Are you a brain in a vat?

In philosophy, there is a common thought experiment about our perception of reality, called the "brain in a vat" scenario. In this scenario, we are nothing but brains receiving electrical signals from the outside world, causing our brains to tell us that we are having experiences (but the actual experiences don't exist--the only thing that exists is the electrical stimulation of neurons).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat#/media/File:Braininvat.jpg

With regards to human anatomy, this is actually describes the situation we are in perfectly. We 'feel' like we exist in our arms and legs, but we really don't--we exist only in our brain. When you feel something with your finger, your finger isn't conscious of anything--it's just part of the complex "vat" of bones, blood, muscle, and organs that supports the brain. There really isn't anything different about this scenario than a super-computer sending signals to each of your neurons in a coordinated effort. There is no way for us to tell the difference between the two scenarios!

It is important to keep this in mind, rather than ignoring it and simply assuming that the physical world exists, as most people are want to do. The implications are important for future arguments, which I will write on soon.

External Surfaces of the Brain

Check out my recent posts on the Screen Argument before reading this! http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/search/label/Screen%20Argument

Please note this is super, super simplified to make it understandable!

Brain cells have a lot in common with all the other cells in our body. In fact, there is a surprisingly small number of genes that differ between neurons (one kind of cell found in the brain) and, say, a hepatocyte (cell in the liver).

If we look at the external surface of the brain, we can pick out which parts are responsible for specific parts of our consciousness. These areas are called "Brodmann's Areas".

Let's look at a few examples.

Areas 1, 2, and 3: The primary somatosensory cortex, responsible for touch.
Area 4: The primary motor cortex, responsible for voluntary movement control.
Area 17: The primary visual cortex, responsible for vision.
Area 41: The primary auditory cortex, responsible for hearing.

I think this may give some hints for progress on the Screen argument.

Physically, the neurons in these different regions are very similar to one another--all of them are part of the cerebral cortex! (The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that you think of when you look at a brain--the external surface)

There are many brain regions deep to the cerebral cortex with very different anatomy and physiology.

Anyway, it isn't the cell type that distinguishes functions across Brodmann's Areas. It's the difference in organization--the different connections that are made by the neurons--that differentiates the function.

But just consider HOW DIFFERENT these regions are as you experience them! Vision (Area 17) is WAY different than touch (Areas 1, 2, and 3)! Hearing is VERY different than movement control!

What I'm pondering is the relationship of this info about the brain to the Screen Argument. If our experiences are purely physical, we ought to be able to find our experiences in the brain. We can certainly point to the spots that correspond to our experiences (see that picture up there, we are memorizing that puppy in medical school right now, I dare you to point out a comprehensive pattern), HOWEVER, when we point to the spots, we see pretty much the same thing--neurons.

But then if we point at the unique patterns in each Brodmann's Area, we see a pattern of neurons, not a Screen (we don't observe, say, a picture of something you are looking at, or an experience of pain, or an audio recording that you are listening to). We just see neurons.

Read my other posts on this subject, and you may start to see why I don't think consciousness is reducible to the physical brain. Consciousness is consciousness, it corresponds to the brain, it doesn't equal the brain.

Podcast #2 - Dr. Joel Velasco, Fine-Tuning, Cosmological Argument, Screen Argument

Second episode of the podcast!

I'm joined by Dr. Joel Vesaco to discuss arguments for and against God's existence.

How Does Evolution Explain Design? Part 3: Does Natural Selection Make an Increase in Complexity Inevitable?

Guest Post by Andrew Rogers

In his book, Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards?, Philosopher of biology Elliott Sober makes an argument for why natural selection will inevitably lead to an increase in complexity.

Sober says that, “Complexity increases from life’s beginning because of the initial conditions, not the laws. This is analogous to the random walk depicted in figure 1.1. A marker on a line changes position because of a coin toss. If the coin lands heads, you move the marker one space to the right; if the coin lands tails, you move the marker one space to the left. These are the rules of change unless the marker happens to be at the left-most or the right-most points. If the coin lands tails when the marker is at the extreme left, you simply toss again. Suppose the game begins with the marker placed at the left-most point on the line. Where will the marker be after five or fifty or five hundred coin tosses? Probably not at square one. Even if selection is indifferent to simplicity versus complexity, evolution by natural selection can still be expected to manifest a net increase in complexity.” (Sober 2011, p. 17).

