Justice Janice Brown is a justice in the old tradition of actually abiding by the Constitution, and is of a strongly libertarian bent. What follows are a few choice quotes from Janice Brown.
Attempting to smear her, the AFL-CIO has generously provided a splended listing of some of her best decisions. Here are some of the most atrocious things that Brown has done, according to the AFL-CIO:“[a]rbitrary government actions which infringe property interests cannot be saved from constitutional infirmity by the beneficial purposes of the regulators.” — Santa Monica Beach, Ltd. v. Superior Court (1999)
“Theft is still theft even when the government approves of the thievery…The right to express one’s individuality and essential human dignity through the free use of property is just as important as the right to do so through speech, the press, or the free exercise of religion.” — San Remo Hotel v. City and County of San Francisco (2002)
- Banning Affirmative Action. Brown authored an opinion that effectively ended meaningful affirmative action in California. Hi-Voltage Wire Works, Inc. v. City of Jan Jose, 12 P.3d 1068 (2000). Brown’s opinion was severely criticized, both on and off the court, for its harsh rhetoric and its suggestion that affirmative action resembled racist and segregationist laws that predated landmark civil rights laws.
- Denying Effective Remedies to Victims of Unlawful Discrimination. Brown would have barred administrative agencies from awarding compensatory damages for emotional distress in race discrimination cases. Konig v. Fair Employment and Housing Comm’n, 50 P.3d 718 (2002). While couching her decision in separations of powers language, Brown disparaged administrative agencies and implicitly questioned their ability to fairly assess damages, saying that “administrative agencies [are] not immune to political influences, [and] they are subject to capture by a specialized constituency.” 50 P.3d at 732. Brown was the only justice to take this position. And in Aguilar v. Avis Rent-a-Car, 980 P.2d 846 (1999), Brown authored a dissenting opinion that would have struck down, on First Amendment grounds, an injunction that instructed a supervisor not to use racial epithets against Latino employees. The injunction was issued by a trial court judge after the employer was found liable by a jury for maintaining a discriminatory hostile work environment for Latino employees.
- Barring Civil Rights Claims. Brown dissented in a civil rights case and said the plaintiff’s race and age bias claims should have been thrown out as preempted by federal banking law. Peatros v. Bank of America, 990 P.2d 539 (2000).
- Allowing Mandatory Arbitration Agreements Even If Employees Must Pay for the Cost of Arbitration. Brown authored an opinion saying that she would allow employers to require employees to agree to compulsory arbitration of employment claims (such as discrimination claims or unpaid overtime claims) even if those agreements allowed arbitrators to impose some or all of the cost of the arbitration on the employee. Armendariz v. Foundation Health Psychcare Servs., 6 P.3d 669 (2000). The majority of the court ruled that a mandatory arbitration agreement containing such a provision would be invalid, because it would discourage employees from exercising their right to bring claims against their employers.
- Protecting Private Property Rights at the Expense of Affordable Housing Measures. Brown dissented from a decision that upheld the City of San Francisco’s determination that the owner of a residence hotel needed to retain affordable housing or contribute to an affordable housing fund as a condition of converting its property to a tourist hotel. Brown wrote a sarcastic and blistering dissent, calling the city’s decision “theft,” “extortion” and an unconstitutional “taking” of the hotel owner’s private property. San Remo Hotel v. City and County of San Francisco, 41 P.3d 87 (2002). Brown’s opinion shows that she is skeptical of government action when it impacts private property rights—a view which, if adopted, would put at risk many consumer, environmental and worker protection measures.
- Protecting Private Property Owners from Expressive Activity on their Property. Brown authored an opinion that took a narrow view of the California Constitution’s free speech protections, imposing a “state action” requirement as a condition of those protections, even though such a requirement does not appear in the language of the California Constitution. As a result, tenants in a huge residential apartment complex were barred from distributing a tenant newsletter to their neighbors. Golden Gateway Center v. Golden Gateway Tenants Ass’n, 29 P.3d 797 (2001). Employers are now using the decision to try to keep union organizers away from their workplaces.
- Chilling E-mail Communication with Employees. Brown dissented from a ruling that a company could not sue an ex-employee under the tort of trespass after the ex-employee sent e-mails critical of the company to his former co-workers. The court majority said the company could not sue because there had been no actual damage or disruption to the company’s e-mail system. Brown would have allowed the lawsuit even in the absence of such damage. Intel Corp. v. Hamidi, 71 P.3d 296 (2003). Had Brown’s view been adopted, companies throughout California could have used trespass laws to shut down group e-mail contact from outside individuals or organizations.
- Denying Schoolteachers Timely Information About Their Employment Status. In Kavanaugh v. West Sonoma County Union High School, 62 P.3d 54 (2003), Brown authored a dissent that would have allowed school districts to notify teachers of their status well after they began work, meaning that new hires could be subjected to “bait-and-switch” tactics by school employers. The court majority ruled that applicable statutes require school districts to notify teachers of their status (e.g., temporary, probationary, etc.) on their first day of work. Knowledge of this status is important because different categories of teachers have different levels of job security.
- Undermining Health and Safety Protections. Prior to joining the California Supreme Court, Brown served on the California Court of Appeal. There, she authored an opinion that would have invalidated a state law that required paint companies to help pay for screening and treatment of children exposed to lead paint. Brown’s opinion was later overturned by the California Supreme Court. Sinclair Paint Co. v. Board of Equalization, 49 Cal. App. 4th 127 (1996), rev’d, 937 P.2d 1350 (1997).
