O'Leary's Handy Uses For Creationism

In part four of Denyse O'Leary's appreciation of John Lennox's book God's Undertaker:Has Science Buried God?, Ms. O'Leary draws out the usefulness of creationist ideas for the development of science. Based on what O'Leary provides, I'm inclined to just pass on this book, which otherwise would have been one that intrigued me. She doesn't do much to distinguish Lennox's points from her own, though, and having read a fair amount of O'Leary in the past couple years, it's clear that she sees just what she wants to see in whatever she surveys; the posts in this series present quotes from Lennox of dubious value, which she then make a mess of with her own riffage on Lennox's quote.

Here's an example, starting with Lennox:

John Lennox:
" ... the rise of science would have been seriously retarded if one particular doctrine of theology, the doctrine of creation had not been present." (God's Undertaker, p.22)

My initial reaction to that is to roll my eyes, but with just this little bit presented, one would have to look at the larger treatment in the text to make a fair evaluation. I don't know how Lennox supports this statement, but here's O'Leary's expansion:

Denyse O'Leary:
Why is a doctrine of creation important? Lennox points out that it frees science from the idea that we ought to be able to deduce what is happening in the universe from fixed prior principles. If - in contradiction to such an idea - we assume that God is entitled to create what he likes (trilobites, giraffes, and whales, to name some examples), then our duty is to address what exists rather than to set rules for what can exist. Unfortunately, centuries ago, many scientists attempted to proceed by setting rules about what can exist, according to their theories. Many of their ideas were in conflict with reality, and unproductive conflicts were common.

I held off posting on this yesterday when going through the other two sections, as I was sure I just wasn't reading this part right. But having looked at it several times now, the unavoidable conclusion is that O'Leary finds creationism valuable because it keeps us from artificially limiting reality. The examples she gives are baffling. Do we suppose that with a 'creationist view' that we would dispute the reality of the trilobite, the giraffe, the whale? It's as if O'Leary thinks we'd be inclined to say one or more of those things "aren't real" if we can't deduce them from "fixed prior principles". The giraffe may be standing right in front of us, but we are inclined to deny it because we can't deduce if from physical law, and this is what creationism saves us from?

Science is anchored in observation. To the extent any of those three can be objectively observed, we're obligated to accomodate for them in our model of reality. O'Leary has things reversed, so far as I can see here, suggesting that science want to define what's real, then map our observations onto it. That's nuts. We observe, test, kick, scrape, measure, watch and use all empirical tools at our disposal to establish the phenomena, then we define our reality based on that.

I suspect a part of the confusion for O'Leary here is the equivocation of the term "rule" or "law" here. In the creationist model, rules for reality are prescriptive, due to Christianity's metaphysical subjectivism. Reality is realized, and constrained by the will of God.

In the scientific view, the rules are descriptive. There's no underlying prescription, and the 'rules' than are identify are rules only by virtue of their identifying symmetries and uniform dynamics. So, to a scientist, "[setting] up rules for what can exist" is a fantastically confused statement. We don't make up rules for what exists, we just do our best to describe what exists, and how it exists. Descriptive, not prescriptive. Maybe that's a key clue for O'Leary.

Denyse O'Leary:
Having taught sections of the Design or Chance? adult night school course at St. Michael's in the University of Toronto, I also have a clear sense of another issue: A doctrine of creation encourages people to believe that the universe is worth studying because it puts a limit on the things you would need to know in order to understand. For one thing, even by positing an actual beginning of time, it closes off an infinite past in which virtually anything could have, and has, happened.

Here, I believe we have O'Leary projecting her own confusions about the concept or reality on the general population. Even if we grant her premise -- that the masses need things "dumbed down" so as not to exasperate them -- this in no way retards science itself. If anything, creationism thwarts the advancement of science by positing "pedagogical falsehoods" on the syllabus. A concept may make things easier to understand, no doubt, but that is not, in and of itself, scientifically useful. It's only as useful as it is accurate, performative in predictions and explanations, and unfalsified by salient tests.

