Evolution and the anthropic principle...

Bobby Cordoba says: "So a finely tuned universe gives no airtight proof for a designer. It points inductively, it strengthens faith for those who believe, but it doesn't prove anything for sure and it leaves other options, even if judged improbable, open." On the contrary, the Bible says that this finely tuned universe that we live in is indeed proof positive. Romans 1:19-22 says: because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools... This is a damning text for all who claim that God doesn't exist or that it cannot be known whether there is a God. But it is especially damning for scientists who study this creation which proclaims to them the glory and power of God almighty. While professing to be wise they declare there is no God, and prove beyond a shadow of doubt the futility of their speculations, the darkness of their hearts, and their own foolishness.

Hey David--it's good to keep in mind that "evolution" only explains (assuming that it does explain something) how a simple organism could become a more complex one. It doesn't say anything about how something non-living could become living. So, just like you said, "evolutionary principle...only comes into play when organic life first forms." The "adaptive powers of evolution" can't take the universe from primordial soup to complex life because it doesn't say anything about what heppens in primordial soup. Evolution only gets you back to simple life. Then, you have to have a story about where that simple life comes from and where the universe comes from. There's actually a lot of play in the philosophical world with design-type arguments using the same kind of scientific data referred to the in WSJ article.

I had written this comment, then decided not to post it, then waffled back after reading Talcott's comment. Distinction should be made between microevolution, macroevolution, and what Pastor Bayly has written about here, evolutional-genesis. Microevolution (observable changes in large populations on reasonable time-scales) is a matter of historical fact: for instance, the evolution of drug-resistant tuberculosis over the last century. Macroevolution (i.e. apes turning into humans) when examined on a biochemical level has a lot of problems, chiefly that evolution theory cannot explain why supposedly "related species" (species that should have a common ancestor) have different karyotypes. The karyotype of an organism is the number of chromosomes it has, and is universal across a species. For example, man's karyotype is 46 (every cell in your body has 46 chromosomes), while the chimpanzees we are supposedly related to have 48 chromosomes. Practically every child is born with the karyotype of his parents; however when a child has more or less than 46 chromosomes the anomaly gives rise to diseases like Down syndrome, and the child is nearly always sterile. It is almost impossible to dream up a situation where a common ancestor would give rise to two groups of descendants with differing karyotypes. Yet we see an inexplicable diversity of karyotypes between "related" species. The most-gaping hole in evolutional-genesis, unsatisfied by either evolution theory or the anthropic principle, is the enantiomeric exclusivity of biomolecules. There is a peculiar quirk of chemistry where certain molecules exist as "enantiomers", two forms that are identical in every respect, except that they are structural mirror images of each other (the same way your right hand is exactly like your left hand, but a mirror image of it; unlike your hands though, chemical enantiomers are practically indistinguishable). So there can exist both "right-handed" and "left-handed" sugars. Yet multicellular life employs exclusively right-handed sugars and left-handed amino acids. No one knows why. In terms of efficiency, vastly more cellular information could be stored in the same cellular volume if this enantiomeric exclusivity didn't exist; that is to say, if life actually arose from chaos, where both right-handed and left-handed molecules were present in equal abundance, the vitality of life would have been enhanced by employing both enantiomers, rather than specializing with only right-handed sugars and only left-handed amino acids. Suppose spontaneous life had evolved from chaos: it would have been molecularly ambidextrous; yet to explain life as we know it today, that first primordial cell must have immediately shot itself in the foot by scuttling half its molecular tool set. Of course I suppose that's just as far fetched as that first cell spontaneously popping into existence in the first place.

I didn't know Abram before now, so I can't judge the learning. What he says is much more intelligent than most things I've heard people say on the subject. There are just a few points that I'd like to share, though, just to help y'all do some mental push-ups. "Abiogenesis" is a word you need to use. It's useful for this topic and it has a cool sound to it. The terms "microevolution" and "macroevolution," are words that no biologist I know (many) use and that groups like Answers in Genesis say not to use because they confuse things (near the bottom of the linked article). Of course, the term "information" that AiG uses constantly in that article is not any better for clarity. Why is enantiomeric exclusivity something anthropic theory does not explain rather than a non-numerical part of anthropic theory? Symmetry and geometry are mathematical, if not numerical, concepts. "We don't know an answer" does not equal "it cannot ever be explained in a way we just do not yet know" and "improbable" does not equal "impossible." I think it's quite improbable that the universe came from nothing without a Creator, but some people are satisfied with any non-zero number, no matter how small, as a reason to disbelieve.

David--you're quite right that many scientists view a "life principle" as a god. What I and many of my friends try to point out to them is that at this point you're way out of the realm of science. I haven't read anything about biological stuff evolving to non-biological stuff (i.e. humans evolving into robots) though I'm sure you're right that it's floating around out there. You're right that if that sort of thing is going to be considered, then organic stuff evolving out of inorganic stuff seems like it should be considered also. As I thought about your viruses counterexample, I realized "organism" isn't specific enough. Because, I think you're right that a virus wouldn't qualify as an organism (though I'm not a scientist so I'm not entirely sure how that term is used). Viruses are, though, biological systems and hence are things on which evolution can operate. "Biological systems" is the criteria used in the philosophical discussions of these things, including by philosophers with significant science background. I entirely agree with you that none of this affects the incredible fact that "life requires an infinitesimally narrow set of circumstances to exist." Physics-based arguments for the existence of God are some of the best ones out there right now in the academic world. Whatever else evolution can explain, it can't explain why the gravitational constant has the value it has and not some other one.