It would be difficult to make a stronger case for Justice Brown than the AFL-CIO has done here by this bullet-point listing. In opposing “affirmative action”, Brown is supporting property rights and the right of freedom of association. Likewise in opposing the gravy-train that comes from “discrimination lawsuits”, expecially when “emotional distress” is claimed. Brown supports the right of companies to refuse to pay for the costs of employee-disputes; it is one thing to say that employees have a right to bring a claim against their employers, and entirely another to say they have a right to force their employers to pay for the cost of bringing those claims.
Judge Brown rightly argued that forcing the Remo Hotel to contribute to an “affordable housing fund”, as a condition of allowing it to convert its property to a tourist hotel, was theft, extortion, and unconstitutional taking. She is also rightly argued that freedom of speech doesn’t mean the right to freedom of speech on someone else’s property: no-one has the right to step on my property and start “freely expressing themselves”, whether my property is my yard or my business.
Even her argument in favor of allowing Intel to sue a former employee for sending e-mails critical of Intel to then-current Intel employees was justiable: the e-mail server which the then-current employees used was the property of Intel; after the former employee was asked to stop trespassing on Intel’s property, they had every right to sue him (whether or not the damages could be significant is another matter). Furthermore, in focusing on damage to the e-mail system, those from whom Brown was dissenting were attempting to make an end-run around the fact that costs are subjective. Likewise, Brown supports property rights in opposing laws requiring paint companies to help pay for screening children exposed to lead paint. Should the companies that make knives, oven burners, mercury thermometers, gasoline, and other things that children shouldn’t be around also be required to pay for the treatment of children who were exposed?
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It is partially correct that there hasn’t been much success predicting future evolution. No-one has been able to predict things with the certainty that we can do in physics. However, that is a completely unreasonable demand. The system that the theory of evolution would have to predict is much much more complex than what relativity or quantum physics has to predict. Furthermore, people have been able to predict certain general trends (in the evolution of HIV for example).
There are numerous lines of evidence supporting evolution as a theory (the explanation of the mechanism, e.g., natural selection) and as a fact (the observed empirical reality, from phylogeneitc evidence and the fossil record). Someone who would deny this is not well-acquainted with the literature (which is perfectly expected, given the numerous and complicated literature on the topic).
Tracy, thank you for that clarification. That’s much better than implying that the theory of relativity is “just a theory”. If evolution is a shaky theory, there still remains the question of alternative theories, and how much or little evidence exists for those.
David, their are actuall problems with the fossle record though. Their are many holes in it. And Natural sellection can account for micro-evolution, but it can’t account for how the individual cell itself appeared in the first place. For instance the simple process of blood clotting involves over 900 different hormones, protiens and amino acids in order to work property. If they weren’t all in place from the onset — prior to completion the animal would die of either the complete clotting of it’s enire body or dieing because of hemophiliac complications. These are systems that simply couldn’t have evolved from darwinian or neo-darwinian piecemealling one new change at a time gradually. There are many such examples. of things like this. So unless each of these systems just randomly appeared all at once, (which contradicts at least Darwinian theories of evolution) any a given animal would have died long before any such mutation would be of benifit to him — indeed, It would be harmfull untill the animal until it was completed. I find that believing such spontanious complex systems appearing. And needing to appear thousands of times (for their are at least that many irreducibly complex processes) even for a simple mammel is a bit absurd.
Michael. You’re welcome. I happen to think that there can be a valid hypothisis of creation. Scientists should be skeptical of both evolution and creation and have an open mind to study the veracity of both creation and evolutionary claims of creation. I happen to believe their is evidence of some sort of intellegent design — and that it could be presented as an alternative theory.
Tracy
I like a scientific theory supported by evidence. So did poor old Paleontologist and evolutionist Niles Eldredge. Here are a couple of his thoughts:
“We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports [the story of gradual adaptive change], all the while really knowing that it does not.”
And…
“No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seems to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change — over millions of years, at a rate too slow to account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the fossils did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on somewhere else. Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution.”
Was he an Evolutionist turned Creationist then? Nope: He became a “Punctuated Equilibrium” proponent instead. This is the power of faith.
Tracy, you wrote: Evolution is a theory, with a great many holes in it. Unline the theory of relativity, which can predict results accurately into the future as well as explain past phenomina.
I’m afraid you are quite mistaken – evolutionary theory has predictive power, and it is verified empirically. Check, for example, experimenal verification of the Evolutionary Stable Strategies (ESS) in animal behaviour by ethologists. Simply put, you take some information about metabolism and gentic mechanics of some creatures, apply a mathematic technique known as “theory of games” and assume that the behaviour of these creatures was shaped by the evolution – and you get numerical predictions of how these creatures will behave, statistically! Then you can go, observe what they do, gather statistics and check that figures match. A scientific proof doesn’t come stronger than that (and that is why evolution is a theory, not a hypothesis).
The fact that evolutionary theory does not give specific predictions about each particular creature, or the forms each particular species will take, does not make it invalid or unscientific; the evolutionary process is fundamentally randomized. Claiming that statistical nature of predictions makes a theory invalid would also require saying that all physics and chemistry are invalid (both are based on quantum mechanics, which holds that behavior of individual particles is fundamentally unpredictable and that only probabilities can be predicted). Oh, and this claim would also imply that computers and TV and phones can’t work, and that planes can’t fly, etc, etc.
