Saladin's Stumbling Start

I am reading a debate between Young-Earth Creationist Duane Gish and Evolutionist Ken Saladin. Gish has a Ph.D. in biochemestry from UC Berkeley and Saladin has a Ph.D. in parasitology from Flordia State.

Early in Saladin's opening comments he states:

"...science is empirical. That means it's based entirely on things that can be observed. Science is not based on revealed truth or idle speculation."

The first link in his chain of evidence for Evolution is the well-know story of the peppered moth:

"In any college biology textbook you can read the story of the peppered moth, which made a visible evolutionary change in a few decades under the influence of pollution and predators. That's what evolution is: the ability of a population to adjust genetically to environmental changes."

I assume Saladin relates the peppered moth story simply because it is well-known. However, I was surprised that he gives the peppered moth such a high profile (Exhibit #1, one minute into a 45 minute introduction). Why?

1) Because the peppered moth experiments Bernard Kettlewell conducted in the 1950s have been shown (by devout Darwinists) to have serious methodological flaws.

2) The experiments have no relevance to the controversial Darwinian claim of explaining how species originate.

3) In order to extrapolate proof of Darwinism from what valid evidence we can gather from the peppered moth (if there is any) requires a truckload of the very speculation Saladin labels anti-empirical and anti-scientific.

Now Saladin gets a pass on the first point. The peppered moth story was not widely debunked until the late 1990s; the debate in question occurred in 1988. However, I highlight the debunking since the peppered moth story is still widely purported to be clear evidence for—if not proof of—Darwinian macroevolution.

This brings me to my second point. Even if we overlook the problems with Kettlewell's experiment, what does it teach us about evolution? As the moth's environment changed from lighter lichen-covered trees to darker soot covered, lichen-free trees, the darker moths became a greater percentage of the general peppered moth population, probably because the lighter moths fell prey more easily to birds. From this we are supposed to be convinced that all the diversity of life on earth could spring forth from one primitive form. But this story sheds no light on the origin of either the light or the dark moths. From the industrial revolution to the mid-20th century the darker moths survived in greater numbers, but the members of the species experienced no evolutionary change whatsoever. Genetically, they exited the period of evolution exactly as they had entered it. After Clean Air laws passed, the environment reverted back to favor the lighter moths, and, as a result, their percentages increased. The peppered moth story may serve as an example of how a species may go extinct, but what does it tell us about how species arise, which is what Darwinism is purported to do?

So how did the fabled Peppered Moth become Exhibit #1 in the case for Darwinism? By way of that noxious mixture of revealed truth and idle speculation. In this case the "revealed truth" is that God does not exist, therefore, life must have evolved from non-living matter by purely naturalistic means. The idle speculation is that any variation within a population brought on by environmental conditions is evidence that large scale genetic changes are also possible in the same way—despite the fact that the empirical evidence gathered throughout human history shows that such variation has narrowly defined limits even when guided by intelligent minds under ideal conditions.

So why does Ken Saladin give such prominence to such flimsy evidence? Could it be that's all he has? I have little expectation that better evidence is forthcoming.

Darwin's Doubt Redux

[Like a fly repeated battering itself against a window, I'm revisiting the topic of the dubious assumption that naturalistic evolution gives us good reason to think our beliefs are true.]

"With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

- Charles Darwin, in a letter to William Graham (Down, July 3, 1881), in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin (London: John Murray, 1887), Volume 1, pp. 315-16.

Darwin was no intellectual slouch. If this "horrid doubt" could have been resolved simply by testing our convictions (or more generally, our cognitive faculties from whence our convictions spring) to determine their trustworthiness then why should Darwin have this concern? There are at least two reason why Darwin's doubt can't be addressed by testing. First, and most obviously, it begs the question, since it calls on us to assume the soundness of our cognitive faculties so they may adequately serve to judge the soundness of those self-same cognitive faculties. Second, testing our convictions does not address the core issue which is not the trustworthiness of our convictions per se, but rather their trustworthiness given Darwin's hypothesis of naturalism, operating within the confines of his evolutionary theory.

I think our convictions (or beliefs) are indeed trustworthy as a result of our having been created by a rational Mind who endowed us with a share of His own rationality. Given a rational Creator and His bestowing of rationality upon humans, it's expected that our beliefs would be by-and-large trustworthy. Does naturalistic evolution likewise lead to trustworthy beliefs? Darwin doubted it. I doubt it. So does noted philospher Alvin Plantinga. He summarizes his argument in the article, "Evolution vs. Naturalism: Why they are like oil and water" from the July/August 2008 issue of Books & Culture.

