structure, and information ... is a kind of structure". Meyer mentions "a vortex emerging in a bathtub" - Atkins says this is information.
9:15 Atkins says the Universe as a whole is becoming more chaotic, more disorganized. There are local abatements of chaos - these constitute information.
10:30 Meyer: "Spontaneous order is not the same thing as information."
Atkins: "Yes it is".
Meyer: "There is a distinction between order and information."
Later, Meyer: "... Specified complexity".
Atkins: "What do you mean by specified complexity?"
This was a good point by Atkins, but it should have been hammered home. Atkins should have asked Meyers to say what units specified complexity is measured in. He should have then asked, what is the specified complexity of a mountain? A tornado? A book? He should not have allowed Meyer to pretend that "specified complexity" is a well-defined measure that is used or accepted by anyone except intelligent design advocates.
10:57
Meyer: "The chemical bonds that allow for the structure of the molecule as a whole do not determine the sequence of the bases in the DNA molecule."
Atkins: "No, evolution determines that."
Meyer: "That is just an assertion. That's what remains to be proven."
Atkins: "What do mean, just an assertion?"
Meyer: "You have to point to a physical process that is capable of doing the work of sequencing the bases."
Meyer is being moronic or disingenuous here. He knows perfectly well that mutation followed by selection, as well as other processes like genetic drift, is the physical process that biologists believe "sequenc[es] the bases". Atkins should have called him on this.
12:05 Meyer conflates origin of life ("chemical evolution") with evolution.
Mark Haville at 13:30:
"When Prof. Atkins asks a question like, 'Has evolution taken place, yes or no?', that's rather like me saying to you, have you stopped beating your wife? Because I'm guiding you to a yes or no answer."
Atkins: "What's wrong with yes or no answers?"
Mark: "The reason is, you have to define what kind of evolution you're talking about."
Atkins: "OK, evolution that has taken us from inorganic matter to our current biosphere."
Mark: "So you're talking about not cosmic, not chemical, not stellar or planetary, but organic. But then, when you're talking about organic, are you talking about macro or micro?"
Meyers: "Are you talking about directed or undirected? The term is fraught with ambiguity."
Atkins: "OK, then, I'll clarify then: undirected."
Meyers: "Undirected. And chemical evolution, is there a an accepted theory of chemical evolution that accounts for the origin of life?"
Here Atkins is letting himself get beaten up from two sides, and of course the interviewer did not intervene. Instead of letting Haville distract by talking about "cosmic" and "stellar" and "planetary" evolution, Atkins should have said, "Don't play games here by bringing in extraneous concepts. You know perfectly well what we're talking about because I just said it: evolution that has taken us from inorganic matter to our current biosphere. Do you accept it or not?"
15:10 Justin Brierley, talking about Expelled "The film starts out with the case of one particular scientist who lost his job at the Smithsonian Institute. This was Richard Sternberg, and he published a paper of yours in a peer-reviewed journal and lost his job for it."
Of course, this is blatantly false. Sternberg did not lose his job (and he was at the Smithsonian Institution, not the "Smithsonian Institute"). Couldn't the inteviewer do the basic homework needed to understand what happened?
15:54 Meyer: "He didn't lose his job. He had his office taken away, his access to scientific samples, his keys, his friendly colleagues were interrogated as to his religious and political beliefs and affiliations, he was transferrred underneath the supervision of a fellow scientist who was known to be hostile to him and then he was ultimately demoted."
This is, as I have remarked before, an inaccurate and misleading summary of what happened. You can read Ed Brayton's article to learn the true story.
20:15 Atkins: "I will make a concession to you, Stephen, which is that you do ask interesting questions. You ask, how does the eye develop. You ask, how does information emerge in the cell, things like that, and these are, in my view, valid questions."
This was a bad rhetorical tactic. Atkins should have also explained that the questions that Meyer asks are nothing new. Futhermore, they have been or are being answered. Maybe not in the detail that Meyers demands, but the answers are being found. There was a day-long symposium on the evolution of the eye at MIT just two months ago. And we know how information "emerges": from the processes of mutation and natural selection.
22:00 Meyer: "If you're look at the Rosetta stone, you can look in vain if you limit yourself to materialistic explanations of wind and erosion and the like and don't open yourself to the possibility that mind played a role in the organization and sequencing of those characters."
This is a typical misdirection by intelligent design creationists, and Atkins should have hammered him hard on it. "Materialists" have no problem taking into account human actions; what do you think archaeologists do? But there is a huge difference between saying that the Rosetta stone was written by an Egyptian, and saying that it was written by some unknown "intelligence" whose properties and motivations we know nothing about.
