AcademicFreedomBlog

 Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt were named on Tuesday as winners of the 2007 Gruber Prize in cosmology for their independent discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. According to the official release, this discovery “has radically changed our perception of cosmic evolution.” I think what that means is that it has thrown them into the toilet. We have known since Newton that nothing accelerates unless some force is acting on it. Since no known force can account for this observation, these scientists assume a new force and christen it “dark energy.” It must be either pushing from the inside or pulling from outside the universe (which would redefine the word “universe). They also conservatively conclude that the universe is “currently” accelerating, which allows for the possibility that it may not have been accelerating in the past. In either case, it blows holes in the inflation theories that propose that in the first fractions of seconds that the universe existed it was expanding at fantastic rates, and then slowed to what we observe today. We have made amazing advances in cosmology in terms of what is out there, but in terms of origin.. All we really know from observation is that the universe as we know it MUST have had a beginning, and all attempts to explain its origins in terms of physics (either when or how) have thus far failed.

I’d like to through another one out there. Perhaps its my simplistic understanding of physics, but: When something expands (including if it explodes), its parts are by definition all moving apart. Right? Then how does anything form?.. Since forming assumes something is coming together.

Origin cannot be explained within any system, since the origin of any system must be outside itself. Therefore all discussions of origins of our experienced systems is by definition metaphysical. That means religious. I do not by any means suggest that we not pursue cosmology, I simply suggest that we either leave off the religious pursuits or acknowledge the religious nature of the pursuits, and include consideration of all that the evidence suggests.

Richard Dawkins’ July 1 attack on Michael Behe amazes me in its strength of accusation and weakness of argument. I will begin by acknowledging that Dawkins is a highly acclaimed professor at Oxford, and I am not, but I do not find that an excuse not to make clear his smoke screen. The article begins by slamming Behe’s legitimacy, not his arguments. Behe is referred to as someone to “feel sorry for,” a “creationist” who is “adrift from the world of real science.” I am always suspicious when an argument begins with an attack on character, and my suspicions are further justified later when Dawkins suggests that Behe’s “creationist fans” would be appalled to know that he accepts the concept of common decent (all organisms had a common ancestor). First you say he is a creationist; then you point out that he does not hold creationist views. Make up your mind, Dr. Dawkins. Are you saying he is a creationist or that he is not? Or does it depend on the point you want to make?

After slamming Behe’s legitimacy and concluding that he has no friends, Dawkins gets around to evidence.. sort’a. He says that Behe’s irreducible complexity argument “remains as unconvincing as when Darwin himself anticipated it.” The suggestion of this statement is that Darwin thought of Behe’s argument 150 years ago and dismissed it as overturned by evidence. That is not exactly what happened. As a matter of fact, Behe directly quotes Darwin from Origin of the Species on page 39 of his book: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ exists which could not possibly have formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would completely break down.” Like any honest scientist, Darwin stated (anticipated) what would falsify his theory, and clearly does so. The reason Behe quotes Darwin is that any discovery of irreducible complexity does exactly that. Dawkins says that Kenneth Miller “beautifully showed how the bacterial flagellar motor could evolve via known functional intermediates.” What Dr. Miller actually showed was that the first ten parts of the flagellum are functional when assembled. He makes it sound is if the less parts that work, the more the whole is demystified. Just the opposite is true. He then states that all other parts are functional separately. What he did not demonstrate was that each of the 50 steps of the assemblage could be justified separately as useful–that the addition of each molecule was functional for the organism and therefore supportable by natural selection.