The theory is evolution is just as well established as quantum mechanics (or theory of relativity, for that matter). If you try to claim invalidity of one, you end up denying the validity of all modern science; which is exceedingly stupid position, considering that we’re surrounded by the working products of applying that science.
Paul:
Regarding “punctuated equilibrium” – the idea that evolution works in leaps is quite easy to understand as an improvement on the original Darwinist theory; Darwin assumed that traits are based on analog (continuous) foundations. Nowadays we know for sure that the seemingly continuous ranges of phenotypical traits are derived from digital (discrete) codes of DNA. Digital can approximate analog (i.e. lines composed of dots on the screen of your computer may look like straight continuous lines, but they are, in fact, collections of tiny discrete pixels). Push the digital system stronger, and the illusion of analog behavior disappears, and the system starts behaving like a digital system – in discrete leaps.
In this respect, progress of evolution theory is no different from the progress of physical theories from classical physics (which operates with continuouly changing values) to the quantum theory (which recognized the underlying discrete nature of the elementary particles).
Quantum theory didn’t made classial physics “false”, it has simply shown the deeper level of reality, and have shown the limits of applicability of the classical model – within those limits the model is quite satisfactory (that’s why it is in wide use).
Similarly, the theory of punctuated equilibrium simply explained the result of applying evolutionary principles to discrete (digital) systems, and thus derived a better match to the empirical observations. The “bangs” paleontologists see are simply the relatively rare occations of mutiple mutations which are actually beneficial to the fitness (practically all single mutations and nearly all multiple mutations are dertimentail) – when a random chance conspires to bring together several changes in DNA which give a new quality, improving the fitness (or opening new areals), the change propagates through the population so fast on paleontological time scales that it looks like a “bang”. The periods of continuing random experimentation which produce only “bad” mutations look like “equilibrium”, under which those bad mutations are weeded out by the selection.
So Eldredge was not a believer – not in evolutionary theory, at least. He merely had knowledge to understand why it must be true. Faith? One can believe only in things unknowable. The rest is not faith, but knowlegde (or lack of it).
Only ignorant fools (mis)apply faith where knowledge is possible.
Tracy wrote:
“I’m not trying to prove anything with my statement[...] I’m just pointing out that just because somebody claims to use “reason” doesn’t mean that they’re going to arive at libertarian conclusions.”
Why not? The problem is that you are trying to support this assertion by stating that some objectivists are warmongers or do not act within libertarian views, but that is the non-sequitur. A person CAN arrive at libertarianism by reason alone, and still choose not to follow such ideals.
Tracy wrote:
“It seems to me that “reason” can’t be the only factor as to whether a person is going to have libertarian ideals[...]”
Why NOT? Is it because you think libertarianism is UNREASONABLE? If it were, then a person could not arrive at libertarianism by way of reason alone, at all.
Tracy wrote:
“or a group of somebodys (Christians in this particular case) as not able to have libertarian ideas simply because one/they don’t meet [A]verros particular standards of “reason” is mi[s]guided.”
I do not agree a Christian cannot arrive at libertarianism just because he or she is a believer of the supernatural. Unless a Christian is irrational, he or she can arrive at libertarianism by reason alone.
Tracy wrote:
“David, their are actuall problems with the fossle record though. Their are many holes in it.”
Considering there is other evidence besides fossils: genetic, anatomical, morphological, hystological, functional, evidence, et cetera, this assertion of yours strikes me as irrelevant.
Tracy wrote:
“And Natural sellection can account for micro-evolution, but it can’t account for how the individual cell itself appeared in the first place.”
No, because natural selection is not a theory for the origin of life, only on the evolution of life. Evolution does not care if life appeared spontaneously or by divine intervention. There are evolutionists who believe God did it, via natural selection. This is because evolution does not negate god, it just negates the fundamentalist view of Genesis.
Regarding reason.
OK, I’m more familiar with formal logic I guess. But we know that based on the initial conditions that a person believes, the conclusions can be very logical — even if they are in fact wrong.
When it comes to the way people view the world, Many of the initial assumptions with which we view it, haven’t been proven or disproven — and many times they can be proven to be unprovable. If a person starts with initial assumptions that are, perhaps wrong, or incorrect that will — quite logically — arive at incorrect conclusions. Starting out the correct innitial assumptions, a person will arive and the correct conclusions — but with-out the initial framework being correct, it’s by no means certain that logic will show somebody the correct conclusion.
If for instance my innitial assumption was that 1+1=3 then I could — through real and complex analisis prove that 1 + 3 = 5 for instance, depending on how I defined my integer incriments. Now, obviously the numbers used in math are defined and it’s quite possible to set up a workable system using different definitions then are standard usage (though it’d be more difficult) but you get my point.
Logic and reason alone won’t show a person to libertarianism. Libertarianism is certainly very reasonable. But if a person has an inherently collectivist view of the world there use of reason and logic is going to lead them in the opposite direction. Now, certainly libertarians have ways of dealing with this, and showing why collectivist thinking isn’t the proper way to look at things — but I hope you understand my meaning now.
A person needs to have the correct initial assumptions AS WELL as logic and reason in order to make sure that he arives at the correct conclusions. That was the point I was trying to make. (For the record a person can have wrong initial conditions and bad logic and arive at the correct conclusion as well. Indeed, a person can even have proper initial conditions and use faulty logic and still arive and the correct conclusions. It depends on how many falsehoods are in the logic chain that negate each other. Hence it seems to me that it could even be possible — though not very likely — for an irrational person to arive at a rational conclusion, albiet that conclusion would be very unstable in his/her mind.)
