Recently, Slashdot posted an "Ask Slashdot" interview with Larry Wall (author of the Perl language). The entire interview is great and can be found here. From the interesting conversation in the "Sex and Politics" thread, I thought one of the questions might be food for thought. Just to clear things up ahead of time, I'm inclined to agree with him, but I'm sure others among you will strongly disagree. Anyhoo, without further ado:

7) Role of Religion?
by Anonymous Cowdog

I remember reading at some point that you are a Christian, and there have been suggestions that some of your early missionary impulses (a desire to do good, help others) are perhaps part of the zeal you have put into Perl over the years.

Preferring a scientific view, I am not religious, and have no desire to be. Perhaps there is a God, but if there is, I think he/she has no opposable thumbs; in other words, has no power to change anything; reality is just playing out according to the laws of physics (whatever those are).

Please tell us how in the world a scientific or at least technical mind can believe in God, and what role religion has played in your work on Perl.

A:

Well, hmm, that's a topic for an entire essay, or a book, or a life. But I'll try to keep it short.

When you say "how in the world", I take it to mean that you find it more or less inconceivable that someone with a scientific mind (or at least technical mind, hah!) could chooose to believe in God. I'd like to at least get you to the point where you find it conceivable. I expect a good deal of the problem is that you are busy disbelieving a different God than the one I am busy believing in. In theological discussions more than any other kind, it's easy to talk at right angles and never even realize it.

So let me try to clarify what I mean, and reduce it to as few information bits as possible. A lot of people have a vested interest in making this a lot tougher to swallow than it needs to be, but it's supposed to be simple enough that a child can understand it. It doesn't take great energetic gobs of faith on your part--after all, Jesus said you only have to have faith the size of a mustard seed. So just how big is that, in information theory terms? I think it's just two bits big. Please allow me to qoute a couple "bits" from Hebrews, slightly paraphrased:


You can't please God the way Enoch did without some faith, because those who come to God must (minimally) believe that:
A) God exists, and
B) God is good to people who really look for him.
That's it. The "good news" is so simple that a child can understand it, and so deep that a philosopher can't.

Now, it appears that you're willing to admit the possibility of bit A being a 1, so you're almost halfway there. Or maybe you're a quarter way there on average, if it's a qubit that's still flopping around like Shoedinger's Cat. You're the observer there, not me--unless of course you're dead. :-)

A lot of folks get hung up at point B for various reasons, some logical and some moral, but mostly because of Shroedinger again. People are almost afraid to observe the B qubit because they don't want the wave function to collapse either to a 0 or a 1, since both choices are deemed unpalatable. A lot of people who claim to be agnostics don't take the position so much because they don't know, but because they don't want to know, sometimes desperately so.

Because if it turns out to be a 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism.

And because if it turns out to be a 1, then you have swallow a whole bunch of flim-flam that goes with it. Or do you?

Let me admit to you that I came at this from the opposite direction. I grew up in a religious culture, and I had to learn to "unswallow" an awful lot of stuff in order to strip my faith down to these two bits.

I tried to strip it down further, but I couldn't, because God told me: "That's far enough. I already flipped your faith bits to 1, because I'm a better Observer than you are. You are Shroedinger's cat in reverse--you were dead spiritually, but I've already examined the qubits for you, and I think they're both 1. Who are you to disagree with me?"

So, who am I to disagree with God? :-) If he really is the Author of the universe, he's allowed to observe the qubits, and he's probably even allowed to cheat occasionally and force a few bit flips to make it a better story. That's how Authors work. Whether or not they have thumbs...

Once you see the universe from that point of view, many arguments fade into unimportance, such as Hawking's argument that the universe fuzzed into existence at the beginning, and therefore there was no creator. But it's also true that the Lord of the Rings fuzzed into existence, and that doesn't mean it doesn't have a creator. It just means that the creator doesn't create on the same schedule as the creature's.

If God is creating the universe sideways like an Author, then the proper place to look for the effects of that is not at the fuzzy edges, but at the heart of the story. And I am personally convinced that Jesus stands at the heart of the story. The evidence is there if you care to look, and if you don't get distracted by the claims of various people who have various agendas to lead you in every possible direction, and if you don't fall into the trap of looking for a formula rather than looking for God as a person. All human institutions are fallible, and will create a formula for you to determine whether you belong to the tribe or not. Very often these formulas are called doctrines and traditions and such, and there is some value in them, as there is some value in any human culture. But they all kind of miss the point.

"Systematic theology" is an oxymoron. God is not a system. Christians are fond of asking: "What would Jesus do in this situation?" Unfortunately, they very rarely come up with the correct answer, which is: "Something unexpected!" If the Creator really did write himself into his own story, that's what we ought to expect to see. Creative solutions.

And this creativity is intended to be transitive. We are expected to be creative. And we're expected to help others be creative.

And that leads us back (finally) to the last part of your question, how all this relates to Perl.

Perl is obviously my attempt to help other people be creative. In my little way, I'm sneakily helping people understand a bit more about the sort of people God likes.

Going further, we have the notion that a narrative should be defined by its heart and not by its borders. That ties in with my linguistic notions that things ought to be defined by prototype rather than by formula. It ties in to my refusal to define who is or is not a "good" Perl programmer, or who exactly is or isn't a member of the "Perl community". These things are all defined by their centers, not by their peripheries.

The philosophy of TMTOWTDI ("There's more than one way to do it.") is a direct result of observing that the Author of the universe is humble, and chooses to exercise control in subtle rather than in heavy-handed ways. The universe doesn't come with enforced style guidelines. Creative people will develop style on their own. Those are the sort of people that will make heaven a nice place.

And finally, there is the underlying conviction that, if you define both science and religion from their true centers, they cannot be in confict. So despite all the "religiosity" of Perl culture, we also believe in the benefits of computer science. I didn't put lexicals and closures into Perl 5 just because I thought people would start jumping up and down and shouting "Hallelujah!" (Which happens, but that's not why I did it.)