Is this really analogous to natural selection. There are two assumptions in Sober’s analogy that bother me:

Assumption 1: If an organism goes below the level of complexity required for evolution then it gets to “flip again.”

Assumption 2: The odds of a mutation leading to an increase of complexity are the same as the odds of a mutation leading to a decrease in complexity.

In regards to Assumption 1, it seems that if an organism has to deal with a mutation that pushes it below the level of complexity required for evolution, then that organism would simply die out without any offspring. This is definitely not the same as getting to flip another coin until it gets an increase in complexity.

So that part of the analogy should be changed to “If the coin lands tails when the marker is at the extreme left, you simply toss again die and leave no offspring!” Even with this change it could be argued that with enough life forms and enough offspring there will be an inevitable increase in complexity.

This brings me to Assumption 2. Is the probability of a mutation increasing complexity really the same as the probability of a mutation decreasing complexity? This seems unlikely if the mutations are random. If I randomly start hitting my keyboard without looking is it more likely to decrease or increase the complexity of this paper?

Lk/nhcSDzkumelri

Looks like a decrease in complexity to me and I would bet good money that the vast majority of random keyboard smacks would likewise decrease complexity.

To be clear, my argument is not that there wasn’t an increase of complexity throughout evolutionary history—I’m pretty sure there was. And my argument is not that God must have intervened in order for this increase in complexity to occur—I’m pretty sure it could have happened without God intervening. My argument is that the mechanism of natural selection alone does not entail an inevitable increase in complexity (or even a high probability of an increase in complexity). 

How Does Evolution Explain Design? Part 2: The Tautology Problem

Guest Post by Andrew Rogers
 
1. The Design Argument
You’re playing poker with me (Andy) and three other people. In order to keep it as simple as possible, let’s say it’s five card draw without the draw, so everyone is dealt five cards and then the best hand wins (not a very exciting version of poker to be sure, but the best one for the analogy I want to make). Also, I’m dealing every hand for some reason.

Now the first five hands in a row I get a royal flush. You get suspicious and start to think that I might be cheating—that my hands may have been “designed.”

Of course, it’s possible that I could get five royal flushes in a row without cheating, but it seems extremely unlikely to you. You think it is more likely that my hands were designed.

You are using a design argument to make the case that I am cheating.

2. Young Earth Creationism
Your first theory of how I’m cheating is that I have a royal flush up my sleeve and that I switch the cards I’m dealt with the cards in my sleeve every hand. So before the next hand you check my sleeves.

But there is nothing up my sleeves. Therefore, your theory that I created my royal flush through a “recent fully formed special creation” by pulling the cards out of my sleeve has been falsified.

But does this nullify your original design argument? No, you still have good reason to think that I’m cheating. All that has been done is that you’ve just eliminated one possible way that I may be cheating.

3. Intelligent Design Theory
Your next theory as to how I’m cheating is that I deal everyone else’s cards fairly but that I’m dealing my own cards off the bottom of the deck (dealing off the top and the bottom is indistinguishable to most observers if one deals fast enough). Your theory is that I have the cards needed for a royal flush on the bottom of the deck and cheat by dealing my own hand from the bottom.

So before the next hand you check the bottom of the deck. But there is no royal flush on the bottom.

You thought that I was performing some intervention during the dealing process by dealing my own cards off the bottom, but it turns out that the right cards for a royal flush are not on the bottom.

So your second theory of how I’m cheating has been falsified. But, once again, this doesn’t mean that your theory that Andy is somehow cheating has been falsified.

4. Explaining Away Design With Natural Selection
Now at this point I can tell that you think I’m cheating so I try to dissuade you of your suspicion. I explain to you that there is a new theory that explains why I got five royal flushes in a row, namely, the theory of Poker Evolution.

I explain that the mechanism of the theory is known as Poker Natural Selection. The way this mechanism works is that it selects only the fittest cards for my hand through a purely naturalistic process that requires no intervention from the dealer.

I explain that each time I go around the table dealing one card to each person (in poker, hands are dealt one card at a time) only one out of five cards survives and makes it to my hand. This is captured by the slogan “survival of the fittest card.” This explains why I always get a royal flush—since I always get the card with the highest fitness!

Something about this explanation just doesn’t seem right to you.

So then you ask me “Well what is fitness? What makes it true that a certain card is the fittest?”

I respond: “It’s simple. A card has the highest fitness if it survives the trip around the table.”