Regarding your statement about the fossle record not being the only evidence. There are problems with all of the evidence you site. The fact is, it only takes 1 disproof of a particular theory to prove that it’s wrong. But no ammount of empirical evidence can conclusively prove a theory right. Obviously the same could be said of any theory regarding creation as well.
“No ammount of experiments can prove me right, but it only takes one experiement to prove me wrong.” Albert Einstien. Of course Einstien was refering to experiments that were reproducible and verifible but you understand the meaning.
I understand that some evolutionists believe God used evolution to Create life. But this argument innitially was about why many libertarians are typically so anti-religioun, and anti-christian. Indeed, many libertarians hold the belief that anybody who believes in a God at all is an irrational wack-job to be suspect. Just because a person believes in God or a god or gods, or is a Christian doesn’t mean he’s irrational. And such a person shouldn’t be allienated by calling them such. As such alienation is detrimental to the cause of libertarianism.
I’m not a fundamentalist Genises creationist myself. I happen to believe in the Big Bang. I happen to believe God created life in stages. I do believe God would have needed to have a hand in creating individual stars and the creation of the heavier eliments. Whether he manipulated the stars he created to do such or whether he created the heavier elements out-right I don’t know. I happen to believe the universe (at least from our space-time perspective) is between 10-14 billion years old, based on current Hubble Constant measurements. But I also happen to believe that God created animals and plants whole when he did it. For instance their could have been eons between the time that god created Fish and Mammals. But that doesn’t mean Mammals evolved from Fish. And frankly, them being created seperately is much easier for me to swallow for me then “punctuated equalibrium” nonsense.
For the record. The fundamentalist view of Geneses isn’t really Biblical. This idea that every single species that exists now, has always existed is not what the Bible says. It’s actually an Aristotilian philosophy. The Bible simply says they reproduced after their own kind.
It’s one thing to believe that existing structures gradually improved and differenciated. It’s quite another to believe that whole complex systems and structures randomly apeared with-in one generation by chance (Since it would have needed to because w/o the complete system the evolution would be self destructive).
Averos: I’ll need to read up on Evolutionary Stable Strategies (ESS). Thanks for the pointer. But predicting how Animals behave to me seems quite different from predicting what new species or what knew genus or family is going to evolve next.
But this is all tangential to my central point.
That people who believe in a God can be resonable. That Christians can be rational.
We shouldn’t be alienating them by calling them irrational because many of them can be allies in the fight for freedom.
I pose this question again.
“Would you people have the same antagonistic attitude towards this Judge is she had been an aithiest Judge who said that ‘Christianity is a danger to society.’”
Tracy
Tracy;
I am not focusing on your question with this post, merely refering you and perhaps others to a site of interest for those with little knowledge about Darwin, evolution and western philosophical foundations. The cosmic view
Qoute from Tracy:
“I happen to think that secularism is a danger to society too. But secularism is caused by too much government — and in many ways government schools which teach people to replace god with government and worship the state — so my solution to this secularism threat is to abolish government schools and the nanny state, etc. How do you know that her solution to this secularism threat isn’t to limit government?”
I don’t see how you get secularism being caused by too much government. Secularism was established as a fundemental principle of our government. We had secularism before there even was a national government. I’m all for limited government, but I don’t see how that is related to secularism.
As for government schools, I agree with you. There is no Constitutional authority for Federal involvement in education (beyond the requirements of the fourteenth amendment).
Qoute from Tracy:
“Somehow I doubt that you’d have this same attitude about an aithiest Judge who said that “Christianity is a danger to society.” ”
Christianity is not a fundemental principle of, or requirement for our government. Christianity could disapear tomorrow and our government could go on. If you abolish secularism, then our government will no longer be the same.
Keith
Ideas, Christian, atheist, or otherwise, are not dangerous in themselves. It depends on how people act upon them. The fact that a judge is Christian or atheist is not in itself a sufficient reason to condemn a judge. The fact that a judge is a Christian or atheist and a part of the government court system may be reason to be wary of a judge, but still not sufficient in itself to condemn the judge.
But this thread started out with considering various decisions that Judge Brown made. Her decisions can and should provide a factual basis for determining if she is a good or bad judge, although even then differences of opinion could still exist.
Thus, if a judge were an atheist who said that Christianity was a danger to society, I would be wary, look for an explanation of the statement (or the context), and look at the kinds of decisions the judge had made.
This discussion has veered far off-topic, into the realm of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. I’ve taken a position on that here, and stand by it. Saying that something is “irreducibly complex” is simply an assertion. The reality is that most of these systems proposed to be “irreducibly complex” in fact aren’t. It is possible for something to at first be only beneficial, then become necessary. Furthermore, this kind of thinking illustrates a misconception about the way evolution occurs: it is possible for useless things to evolve, then later be adapted for some use.
However, returning to the discussion at hand, the matter of Justice Janice Brown. Whether or not she’s a good judge should be determined on the basis of her judgements, not of her religious beliefs. I’ve given several lines of evidence (ironically taken from her detractors) in her favor.
Tracy –
Regarding your statement about the fossle record not being the only evidence. There are problems with all of the evidence you site.