Denyse O'Leary:
Assume, for example, that our theory of the universe does not include a doctrine of creation. We might assert - as some cultures have - that the universe is supported on an infinite series of turtles who (in some greater infinity) are swimming in an endless sea. Why study it? The information gained from one turtle may be no use in interpreting another, and then - even if you could get to the end of the turtles (which you cannot, because the series is infinite) - you would then confront the endless sea. All the information you have accumulated is a mass of interesting sludge, really. The prospect of understanding the universe is actually impossible. Lennox aided my understanding of this question by noting that the Jesuit Fathers who visited the advanced kingdom of China in the early modern period had difficulty at first persuading the Chinese scholars that many features of the universe can be understood by simple equations. They had not expected to find the unverse comprehensible in that way.

I don't know of any cultures that suppose that "the universe is supported on an infinite series of turtles". This objection isn't material to O'Leary's point, but it's indicative of the kind of ... "whatever!" approach she brings to science and the philosophy of science. From what I can find (see here, for example and here), Hindu culture has imagined the earth (as opposed to O'Lery's use of 'universe' here) as borne on the back of an elephant, which stood on a single tortoise, and that's about as close as I can come to finding support for her statement here. The Wikipedia article on "Turtles All The Way Down" attributes the "infinite turtles" idea to a single person, someone sparring with Bertrand Russell after a lecture. I won't make a bigger issue of this than just to note: when you start looking at the "building blocks" O'Leary uses, even those often are imaginary, or widely mistaken.

But suppose we are presented with a "turtles all the way down" cosmology. Now what? Well, to the extent you could verify it, you'd have a most significant answer. There are fewer more profound answers to be had, if the theory checks out. Oddly, O'Leary claims this would all be "interesting sludge, really", in yet another example of her command of the language. "Sludge"? She then announces that this would render the prospect of understanding the universe "actually impossible". Yet, she's just posed the foundations for understanding the universe. If the reality is "turtles all the way down", something we can verify, or even just verify that these turtles really do extend a very, very, very long way down and that they do somehow "support the universe", then a significant level of understanding the universe has been "actually achieved".

I know, I know. O'Leary's paragraph here is more incoherent than it is wrong.

I'm just sayin'.

Just to really get things thoroughly confused, O'Leary points to mathematical principles as a useful means for modeling and describing our universe, an approach that apparently hadn't occurred to the Chinese before some Jesuits introduced the idea. But that's not creationism at all, and in fact is the very antithesis of creationism. In proposing math as a key resource in understanding the universe, the Jesuits were proposing a perfectly materialist model of the universe. There's nothing "creationist" about the inverse-square law. In fact, maths are the building blocks for the "non-created" model of the universe, a universe governed by impersonal physical dynamics, rather than the arbitrary will of God. I can't think what O'Leary imagined the pedagogical value of math to be in terms of creationism, but for now, I'm thinking she's as confused about what Lennox is really saying as she is on the cultural popularity of "turtles all the way down".

Denyse O'Leary:
So a doctrine of creation imposes limits on what we must understand in order to gain a picture of our universe. That is critical for science as we understand it. If we assume that if the Big Bang happened roughly 13.7 billion years ago (conventional dating), then anything that could not have taken place within that period by random movements alone either did not happen or happened because of exterior or prior guidance. Or something else? At any rate, we are justified in seeking an explanation.

I'll agree that creationism imposes limits on understanding. But this is positively perverse, epistemologically. And the example she gives demonstrate this. If we are to discover a process or phenomenon that exists and requires 20 billion years of running to reach the state it is in now, we'd have to revise our estimates of the age of the universe. QED, so long as we have reason to trust the calculations on the process timeline. The existing estimates are where they are based on the demands for a model that harmonizes all that we have to go on. If you change the evidence and facts in view, then the estimates might very well need to be changed to accomodate it.

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O'Leary: Lennox Part 3

In part 3 of Denye O'Leary's appreciation of John Lennox and his book God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, she tackles the idea of information. She quotes Lennox, who finds it "remarkable" that information is invisible, and comments:

Denyse O'Leary:
Not only that, but information, as Lennox goes on to demonstrate, is immaterial. Example: The knowledge that the concert you hoped to attend has been cancelled due to an ice storm is immaterial. The storm is quite material, but your knowledge that the concert has been cancelled is immaterial, even though it may have been conveyed by material things.