33:10 Julian: "Julian Baggini, for example, who is an atheist philosopher here, said when I got in touch with him, "The Discovery lot are thoroughly disreputable." I mean, what's causing this particular kind of backlash against your organization, Stephen?"
Meyer: "Well, you're talking to people who have a strong precommitment to materialism or atheism.
Julian: "Why would they say you are disreputable? What have you been doing or saying that makes you disreputable?"
Meyer: "I guess that you'd have to let them answer that question. But I think what's actually disreputable is that we're challenging the rules of science - rather self-serving and arbitrary rules of science - which they have been using to shut down the debate."
Meyer knows perfectly well why his Discovery Institute is derided as "disreputable". It's because the spokespeople for the Discovery Institute utter untruth after untruth.
As for "shut[ting] down debate", where has this been done? Creationists raise their loud and ignorant voices in books, magazines, and on the Internet. Who has censored them? What they don't get to do is label their religious claptrap as "science" and force it down the throats of public school kids; Judge Jones put a stop to that.
34:27 Q. "Why won't you let Stephen publish his paper then, on the issue, if it's such an interesting issue?"
Atkins: "Because it's outside the mode of standard scientific procedure."
A terrible answer. Atkins should have said, "You're being ridiculous. Meyer's paper was published, and I had no say about whether or not it should have been. The problem is, the ideas in his paper were by turns, trivial and wrong, and the paper got published anyway. Lots of junk gets published, you know. If he wants his ideas to be taken seriously, he has to make a good case for them. We can evaluate what the scientific community thought about his ideas by looking at how many papers have cited his. Virtually no one has. The verdict is in: Meyer's ideas are simply not of interest to the scientific community."
There's more similar nonsense - listen for yourself. I think Atkins was at a bit of a disadvantage because his rhetorical style was too polite; he let Meyer and Haville walk over him. But he also didn't always produce effective responses to Meyer's bogus claims.
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22 comments:
"4:15 "Instead of responding to arguments that we're making ... we get this kind of name-calling, creationists in cheap tuxedos, religion masquerading as science..."
This is completely bogus."
I think it's half true, half bogus.
If Eugenie Scott, e.g., said the same thing in reverse, I'd also say it is half true, half bogus.
1 - Shallit, do you know any way of transcribing audio for free? Like this conversation?
2 - "What they don't get to do is label their 'claptrap' as science and force it down the throats of public school kids; Judge Jones put a stop to that."
Have you heard this
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/19/mississippi-dips-its-toe-into-antireality/ ?
3 - I see that this anti-science movement has some force in the USA. There are also creationists in Brazil (my father, a Protestant Pastor, for instance), but the majority here is Roman Catholic, and 'the Church' has recognized the TofE as valid. Hence, no major problems, for now. So, I recognize that a comment of mine two posts earlier was childish, at least. And I apologize for that.
If both A and B have happened frequently in the past and continue to happen now, it's not so honest to say, "Instead of A, we get B."
Meyer: "If you're trying to explain an event in the remote past, you should be looking for causes that are known to produce the effect in question."
OK, let's take Meyer at his word. The Bible, a book, was written in the remote past (well, remote as far as human lives are concerned, though not on the geological scale). How do we explain how this book got written? We know something about the causes of such effects, I'd say. Nowadays, books are written by people. So, we should for the human beings who wrote the Bible . . .
Hey, there just might be something to that thinking! (-:
2:30 "What we know from experience, from our uniform and repeated experience, which is the basis of all scientific reasoning, is that information comes from an intelligent source ... whenever we trace information back to its source, we always come to a mind, not material process..."
Shallit: "This is completely false, as I have shown. Atkins should have given an example, like weather, to show that this is false."
But Meyer would have rebutted that the information that he's talking about assigns function to something, whereas the information you're talking about needs to be interpreted.
Meyer would have rebutted that the information that he's talking about assigns function to something, whereas the information you're talking about needs to be interpreted.
A silly rebuttal, particularly because "assigns function to something" is not the negation of "needs to be interpreted".
What do you think messenger RNA does?
And how does one decide, in a rigorous way, whether something "assigns function to something"?
All creationists can offer is handwaving.
"The burden is on intelligent design advocates to show that an "intelligence" existed in the distant past before they can invoke it as a cause."
Really? What, then, could ever constitute evidence that an "intelligence" had existed in the distant past? If they had good evidence of the existence in the distant past of something that had to be the product of some intelligent agent, then they'd have their evidence of the existence of an "intelligence" in the distant past. Such evidence could be provided by Paley's great^n-grandfather's watch being found embedded within rock of undoubted Ediacaran age, perhaps with the fossilized remains of an Ediacaran organism embedded within it, just for show. If such a thing were found and were genuine, it would be hard to conclude there hadn't been some "intelligence" existing way back when.