But if fitness is nothing more than a term for the card that survives, then we can restate the mechanism of Poker Natural Selection as “survival of the card that survives.” This means that the mechanism tells us nothing more than that I will always get the cards that I will get. It’s true of course, but it’s not a useful explanation and it certainly doesn’t dissuade you of your suspicion that I’m cheating.

5. The Fine-Tuning Argument
At this point you come up with a third theory as to how I’m cheating; you propose that I may have stacked the deck so that every fifth card is one of the cards needed for a royal flush. You propose that I have “fine-tuned” the order of cards in the deck so that I will get a royal flush even without any actual intervention during the dealing process.


6. The Purpose of the Analogy
Humans have always had the suspicion that “someone was cheating”: that the universe wasn’t completely random. There have been many different theories of how exactly this cheating took place; there have been as many different creation stories as there have been different cultures.

There have been theories that God(s) created all life on earth fully formed just as we see it today within the not too distant past. Today people who defend this view are often called “Young Earth Creationists”. There seems to be some good evidence against this view, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t still good reason to think someone cheated. Analogously, just because there aren’t any cards up my sleeves doesn’t mean that I didn’t cheat in some other way.

There is also a theory that certain things were specially created by God or that certain things required a special intervention by God in the natural world. For example, Michael Behe defends the view that some things in nature are “irreducibly complex” and could not have come about through purely natural processes. This theory is very difficult to falsify since it would require a detailed account of a possible story of evolution for everything on earth. But even if it is falsified or at least shown to be unlikely, that still wouldn’t mean that the original suspicion that someone cheated has been falsified.

There are two points that I wanted to make with the poker analogy. The first point is that the design argument is not refuted simply by refuting a specific theory of divine intervention. The second point is that proposing Natural Selection as a mechanism is irrelevant to the design argument if natural selection is a tautology (a statement that is true by definition such as "all bachelors are unmarried men"). If fitness just is survival, then “survival of the fittest” is not explanatory.

I’m sure many people will object that I am getting natural selection wrong here. I am aware that there are many different views on natural selection and that many of them are not tautologous. In the following posts I will explore whether any of these definitions are explanatory and, if so, what relevance they have to the design argument.

How Does Evolution Explain Design? Part 1: Introduction

 Guest Post by Andrew Rogers

There are two ways in which evolution has traditionally been thought to undermine Christianity.

The first is that it challenges the historical claims made in the Bible about the age of the earth and the order and nature of creation.

For example, if the Bible claims that all land animals and humans were made within the 6th 24-hour day of creation, then evolution would seem to falsify Christianity (if it is assumed that the Bible makes this historical claim and that Christianity is false if at least one of the historical claims of the Bible is false).

The second way in which evolution has been thought to threaten Christianity is that it nullifies the biological design argument for the existence of God. In the words of biologist Richard Dawkins:

“An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” -The Blind Watchmaker (1986)


Dawkins expresses what I think is the mainstream view-- that evolution destroys the biological design argument because it gives an alternative explanation for the appearance of design in biology.

Some Christians respond to this by completely rejecting evolution (Young Earth Creationists such as Ken Ham). Some Christians respond by rejecting some part of evolution (Irreducible Complexity proponents such as Michael Behe). Some Christians respond by focusing on other arguments such as the fine-tuning argument, the moral argument, and the cosmological argument (Theistic Evolution proponents such as Francis Collins, Kenneth Miller, and Josh Willms).

In this series of articles, I will put aside the issues of whether evolutionary history contradicts the Bible and of whether there is good evidence for evolution. Instead I will focus on how exactly it is claimed that evolution explains away the appearance of design in biology.

I will not be concerned with the historical claims of evolutionary theory; instead I will presuppose the historical claims and analyze the claims evolutionary theory makes about forces, causes, laws, and mechanisms and how those claims relate to explaining away the appearance of design.

Farewell For a Time

Dear Readers,

Medical school is really (really) hard, so I need to take a break from blogging for about 9 months. In the meantime, Andy Rogers, a graduate student in philosophy, will be posting material relevant to searching for truth. I hope you enjoy his posts!

Thank you so much for following my blog, I love all of you!!!

And I will be back.

Josh

Podcast #1 - Andy Rogers, Pascal's Wager Updated, Design Arguments, Historical Jesus

I am proud to share the very first episode of my podcast! You will learn about cool animals, the historicity of Jesus from Dr. Bart Ehrman's book, "Did Jesus Exist?", take a peek into the life of a philosophy nerd on Philosophy Nerd Roadtrip, and enjoy a 30 minute interview with philosophy graduate student, Andy Rogers. The second podcast is already filmed and on its way through the pipe!