The first thing to see is that naturalists are also always or almost always materialists: they think human beings are material objects, with no immaterial or spiritual soul, or self....According to materialists, beliefs, along with the rest of mental life, are caused or determined by neurophysiology, by what goes on in the brain and nervous system. Neurophysiology, furthermore, also causes behavior....[What] evolution tells us is that our behavior (perhaps more exactly the behavior of our ancestors) is adaptive; since the members of our species have survived and reproduced, the behavior of our ancestors was conducive, in their environment, to survival and reproduction. Therefore the neurophysiology that caused that behavior was also adaptive; we can sensibly suppose that it is still adaptive. What evolution tells us, therefore, is that our kind of neurophysiology promotes or causes adaptive behavior, the kind of behavior that [results in our] survival and reproduction.

Now this same neurophysiology, according to the materialist, also causes belief. But while evolution, natural selection, rewards adaptive behavior and penalizes maladaptive behavior, it doesn't, as such, care a fig about true belief. As Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the genetic code, writes in The Astonishing Hypothesis, "Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truth, but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive and leave descendents."

...

Consider a frog sitting on a lily pad. A fly passes by; the frog flicks out its tongue to capture it. Perhaps the neurophysiology that causes it to do so, also causes beliefs. As far as survival and reproduction is concerned, it won't matter at all what these beliefs are: if that adaptive neurophysiology causes true belief (e.g., those little black things are good to eat), fine. But if it causes false belief (e.g., if I catch the right one, I'll turn into a prince), that's fine too. Indeed, the neurophysiology in question might cause beliefs that have nothing to do with the creature's current circumstances (as in the case of our dreams); that's also fine, as long as the neurophysiology causes adaptive behavior. All that really matters, as far as survival and reproduction is concerned, is that the neurophysiology cause the right kind of behavior; whether it also causes true belief (rather than false belief) is irrelevant.

...

We must suppose, therefore, that the belief in question is about as likely to be false as to be true; the probability of any particular belief's being true is in the neighborhood of 1/2. But then it is massively unlikely that [one's] cognitive faculties... [would] produce the preponderance of true beliefs over false required by reliability. If I have 1,000 independent beliefs, for example, and the probability of any particular belief's being true is 1/2, then the probability that 3/4 or more of these beliefs are true (certainly a modest enough requirement for reliability) will be less than [10 to the -58th power]. And even if I am running a modest epistemic establishment of only 100 beliefs, the probability that 3/4 of them are true, given that the probability of any one's being true is 1/2, is very low, something like [.000001 to the 7th power].

...

If evolutionary naturalism is true, then the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable is also very low. And that means that one who accepts evolutionary naturalism has a defeater for the belief that her cognitive faculties are reliable: a reason for giving up that belief, for rejecting it, for no longer holding it. ... No doubt she can't help believing that they are; no doubt she will in fact continue to believe it; but that belief will be irrational. And if she has a defeater for the reliability of her cognitive faculties, she also has a defeater for any belief she takes to be produced by those faculties—which, of course, is all of her beliefs. If she can't trust her cognitive faculties, she has a reason, with respect to each of her beliefs, to give it up. She is therefore enmeshed in a deep and bottomless skepticism. One of her beliefs, however, is her belief in evolutionary naturalism itself; so then she also has a defeater for that belief. Evolutionary naturalism, therefore... [is] self-refuting, self-destructive, shoots itself in the foot. Therefore you can't rationally accept it. For all this argument shows, it may be true; but it is irrational to hold it.

...

The argument isn't an argument for the falsehood of evolutionary naturalism; [or even, may I add, that our cognitive faculties are not, in fact, reliable] it is instead for the conclusion that one cannot rationally believe that proposition. Evolution, therefore, far from supporting naturalism, is incompatible with it, in the sense that you can't rationally believe them both.

Hit it with "The Origin of Species"

(In response to cyberkitten.)

How do evolutionists react to scientific evidence when it conflicts with their metaphysical committments? Here is one representative example excerpted from Darwin's God by Cornelius G. Hunter (Brazos Press, 2001) 69-71.

***
One problem with the fossil evidence is its abrupt character. If we are to believe that evolution occurred, then according to the fossil record large evolutionary change probably happened in relatively short periods, with little or no change in between....Paleontologists estimate that over the last 600 million years the major groups in the fossil record made abrupt appearances....As one recent paleontology text put it, "The observed fossil pattern is invariably not compatible with a gradualistic evolutionary process." There is a problem either with the fossil record or the idea that evolution is gradual. To make the data compatible with the theory, "undiscovered fossil forms can be proposed" or "unknown mechanisms of evolution can be proposed." But neither of these ad hoc hypotheses is known to be true or untrue. (1)

Such ad hoc hypotheses are often used by evolutionists to try to explain the "Cambrian Explosion"...[which is] estimated to have taken place almost 600 million years ago over a period of no greater than five million years, it initiated virtually all the major designs of multicellular life with barely a trace of evolutionary history. In a geological moment, the fossil species went from small worm-like creatures and the like to a tremendous diversity of complex life forms, including virtually all of today's modern designs.