And now let's all sing hymn #42...

My problem with all theological arguments is that the believers often fall back on this as an axiom, as he does:

Because if it turns out to be a 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism.

And that's the problem with many theistic arguments. Far too many theists assume that atheists are immoral, and base much of their argument on that.

I have found in my travels that atheists can be just as moral/immoral as theists. And that there has been so much historically-documented immoral behavior committed specifically in the name of a given theism that you can't assume that any theism can be responsible for maintaining morality.

So if morality is dropped out of the argument list, we're back to bit "A" of his equation as the only question. And frankly, if bit "B" is meaningless, bit "A" becomes a no-op which doesn't affect the running of the individual program processes. I suppose that's circular reasoning, but it's no more circular than any of the arguments on the other side of the fence.

The problem is that religion (at least Christian religion) is all about faith. That means believing in something that is unprovable. There is simply no way to get there from the outside. No matter how hard someone wants to explain it or have it explained to them, you can't do it. Even with all of that logic he has built up around it, it comes down to one unprovable point.

And they would argue that it's not about proof. I liked how they handled that in the movie Contact. "Did you love your father?" "Of course." "Prove it."

Then again, they totally copped out on the ending of that movie. I still loved the movie, though.

In reply to:

---

Preferring a scientific view, I am not religious, and have no desire to be.

---

That is my favorite quote that anybody who professes that there is no God uses. One thing that I've noticed is that the more scientific you tend to be in either hobby or profession, the more you tend to lean toward there being a Supreme Being.

One of my physics teachers in school was a member (leader) of at least one (I think two, but I don't remember for sure) Nobel Prize winning team for their work in Quantum Physics/Mechanics (discovering neutrinos or something). He said that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know, and as you explore the creation of life and the universe, it becomes almost impossible to believe that there wasn't some form of external 'help' in creating it.

And I've seen statistics which say the opposite. Then again, 90 percent of statistics are made up, so that means nothing.

actually i think its more along the lines of 83%. but i have nothing to back that up with other than some dumb article at attrition.org and who knows where they stand to be able to say so.

And 95% of all statistics are caused by smoking

It's not about proof. At the same time, there are people that like to approach it as if it were provable.

I'm either an agnostic or an atheist (I know the difference, I just haven't decided which I am -- perhaps both), so I have no personal stake in this, but if it were provable, then it would no longer be religion, IMO, just worship.

And I can worship Pete Townshend as it is.

I don't collapse from shock when I meet a scientific person who is religious. While it can be argued from some angles that they are mutually exclusive, in day-to-day life I think that there are plenty examples of where they coexist.

I think Tony did a good job of pointing out the circulararity of Larry Wall's response, but one thing I'd say is that Larry Wall has probably given more to his fellow humans in the way of perl than Jim Hogan ever will in the way of anything, so I'd say that the supernatural beliefs he describes seem to be working for him and they're not bothering me (I haven't heard of him proclaiming any fatwahs or anything!).

As for the more scientific you tend to be in either hobby or profession, the more you tend to lean toward there being a Supreme Being. , I would not agree. Just to make it easy, I'd allow that a majority, say 80 percent of folks, believe in a supreme being of some sort. I have no solid basis for that number, but I'd even allow that perhaps a majority of scientists hold that belief. What I am very skeptical of, and which I think has been shown not to be the case through some survey research, is that being more scientific *increases* your chances of belonging to that 80 majority.

One distinction, probably better left to the alt.atheism FAQ (but I'll still make it) is that many folks such as myself don't think of ourselves as people who "profess that there is no God". I don't profess this. It is a losing proposition. Other folks then say "Prove It!". But there are a lot of things that I don't spend time professing don't exist, but which I don't tend to believe in due to lack of what I consider decent evidence. A few years ago a coworker quite seriously confided that there is a second, not-readily-visible moon circling the Earth (I looked it up. I guess, unbeknownst to me at the time, that this is what the term "Lilith" refers to.) Would it be useful for me to spend my time professing that Lilith doesn't exist? Probably not. Maybe I just have a crummy telescope!

Anyhow, I guess, I'll agree with your physics teacher that the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. Boy, oh, boy, now that I am slowly sliding into "incapable of learning" status, does that mean I will stop realizing how dumb I am??

I'm either an agnostic or an atheist (I know the difference, I just haven't decided which I am -- perhaps both)

I think by definition, you are agnostic if you haven't decided yet. Not that either label is meaningful or can accurately describe a person's view of the universe.

but if it were provable, then it would no longer be religion, IMO, just worship.

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. I do so love it when Douglas Adams pokes and prods at religion. Incidentally, that link includes Doug's clarification on the Atheist/Agnostic point.

And I can worship Pete Townshend as it is.

Amen, brother.

Thanks for the link Tony, that was a fascinating read.

>In England there is no big deal about being an Atheist. There’s just a slight twinge of discomfort about people strongly expressing a particular point of view when maybe a detached wishy-washiness might be felt to be more appropriate - hence a preference for Agnosticism over Atheism.

> We just don’t have that kind of fundamentalism in England.

I swear I am moving to Britain, they seem to be a little smarter and more tolerant over there, whereas here in America Atheism is pretty much socially unacceptable.

I don't think Larry Wall said atheists are amoral. Only that there are two places where human morality can well from, religion and hence by influence, culture -- or from the selfish gene. He does not state that one or the other is amoral, but rather, he would rather not be slaved to the selfish gene. I think the selfish gene concept comes from Dawkins, in any case, having a morality based out of religion is more "human." The only flaw in my argument is that I haven't decided whether culture originates from the selfish gene entirely, in which case, you could just as easily say that religion itself is encoded in the selfish gene.