Bobby et al, You'll see in my first comment that I had doubts about commenting in the first place, and those doubts have now become clear: this week at IU we are in the throes of Hell Week and preparation for finals. I'm sorry, I simply won't have the time to give you a thoughtful reply for several days. "The writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body." Eccl 12:12

There's a lull now between term papers and final exams, so I'll give this a shot. I'm unfamiliar with Answers in Genesis and this issue they raise, though it is an interesting facet to the issue I'd never seen considered (that evolution requires the spontaneous addition of genetic information). I'm not sure how well that matches up to the evidence. We've certainly observed mechanisms where bacteria exchange small amounts of genetic information; so regarding antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis, it should be fairly straightforward to deduce if the TB obtained the genes for drug-resistance from an already drug-resistant bacterium, or if TB spontaneously developed a mechanism for surviving antibiotics. As for macroevolution, I still believe it's a crucial distinction to be made. It is simply bad science to say "TB evolved to be drug-resistant, therefore man must have evolved from apes." This is akin to saying "Joshua Bell is a virtuoso violinist, therefore he must also be a virtuoso on the double-bass." It just doesn't work like that. A double-bass may simply be an over-sized violin (I know it isn't: bear with me), but Joshua Bell's fingers were trained to operate on a violin, not a double-bass. Similarly, if we've observed evolution working on single-celled organisms, that doesn't mean it therefore works on multi-cellular vertebrates. In fact, in my brief exposure to biochemistry I learned that the more complex an organism gets, the more tightly it is bound to its own status quo: the cells in your body can only live under a very specific set of parameters. Changing one of those parameters doesn't make you evolve, it makes you die. Fundamentally, all of science is physics. You could say that chemistry is just a scaled-up model of quantum physics. But there are lots of unpleasant details chemistry inherits from quantum physics; were we to give close attention to those details, we would get bogged down in them. So we in chemistry gloss over a lot of details that would slow us down. Similarly, biology is just scaled-up chemistry, and the biologists gloss over a lot of unpleasant details they inherited from chemistry. All of science is knowing which details are important and which ones you can ignore. In chemistry we can very often ignore the unpleasant detail that an electron is a wave and a particle at the same time; we treat it simply as a particle, and most of the time that approximation works. But sometimes we have to describe the dual wave-particle (wavicle) nature of electrons to explain certain observed phenomena. We can almost always explain observed phenomena by describing electrons as wavicles. And it almost always sucks. That's why we avoid it when we can, because it's miserable (imagine a teaspoon of chemistry, a cup of physics, and a gallon of linear algebra, all added to a keg of vector calculus: that's what it takes to use the wavicle nature of electrons to model chemistry). Evolution has ignored a whole lot of unpleasant details. On the biochemical level, we don't even understand most of the details evolution ignores; and those details most certainly control and affect the very phenomena evolution aims to explain. I don't blame them; using sound chemistry to model the intricacies of the simplest cell is even more of a headache than the wavicle nature of electrons. But that is exactly what evolutionists must do to support their theory. What I've tried to show here (with karyotypes, enantiomeric exclusivity, macro vs. micro) is that many biochemical phenomena we've observed are inexplicable using evolution, and some run counter to it. I'll stop with that. This is already far longer than anyone will read. If you like, I'll try to further elucidate the issue of enantiomeric exclusivity, but another time ("another time" = "after my inorganic chemistry final exam").

Abram, thanks for your thoughts. I do physics, so I not only read the whole thing but I can sympathize with your definition of "another time" :) Also, I do agree that there is a distinction to be made between what I could be called speciation and what could be called selection of traits. For all-- I'm not an expert on information but I think informaiton is the best option for design research, if modified. I can expound for you straight out why I think the current arguments have a flaw-- the term "information" as used in ID circles is subjective. The basic idea, I think from William Dembski but possibly others, is that there are two components to genetic information. One component that is numerical, like in information theory (be forewarned that entropy has a somewhat different meaning there than in physics, so I've been told anyway). Another component is about "function." This latter piece is where the subjectivity comes from. In this scheme if you have two organisms with cells of the same complexity mathematically (the caculable component of "information") but one is a bacterium and one is part of a multicellular organism, then either the cell from the organism, or the organism requiring specialized cells, is declared to have more function, and thus more information. But this is the cat chasing it's tail. One need not talk about anything calculable if it is going to get mucked up by what is essentially adding whatever number is needed to make the proof work. If there is some way to overcome the subjectivity then information really will be the knock-down argument that AiG thinks it already is. Also, my encouragement to you Collin-- it's harder to be a Christian in biology than in physics. The atheists are more militant there. You certainly know more than enough for the knowledge to be dangerous, but probably enough for you to be safe from it. After all, you understand that even evolution, humanism, and so on are based on assumptions on some level. I know people who just don't get that.