Problem of Evil: Simplified, Rethought, and... Re-complicated.

Note: When I started writing this post, I had a very different conclusion than the one I figured out in the process of writing this post. I'll leave my process up for everyone to see as my mind is changed while I ponder the issue of the problem of evil by writing:

In this post, I hope to simplify the problem of evil and offer a simple, albeit depressing, solution. In layman's terms, the problem of evil is: "If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why does bad stuff happen?" I will be talking about the problem of evil in the context of Christianity and the Christian God for this post.

I have written on this subject before here--
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2011/06/god-does-not-love-everyone-here-is-why.html

The problem of evil takes its most potent form thusly:

1. God is omnipotent (all-powerful).
2. God is omnibenevolent (all-loving).
3. God is omniscient (all-knowing).
4. God has free will (God could have chosen not to create our universe).
5. In natural theology (the physical world), we see most people ending up in hell (eternal punishment).

I realize each of those points is debatable, so for now, we can treat each one as a moving part--for example, we might take the stance that God doesn't have free will, or that God has free will but wouldn't act in any way other than the way God does based on God's perfection. Another example would be hell--perhaps it isn't eternal, and souls either cease to exist or are moved to purgatory (kinda heaven) or heaven (heaven) at a later time, or perhaps most people actually go to heaven instead of hell.

To start with, lets treat 1-5 like cement and see where those assumptions take us.

If 1-5 are all true
Actually, this is impossible. If God were omnibenevolent and had free will, God would not have chosen to create the universe. It would be more loving to simply not create, given that the majority of people experience eternal punishment in hell.

-------------------------------

 Wait... Hold on...
Actually, maybe it IS possible for 1-5 to all be true at the same time. I was planning to write something totally different, but perhaps I have figured something out:

My Solution to the Problem of Evil
The magnitude of heaven's good-ness for people could be at least 10 times greater than the magnitude of hell's bad-ness.

Under this model, God can be omnipotent, mostly benevolent, omniscient, and have free will.

Actually, now we need to examine the influence of free will in humans, especially regarding their part in choosing to accept salvation. We would need to wade through Calvinism, Molanism, and Arminianism to do this, as well as some complex philosophy of mind. What is the best of all possible worlds?

It is impossible to figure out what the best of all possible worlds would be--but can I at least think of one that would be better than the current world? I suppose that is (at least probably) beyond human comprehension?

OK, so for now I'm going to assume Molinism, which means that people DO have free will. So, God created the universe, gave humans free will, majority of people don't choose salvation, but heaven is so much better for the ones that are saved compared with the pain of hell that the net good-ness is still positive--and if the magnitude of heaven's good-ness is infinitely higher than the magnitude of hell's bad-ness, then the whole thing is a wash and hell is negligible?

Hmmm...

It would still bother me that anyone was experiencing something bad for eternity, no matter how much better the good was that the minority of people were experiencing forever. But is that just the wrong way to think about this?

There are two ways to think about this.
1. Binary--each person counts as one person, and the good or bad they experience is equivalent across the board.
2. Quantitative--the magnitude of the happiness/suffering also matters.

Logically, it seems like the quantitative model makes more sense--it would be better to punch someone in the face so that someone else could get a million dollars than to not punch someone and not have someone else get a million dollars.

Then again, is there a point at which the degree of suffering outweighs any amount of happiness for someone else?

I'm really not conditioned to think about these kinds of things when eternal values are assigned--infinite time, or infinite pleasure, or infinite pain. That is hard to think about.


OK, if I remove my emotional attachment, then it is mathematically infinitely good to give a few people something that is infinitely better, in exchange for giving most people something that is bad, but infinitely less-so than the good is for the others.

If this is the case, then God can be omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and have free will (if humans also have free will)--and there are purely logic-based constraints upon universes in which there were no humans that chose (or didn't even have the opportunity to make a positive decision to accept salvation [people who never hear the gospel]) the option of not being saved.

But then again, is it more loving to give free will, if one of the options is eternal punishment? I suppose, again, if heaven is infinitely more good than hell is bad, mathematically, the people in hell are negligible?

I just can't get myself to agree that most people are negligible.

-------------------

I must ponder further. Please comment if you have ideas!