Calvin

But by your definition, an agnostic must be in a state of pre-decision. Some, perhaps most, agnostics do not plan on ever deciding.

Calvin

I think The Selfish Gene is a hypothetical construct. In my experience, morality is natural even without religion, and with or without selfishness.

How is the selfish gene a hypothetical construct? It's no more theoretical than the statement that every single one of Tony Fabris' ancestors lived long enough to reproduce, every single last one of them all the way back to the beginning of time. Every single one of them managed to survive against all odds, one after the other.

The concept of the selfish gene is that it deploys whatever mechanisms/techniques necessary to ensure the survival of itself, creating such things as society and culture.
The expressed characteristics that allow for its survival and reproduction (morality, ethics, culture, society, as well as lower order characteristics like male/female differences, physical characteristics..) well out of the code. Religionists would rather believe that if genes do exist, they are no more than physical blueprints, and that the hand of God, or at least some higher being(s) have some play in the guidance of all of the above, and genetics is no more than physical blueprints if you will. (To some extent the nature vs. nurture argument is related).

So the question is not whether morality is natural or unnatural... Is morality the result of a complex mixture of genetics and society and culture, where society and culture also result from genetics ultimately? Or is morality not part of the selfish gene at all? If so, then morality and ethics may not be about selfishness of survival (survival of the individual, the family, culture and society) but rather originates from some higher unselfish place (let's call that religion). You might say then religion influences, or perhaps engenders society and culture and carries the blueprint (genetics) as part of this plan. In either case, it can be argued as natural.

Calvin

I always understood the Earth-Moon system to be more similar to a double planet binary configuration gravitationaly than a Planet-Moon system (e.g. Mars, Jupiter, etc). The moon does not revolve around the earth, but rather, they both revolve around a central point. It happens that this central point under the surface of the earth due to the larger mass of the earth. Is this ever moving "center point" mystical in any way? Not really. If the lunar orbit is eliptical, then this "black moon" as they call it would be a blank vacuum, no more special than say a lagrange point.

What's the big deal?

Calvin

What I meant is that "The Selfish Gene" can't possibly refer to a single gene. It's shorthand for referring to a complex set of genetic traits. And I would agree that genetics plays a major role in the morality of the human species and individual humans specifically. I'm just saying that morality comes naturally to us, and that it's not necessarily more natural to base morality on religion. Or selfishness.

At the same time, there is a school of thought which states that our human need for religion is also due to a set of genetic traits.

If the lunar orbit is eliptical, then this "black moon" as they call it would be a blank vacuum, no more special than say a lagrange point. What's the big deal?

I think the big deal happens when people start saying there's actually an object there. That we can't see. Riiiiight...

Ah. The term "selfish gene" is not meant to reference an actual physical gene, it's only a description of the human dna being selfish as a whole. It's a basic belief of any darwinist.

If morality comes naturally to us, the question is why? Is it because of some directed action from God, or is it because of directed action of selfish genetics? (e.g. morality ensures the survival of the community, and the community ensures the survival of the individuals, and thus as a long term protective strategy, it is a direct expression of the selfish gene). If however, the selfish gene is non-existent, and the genetic code is merely a physical blueprint, then the hand of God must be involved to propagate the species via the creation of things such as culture, society, morality, etc. To that effect, what you call natural morality is nothing more than the memes of morality from a religious society at large infecting the so-called non-religious. Spooky...

So besides Richard Dawkins, have you read Snowcrash?

Another school of thought simply states that God is just as likely to be directing the action from below as he is from above, as he is the God of all small things as well; things as small as DNA say.

Calvin

And any argument trying to say "our evolution is being subtly directed and manipulated by a supreme being" is self-defeating. On both sides of the argument.

Because if an omnipotent being can do something as huge as alter the course of evolution through his will, then there's no point in either (a) trying to find proof of God because he could insert or hide any proof or disproof he wanted, or (b) trying to view any natural processes from a scientific viewpoint because anything we discover could be changed by God.

This treads dangerously close to the idea of "oh, God created the earth 6,000 years ago with all those fossils already in the ground just to fool us"...

I think the big deal happens when people start saying there's actually an object there. That we can't see. Riiiiight...

It's funny you should mention that...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2251386.stm

Whoa, cool. I didn't know about Cruithne. The movie file here is really cool. Of course, that one we can see.

This treads dangerously close to the idea of "oh, God created the earth 6,000 years ago with all those fossils already in the ground just to fool us"...

I'm sure noone wants to get into the origins debate, but just a note to set the record straight:

Most biblical creationists believe that creation occured between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago and that the fossils came later during the Genesis flood. I'm not sure who you heard the "fossils already in the ground" thing from, but it's definitely not a representative viewpoint of most biblical creationists.

I'm not sure who you heard the "fossils already in the ground" thing from, but it's definitely not a representative viewpoint of most biblical creationists.

Right, I know that (and of course there's no point in me hashing over the flood arguments already presented at www.talkorigins.org ), but I was trying to make a different point.

Let me be more clear about the point I was trying to make...

Option 1: You can look at the universe from a purely scientific perspective, which is to try to discover the natural processes which formed the universe and the life around us, and to view these processes as the only important things worth knowing. These processes come from the basic laws of physics which are absolute. These laws don't change, although our understanding of these laws will change as we learn more and more about them.

Option 2: You can look at the universe from a purely theological perspective, which is to say that it was created by a supreme being, with everything created "in place" as we currently see it. He sends messengers in human form down to our planet every 500 years or so to make sure we're being good.

Option 3: You can take the half way point between 1 and 2, and say that a supreme being is subtly hiding his influence behind natural processes. The processes that we're observing aren't absolute, the will of a supreme being can bend these laws to suit his purposes similar to the way that Morpheus taught Neo to bend the laws of the Matrix.