Please be so kind so as to point to any problem of a kind different from “we didn’t yet find something which is assumed to be needed for things to evolve from A to B”. I’m not aware of any, and I have a professional-level education in the field. Absense of evidence is not evidence of absense.
The fact is, it only takes 1 disproof of a particular theory to prove that it’s wrong. But no ammount of empirical evidence can conclusively prove a theory right. Obviously the same could be said of any theory regarding creation as well.
This statement is plainly wrong if applied to anything other than mathematical proofs. Any single experiment may have noise, random coincidences, subtly (but significantly) bad methodology, unanticipated biases, wrong interpretation, self-delusion or even fraud on part of experimenters, etc, etc.
In fact, all of our scientific knowledge is based on balance of evidence – some forms of evidence being stronger than others, but there are no absolute proofs or disproofs to any scientific theories. Anyone saying that a theory is “disproved” usually means that some strong evidence is found which is absolutely logically incompatible with the theory. There simply is no such evidence with regard to evolutionary theory of origin of life. (In fact even the logical incompatiblity does not invalidate theories… quantum mechanics is logically incompatible with general theory of relativity – and both are two of the most precisely validated theories in all history of science).
The fundamental problem with ID theory is that it is not a theory at all (the evolutionary theory can – for example, by finding something which has no plausible hypothetical way of evolving, – for example a complex organism using radically different mapping of DNA codons to proteins). ID hypothesis cannot be disproven. For all we know, God could’ve created world five minutes ago and simply put false memories in our heads. There is no way to prove or disprove this statement. Nor does it matter, for the science.
Science is not concerned with unprovable (and un-disprovable, or, in Popperian terminology, unfalsifiable) hypotheses. It does not matter if the evolution is something which happened to atoms or simply a reflection on how the mind of God worked – as long as it presents a useful model of how things are working or came to be. We can all live in a kind of Matrix-ey computer simulation. The universe can be nothing more than a huge computation (the view tacitly favored by a group of eminent physicisis working on loop quantum gravity theory, an alternative to string theory). Or, as a transactional QM interpretation holds – it does not happen, but just is: a static web of transactions between the past and the future. There’s no way to tell, and, for all practical purposes it does not matter.
So, ID is not an alternative, or opposite, to evolution. It is simply totally outside of the realm of scientific inquery. It is not even incompatible with evolution – after all, quite intelligent designers of electronic circuits or airline schedules, and many other things, use evolutionary algorithms as aid in their [i]designs[/i]. Someone looking at the results of their work may say: oh, I can back-guess how did they arrive to this particular kind of design! If the guess is mostly right and matches the observations of the actual designed things, that is a good theory of the origin of these circuits.
There are no plausible alternative scientific theories to the evolutionary theory at this time. It is as simple as that – and scientific “truth” is always understood to be the most plausible theory currently available. It can change (in fact, it does change, as the story with the punctuated equilibrium shows) as new data and insights become available.
David — the fact that some servant of State made some good decisions does not change the fundamental issue of her being a willing accomplice of the looter crowd. She didn’t engage in free exchange of ideas, so all her good deeds are, in fact, morally corrupt. She may be right or she may be wrong but what it amounts to is that she sought to impose her ideas on others by means of coercive force.
“Science is not concerned with unprovable (and un-disprovable, or, in Popperian terminology, unfalsifiable) hypotheses.”
Then evolution, can’t be considered a science either, because it’s not falsifiable either. Whenever somebody points out a problem with evolutionary theory, they simply invent some new theory to cover it. Anthropic priniciples or also unfalsifiable.
Frankly I don’t put a whole lot of stock in demarcation arguments about what science is or isn’t. But if you’re going to go with that falsifiable definition, then evolution doesn’t fit the definition of science anymore then creation does.
Who wrote those evolutionary algorithms. Somebody with intellegence. If their actually is a natural force of evolution with-in creation. (I really don’t buy it.) then some intellegence must have written the program. In the same way that people wrote the programs you describe. It’s possible to tell whether something was designed or just randomly formed through natural forces. Again, I’d refer you to Charles Thaxton — specifically complexity theory. Here’s a decent summery.
http://www.arn.org/docs/thaxton/ct_newdesign3198.htm
So basically you’re one of those people who believe that if, at some point in the future, if it ever became possible to PROVE that we were created — that it still wouldn’t be a scientific proof.
I’d encourage you to read “The Creation Hypothisis.” A good scientist should have an open mind about things. And if he sees evidence of design, he should be skeptical and test that hypothisis. Science historically used to be the method to figuring out exactly how God created the universe. Because (scientists who were Christian especially) believed that God was a God of order. Methodological naturalism — is actually quite a relatively new concept with-in the scientific tradition.
Frankly as far as science is concerned. We have too options. Origins don’t matter — so we shouldn’t be trying to study evolution or creation theories of creation. Because if it has to be falsifiable to be science, both evolution and creation fail to make the grade. Or, we study origins with an open mind and be skeptical of evidence in support of both views. Eitther both are theories with in the realm of science, or neither is.
That’s the problem with most people. They’re not skeptical enough. Typically they’re highly skeptical of views they don’t agree with — but not skeptical of the views they do agree with.
Anyway, We’re not going to convince each other here. And I’ve made my more basic points that this evolution/creation thing is actually quite peripherial to. (Like I said at the beginning, I really didn’t want to even get into this creation/evolution discussion) So, I’m going to bow out. I’ve got other things on my plate I need to get too.