Evolution did not predict, nor can it provide a detailed explanation for, abruptness in the fossil record. But evolutionists are not alarmed, for the Cambrian Explosion does not refute evolution. They point out that observed rates of small-scale change are sufficient to account for the abrupt changes observed in the fossil record.

And how do evolutionists measure these rates of change? They measure rates of small-scale changes within species. For example, traits in guppies, such as growth patterns, were found to change when the guppies were placed in a new environment. The guppies, of course, were still guppies, but evolutionists argue that the rate of change observed is theoretically sufficient to account for any of the abrupt changes seen in the fossil record. We could argue, against the evolutionists, that there is no justification for assuming that such small-scale changes fall into the same category as large-scale changes. But it is important here to understand the thrust of the evolutionists' argument. They are not showing that evolution is compelling or even likely; they are merely saying that evolution is not proved false by abruptness in the fossil record.

It certainly is true that one cannot use biology's big bangs [vis. Cambrian Explosion] to absolutely disprove evolution, but this simply points out how adaptable evolution is to whatever evidence comes along. One might think that evolution requires evidence of slow, gradual change, but in fact evolution can also accommodate abruptness in the fossil record. Why should we accept a theory that does not provide compelling explanations or bold predictions but rather molds itself to whatever evidence comes along?

Rather than being falsified by abruptness, evolution simply adopts it. We are told that big bangs like the Cambrian Explosion do not call evolution into question; they define it. They help answer the question how evolution occurred, not whether it occurred. For [Geneticist Steve] Jones...the Cambrian Explosion is a failure not of Darwin's theory but of the fossil record. Yes, for some reason shells appeared all of a sudden, but they must have evolved from soft shell creatures that leave no mark on the geological record.(2)

The fact that the Cambrian Explosion does not refute evolution does not mean that the abruptness problem is resolved. There are all sorts of unlikely theories that otherwise cannot be falsified. What science needs are likely explanations for its observations. And the array of vague explanations about how evolution could have produced big bangs such as the Cambrian Explosion does little to help. Their speculative nature reveals what little hard evidence there is that evolution is the right explanation and, in spite of what evolutionists maintain, how big a problem the Cambrian Explosion is for evolution.

(1) T.S. Kemp, Fossils and Evolution, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 16.
(2) Steve Jones, Darwin's Ghost (New York: Random House, 2000) 207.

The Argument Against Naturalism v1.1

Is it likely, given naturalistic evolution, that our cognitive faculties (minds, brains, or whatever else might be involved) are reliable in that they produce true beliefs? In order to present the argument properly, or at least as best I can, I will broadly define the main ideas in question.

First, evolutionary theory maintains that all forms of life , including we humans, have developed from simple single-celled organisms by the processes of natural selection, genetic drift working on genetic variation, and, most popularly, random genetic mutation. Second, naturalism states that there are no supernatural beings, there is no God to direct the evolutionary process in any way.

So what is the probability (P) that our cognitive faculties are reliable (R) given the conjunction of naturalism (N) and evolutionary theory (E)? Stated as an equation it's P(R/N&E).

In the previous post I mentioned that Darwin himself had doubts that this probability was very high. It may be more accurate to say he was worried the probability was very low.

Why would Darwin harbor such doubt? Patricia Churchland explains:

“Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism’s way of life and enhances the organism’s chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.” (Churchland's emphasis)

In the previous post cyberkitten objected, saying that we can test our cognitive faculties (CF) to determine if are indeed producing true beliefs. My reply was that relying on the deliverances of our CF in order to verify our CF is pragmatically circular. Either way it's beside the point. If Timmy wants to prove that Santa Claus brought him an X-Box for Christmas, by verifying that it indeed is in his room he hasn't shown us anything relevant to our question: did Santa bring it?

This conversation is not about our CF per se, but rather, if what we know about naturalistic evolution is accurate, does that knowledge give us any reason to trust our CF as the output of that process?

Simply put, is P(R/N&E) high, low, or inscrutable?

An Argument Against Naturalism

Richard Dawkins: "Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

Charles Darwin: "With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"

Karl Popper: "Since we have evolved and survived, we may be pretty sure that our hypotheses and guesses as to what the world is like are mostly correct."

W.V.O. Quine: "Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind."

Patricia Churchland: "The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive...Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."

So who is right?

Darwin and Churchland propose that the probability of human cognitive faculties' being reliable, given that they've have been produced by evolution is low. The ultimate purpose or function of our cognitive faculties, if indeed they have a purpose or function, will be survival—of individual, species, gene, or genotype. But then it is unlikely that they have the production of true beliefs as a function. So the probability or our faculties' being reliable, given naturalistic evolution, would be fairly low.

Popper and Quine, on the other side, judge that probability fairly high.

What do you think? I was planning on going through Alvin Plantinga's entire argument against naturalism, but, since I hate to read long posts I guess probably shouldn't write one. It might even be better to let the argument unfold, err...., naturally.