Option 4: You can take the view that the natural laws that we observe in the universe, and the beginning of the universe itself, was created by a supreme being, but that he's just let everything roll from that beginning moment and is not altering the way things are going in realtime.

Although the creation-science people will deny it by trying to present flawed evidence, they're taking option 3. As are those who say that our evolution is being subtly "directed" by a supreme being. Both camps are saying the same thing, they're just saying it to different degrees. One camp is dead-set on finding tattered shreds of pseudo-scientific evidence proving the earth really was ...poof... created 6000 years ago and that the dinosaur fossils really are that young. The other camp is being a little looser about it and deferring to modern science with regard to the actual details of the age of our universe and its laws. But they're still hanging on to the idea that it's being "manipulated" and "observed" from outside and therefore prayer and worship are still important.

As far as I'm concerned, that's the same thing. Because from everything I've observed about how the world around me works, remotely-directing the evolution of a species without physically interacting with it would be just as much of an amazing feat as creating an entire planet in six days while fooling its inhabitants into thinking it's billions of years old. Both things would require an actual omnipotent God who was able to (for example) make things appear and disappear at will. And aside from illusionist's tricks and unconfirmed legends, we've not yet seen that kind of stuff happening. At least not in a way that gives us real evidence that it's there.

Arguing that an omnipotent God can hide his methods is, as far as I'm concerned, copping out of the argument. Because once you step over that line into "it's that way because God made it that way", you've just turned all points in the debate moot. Suddenly there is no way to prove or disprove anything. God can make evidence go poof if he wants. So there's nothing to argue about, no proof is good enough or bad enough to fight over. All you have left is (say it with me now)... faith.

Now, as far as option 4 is concerned... It's a no-op. If God isn't interacting with the universe and directing things in realtime, what's the point in worrying about him or giving him any thought? You can try to discover all the natural processes as in Option 1, but you're never going to find God that way because by definition, he's bigger and more powerful than the processes which govern our universe. And that concept becomes reducto ad absurdum anyhow, because you then have to ask yourself who created the creator.

Of course, to paraphrase Neil Peart, you can choose not to decide. But then you've still made a choice...

I admit it. I'm lazy. Too lazy to find the page that was linked from.

I assume that the thing with the spirograph-like orbit is Cruithne. I assume that the thing in the middle is the Earth and that the thing to the bottom is the moon.

What is the thing orbiting the moon, and what are the dots-in-a-circle that pass through the moon in an orbit around the Earth?

Or am I misinterpreting the whole thing?

I admit it. I'm lazy. Too lazy to find the page that was linked from.

It's here. According to that page, it's basically another moon. A very tiny one with an odd orbit. Technically, it's a near-earth asteroid. Nothing mysterious about it other than the cool orbit.

It can't be lilith, because if it is, it should have the same orbital period as the Moon itself.

Calvin

Option 1 is the Scientific Method.

Option 2 is the Theology

Option 4 is I believe the Spinoza hypothesis. Spinoza was an Italian philosopher, (i am paraphrasing this) who equated God to a watchmaker. The watchmaker only needs to make the watch once, and although you, as the wearer of the watch, might never have met, seen, or known the watchmaker, the watchmaker exists by the evidence of the watch.

Interestingly, cultural evidence is always being adapted to explain God. Spinoza, who lived during the mechanical age, explained and philosophized God using cultural objects. And perhaps farther back in time, mythology and oral history was used extensively to explain God (I have the Babylonian and sumerian creation mythology, gilgamesh, the Hebrew oral mythologies, etc, in mind). And perhaps today, there's quite a bit of scientific and psuedo scientific thought being incorporated into the "language" of explaining God.

As for Option 3: I think you'll find there is a very wide and varied number of philosophies all bound up here.

Calvin

Ok, lets remove the supreme being bit from the argument temporarily.

Do you agree that evolution is capable of being directed? (The manipulations should have a definite goal in mind).

Exhibit A: Geneticists and genetic engineering, monsanto, etc.

Exhibit B: Sexual reproduction, breeding, etc.

Do you agree there are mechanisms of evolution that is very suspicious?

Exhibit A: cosmic ray "point" mutations

Exhibit B: evolution as noted in the archeological record is not a continuous bit-by-bit change, as darwinists would say. Evolution generally occurs in big leaps and bounds all at once.

Exhibit C: cross over points are controlled by whom? When two different strands of Dna meet, and they decide to cross over, who determines the points and places, when and where code crosses over?

Exhibit D: bacteria has the ability to discover novelty, and isolate the code for it, and wrap it up, and transmit that to other bacteria. (for example, if tuberculosis discovers a genetic immunity to a drug, it will wrap it up and transmit it to other bacteria, in a sense, invoking the process of evolution from within, to without).

Exhibit E: Recent discoveries show that higher order organisms, plants, animals, humans, are capable of cross-individual genetic manipulation. (wow, what a shocker?) This is akin to somebody being born with immunity to AIDS, then passing that immunity onto other people by breathing on them. But yet, this does not happen all the time, or awful things would occur... yet, who, or what decides when an evolutionary change should be evoked across the whole species?

So interestingly enough, dna has the capability to 1) modify its own code 2) store a history of what its been doing for the past millions of years 3) can wake up, transmit messages to other members of its species, and other species to invoke subtle and non-subtle changes 4) is susceptible to apparantly "random" changes and can gather novelty via other methods such as sexual reproduction. Not all of the above is really understood.

I remember when I was in college, I studied genetic "algorithms" via computer simulations. It is possible for example, to put random nonsense code into a computer, and after a number of generations, have it duplicate complex algorithms such as quicksort, path finders, orbital mechanics type algorithms, fluid dynamics algorithms, etc. All on its own, without human intervention at all. It's as if some kind of "creation" is occuring sprouting literally out of nowhere.

