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Author Topic: Sheer Dumb Luck  (Read 4999 times)

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hillsbororiver

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Sheer Dumb Luck
« on: December 20, 2007, 01:12:52 PM »

I thought I would share a portion of this with you, it is an article written by David Berlinski entitled "The Deniable Darwin." You can read the rest of it here;

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:W8uTIWFr1EoJ:www.arn.org/docs/berlinski/db_deniabledarwin0696.htm+david+berlinski&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=ca

Sheer Dumb Luck
 
Chance alone," the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Jacques Monod once wrote, "is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of creation."

The sentiment expressed by these words has come to vex evolutionary biologists. "This belief," Richard Dawkins writes, "that Darwinian evolution is 'random,' is not merely false. It is the exact opposite of the truth." But Monod is right and Dawkins wrong. Chance lies at the beating heart of evolutionary theory, just as it lies at the beating heart of thermodynamics.

It is the second law of thermodynamics that holds dominion over the temporal organization of the universe, and what the law has to say we find verified by ordinary experience at every turn. Things fall apart. Energy, like talent, tends to squander itself. Liquids go from hot to lukewarm. And so does love. Disorder and despair overwhelm the human enterprise, filling our rooms and our lives with clutter. Decay is unyielding. Things go from bad to worse. And overall, they go only from bad to worse.

These grim certainties the second law abbreviates in the solemn and awful declaration that the entropy of the universe is tending toward a maximum. The final state in which entropy is maximized is simply more likely than any other state. The disintegration of my face reflects nothing more compelling than the odds. Sheer dumb luck.

But if things fall apart, they also come together. Life appears to offer at least a temporary rebuke to the second law of thermodynamics. Although biologists are unanimous in arguing that evolution has no goal, fixed from the first, it remains true nonetheless that living creatures have organized themselves into ever more elaborate and flexible structures. If their complexity is increasing, the entropy that surrounds them is decreasing. Whatever the universe-as-a-whole may be doing -- time fusing incomprehensibly with space, the great stars exploding indignantly -- biologically things have gone from bad to better, the show organized, or so it would seem, as a counterexample to the prevailing winds of fate.

How so? The question has historically been the pivot on which the assumption of religious belief has turned. How so? "God said: 'Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."' That is how so. And who on the basis of experience would be inclined to disagree? The structures of life are complex, and complex structures get made in this, the purely human world, only by a process of deliberate design. An act of intelligence is required to bring even a thimble into being; why should the artifacts of life be different?

Darwin's theory of evolution rejects this counsel of experience and intuition. Instead, the theory forges, at least in spirit, a perverse connection with the second law itself, arguing that precisely the same force that explains one turn of the cosmic wheel explains another: sheer dumb luck.

If the universe is for reasons of sheer dumb luck committed ultimately to a state of cosmic listlessness, it is also by sheer dumb luck that life first emerged on earth, the chemicals in the pre-biotic seas or soup illuminated and then invigorated by a fateful flash of lightning. It is again by sheer dumb luck that the first self-reproducing systems were created. The dense and ropy chains of RNA -- they were created by sheer dumb luck, and sheer dumb luck drove the primitive chemicals of life to form a living cell. It is sheer dumb luck that alters the genetic message so that, from infernal nonsense, meaning for a moment emerges; and sheer dumb luck again that endows life with its opportunities, the space of possibilities over which natural selection plays, sheer dumb luck creating the mammalian eye and the marsupial pouch, sheer dumb luck again endowing the elephant's sensitive nose with nerves and the orchid's translucent petal with blush.

Amazing. Sheer dumb luck.

This is a brief biography of David Berlinski;

David Berlinski was born in New York City and educated at Columbia College and Princeton University.

Berlinski (Ph.D. in mathematics, Princeton University) is a lecturer and essayist. He is the author of Black Mischief (Harcourt Brace) and A Tour of the Calculus (Pantheon). An outspoken critic of Darwinism, he wrote an article, "The Deniable Darwin," that appeared in the June 1996 issue of Commentary and provoked a maelstrom of response both from participants at the Mere Creation Conference and from doctrinaire evolutionists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Berlinski was a longtime friend of the late Marcel Schützenberger, with whom he collaborated on the mathematical critique of Darwinism. Berlinski is a fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.

The author of works on systems analysis, differential topology, theoretical biology, analytic philosophy and the philosophy of mathematics, David Berlinski is the author as well of three novels, all of them dealing with the affairs of the redoubtable Aaron Asherfeld, and a number of shorter works of fiction and non-fiction. He is an accomplished poet.