Thank you for the discussion. I feel like I communicated what I wanted too. And that’s more important then the evolution/ID debate as far as this thread’s concerned.
Tracy
The (rock) sphere would show design. The “complexity” in the sharp rocks isn’t complex since the edges carry no information. However if you showed me three IDENTICAL rocks – that duplicated precisely every edge and surface, I would say it was from design. No natural process (I know of) can produce rock spheres (I assume spherical to so many decimal places). I can experimentally produce octahedrons and cubes though.
Tracy is correct that evolution is not a theory in the normal sense of the word. You cannot show biological evolution (an increase in complexity) in a controlled experiment.
(To digress further, but with an on point example)
Evolution is much like history – take Lincoln for a current example – books proffered here give a different view than what is commonly taught. I don’t think any get to what he actually thought (When you are point man while the country is literally coming apart around you, you might act differently, and he stated his first duty was to preserve the union – apparently even if that meant destroying every other principle). Despite his debates with Douglass and the actual text of the articles of secession, I am told the civil war (and thus Southern secession) “wasn’t about Slavery”. Who is really right? Looking back it is complex, but it is different when you live through it than when you look back – in the same way that paper traders don’t react the same as when they use actual money in the markets. Emotion would be a much greater factor than any reason in recruiting for fighting a war. But you can’t easily look back emotionally.
Christianity was very specifically a danger to society – specifically communism. John Paul II was the greater threat than the consumerism, as the former could cause the slaves to consider their dignity instead of simply seeking gold-plated chains.
Secularism is also fatal to society – literally in the case of abortion and euthanasia, and even the contraception mentality that is causing demographic crises across the globe. JP2 used the term “The Culture of Death”.
Liberty cannot in itself give or show human beings their dignity – it only allows them to discover it if they so desire, but it is a powerful and instinctive desire as Augustine noted. Yet it is a feedback loop – when humans discover their dignity they demand liberty.
Instead of casting pearls before swine who prefer their comfortable pens and regular feeding, the first step is to break Circe’s spell and turn the swine back into men. Then they will flee the pen.
Tracy
Then evolution, can’t be considered a science either, because it’s not falsifiable either.
This is the classic fallacy used by people who try to use Popper’s falsifiability to show that something is not scientific. First you claim that evolution is false since it purports to explain such things as blood clotting factors that are “irreducibly complex”. On the other hand you assert that evolution is not scientific “because it is not falsifiable”!
(I will, however, concede that in Mathematics you can have, within a formal system such as the predicate calculus, statements that are false yet unfalsifiable (within the formal system). Look up Godel’s theorem.)
It’s possible to tell whether something was designed or just randomly formed through natural forces.
This statement is not true. Example – consider a congruential random number generator.
a(n+1) = b*a(n)+c (mod m) . In other a, b, c and m are arbitrarily large integers take a, multiply by b and add c. Now divide by m discarding the decimal part to obtain q, then
the next a in the sequence is given by b*a(n)+c –m*q. By careful choice of b, c and m, I can generate a sequence of integers that do not repeat for an arbitrary long period. Cleary, this process is purely deterministic. However, there is no way to know, given a particular sequence of numbers whether or not you are looking a random process (generated by, for instance, radioactive decay) or a pseudo-random process generated by a deterministic algorithm.
In case this is example is too complicated, here is a simpler example. The digits of the number PI are not random. In fact, there is an algorithm that can calculate the value of any digit in the expansion, (the billionth, for example) without having to calculate any of the other digits. So if I pick a very large number and then calculate the next million digits one by one, you have no way of finding out whether or not you are looking at a random sequence or a million digits taken somewhere from the number PI.
For instance the simple process of blood clotting involves over 900 different hormones, proteins and amino acids in order to work property. If they weren’t all in place from the onset — prior to completion the animal would die of either the complete clotting of its entire body or dieing because of hemophiliac complications.
You have taken a very interesting example. In fact, if you asked an evolutionary biologist to give you an example to illustrate the principles of evolution, this would probably be one of the best examples. (If you go to Google and search for Doolittle fibrinogen and blood clotting, you will come up with definitive explanations.) The basic gist of the argument is that we should be able to find more primitive clotting systems in other organisms and also other organisms that use fibrinogen, for example, for some use other than blood clotting. This is in fact the case. This then allows for a blood clotting system to evolve without all the factors having to be simultaneously created. We can also find creatures such as the lobster that have much simpler clotting systems. So evolution makes specific predictions that in this case can be falsified. While we are on the subject of blood, the hemoglobin molecule existed in anaerobic organisms where its function was to remove nitric oxide. When the atmosphere changed to an atmosphere containing oxygen, the hemoglobin molecule was able to transport oxygen.
The Intelligent Design argument has been around, (and refuted) for a long time. Moreover, it is clearly not compatible with the Fundamentalist Christian literal interpretation of Genesis. If you want a good author, IMHO, who discusses Science and Religion in a thought provoking fashion, try reading some of the books of John Polkinhorne – he was a Professor of Quantum Mechanics at Cambridge University, who became ordained as a Church of England priest after he retired.
Walt D. – Any beginning cryptographer would find the equation to your pseudorandom generator. Even the better hash algorithms (used for digital signatures) are occasionally found to be weak. If the sequence is sufficiently long, it can be analyzed. (Too short sequences woudl be the same would apply if you presented me with a microscopic fleck and asked if it came from something designed or random – I’d just say “not enough data”). But we aren’t talking about tests for randomness (again cryptographers have a lot to say on the subject). That you can apparently design something with a random result isn’t the test. It is whether some object under consideration is designed or “natural”. It is possible for the result to be “indeterminate”, or to apply a confidence factor.