Anyway, so let's roll back the concept of God back into this. Note: I am not talking about creationism, the evolutionary record or the judeochristian text. If there is anything at all we discovered from science, it's that the Universe as we know it is very mathematically consistent, and is not a universe of magic and fantasy. That said, God, if such a thing exists, is a mathematically consistent being. As such, that opens up a great many avenues of manipulation and direction (e.g. what is "randomness" and if God is in control of "randomness" to what extent does that lend itself towards direction of evolution?).

Anyway, I'm not saying God created the earth 6000 years ago. However, at the same time, there is neither the thisness or thatness that you seem to imply.

My premise is that since all that we know and experience and create is done through a kind of "genetic lens" -- so ubiquitously that if people were computers on a network, it's the code that writes the code for everything -- that you *have* to point your eye at this code. We currently don't actually know if God is involved, or not. And I know you're not saying that evolutionary direction/manipulation is not happening. But to say it's self-defeating to theorize a control entity is just as well as pointing to a text that says the world was created 6000 years ago and accepting it as such. Maybe it is or isn't? Who knows.

Calvin

My problem with all theological arguments is that the believers often fall back on this as an axiom, as he does:

Because if it turns out to be a 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism.

Having read, and re-read what Larry wrote there, I don't think he's falling back on that as being axiomatic. Looking at the statement in the greater context (the paragraph above), I think he was pointing out that a-religious (i.e. agnostic) people are unwilling to examine their faith because the possibility that morality may not be derived from some god is unpalatable, yet if there is a god, then they think they have to accept all the crap that comes along with "religion" -- crap which is just as unpalatable.

B doesn't have anything to do with morality -- it has to do with God taking care of those who search Him out. Thus, when you say "drop morality from the argument", that doesn't just leave A -- it leaves A and B, since B isn't about morality to start with. If A is 0, then B is meaningless. If A is 1, then B can be either 1 or 0. B is meaningless only in the absence of A.

Anyway, his point wasn't to argue about whether God exists, but to a) get an admission that the idea of God is conceivable, and that b) his concept of God is of one who desires creativity.

Just a thought...

Do you agree that evolution is capable of being directed?

No, not in the sense of being remotely directed by the sheer will-force of some unseen being. Evolution occurs via well-documented, observable, natural processes.

Exhibit A: Geneticists and genetic engineering, monsanto, etc.
Exhibit B: Sexual reproduction, breeding, etc.

Those require direct physical interaction with the life forms. A breeder or a genetic engineer can't direct a mutation by wishing for it, he's got to actively do something physical to the life form to bring about the change. And it's a lot of work, as anyone in the field will tell you, and it leaves evidence in its wake.

Do you agree there are mechanisms of evolution that is very suspicious?

No, I do not agree. I don't see anything suspicious about the mechanisms of evolution. Most of it is very amazing and quite awe-inspiring, but not suspicious. And none of it requires remote-control influence by a supreme being in order to be possible.

I hadn't heard of some of the specific "suspicious" examples you cited. Can you provide links to information on these? I will also dig around the talkorigins site to see if any of them are mentioned there.

But to say it's self-defeating to theorize a control entity is just as well as pointing to a text that says the world was created 6000 years ago and accepting it as such.

Right, my point is that the two are equal. Theorizing a subtle "control entity" is just as farfetched as the 6000-years-ago "poof".

As for Option 3: I think you'll find there is a very wide and varied number of philosophies all bound up here.

Right, and I consider them all to be equal, regardless of how far they lean towards theology or towards science. If a supreme being can willfully alter a single DNA molecule, then all of science becomes pointless because all of the things we've discovered about physics, chemistry, and biology can be ripped right out from under our feet at any time.

...because all of the things we've discovered ... can be ripped right out from under our feet at any time.

Yeah, and the scientists can rearrange the maze at will, without letting the mice know. It's still valid for the mice to know where the cheese is in the maze's current configuration, though.

You guys have it all wrong, we are descendant from the survivors of some 15,000,000 people who were brought to this planet around 2,000,000 years ago.

The ones exploded by a nuclear weapon in a volcano?

If so, then I haven't gotten that far yet... shhhh...

/me walks away sobbing

See, I thought you were making a Scientology reference. Whatever you're reading, that's probably not it. Unless you're working on your OTs.

I know nothing about Scientology... being somewhat of an Athiest myself. So no, that's not it.

I thought his response ("haven't gotten that far yet") was a perfect Scientology joke response. Figured you two were just having fun with the same topic.

Well, if you don't know anything about Scientology, then this is the best place to start

> Well, if you don't know anything about Scientology, then this is the best place to start

If you don't know anything about Scientology...consider yourself lucky.

Heh, yeah. Of course, if you don't know anything about it, then you're rather ripe for the picking, aren't you? Education is a good thing, then.

Would you like a free personality profile?

When I was in college the German government had written off Scientology as scam. Which is made even more interesting by the fact that Germany helps support all religion much more openly that other countries (cough, U.S.) Is there anyone from Germany who can comment about the present situation?

Yeah, hasn't Amway also been outlawed in Germany for pretty much the same reasons?

I like a government that doesn't put up with bullshit.

The last thing I heard in relation to this was a year or so ago when the German government required Microsoft to remove a piece of software from the basic Windows distribution (I believe it was the defrag utility, but I could be wrong) because it had been written by a Scientology-based contractor for Microsoft. So I'd say that they're still quite hard on them. Here's an article on it.

As far as I know, Amway is a legitimate company.

How do you explain http://www.amway.de/default.asp?lan=de ?

Calvin

I tried to follow the whole forest of links related to Scientology and it just made my head hurt. Ugh. Get away...

Calvin

Let me reword the question. Do you agree there are functions and mechanisms built into the process of evolution that *allow* external influence and direction of the outcome of evolution? My answer to this is a definite *yes*. Evolution by definition is a mathematic function peak finder based on an externalized solution set. The various functions so far discovered in both artificial, electronic and biological evolution are all "natural" functions that allow better solution finding.