It's the same problem when we look at whether there was an "intelligence" existing in the Americas, say, 80,000 years ago. If someone found an undoubted manufactured spearpoint from Argentina conclusively dated to 80,000 years ago, one wouldn't object that it can't be said to be the product of an intelligence on the basis it hadn't already been shown there had been an 'intelligence' in Argentina 80,000 years ago. Rather, we'd conclude there _had_ been an 'intelligence' in Argentina at that time.
Of course, the creationists have found no such thing, and instead of having evidence, rely on hand-wavy arguments that what is currently not explained in excruciating detail by natural processes must have a supernatural explanation.
Claims about 'information', 'complexity', and improbability arguments are seemingly all ID advocates have these days. I'm surprised more mathematicians don't tackle these claims head-on. People like Meyer have made a career out of presenting these claims to the public, a significant proportion of whom have theological beliefs to whom they appeal, and they sound plausible and convincing. He made a whole series of extremely dubious claims about 'junk DNA' and how it is "species specific" which he claims invalidates arguments for common ancestry. I would really like to know what he is referring to and what his sources are.
Mike:
Let's look at your watch example again. Suppose I find a watch on an island thought to be uninhabited, and never visited before. Suppose I want to distinguish between the hypotheses (i) the watch was dropped by someone on a ship visiting the island or (ii) the watch was created by a person living on the island 10,000 years ago.
If I have no reason to believe there were people living on the island 10,000 years ago, I can discard (ii). But suppose later I discover, on the other side of the island, remnants of metal working, including springs, gears, etc., and they date to 10,000 years ago. Then it is reasonable to consider (ii).
When ID advocates claim DNA is the result of an intelligent agent, they need to show first, by some independent line of evidence, that there even was an intelligent agent 3.5 billion (or whatever) years ago. Unless we know that, their hypothesis is dependent on causes which we do not know were in operation at that time - which is illegitimate, in my opinion.
Filipe Calvario (from Brazil): I see that this anti-science movement has some force in the USA. There are also creationists in Brazil (my father, a Protestant Pastor, for instance), but the majority here is Roman Catholic, and 'the Church' has recognized the TofE as valid. Hence, no major problems, for now.
You may want to read this article: http://revistaepoca.globo.com/Epoca/
0,6993,EPT731549-1664-1,00.html
I suspect that many people in Brazil, like many people here in Europe, dismiss creationism as a USA thing because they haven't personally come across people who believe in it, but even if it were ever just a USA thing it certainly isn't today, and we need to get our heads out of the sand.
(For those who don't read Portuguese, I should say that the article I linked to documents the efforts of the Governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro to have creationism taught in state schools. The only date I can find on the page is 2010, but the article is certainly several years old, as I first saw it in 2006 or 2007.)
Non-coding DNA, like the 8% or so of the human genome which consists of endogenous retroviruses, actually reveals patterns of common ancestry.
Thank you, Athel. That was really pertinent to me, because I live (and was born, and raised and have never left!) Rio de Janeiro.
Fortunately, that's the EX-Governor, Rosinha Garotinho. I think she won't be reelected again, ever. She instituted religious classes in Rio de Janeiro's State Schools. And, by what I read in the article, she wanted to create a new topic in those religious classes, called "reflexions about God's creation as an act of love". I think this project was rejected, but I couldn't find any confirmation in the Internet.
See that, even in this case, it was very different of what has happened in the US. The idea of changing Science classes would seem absurd for most people here. My father himself used to tell me: "when you're in school, and they teach you those bullshits (TofE), pay attention, and learn it, because you know it's going to be in the tests. But you know in your heart what is true."
Anyway, I'll stay alert.
Sounds to me like Atkins got his ass kicked.
The thing about debating creationists is, you have to be able to confidently argue about subjects that are way outside your specialization. Meyer does that when he borrows the jargon of information theory and paleontology.
I listened to this "debate" on Youtube- posted by "The Word is Alive" who in the spirit of open dialogue and free inquiry has comments prohibited and ratings disabled- typical creationist hypocricy.
One of the first things I noticed was the audio set up- whereby Atkins would have to be screaming to be heard over Meyers constant ill-mannered slogan chanting. This he didn't do- even if I did!
The slogans and their dishonesty are getting really tiresome. We DO NOT find "nano technology" inside cells. Technology is by definition the product of intelligence- tools made by higher primates. To label the content of cells as such is crude question begging- likewise the chorus of "molecular machines". They have to establish that these are "machines" in the accepted use of the word. They have not.