Shades of George Gilder, actually!

There's a Nobel Prize embedded in here, apparently. Forget the rest of this, that's what's remarkable, that Lennox has demonstrated that information is immaterial. I just recently finished reading Leff & Rex's Maxwell's Demon 2, which is a tour de force review of the subject of Maxwell's Demon. Which is, of course, all about information and entropy. While the subject is complex, and to be sure, even established 'experts' in information theory occasionally have disagreements about some of the basics of information as a scientific concept (see Tom Schneider's rejection of "self-information" in favor of "surprisal", for example), "information" is perfectly and completely physical.

And this little example Denyse throws out here is a point at which we can reasonably doubt that Denyse has even the bare beginnings of the conceptual framework needed to be a meaningful contributor in these discussions. I haven't read Lennox's book, and I'm quite prepared to allow that he as a more sophisticated view of the concept of information than Denyse relates here. But as it is, Denyse betrays complete incompetence with the subject matter here. Her example is the "information" that a concert has been canceled, due to a storm. The storm is material, but the information that the concert has been nixed is immaterial.

I'll try to resist the obvious opportunities at humor here, but what does Denyse think her brain is for, anyway? Does she suppose her brain is material? Is it real? The "information" Denyse claims is immaterial is most certainly material -- and is represented by the electrical configurations -- the "brain-states" of any and all who received and stored the message about the canceled show. Now granted, one can't "see" the electrical patterns that reify this knowledge because they are safely ensconced inside someone's skull. The ice storm that prompted the cancellation is a different matter, and quite observable, perfectly "visible", if maybe a little whited-out.

So the visible ice storm leads to a decision (a brain-state) in some individual that determins the show should be canceled. Additional bits of information (brain-states) are marshalled into the service of communicating that decision, and the recipients of this information reach new brain-states as a result of receiving the message. All the electrons are in the right places.

But Denyse can't see 'em, so apparently they don't exist. Kind of a grown-up version of the mistake my 1 year old twins make in thinking that if they can't see me, I can't see them.

Doesn't exist. Immaterial.

I won't even bother with the conflation these examples introduce, the confusion they spread in confusing the "retail" definition of information (knowledge or data that is contextualized for human processing, like the news of a canceled concert) and the scientific definition of information, (the reduction in uncertainty about physical configurations). Denyse isn't ready for "Remedial Information Theory 100" just yet.

Maybe a way to point at the major blunder Denyse is promoting here is to ask: OK, take away all physical objects and entities, for the sake of argument, here. Does this "immaterial" information about the canceled concert still exist? If there are no brains in the entire universe, would such news be "immaterial information"? If not, why not? If she should reply that of course, immaterial information needs a material "home" -- a place to exist -- then I'd say she's on the road to recover from this mistake. She's not there yet, but you can see the right answer from that point.

Information is physical. Where there is physical existence, there is information. Where there is no physical existence, there is no information.

Assuming, of course, that Denyse is confused, and that Lennox hasn't -- mirable dictu! -- actually inverted the whole of physics and demonstratede that information is immaterial.

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Denyse O'Leary: What a Design Argument Is (or isn't)

Denyse O'Leary holds forth on design arguments over here at ARN. She's enamored of John Lennox's book God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? and uses Lennox's thoughts (or so it seems, it's hard to tell which ideas are hers here and which are Lennox, which is unfortunate for Lennox) to provide some riffage on intelligent design.

Denyse O'Leary:
With admirable clarity of thought, Lennox avoids confusing design in the universe and life forms with either creationism or Scriptural literalism. A design argument asserts that the evidence for design in the universe and life forms should be taken at face value, that is as evidence that the entities are designed. And Lennox does just that.

Denyse, of course, does confuse design of the universe with creationism/Biblicism. Yet she admires Lennox's 'clarity of thought' here. Lennox conflates design with creationism himself, as it turns out, so what Denyse here is admiring, ostensibly, is Lennox's 'clarity' in sanitizing the argument, laundering out the overtly religious language and underlying epistemology, so that it might read, nominally at least, in some "science-ish" way. Earnest discussions and arguments from creationists on this topic have been disasters in the public forum, so Denyse here admires not clarity so much, but 'effective obscurantism' in avoiding overt displays of magical thinking in scientific discussions. Obfuscation as 'clarity', just another day in the ID universe.