Every living creature might be considered as an "island" of a particular instance of dna, so to throw in the idea that each of these islands can be directed to change from one or more, known and unknown places is a real shocker. It's as if each living creature is networked to each other. Speculation aside, one of the fundamental tenets that allows evolution to operate is the random walk. I won't go into in depth explanations of random walk solution finding, but the gist of it is the dependence on a random variable. The interesting thing about randomness, is nobody knows what randomness really is. You might say that evolution is wrapped up in observable repeatable science, which for the most part is true, but deep down inside, it requires this element of randomness. Randomness, the more you think about it, is like magic. You harder you try to explain it, the farther away the explanation is. Perhaps what we perceive as randomness is something external?

I really doubt you'll find much in-depth knowledge on evolution on any theological site. They tend to point their noses away and wag their fingers at the stuff.

The ability of bacterial dna to reprogram the bacterial dna in other bacteria is well documented since the 1960s. You can find lots of stuff anywhere as far as I know. I think the earliest experiment was with e coli. Somebody engineered a strain of e coli that is incapable of digesting sugar by damaging the b-galactosidase mechanism. They then introduced a strain of normal e coli into the dish, and within minutes, the normal e coli transmited data to the damaged e coli, causing their dna to instantly upgrade and gain access to the b-galactosidase function. the broken e coli compiled this live, that means the evolutionary jump occured in the live organism. Neat eh? And there are *many* other mechanisms for doing this. These functions form the basis for modern genetic engineering -- that is to say, scientists now piggyback their code on top of these mechanisms to reprogram and remake their own versions of anything. This is why genetically engineered crops and germs are so frightening to ecologists, because mechanisms of a trans-species nature exist, that allow "innovative" functions to appear outside the original species, even without reproduction, then they should be worried.

The recent news is simply that apparantly higher order organisms (plants, animals, humans) are capable of transmitting innovation as well. Rare as this may be, it happens. The speculation is that such transmission functions form the basis of the concept of evolutionary leaps and the explanation of why missing links exist. (The archeological record shows that evolution occurs all at once, across the entire species). Even in computer simulations, evolution looks like a step function. Here is a far fetched example: As weird as it may seem, if one dude in Arkansas is born with say, X-ray vision, in a matter of a couple of generations everybody else will have the ability. Yet, on the other hand, if another dude is born slightly taller, or as a faster runner, there is no evolutionary leap. When an innovative function is "discovered" during evolution, who decides that this function is useful for the species as a whole, in such a manner that the code for it is transmitted out? Who knows?

By the way, the funny thing about Science, is the hidden understanding that when the next best explanation is discovered, it will out of necessity supplant and rip out by the roots the old way. Perhaps nothing in Science can explain what came before the big bang, but not knowing does not cause the current explanation of things to poof away either.

Calvin

Wow, that's a lot of links. I haven't followed all of them yet, but I will as soon as I get some time. I'm ripping through the BBS in "quick" mode this morning and don't have a lot of time to reply, but let me respond quickly to one or two small points.

Do you agree there are functions and mechanisms built into the process of evolution that *allow* external influence and direction of the outcome of evolution?

Although I understand what you're trying to say, you're using metaphorical words such as "built into" that don't apply to evolution (it wasn't built). I agree that external environmental factors can influence the development of a species, that's the definition of evolution.

It's as if each living creature is networked to each other.

Only indirectly, in the sense that each living creature on this planet affects its environment, and that the environment affect the evolution of all species.

Speculation aside, one of the fundamental tenets that allows evolution to operate is the random walk.

But evolution isn't random at all. Assuming that randomness is the root cause of evolution is missing the point.

Somebody engineered a strain of e coli that is incapable of digesting sugar by damaging the b-galactosidase mechanism. They then introduced a strain of normal e coli into the dish, and within minutes, the normal e coli transmited data to the damaged e coli

Very interesting! Of course, this was with observed mechanisms, not through the external mind control of an unseen entity. I will try to read up more on this experiment. Fascinating.

The speculation is that such transmission functions form the basis of the concept of evolutionary leaps and the explanation of why missing links exist. (The archeological record shows that evolution occurs all at once, across the entire species).

Sorry, you can't start pulling out those old chestnuts when they've already been argued to death. I could get into a complete discusison about the fossil record, missing links, punctuated equilibrium, etc., but I'd just be re-hashing a bunch of old arguments. Suffice it to say that I don't subscribe to the idea that evolutionary leaps happen in a single, or even a few, generations. Nor do I think that any major trait can be naturally transmitted among higher life forms by DNA-carrying bacteria. I don't think I'm going to inhale the fallout from my neighbor's sneeze and my eyes will miraculously change color (and the color of my children's eyes). The observed evolutionary changes to which your refer were not caused by the kind of DNA programming you cited in the e.coli experiment. There are plenty more mundane explanations for those.

Oh, forgot to reply to one more point...

By the way, the funny thing about Science, is the hidden understanding that when the next best explanation is discovered, it will out of necessity supplant and rip out by the roots the old way.

This is not a hidden understanding. It is the most basic tenet of science itself. Science is constantly searching for better answers. Provided that there's testable evidence and that the questions are empirical ones.

Perhaps nothing in Science can explain what came before the big bang, but not knowing does not cause the current explanation of things to poof away either.

And just for the record, I'm not completely down with the whole Big Bang thing anyway. That's a pretty shaky one if you ask me. Our evidence about of the origins of the universe is sketchy at best. That's one of those areas of science where I expect to see changes in CW as time goes by.

I dunno...the whole thing smacks of intelligent design to me. If we were to remove the encumberances of religion and society and take a non-biased look at things, it is much more reasonable to attribute the highly complex interactions in nature to design than to random chance.