How to Pick Your Wordview: Step 2

Step 2: Change your mind frequently

Most people slowly change their mind on issues of philosophy or religion. I think fear plays a major role in this: "what would my pastor think?" "what would my parents think?" "Will someone date me if I change my mind?".

This is ridiculous, because there is SO much to learn, and it is extremely unlikely that you were lucky enough to grow up with all of the right answers on complex philosophical issues.

It is important to change your mind frequently, because this is how you grow. It allows your ideas to evolve--you can test new ideas, and see how they fit into larger paradigms. You can see the world from multiple perspectives.

Changing your mind is difficult, because it takes mental exertion. This is good, because it serves to train your mind--you will get better and better at thinking about complex issues, and this will allow you to grow as a thinker.

People will also enjoy talking to you more. How many conversations have you been in on matters of religion, politics, morality, or philosophy in which neither party admits that they are wrong? Or neither party changes his/her mind?

These conversations tend to be frustrating, because they take great effort, but are fruitless--both parties are more emotionally annoyed than ideologically enlightened.

So just be willing to change your mind, and tell people when you do. Say, "That was a good point, I hadn't thought of that, you have changed my mind."

I'm not saying to change your mind just to change your mind--I am saying that you are wrong a lot more often than you think, and it is really helpful to develop your ability to sense when you are wrong, accept it, update your philosophy, and then keep making progress! The friends you make as a side effect of doing this will serve as awesome companions on your journey.

It is uncomfortable to change your mind, but it is essential for finding truth.

Biological evolution takes place because of mutations. If the mutation rate goes up, evolution can take place at a faster rate. HIV is so hard to defeat, from a medical perspective, because it's mutation rate is SUPER high.

So think like HIV. Change a lot. Test ideas, and keep the good. The faster you evolve, the more likely it is that you will find truth.

How to Pick Your Worldview: Step 1

This is the start of a series on how to pick your worldview. What do you believe? Are any religions actually true? How can you know?

I want to give everyone the tools they need to figure this out for themselves.

Step 1: Commit to search for truth
Make the decision to follow the evidence wherever it leads. Start to accept that what you grew up believing about God or about religion might not be true. Sure, maybe the evidence points towards what you already believe; maybe it doesn't. You don't know unless you look at the evidence.

Many choose not to search because they think the evidence to make an informed decision does not exist--and this simply isn't true. There is a wealth of evidence!

Maintaining an open mind and a commitment to conform your thoughts and beliefs to reality is essential. Without it, you can't expect to find real answers to the most important questions in life.

Comic: Dart Board of Religion

A Biological Perspective on Human Life

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DNA is what makes a species what it is. The Genome (a complete set of DNA) is completely responsible for the biological identity of an organism. True, the environment can influence development, but the environment can only shift variables one way or the other based on what is already made possible by the Genome.

DNA is made of long strands of Nucleotides, of which there are 4: Adenine, Guanine, Thymine, and Cytosine (A, G, T, and C). These four Nucleotides are the four Letters in the alphabet of life. The Letters form Words, all of which are 3 Letters long. Three Letter triplets of Nucleotides code for 20 Amino Acids. The combinations of letters results in 20 Words.

The 20 Words are combined to form a multitude of Sentences, ranging from a 20 to 33,000 Words in length: Amino Acids are the Words that are strung together to form the Sentences, called Proteins. Proteins perform most of the functions of living cells.

The combination of all the Sentences makes up a Book. A Genome is a Book. The Book is made of DNA.

In Books, the Sentences dictate the story. In the Genome, Proteins dictate the function.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A book is defined by its letters. If you change one letter in a book, the book isn't exactly what it used to be. Change 10 letters, and it is a bit different. Change 100 letters--even more. Change 50% of the sentences, and 50% of the identity of the book has changed.

Each of us is a unique book, filled with a unique set of letters. The entire book is the dictionary entry under the word "You". The dictionary of life contains entries for every organism that ever lived--each perfectly defined by its unique genome.

Here is one tiny bit of the dictionary entry for one organism, the "human" whose genome was sequenced in The Human Genome Project:

 

https://vimeo.com/11711801

We "humans" are very similar to each other. We share over 99% of our letters in common.

As we look into the evolutionary past, however, we run into "species" that share 99% of our letters, and others that share 98%. Still others share 97%, and 94%. We keep moving backward in evolutionary time and we see forks in the road--several groups with 84% of the same letters, but none of them with the same differences, and EACH individual in EACH group never sharing exactly the same letters as its parents or offspring.