She (and/or Lennox?) contend that a design argument simply accepts evidence for design, as, well, as evidence for design -- at "face value", doncha know. Why didn't those evilutionist scientists think of that? Just accept the evidence for the evidence it is...

It's as radical as it is vacuous. The whole point of scientific investigation is to get beyond "face value" for the phenomena we observe around us. There's nothing wrong with a "face value" interepretation, it's just exceedingly trivial, epistemically. I wonder if Denyse really understands what the term "face value" implies.

Denyse O'Leary:

There are several contrary materialist positions:

1. Design is an illusion. In recent years, that has increasingly come to sound like whistling in the dark.

Denyse is projecting. Every year, more and more evidence is added to the knowledge repository, further detailing the mechanics of evolution, the psychology of man, and man's natural proclivity for anthropomorphizing the world around him. Creationism gets incrementally more problematic as more and more gaps in the repository get filled in -- creating, perversely, two gaps in which to inject the creationist God where there previously was one. Maybe it's this sense that Denyse is appealing to? With all the gaps that get addresses over time, science is experience runaway growth in the number of holes in its theory. Surely it must soon collapse because of all these little gaps!

Enough on this one -- it's just Denyse in self-congratulatory mode.

Denyse O'Leary:
2. Or perhaps there are uncountable numbers of flopped universes out there and ours just happens to be unusually nice. That idea goes down well in popular culture - just think of the FILMS! It can spawn - but it is presently untestable.

I confess, I'm behind on the literature -- I don't even know what a 'flopped' universe is supposed to be. It certainly is true to say that other universes are untestable, given the way we define 'universe'. But it's worth pointing out that the "Cosmic Landscape", as it's called by String Theory heavy Leonard Suskind -- a complex of innumerable other universes -- it isn't so much magical thinking as is engaged by creationist "design arguments". The cosmic landscape is something that proceeds naturally out of the mathematical models that underwrite String Theory. While String Theory is nowhere close to 'established' in the scientific sense yet (and may never be), if it does bear out, then it brings with it maths that fairly require a "landscape" in which universes come to be, and develop with different cosmological parameters (it is the suite of configuration of parameters that gives rise to the term 'landscape' in Susskind's model).

It's directly not testable. It may not even be possible to test indirectly (although this isn't at all clear at this point). Nevertheless, the Cosmic Landscape idea can point to a set of epistemic credentials that creationist ideas cannot; it proceeds automatically, organically, from the solution sets that String Theory math models yield. If String Theory is correct for this universe, then the nature of the theory is such that we are reasonably led to the conclusion that this universe is one of a great many, mathematically.

Denyse O'Leary:
3. Lastly, some argue that the question is not a proper concern of science - in common parlance, "Let's just rule it out of order, and ignore the evidence." That raises the question of what science is, if it is not an effort to learn more about the universe we live in.

Yes, that's the common reaction: Let's just rule it out of order, and ignore the evidence.

I hear that all the time. It begs credulity to suppose that Denyse has not had access to the concept of methodological naturalism, or the basics of the philosophy of science. Science is an effort to learn more about the universe we live in, but it is a disciplined effort, dedicated to a concept of "learning" that is epistemically sound. Those are crucial, and daunting constraints. Science specifically seeks to avoid the magical thinking and superstitious interpretations Denyse wants to "add to the mix" here, and for good reason. Those elements delegitimize the epistemological foundations of the whole enterprise. Indulge Denyse and her creationist "learning" here, and all scientific learning gets devalued down to the credibility level of her 'knowledge'. Science is as strong as its weakest link in the epistemic chain, and Denyse is proposing imaginary segments of chain.

Denyse O'Leary:
But a design argument is not an argument for special creation -. the sudden appearance of multicellular life forms out of nothing. Design does not require such events and does not provide direct evidence for them either. In a designed universe such events are at least a possibility, but other inferences and evidence must establish them. The mere fact of design does not establish them.