But then again, that would make us accountable to the designer, and we can't have that, can we....

I dunno...the whole thing smacks of intelligent design to me.

Which is one valid point of view. I will concede that the universe could have been designed and created by a hyper-intelligent being who defined all of the natural laws that we currently observe, and then set things in motion trillions of years ago.

However, there is no evidence to indicate that such a being is currently influencing events in real-time. The universe continues to function as if it is not being controlled from outside.

it is much more reasonable to attribute the highly complex interactions in nature to design than to random chance.

Again, making the mistake that nature as we observe it, and the evolution that created it, was somehow random. It wasn't. Evolution is not random, it is quite selective.

If you don't understand the mechanisms behind evolution, you might think that this is contradictory and therefore indicates intelligent design. It doesn't. In fact, the more that you understand about how natural selection works, the more that you realize that ID is an unnecessary hypothesis.

I was out for a week, and just as I entered this forum, my browser crashed so I'm now hand-sifting through posts. Sad aint it?

My way of thinking is this, many of the basic processes of evolution is well understood enough such that they can be functionalized and described algorithmically. In fact, this is done by GA (genetic algorithm) researchers all the time. It's known that not all the functions of evolution has been discovered, and often times biological discovery feeds computational GA work, and vica versa. That said, when I say some function is part of the evolutionary process, I speak algorithmically, not metaphorically. Now, where it gets semi-mystical is *all genetic algorithms* are non-deterministic. That means if you execute the same process, with the same conditions, you will never get the same path to the answer. Sometimes you do not get an "answer" in that sense of it.

Reason for this, is the random walk. Random, and the random-walk is not the same thing. Evolution is not "random numbers" it is more like a random walk. I'm going to have to call bullshit on the claim that the evolutionary-mechanism-of-gradual-change-such-that-eventual-discovereries-for-environmental-problems-are-kept is *not* based on a random walk. Note, I did not say the evolutionary process is random. (see link in previous message describing random walk).

You'd think that each living creature is only "indirectly" networked to each other, but if you think about it, it's another way of saying that the environment is the network! :-) I'm not saying dna is connected to other dna by 802.11b, but suffice to say not all the mechanisms for cross-dna communications have been discovered. I heard that only recently were prion-like molecules, sub viral in size, have been found delivering "packets" :-). But for the most part, the standard mechanisms of code transfer (plasmids, viral agents, etc) are old hat. Some theorists have gone as far to say that perhaps these cross-dna communication systems over time have unintentionally taken on a life of their own. For example, viruses may have been a chain-letter style messaging system that allows innovation to be passed onto a species as a whole no matter where they are physically, but over time has been damaged and converted into self-perpetuating code. We've all seen it on the Internet, but evidence to this effect lies in the so-called "unused" portion of dna. We've all heard of large sections of dna that supposedly does "nothing" -- and analysis of the inactive dna shows ancestral viral code, viruses built into the human dna that resemble wild viruses out there today. This inactive code is theorized to be inactive communications code, perhaps waiting to be called() by some unknown source.

Tony, how can you believe in evolution, and not believe in evolutionary leaps? Do you not believe the archeological record and the computational evidence to this? One of the basic experiments in computational genetic algorithms is evolution of quicksort. You have a population of N algorithms that you breed with the hope that they will be capable of sorting a string of letters. Some of the individuals in the population evolve into non-optimal sorting algorithms, and many thousands of generations later, the funniest thing happens is quicksort appears out of literally nowhere. It just appears. If you graph this, it looks exactly like a step function. Evolutionary leaps. It does not always happen, and there are theories to explain why this happens. And when it happens it happens in a single generation. Richard Dawkins claims it is because several independent algorithms develop gradually, and then when they accidentally fit together in one generation it pops into place. (e.g. development of the human eye, flowers that look like bees, etc). There are mathematic explanations (structure of the underlying solution leads to quantum leaps in the fitness function due to natural peaks and plateaus) and network theory (part of a problem solved in several places, is synthesized into a complete solution by way of communications, and so on. I will readily acknowledge there are many known and unknown mechanisms behind evolutionary leaps (or quantum jumps or whatever), with the most rare type in higher-order creatures being evolution within the same generation, followed by evolution in a single generation. But for lower-order creatures this is much more common. My theory is just that higher order creatures have more safety/stability cushions to overcome. Anyway, while you might not subscribe to the concept of evolutionary jumps, they happen, it's well documented, and in many cases explanable. Without bringing a "god" into the equation at all, consider that a mechanism for sudden change in the same or next generation is an incredibly beneficial survival tool eh? Who is to say the process for activating it isn't scientifically explanable? Personally I don't care either way, since I'm agnostic about it all, but I do know there is a big fat hole in our knowledge regarding this part of evolution, and if there's ever a God playing the species for suckers he would be right there. :-p

Calvin

Tony, how can you believe in evolution, and not believe in evolutionary leaps?

I know that there can be rapid changes in a given species, these are seen in the fossil record. I just don't think that they are due to an outside influence tweaking their genes by remote control or viral reprogramming, I think they evolved through normal processes. Some traits faster than others, I just don't think that an entire species simultaneously starts giving birth to a radically different set of offspring all at once. (Although a friend told me about a sci-fi story on that subject once... )

But that's the crux of it --> to have some outside "force" or "being" (say, from outer space) manipulating the outcomes of evolutionary processes is like you say, unlikely. However, the setup is clear, the evolutionary process has mechanisms to induce and propogate innovation, and the *signal* to store or forward such changes comes from within. Like I said, God is just as likely to be directing the action from below as he is from above, as he is the God of all small things as well. The impetus or command does not have to originate from "above" and can as easily originate from "within." And since this particular area of evolution is particularly sketchy, there is no proof for or against.

