Macroevolution is the change from one family of animals to another, such as a change from dogs to horses. The evidence for macro, and therefore its scientific validity, is almost non-existent. See Roger Lewin’s book “Bones of Contention” if you disagree. Lewin is a devout evolutionist, so you Darwinians don’t have to be afraid that he will try to destroy your faith in evolution. He just happens to be an honest scientist, unlike Dawkins.

Just got your book and am enjoying it so far but am having trouble with one of your arguments that I’d love to address before I continue on…

I love your breakdown of Biology (baggage + chemistry), chemistry (baggage + physics) and physics (baggage + math).

Here’s my question. Could it be that math is baggage + logic? For example, multiplication is simply human defined process for calculation purposes… so Multiplication = baggage plus addition… addition = baggage + logic. The set of natural numbers = baggage + addition…. addition = baggage + logic.

I argue that the CONCEPT of the set of natural numbers is not complex at all… just follow one rule of logic (add 1 each time).

You say on pg 19 that mathematics “contains the most complex patterns ever observed”. Are those patterns really the math? Or are they human applications of the logic laws?

I could be wrong, but mathematics could be extremely un-complex. It’s just that our brains have discovered ways to classify logical laws, adding complexity to a simple set of logical truths.

I guess when I think of measuring complexity, I would have to define “the amount” of complexity to be the minimal amount of information (bits on a computer for example) needed to define it.

I feel you are not distinguishing between the complexity of a set of logical truths (math – baggage) and the infinite complex manifestations of those logical truths.

The concept of the number 294892849324 is simply baggage + logic.

Please set me straight!

Kindest Regards,
Bill T.

Would it then be fair to generalize and say that the strength of your beliefs is directly related to the ratio of net change in explained phenomena to the complexity of the explanation? If so, wouldn’t the existence of an intelligent creator being have a high ratio? Or perhaps you think that proposal raises more questions than it answers? If not, how do you think your strength-of-belief algorithm differs?

Also, I think that something representative of the physical world clearly should be higher than some included on the list. For instance, I am quite certain that hitting my thumb with a hammer hurts. And that is a greater certainty (at least without pain-killing drugs) than the efficiency of free markets.

Similarly, I am much more confident that socialism is a failure than I am that the free market is optimally efficient (in the real world, as opposed to the theorems of welfare economics); and, perhaps like JLA above, I am more confident that the South lost the Civil War, than that the North won it.

Another distinction is between random mutation + natural selection as an optimization algorithm and as a theory of biological evolution. I have more confidence in it as an optimization algorithm; but only slightly, because this confidence is based to a large extent on biological evolution providing a proof of concept.

2. Basic physical properties, in space and time. That rocks, when dropped, go downward, not upward, that two solid objects cannot occupy the same space, that water seeks its own level, that the sun is hot, that the stars move through the sky, and so on. These are the things, like ancient man, which I know most directly about the physical world. They constitute the vast majority of what I know. But my knowledge of the physical world is inherently dynamic. I do not perceive the world as a series of freeze-frames, but rather, as a flowing movie which only makes sense exactly because it keeps moving. In other words, my brain forms expectations about the future state of the physical world. The relationships between events in space and events in time are equally fundamental. But the essence of time is expectation or prediction which is inherently metaphysical since that which we predict does not (and may never) exist, yet it is what guides our actions (consider the lowly housefly which predicts the incoming swat of the magazine and makes a hasty retreat). In other words, abstraction (dare I say, metaphysics?) emerges from prediction about the physical world.

3. Other stuff. Logic, math, physics, and so on. These are all stylized/ritualized/formalized extensions of the basic properties of the physical world that I know through immediate sense perception. Most important is to realize that science is a subset of my immediate knowledge about the physical world… every theorem of science known to modern man is bound up in the simple act of throwing a rock. Similarly, mathematics is a subset of natural language, since every math theorem ever invented can, with sufficient effort, be translated to ordinary, natural language without loss of information but not vice-versa.

Or to make this operational: If I were to learn (from some unspecified miraculous source) that there is an inconsistency in the “inaccessible part” of arithmetic, I might not be as shocked as I think I’d be. Maybe even less shocked than if I learned that the theory of evolution is false.

You might be right, but I’m pretty sure you’re wrong (regarding your forecast of my reaction). I do have a more or less Platonist view of the natural numbers as existing independently of human invention, and if anything like that view is correct, then there can be no contradictions in any part of arithmetic. Now maybe that view is completely unjustified, or even completely wrong—but I continue to believe that I’d be shocked to the core by that discovery.