Every book is unique.

Biological life is not black and white. Biological life is shades of gray.

Define for me, then, a biological human.

Yes, you could assign groups of individuals in specific places that have the ability to reproduce with one another a species name--but this is merely a crutch to learn things about our world at the present time--not a suitable definition for actual species. If we grant that definition, then all species are equivalent. We simply shift the time range from the present back 30 years, and then 30 more years, and then 30 more all the way back to the origin of species, and the whole while we have groups of individuals in specific places that have the ability to reproduce with one another--but at the end we have modern "humans", and at the beginning we have a single celled organism or protobiont.

If we grant that definition, all books are "Moby Dick".

It is far better to define each book as it is--by its unique sequence of letters. Yes, genres and sub-genres can be argued over, but such things are subjective matters of opinion. There is no invisible wall that truly separates one genre from another--no magical percentage that can objectively differentiate between groups of letters.

Is what makes humans "human" a subjective matter of opinion?

Biological life comes in shades of gray.

Based on biology, all of us are individuals--we must look to the philosophers if we want to know anything more.

Read Parts 1-6 for my Philosophical Perspective on Human Life

The Argument from a Dissenting "Expert" in a Quazi-Related Field

In the discussions on Climate Change and Evolution, I have noticed a common type of argument that, for some reason, has great psychological pull.

Here is an example from ThePoachedEgg:

The article begins, "A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no scientist alive today who understands macroevolution."

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Professor James M. Tour is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world. He is famous for his work on nanocars (pictured left, courtesy of Wikipedia), nanoelectronics, graphene nanostructures, carbon nanovectors in medicine, and green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Rice University. He has authored or co-authored 489 scientific publications and his name is on 36 patents. Although he does not regard himself as an Intelligent Design theorist, Professor Tour, along with over 700 other scientists, took the courageous step back in 2001 of signing the Discovery Institute’s “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism”, which read: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”
On Professor Tour’s Website, there’s a very revealing article on evolution and creation, in which Tour bluntly states that he does not understand how macroevolution could have happened, from a chemical standpoint (all bold emphases below are mine – VJT):

As well as the article's quote from Dr. Tour:

Although most scientists leave few stones unturned in their quest to discern mechanisms before wholeheartedly accepting them, when it comes to the often gross extrapolations between observations and conclusions on macroevolution, scientists, it seems to me, permit unhealthy leeway. When hearing such extrapolations in the academy, when will we cry out, “The emperor has no clothes!”?

…I simply do not understand, chemically, how macroevolution could have happened. Hence, am I not free to join the ranks of the skeptical and to sign such a statement without reprisals from those that disagree with me? … Does anyone understand the chemical details behind macroevolution? If so, I would like to sit with that person and be taught, so I invite them to meet with me.

The article concludes:

In a more recent talk, entitled, Nanotech and Jesus Christ, given on 1 November 2012 at Georgia Tech, Professor Tour went further, and declared that no scientist that he has spoken to understands macroevolution – and that includes Nobel Prize winners! Here’s what he said when a student in the audience asked him about evolution.

I will now summarize the argument:

1. Dr. Tour is a very successful scientist, respected in his field of chemistry.
2. Dr. Tour claims that he does not understand how macroevolution could take place from the perspective of a chemist.
3. Dr. Tour claims that evolutionary biologists also don't understand how macroevolution could take place.
4. Therefore, it is reasonable to think that macroevolution didn't take place. If Dr. Tour thinks so, then certainly others can be justified in thinking so.

Here is why this argument is useless: If we allow this type of argumentation to be valid, I can simply make the same argument:

1. Dr. Dylan Schwilk is a highly successful scientist, respected in his field of plant evolution and ecology.
2. Dr. Schwilk claims that he DOES understand how macroevolution could take place.
3. Dr. Schwilk claims that evolutionary biologists DO understand how macroevolution could take place.
4. Therefore it is reasonable to think that macroevolution did take place. If Dr. Schwilk thinks so, then certainly others can be justified in thinking so.

Then I could proceed to do the same thing, making the argument with every scientist that does and doesn't support macroevolution--and we would come out with a huge majority in favor of macroevolution (including many on par with Dr. Tour--except with PhD's actually in the field of evolutionary biology).