It's really amazing actually, that probably a few decades ago evolution was thought to occur by small point mutations, possibly induced by environmental (chemical, radiation, food) factors. Today we know "random" point mutations have little to no overall effect in the big picture. Cross-over and transmitted code have larger effects on the other hand.

I think darwinists in general have polarized into two camps, the gradualists (evolution is slow and steady...) and the rest of the folks who think it comes in spurts and spats. I personally think that gradual change can happen, but is actually the rarer of the two types. Evolution is a survialist technique, and if something awful happens, say, a meteor strike, that alters the environmental conditions enough, survival of the fittest is moot, because there is no way to cause several thousand generations to occur really...

Calvin

I'm not an evolutionary expert by any means, but I don't think that the two theories you present are at odds.

Consider that random genetic mutations occur. In salad days, everything is going well, and there's not much impetus for one mutant to be better off than any other, but since the mutations are still randomly occurant, as long as they don't cause any harm, they continue happening. Then, all of a sudden, something bad happens, as it is wont to do. Suddenly, those thousands of years of mutations have something to do, and vast changes seem to happen all at once, because only one set of mutations help survive that crisis, whereas there's just been slow genetic mutation that generates a diverse population that is suddenly culled to a great extent down to only one specific population.

Just my two cents, and it's probably got a major flaw in it, anyway.

Some more rambles:

The old school of evolution theorized that change occurs via point mutations over a long period of time. All the good stuff collects and the bad stuff doesn't. Simulations and papers show that point mutation is more likely to cause a point of failure than something good. Picture:

A stretched rubber sheet, with peaks, probably caused by poking broomsticks from underneath. Imaginary plants are allowed to grow, and their genetics are very simple: the dna describes their x,y position on the sheet, and they are more likely to reproduce if at a higher elevation. If they are too low, they die quickly. If they are high they live long enough to reproduce. If the descendents of these plants changed only via point mutations, what you end up with is a semi-evenly spread out population of plants. If they reproduced by breeding, then very quickly you end up with clumps of plants around the peaks. Sometimes a plant will appear on the very peak, but its offspring will be downslope for sure. (ever notice how an Einstein only appears rarely, and offspring of geniuses are not necessarily geniuses?). Evolution it seems can do just fine without random mutations mucking things over. If you combine the two in certain ratios you have the effect of producing a more dynamic bell curve around the base of the peak, you get more smarties, and more fools too. The fools will appear far away and will quickly die. Some papers I've read explain that the evolutionary functions in our genes allow a certain amount of mutation in certain cases. Reason seems to be that breeding causes a population to quickly coalesce around a peak, or evolutionary niche, and if the environment significantly changes the whole population dies.... unless there's a bunch of farther ranging individuals... or if an evolutionary leap occurs .

To illustrate the rarity of mutations... DNA is like plain-text source code. Each gene or dna fragment is a separate source file intended to do a certain thing. RNA is like a run-time compiler. It reads the DNA and produces run-time code. Proteins are like executing threads. The RNA, being the compiler, has a complex system for verifying the validity of the code, and ensuring the integrity of the code. If a checksum fails, then a self destruct sequence can and often is initiated to destroy the cell. The dead cell is returned to the heap and a known working cell is forked off to replace the dead one. Also, many, maybe all, functions have redundancies on top of redundancies by way of competing variants of code. If there is an attribute (e.g. skin color) it is often encoded 10 different ways and ten different shades, and they are all "executing" simultaneously. This is like reading the same file using several methods and averaging the results and discarding bad values. A point mutation in any one place has neglible effects. Hence, mendelian genetics or the binary theory of genetics is insufficient to explain why a dark person + a fair skin person does not produce either/or. So when a point mutation occurs, not only does it have to be beneficial, it also has to pass the checksums, compete against existing code, beat the averages, *and* occur in a gamete cell to produce the offspring. So...very rare.

Not only that, there exists genetic code that does nothing but prevent the compilation of other fragments of code. If it does compile, then it's the equivalent of a kill thread script, effectively suppressing the appearance of another fragment of code. My theory is evolution is equally, if not more, likely to occur by deletion rather than addition. If humans originally had gills (as evidenced by vestigial gills in fetuses), and an evolutionary advantage occured in a code fragment that suppressed the gill gene, then this says two things.... 1) sometimes things get better by removing bored code and 2) dna must look exactly like my hard drive-- i don't have a use for that anymore, uninstalled but will keep the original somewhere in C:\temp, maybe i'll need it someday... That means dna is not only current source code, it is it's own historical archive of previous known good code with a crazy system of preventing code from running. (hey! linux and windows xp both have lots of extra stuff installed, most of which never run).

So if dna is saddled with its own storage system (genetic memory), then it is not a big jump to state machine, and from state machine to computer. DNA is shown to be able to talk to other DNA so it is networked. If it has current stable code, a library of other code, ability to communicate, ability to compile and execute, ability to checksum and all sorts of neat stuff like that.... (this part is not proven, and hence, it is as likely to be God pushing bits around as any) it's not a huge jump to theorize:

1) since genes can be downloaded, why can't genes be downloaded all the time and stored.

2) why not analyze the current environmental conditions and pass such state around on a species basis. if the environment is gradually changing, insert snippet of code into offspring. if the offspring dies, oops, don't do that again. Since the systems are redundant, an extra gene to encode for skin color, e.g. (ability to tan darker) will average in. Since there seems to be a handful of code fragments for every function, it may be evidence of a parental program developing possibilities (e.g. why children are so different from parents sometimes?)

3) if environmental conditions *suddenly* change, look for an appropriate peice of code to answer the environmental conditions, e.g., does such code already exist in the dormant area? if so, activate it immediately. if the current individual doesn't die, transmit the discovery to the species and initiate an evolutionary leap.

Calvin

Programming DNA would take some mad coding skills.