Doesn't matter. Magical thinking about "design", even when it loudly disavows "special creation" and "poofing" of Adam and the animals out of thin air isn't any more respectable or useful than "poofing". Denyse might suppose it happened in a 'non-poof' way, but in a way that's still 'designed', but that's as perfectly magical as the "poof" idea. So why bother with such meaningless distinctions.

Don't agree? OK, let's think about more sophisticated, "adult" idea of how design is carried out. Panspermia, perhaps? No, that doesn't help at all, because any Designers who bootstrapped organic life on earth however many billions of years ago would themselves have to be designed, as they have all the "face value" evidence of being designed themselves! Or suppose it is Yahweh after all, and instead of the clumsy sideshow parlor trick approach -- *poof* and behold! Meet Adam -- God uses slow, gradual, organic processes that He controls in subtle, elegant ways to steer the development of organic life toward his design goals.

That doesn't help, either.

God would have to exhibit all the "face value" evidence of being designed Himself! See, it doesn't matter at all who design proponentists suppose the Designer was (or were, if there were many). Whatever he/she/it/they are like, they by definition have the capability to design organic life, which is, per the principles of Intelligent Design, de facto proof that that the Designer was designed.

It's wholly disingenuous, then, to suggest that this makes any difference at all. It's an utterly useless qualification on the merits. It does have the potential to make the ID arguments seem a little less silly, though, and I suggest that is why Denyse says what she does here.

Denyse O'Leary:
There is much confusion on this point in North America. Many on both sides profit from the confusion. The materialist atheist benefits the most because he evades the looming falsification of his central idea - an accidental, purposeless universe - by loudly insisting that design means special creation or a universe created in six days (144 hours). Because he usually has the ear of a sympathetic media corps, he can buy a lot of time for his interpretation.

Not. Design, per Design advocates, means having "complexity" and "specificity" as a Designer, and thus being designed. It invokes infinite regress, if the principles are taken seriously at all. But wait, says Denyse: God stops the regress, He wasn't designed!

Oh, yeah? Well then "specified complexity" or whatever other criterion you want to use as your razor for positively identifying "designedness" doesn't hold. If "God" can be "accidental, purposeless" -- not the product of design, in other words, why can't the universe? This is logical box Denyse cannot get out of, except for through "magical answers". God isn't beholden to these principles, after all, right Denyse? Denyse has the "Creationist Magic Answer Get Out Of Logical Contradiction Card" in her hand, and she's playing it here.

Oh, and don't forget to swirl in a small dose of conspiracy theorism into the mix here, too. That's an important part of the argument from design.

Denyse O'Leary:
Meanwhile, the special creationist hopes that the powerful arguments for design can be co-opted as arguments for special creation. Having little incentive to help set the record straight, he doesn't.

And at the same time the Scriptural literalist - usually a young Earth creationist - is primarily interested in finding science evidence that conforms to his favoured interpretation of the words of Scripture. Actually, many people in that camp do not even like design arguments, as such because design arguments are not drawn from the Scriptures and can be advanced and defended in the absence of any scriptures.

Yeah, and that should be a sobering point for Denyse to observe. YEC creationism, as ridiculous as it is, is both more honest and more coherent than Intelligent Design. ID is the worst of both worlds -- it subverts the epistemic foundation of science with its superstition, and yet it is too embarrassed of its own superstitious nature to identify with overtly superstitious ideologies. Double whammy. Many YECs rightly see it as the most hopeless case of all; it's not faithful or redemptive in its expression, and viciously vacuous as a matter of science. You gotta give YECs credit for at least offering a hypothesis that is liable to falsification, an idea that is nomimally germane as a matter of science. When they claim the earth is 6,000 years old, they are at least offering a claim that can be evaluated. ID can't even manage that.

The allergic reaction Denyse has to allegations of being a 'creationist' is quite plain to see in posts like this. But she's just in a state of denialism. She's believed her own BS, and has fooled herself into thinking ID is something more scientific than YEC, when in fact it's actually far less scientific. It's a persistent, ongoing identity crisis she's dealing with. ID is creationism, by an large, and the panspermian hangers-on do not rescue ID as 'non-religious'. They just broaden the exotic nature of the religious basis for ID.

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