If ThePoachedEgg's argument against macroevolution is valid, then my argument for macroevolution, using the EXACT SAME reasoning, is more valid. I can give more anecdotes about impressive scientists who do accept macroevolution, understand how macroevolution could happen, and think that other scientists do understand how macroevolution could happen.

Does this mean that dissenting scientists are never right? Obviously not! Dissenting scientists can totally be right--but the thing is, they need to have evidence and arguments that support their position. You can't just accuse an entire field of scientists of "not understanding their field", like ThePoachedEgg does, and expect rational people to believe you.

Dissenting scientists, with solid evidence, win Nobel Prizes. Good evidence and good arguments win in science--not anecdotes from dissenters in separate fields who have epiphanies about the supposed lack of understanding present in the majority of scientists in the actual field being discussed. If evolution isn't supported by the majority of evidence and arguments, collect your Nobel Prize, ThePoachedEgg.

Fine-Tuning: The Normalization Problem

If you aren't familiar with the Fine-Tuning argument, check out this list of posts: http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/search/label/Fine-Tuning

The basic argument is this: Out of the set up possible physics, the subset that allows for abiogenesis (life arising from non-life) is very small.

Multiple physical parameters, such as the strength of gravity and the cosmological constant are "fine-tuned". If they were slightly larger or smaller, during the inflationary phase of the universe, we would have ended up with either the entire universe being a black hole, or a gargantuan fizz of hydrogen and helium (not enough attractive force for these elements to condense into stars, and stars allow for heavy elements, and without heavy elements you can't have abiogenesis).

There are certainly other forms of life than our own, but that doesn't effect the argument--there are more ways for life to not exist than there are ways for life to exist.

It appears as though we won multiple lotteries all in a row (and only bought one ticket for each lottery), therefore it is reasonable to conclude that there was an intelligent agent influencing physics.

I have addressed all of the common objections to the Fine-Tuning Argument--multiverse theory, the anthropic principle, pointing out that most of our universe won't support life--in my Honors Thesis: http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2014/07/my-honors-thesis-on-fine-tuning.html

While each of those common counter-arguments completely fails to address (and sometimes even understand) Fine-Tuning, there is one objection that may be a home-run counter: The Normalization Problem.

For the Fine-Tuning argument to work, we need to be able to set up some sort of probability--how likely or unlikely is it that we have the physics that we have?

We assume that physics could be something other than what it is, and then adjust gravity or other parameters slightly. We see what effect those slight changes would have on our universe. But what would happen if gravity were infinity? Or negative infinity?

There aren't bounds on how big or small each parameter could be--because we allow them to change from the get-go, there isn't some "invisible wall" that lets us stop somewhere.

Because of this, we can't generate a probability. There isn't a mathematical way to describe our situation, and it certainly isn't reasonable to punt to our intuitions--how could we possibly have accurate intuitions about such an abstract topic?

I will pursue this issue further, but it may be a home-run against the Fine-Tuning argument.

Guest post by Alex: Where Have All The Open Minds Gone?

The following is an excerpt from a conversation I had with a friend, Alex, who is discouraged by the lack of willingness for people to have an open mind when arguments don't coincide with their political alignment:

The problem with America right now is a problem of ideology: ideology makes it very difficult for someone to decipher the forest from the trees. Information that supports your ideological position will be acknowledged and taken as 'the truth', whereas information that conflicts with it will be ignored.

America (and other modern European states) are strange, strange places where reality is divided up as either 'conservative' or 'liberal' - as if reality could be placed into check-boxes. Until Americans can see this, most dialogue will just go back and forth between people who already agree with each other: there isn't any sharing of meaningful information or solutions to political problems between parties or across party lines.

I have found that I can give great reasons for thinking a certain way - but if, for example, someone is a conservative, they won't listen to reason regarding the possibility of climate change.

I echo Alex's frustration at the lack of willingness for people to modify their ideology due to political affiliation.

Mind vs Brain 1/6

I have divided this web comic into 6 posts so that it doesn't take forever for the page to load. However, I created the comic as a single, cohesive story. The most interesting argument and my ultimate conclusion is found in part 6/6. I hope you enjoy reading!

Click the links at the bottom to navigate!

1-3 

4-6

 7-9

 10-12

Episode 2

But green, red, and images of apples actually don't exist in the brain: Go to the next episode!

http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2015/06/mind-vs-brain-2.html

Mind vs Brain 2/6

Click the links at the bottom to navigate! 

13-15

16-18

19-21

22-24

 Check this out!!!

Episode 1                                             Episode 3