Dawkins finds it “bizarre” that Behe would focus on random mutation as the key to Darwin’s theory. Dawkins next statement I find bizarre: “unacquainted with genetics, Darwin set no store by randomness. New variants might arise at random, or they might be acquired characteristics induced by food, for all Darwin knew.” Think about what Dawkins is saying: He says Darwin did not understand mutations, though they are required for his theory, but might have credited their cause to what the organism eats. This statement is not a reflection on Behe, as the positioning in the paragraph might suggest. It is a slam on Darwin’s understanding of his own theory, and a suggestion that mutation by digestion might be an acceptable explanation for Dawkins. Mutations ARE random, and no one, especially atheists such as Dawkins, believes anything else. What Dawkins cares to call key instead of random mutation is natural selection, a concept which no one denies, ever since Henry Blyth first explained it to Charles Darwin. (Blyth, by the way, was a creationist, who saw the variations has having limits that required a special creation for broader kinds.)

Dawkins argues that Behe’s objection of randomness as insufficient to explain all life is unjustified. Perhaps Dawkins should review papers from the 1966 symposium of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, where the mathematical challenge to random origin of life was set by one scholar at 1 chance in 10^1,000. There has never been a successful mathematical rebuttal to this challenge.

Then Dawkins used domestic dog breeding to justify his claim that natural selection is all that is needed to prove evolution. This is no advancement of thought, because it is the same argument that Darwin himself used. In the first place, breeding is not natural, but directed by intelligence. In the second place, it is not primarily the manipulation of mutations but of pre-existing genes. Characteristics that are preferred are bread, while those that are not are eliminated. Perhaps there is a mutation, such as the birth of a hairless dog, but there has never been a demonstration that a mutation has increased information. And natural or artificial selection only eliminate alternatives, they do not create them. Elimination is not creative. Let me state that another way: Elimination is not creative. You cannot get anything you want by eliminating what you don’t want. Mutation MUST furnish new alternatives, or evolution cannot work. I find it hard to believe that Dawkins does not understand that. But I must doubt either his thinking or his motives. Here I will stop.

Why is the universe not fractal? Ordinarily when one uses the word chaos, one means a condition of complete disorder. Chaos theory is very different. It has many implications, some valuable for medicine and other science, but the main idea is that when randomness occurs in the presence of some rules, patterns emerge. The simplest example I know is the Sierpinski Triangle. This can be constructed using a plain sheet of paper, pencil, and a die (singular of dice). Place three dots on the paper, which would form a triangle, if the dots were connected. Write two different numbers at each corner, using the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6. It doesn’t matter which corner each number is at, so long as two different numbers are at each corner. Roll the die, and put the pencil point at whichever dot has the number rolled. Roll again and make a dot exactly half way to the dot of the next number rolled. From there, role again and make a dot exactly half way to the next, etc. As you can see, this is a combination of a few rules with randomness, and no matter what each roll of the die turns up, the overall layout of dots will form an exact and predictable pattern. Another interesting fact about chaos (randomness plus rules) is that the pattern is always fractal; that is, the pattern repeats itself infinitely at each level. Depending on how complex the original formula is, fractals can be quite complex and beautiful, but in all cases, there is at some level a repeating pattern.

What has this to do with the universe? The cosmos (the word means order) we know has rules which we call laws of physics. If one wants to believe that chance actually does occur in the universe, with no other ordering force (the alternative would have to be purposeful and directed), then the structure of the universe would have to be fractal; because rules plus randomness always yields fractal structure.

But this is not what we see. Yes, fractals can be used to predict some structures similar to nature, such as the branching of coral or broccoli, but there is no repeating pattern on the larger scale. Electrons have been pictured as traveling around protons (like planets), but this model is not adiquite. They are quantum in their positions, and two electrons seem to be able to occupy the same quantum level at the same time. Our planet moves around the sun, and the sun moves around the Milky Way, but the Milky Way has a pinwheel structure. Other galaxies may or may not have a pinwheel structure, and they are in turn clustered into groups that have no apparent pattern within the clusters. We now know that the clusters of galaxies form a greater pattern what appears to be either strings or like the shells of bubbles, with great voids in between. Is their a structure beyond that? We don’t know, but none of these levels is a repeat of any other level. If the structure of the universe cannot be predicted by chaos theory, then I am forced to conclude that there is something involved other than rules and randomness. There only remains purposive direction; or perhaps I should say Purposive Direction.