But what of SETI? It is specifically looking for intelligent design in what are apparently noisy signals. You claim they can’t find anything because they can’t tell?
I suspect you would be able to pick out the Mona Lisa from a random collection of paint splotches. Or a Bach fugue from windchimes. This is the kind of test we are talking about.
You also miss the point about Clotting – Fibrogen and Hemoglobin. Or the Bombadier Beetle which is the simpler example.
1. The N-1 state is generally useless. Random blobs of protien around a Heme molecule are useless. Only when it has a structure that can carry molecules (and is there a current example where it exists in anerobic organisms) does it convey a survival advantage. And the information threshold is very high. A collection of random proteins and RNA is useless, only when you have both a ribosome and the encoding for the ribosome and TRNA can you have a self-reproducing mechanism. Has anyone DEMONSTRATED a simpler self-replicating (information bearing) system?
2. A deviation from the Nth state is often fatal. If you don’t have blood that clots, or that clots even without the presence of a leak, or that can’t remove the clot, you tend to die. If a cell can’t produce a single protein that forms a ribosome, it dies. Some distortions of the hemoglobin molecule are nasty (sickle cell), most are fatal.
3. These mechanisms are not simple, they involve dozens of components which all must work and a breakage (or failure to evolve) in any one prevents the system from working. The problem is not X+X+X+X, for a 4x increase in complexity, but X*X*X*X, or X to the 4th power if you have four independent parts.
4. You are also begging the question – you assume fibrogen “evolved”, and other clotting methods “evolved”, so it would be natural or proof that they could be conjugated by the same mechanism. Technically I (and I think Tracy would) believe that the more sophisticated design would arise from the same mechanism the earlier ones did, but we would say the antecedents were designed, so the final system was designed too. The information complexity thresholds are high at each stage – you can’t simply minimize the entire staircase to the last step, which itself is large.
You can show a convergence, yet you have not proposed any mechanism where I can put a fibrogen generating system in a box, and a primitive clotting system in a box, turn a crank, and get the complex clotting system in mammals. That is the key question. The Evolution fairy waves it’s wand and a bunch of very complex DNA instructions suddenly appear – something that chemists who know the structure of proteins and software engineers couldn’t do today.
I would really love to find this mystical force that produces information ex nihilo. I wouldn’t have to spend hours writing and debugging programs which are far less complex than most of the things you dismissively say arose without any intelligence.
You simply say it must exist – but there is no evidence for such a force. Your “evidence” is the complex biology which anyone with common sense would classify with the Mona Lisa, Bach Fugue, or automobile, but you say it abosolutely, positively could not be designed. I don’t know why.
So you smuggle an “intelligent design” force into your science without admitting it or calling it by some specific name. It just happened, although in any experience or experiment it doesn’t “just happen”, and the only cases where you find nonbiological complexity you find a human designer.
Random (or even chaotic) processes don’t create information – or would take trillions of times the age of the universe to produce the first cell or the cambrian explosion. You need information for organisms to start and to become more complex. Where does it come from since the processes we are all familiar with are too slow? You say it doesn’t come from an intelligence or a designer. OK, show me an experiment or observation where you can produce something informationally complex starting without that information anywhere inside the system.
tz
Any beginning cryptographer would find the equation to your pseudorandom generator. Even the better hash algorithms (used for digital signatures) are occasionally found to be weak. If the sequence is sufficiently long, it can be analyzed.
True if I choose 32 or 64 bit integers for a, b and m. However, in practice, you do not get to choose the length of the sequence to be analyzed. By choosing huge integers, I can make the size of the sequence too long to be analysed with current technology. I normally use a Mersenne twister algorithm for simulation. This has a much larger period. 2^19937 – 1, in the standard implementation. However, even this implementation is not cryptographically secure. To do this we need to go to a quadratic generator such as Blum and Schub. Here we can take the modulus as the product of two 2048 –bit primes pq (chosen with certain restriction on p and q). At present this is cryptographically secure. (We still can not hack RSA640 to two 320 bit integers.)
As regards SETI, I seem to recall when we first discovered pulsars, we thought we were receiving a signal from “Little Green Men”. True that you or I can easily find JFK or Bill Cosby in a picture. However, we don’t know how this mechanism works, in that we have no good algorithms for recognizing objects.
For a better explanation of blood clotting that attempts to answer the point raised try this link.
http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Darwin/DI/clot/Clotting.html
It has already been demonstrated in the laboratory how amino acids can be synthesized out of basic compounds and natural processes that were present early in the Earth’s history. MIT hopes to produce a primitive cell in the next few years. So the basic question is whether or not we need to invoke supernatural forces to explain biology. Here is a quote from Ken Miller.
In 1990, Xun Yu and Doolittle won their own bet, finding a fibrinogen-like sequence in the sea cucumber, an echinoderm. The vertebrate fibrinogen gene, just like genes for the other proteins of the clotting sequence, was formed by the duplication and modification of pre-existing genes.
Now, it would not be fair, just because we have presented a realistic evolutionary scheme, supported by gene sequences from modern organisms, to suggest that we now know exactly how the clotting system has evolved. That would be making far too much of our limited ability to reconstruct the details of the past. But nonetheless, there is little doubt that we do know enough to develop a plausible and scientifically valid scenario for how it might have evolved. And that scenario makes specific predictions that can be tested and verified against the evidence.