David Berlinski has taught philosophy, mathematics and English at Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York, the University of Washington, the University of Puget Sound, San Jose State University, the University of Santa Clara, the University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University. In addition, he has taught mathematics at the Universite de Paris. He has been a research fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) in France. He has lectured at universities throughout the United States and Europe and at the Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, the IHES, IIASA, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Prague, and most recently at Oxford University.

Peace,

Joe


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Sorin

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Re: Sheer Dumb Luck
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2007, 10:06:20 PM »

Very interesting. Thanks Joe.
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musicman

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Re: Sheer Dumb Luck
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2007, 10:47:54 PM »

It is interesting to use entropy as another argument against evolution.  On the one hand you have a gigantic, self sustaining, fertile planet (closed system) acting on every form of life.  In my opinion, that should help enhance life progressively through time, until an intelligent force (no, actually here I mean mankind) drains the planet of its' resources and pollutes it with his reckless industry.  Only then do I believe entropy could begin on a planetary scale.

However, I remind myself that our own cells do not copy themselves exactly like the originals.  We know that every individual cell goes through entropy, breaking down through its life cycle.  That is not the issue.  The issue is that the most healthy our cells ever were in our life, did not duplicate themselves perfectly.  Each generation of cells is ever so slightly less organized (or just weaker) than the previous one (much like comparing a printed copy to the original).  This, I understand, is an important cause of our aging.  Another example of entropy.

What is this non-scientist (me) trying to say?

The first hypothesized cell had to have made numerous copies of itself.  Those copies would have done the same thing throughout the ages of "evolution".  Generations of cells would continue to lose order until they no longer exist.  They would not and could not gain complexity over the long haul.  I think after 3.8 billion years, cellular life would be a thing of the distant pass.  In closing, I now believe that entropy stands as a good argument against the hypothesis of evolution.

Don't try to publish this crude work.  I am only a musician, and I pulled this information out of my proverbial butt. 
« Last Edit: December 20, 2007, 11:02:31 PM by musicman »
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hillsbororiver

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Re: Sheer Dumb Luck
« Reply #3 on: December 21, 2007, 10:44:06 AM »

You are welcome Sorin!

Thanks for another interesting response musicman!  ;)

Peace Brothers,

Joe
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musicman

  • Guest
Re: Sheer Dumb Luck
« Reply #4 on: December 22, 2007, 12:35:14 PM »

It is interesting to use entropy as another argument against evolution.  On the one hand you have a gigantic, self sustaining, fertile planet (closed system) acting on every form of life.  In my opinion, that should help enhance life progressively through time, until an intelligent force (no, actually here I mean mankind) drains the planet of its' resources and pollutes it with his reckless industry.  Only then do I believe entropy could begin on a planetary scale.

However, I remind myself that our own cells do not copy themselves exactly like the originals.  We know that every individual cell goes through entropy, breaking down through its life cycle.  That is not the issue.  The issue is that the most healthy our cells ever were in our life, did not duplicate themselves perfectly.  Each generation of cells is ever so slightly less organized (or just weaker) than the previous one (much like comparing a printed copy to the original).  This, I understand, is an important cause of our aging.  Another example of entropy.

What is this non-scientist (me) trying to say?

The first hypothesized cell had to have made numerous copies of itself.  Those copies would have done the same thing throughout the ages of "evolution".  Generations of cells would continue to lose order until they no longer exist.  They would not and could not gain complexity over the long haul.  I think after 3.8 billion years, cellular life would be a thing of the distant pass.  In closing, I now believe that entropy stands as a good argument against the hypothesis of evolution.

Don't try to publish this crude work.  I am only a musician, and I pulled this information out of my proverbial butt. 

Then again, why do viruses appear to endlessly copy themselves and mutate?  Why do single celled creatures thrive today?  Don't think I had better use my above argument until I get more information.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2007, 10:42:07 PM by musicman »
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Vangie

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Re: Sheer Dumb Luck
« Reply #5 on: January 17, 2008, 06:56:29 PM »

Musicman and Joe,
Very interesting reading and thoughts.  Musicman, if you don't watch it you're gonna grow a third proverbial butt to pull another idea out of.  :D  (Hope that came off as funny.  Sometimes humor gets lost in the typlation, and I'm new here--don't want to rub my new family members the wrong way.... :o Oops I did it again...just don't call me Brittany ;D )

You know, I'm so looking forward to Ray's Nashville conference which is gonna shed a whole lot of light on what the scriptures actually say about all this.  Hope to see you both there again.  (I was sitting in front of you Musicman in Mobile!)
Love,
Vangie
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