Meyer's professional occupation is lying to adults in the hope of a chance to lie to their children.
It sounded to me like Atkins went into the "debate" unprepared for Meyer's specific arguments and therefore winged it a good deal. He was in a bit of a "we'll send a couple of Oxford dons over to straighten them out" mode. That's a lethal mistake when debating those guys. One has to know the specifics of their arguments to effectively and succinctly rebut them.
Tony writes: " We DO NOT find "nano technology" inside cells. Technology is by definition the product of intelligence- tools made by higher primates. To label the content of cells as such is crude question begging- likewise the chorus of "molecular machines". They have to establish that these are "machines" in the accepted use of the word. They have not."
Well, scientists use the word "design" all the time, despite the fact that this word usually refers to a plan and purpose. When accused by creationists or even other scientists of speaking in teleological terms, the scientists will often brush it off as not a big deal.
It's brushed off as not a big deal because it's not a big deal. My accusation, by which I stand, is that Meyer, who is a paid mouthpiece of the religious right and is not and never has been a scientist, is deliberately out to deceive by choosing language that assumes a case thay haven't a hope of making empirically.
Definition of absolute zero- the number of lab technicians employed by the "Discovery" "Institute"
Infinity? Take the number of church meetings addressed by Meyer and divide by the number of cell biology conferences addressed by Meyer.
He's a liar, deliberate and conscious, and we should be more vocal in saying so.
Jeff,
In transposing to your island, you've left out a critical part of my example, namely the undoubted Ediacaran date. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, but "... embedded within rock ..." wasn't meant to convey that the watch was merely found lying among broken rocks at the surface or in a crevice in the rocks. It was intended to conveny that the watch was actually embedded within the rock in the same way a fossil of, say, Dickinsonia might be found embedded within rocks of Ediacaran age, the result of the original sediments penetrating it before it consolidated into rock, so that one imputes to the watch the date of the rock the way one imputes to the fossil of Dickinsonia the date of the rock.
The point is that it is part of my example that the Ediacaran age of the watch is certain, while your example does not posit any independent measure of the age of the watch.
Now, if a watch soundly dated to the Ediacaran was found, what explanation could you offer other than that an 'intelligence' had been around?
Otherwise you're both demanding prior proof of the existence of an intelligence at that early time and at the same ruling out the only kind of evidence that could show the presence of an intelligence at that time.
I'm not suggesting, BTW, that one will find such a thing nor that the creationists/IDCers have anything remotely like it to point to or ever will. To me, the great age of the Universe, Earth and life and the diversity and evolution of life here since its origin is the glory of the sciences and it's study a daily source of awe and joy to me.
Is it true what Atkins says, that local abatements of chaos constitute information? Would such structures be Shannon or Kolmogorov information? In his popular books, The Second Law and The Four Laws, he deliberately avoids connecting information theory and thermodynamics.
it is part of my example that the Ediacaran age of the watch is certain
Nothing in science is certain. Methods used to date rocks have lots of sources of errors, and whenever they are used we need to be on guard against these sources.
Given a watch in Ediacaran strata, I think we'd have to first rule out hoax or dating error. Then we'd have to seriously consider the possibility of time machines or aliens.
Otherwise you're both demanding prior proof of the existence of an intelligence at that early time and at the same ruling out the only kind of evidence that could show the presence of an intelligence at that time.
No, I don't think so. The evidence that ID advocates point to is information in DNA. But there are plausible alternative explanations for this information - namely, that it was acquired through processes such as mutation and selection.
If ID advocates could produce a crashed spaceship, with plans showing how organisms were designed, they would have a case. I am not ruling out the only kind of evidence; I am looking for some independent evidence that intelligence existed at the time they need it to.
Is it true what Atkins says, that local abatements of chaos constitute information?
Not in the Kolmogorov interpretation, where more order is equated with less complexity.
Not in the Kolmogorov interpretation, where more order is equated with less complexity.
Okay. At least Meyer got that point right. That is surprising, considering that one of their favorite examples of Specified Complex Information is (used to be?) a binary sequence encoding prime numbers or digits of pi or whatever.
A week or so ago I was listening to American Family Radio Network. Bill Dembski and William Lane Craig were guest experts on some apologetics show, and Dembski gave that as an example of his kind of information. For all I know, that show was taped 5-10 yrs ago, so if you were to bring that up to them you would undoubtedly be accused of not being up to date on their vast research program.
If they still consider such sequences to be SCI, all I can figure is that a sequence is specified-complex if it is not random, but computing it would be tedious for a human.
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