The ID explanation, on the other hand has zero explanatory power. It just replaces an unanswered question with another one. The intelligent designer appears on the scene as a “Deus ex-machina”. So where did the intelligent designer come from? The argument about the age of the universe also applies to the intelligent designer. If you take the second account of creation in Genesis, where it refers to “the men who came from the sky”, or as Fred Hoyle argued that DNA arrived here or a meteor, then we can circumvent the age of the Earth. (Incidentally, Fred Hoyle did not believe in the Big Bang, so in this case it is only the age of the Earth that is relevant). However, I would conjecture that the flaw in the argument is that the assumption that the mechanism of evolution is random. DNA replication is the antithesis of random. The actual 3D structure of Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine (and Uracil in transfer RNA) are very specific. The double helix is a very specific shape. Admittedly, we do not yet understand why, and as Tracy pointed out, the slightest change in the shape would cause the whole replication mechanism to fail. Perhaps we are looking at an intrinsic property of the carbon molecule. However, just because we don’t understand a mechanism does not mean that the only possible explanations are either random or supernatural. Also information is not created from nothing – some of the chemical reactions are endothermic – they require the input of energy.
For a simple mechanism that produces complex patterns, the fractal model referred to in a previous post provides a simple example. For a mathematical example, consider the classifications of finite groups. The group axioms are simple 1)Closure a in G and b in G imply a*b in G.
2)Associative a*(b*c) = (a*b)*c 3) Identity: There exists an e such that a*e = e* a =a
4) Inverse: For every a there exist an inverse a’ such that a*a’ = a’* a = e.
For an example consider the symmetries of a square under rotation. We wish to determine fundamental groups from which all finite groups can be formed. It is not at all clear that we would expect in advance that a group of order
808017424794512875886459904961710757005754368000000000
is a fundamental group.
David:
Sorry we took your thread so far off the original topic!
tz:
Tracy is correct that evolution is not a theory in the normal sense of the word. You cannot show biological evolution (an increase in complexity) in a controlled experiment.
tz – you may be surprised to learn that this is, in fact, a routine demonstration. Take a culture of bacteria which is easily killed by some antibiotic. Then treat that culture with doses which kill most, but not all microbes. Then let it grow. Repeat. After a sufficient time you end up with a strain which exhibits a novel property – resistance to that particular antibiotic.
(Of course, the rate of adaptation depends heavily on details, but the model systems used by people investigating genetics of resistance typically show nontrivial evolution in a matter of weeks).
The experiments with digital models have shown emergence of such complex things as predation.
Again, the fact that we don’t have all the answers does not invalidate the theory – what can invalidate it is finding of data which cannot, even in principle, be explained by the theory. Even that may still not invalidate the theory, but merely show limits of its application (classical mechanics is quite useful theory, though it does not accurately describe the reality).
ID cannot be shown in any way incorrect or limited (as proven by providing a “designed a second ago” argument, which would explain any present observable state), and so it is not a scientific theory.
Walt D.:
Also information is not created from nothing.
Actually, the source of the information feeding the Earth’s biosystem is the locality of the source of light – increasing enthropy of Sun’s radiation being re-radiated by Earth in all directions as lower-frequency (and thus, longer wavelength and, therefore, having poorer spatial locatization) photons. Thermodynamically speaking, biosphere is simply a mechanism for dissipating the information, more efficient than just re-radiation by inert rocks.
This can only happen if the sky is dark. Which means that Universe is a finite lump of matter sitting in an otherwise empty space, or that it is expanding. Which means that there was an initial store of information in form of the coordinated location of energetic (short wavelength) particles at some specific place.
tz wrote:
“The (rock) sphere would show design. The “complexity” in the sharp rocks isn’t complex since the edges carry no information.”
Depends on what you mean by “information”, which I believe in this case, you change as expediency dictates. A rock’s sharp edges require a lot of mathematics just to simulate the edges, meaning the edges do carry a lot of information.
tz wrote:
“Tracy is correct that evolution is not a theory in the normal sense of the word. You cannot show biological evolution (an increase in complexity) in a controlled experiment.”
What Tracy said was that Natural Selection is an unfalsifiable assupmtion, which is totally incorrect. Natural Selection is falsifiable a theory as any theory there is. You cannot “show” biological evolution in a controlled experiment because evolutionary changes only happen in complex systems, with many varibles.
However I have to tell you I’ve read this argument against evolution so many times it invites me to think people who say this are brain-dead. You cannot simulate the total devastation of a hurricane in a lab, nor a storm, or a tornado, but they do happen and climate change is a fact, not “simply” a theory. Should I believe otherwise, following the logic you forward that such things cannot be proven in the lab?
tz wrote:
“Christianity was very specifically a danger to society – specifically communism. John Paul II was the greater threat than the consumerism, as the former could cause the slaves to consider their dignity instead of simply seeking gold-plated chains.”
So much for Austrian economics and Laissez Faire…
We don’t need a utopian with a death wish.
Mike Hignite: There was a county in CA that wanted a satellite in geosynchronous orbit overhead to be taxed as personal property in that county. I believe they lost in court, but quite a stretch, eh?
Sounds like an “urban legend”. It’s not possible to put a satellite in geosynch orbit over California.
yes
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