Is Darwinism mathematically impossible?

Very interesting discussion.

This was quite interesting though as always I find it difficult to grasp the arguments for/against.

With Cosmic Fine Tuning there seems to be agreement on the very small range universal constants can assume before human life among other things would not be possible. So we can accept, to some degree, that the argument's focus is on how to interpret this very thin margin.

With Intelligent Design it continuously feels like I would need to get, at minimum, a bachelor's degree in biology to even begin to assess the topic.

This was quite interesting though as always I find it difficult to grasp the arguments for/against.

With Cosmic Fine Tuning there seems to be agreement on the very small range universal constants can assume before human life among other things would not be possible. So we can accept, to some degree, that the argument's focus is on how to interpret this very thin margin.

With Intelligent Design it continuously feels like I would need to get, at minimum, a bachelor's degree in biology to even begin to assess the topic.

It's over my head in many ways too.  As a Christian, I believe in intelligent design but when you ask the same questions about the existence of God as you ask about the existence of humans, you end up in an impossible place - or at least I do.  Only by faith can we believe either that there is a God, or that there isn't one.

With Intelligent Design it continuously feels like I would need to get, at minimum, a bachelor's degree in biology to even begin to assess the topic.

I feel the same. I have tried to get into it a few times, also reading the arguments of some christian biologists who disagree with the Discovery Institute (just to get some different perspectives) but it quickly gets very technical.

I feel the same. I have tried to get into it a few times, also reading the arguments of some christian biologists who disagree with the Discovery Institute (just to get some different perspectives) but it quickly gets very technical.

I am going to try and give it another go but yeah I feel like there is great difficulty in trying to grasp the actual question without great expertise.

Even among QM interpretations, physicists like to appeal to the public on the basic idea of their theory which non-physicists can judge. For example I disagree with Rovelli that you can relations without relata, OTOH I agree with him that we should accept the evidence of actual indeterminism.

With ID where does one start? It seems that one must begin at the question of Information itself, and then slowly try to build a path to asking about specific kinds of Information....

I am going to try and give it another go but yeah I feel like there is great difficulty in trying to grasp the actual question without great expertise.

Even among QM interpretations, physicists like to appeal to the public on the basic idea of their theory which non-physicists can judge. For example I disagree with Rovelli that you can relations without relata, OTOH I agree with him that we should accept the evidence of actual indeterminism.

With ID where does one start? It seems that one must begin at the question of Information itself, and then slowly try to build a path to asking about specific kinds of Information....

Here is Bill Dembski just a couple of days ago.  https://substack.com/@billdembski

 Conclusion
In motivating specified complexity and showing why it works to detect design, I’ve omitted many details. I did in this essay sketch how Shannon information connects probability and complexity. But I omitted the connection between description length and Kolmogorov information, which is the other pillar on which the formal theory of specified complexity rests. Nor have I described how Shannon information and Kolmogorov information combine to form a unified specified complexity measure, nor how this measure exploits a deep result from information theory known as the Kraft inequality. For a first go at these details, see my article “Specified Complexity Made Simple.” For the full details, see the second edition of The Design Inference, especially chapter 6. 

© 2024 Bill Dembski

I am going to try and give it another go but yeah I feel like there is great difficulty in trying to grasp the actual question without great expertise.

Even among QM interpretations, physicists like to appeal to the public on the basic idea of their theory which non-physicists can judge. For example I disagree with Rovelli that you can relations without relata, OTOH I agree with him that we should accept the evidence of actual indeterminism.

With ID where does one start? It seems that one must begin at the question of Information itself, and then slowly try to build a path to asking about specific kinds of Information....

In my opinion it is not necessary to fully understand the esoteric mathematical foundations of information theory as it applies to biological information as in functional complex specified information, in order to get the essentials of why ID must be the truth. I think Michael Behe's books make a good start: Darwin's Black Box (irreducible complexity), Darwin Devolves (the inevitable genetic self-destruction involved in RM+NS evolution), and A Mousetrap for Darwin (Michael Behe answers his critics).

In my opinion it is not necessary to fully understand the esoteric mathematical foundations of information theory as it applies to biological information as in functional complex specified information, in order to get the essentials of why ID must be the truth. I think Michael Behe's books make a good start: Darwin's Black Box (irreducible complexity), Darwin Devolves (the inevitable genetic self-destruction involved in RM+NS evolution), and A Mousetrap for Darwin (Michael Behe answers his critics).

I particularly like Behe's approach because it is always possible to invent scenarios that increase the number of cycles of RM+NS, so people still end up thinking, well maybe the whole galaxy was full of planets that could support life, and so maybe .....

I think I wrote more extensively about Behe's ideas on here, but somehow I can't find a complete list of all my posts - if anyone knows how to do that please say!

Behe explains why RM+NS will wreck a whole species without periodic design input. It is a beautiful idea that should be front and centre of this discussion.

David

In my opinion it is not necessary to fully understand the esoteric mathematical foundations of information theory as it applies to biological information as in functional complex specified information, in order to get the essentials of why ID must be the truth. I think Michael Behe's books make a good start: Darwin's Black Box (irreducible complexity), Darwin Devolves (the inevitable genetic self-destruction involved in RM+NS evolution), and A Mousetrap for Darwin (Michael Behe answers his critics).

The biggest mistake one can make is to only read sources one agrees with beforehand and then think that covers everything. If one hasn't seen both sides of the coin, one truly knows nothing.

The biggest mistake one can make is to only read sources one agrees with beforehand and then think that covers everything. If one hasn't seen both sides of the coin, one truly knows nothing.

Of course, there may be a couple of dozen valid perspectives.