[_ Old Earth _] Professor John Lennox Demolishes Evolution

[Asyncritus]

Professor John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, and his comments on Dawkins' 'Climbing Mount Improbable' are irrefutable, and finishes off Dawkins' idea of small, incremental improvements fatally.

I will first present his case, and then extend the argument into the quite foolish idea that a reptile could ever have evolved into a bird.

Lennox:

Dawkins looks at some monumental piece of design and says that it is impossible for that organ to have evolved in one big go, and therefore, supposes that we went round the back way, up the gentle slopes (of mutation followed by natural selection) of Mount Improbable.

Lennox shows that the name is misleading, because it should really be Mount Impossible, not mount Improbable.

Here is his statistical argument.

Suppose that it takes 2000 steps to get from the bottom to the top of the mount - meaning, to go from a fish to an amphibian requires 2000 steps.

Assume also that at every step of the way, there are only 2 possibilities: viable, and non-viable.

Natural selection will wipe out the non-viables and only the viable ones will survive.

The probability of getting a viable mutation is therefore 1 in 2.

The probability of getting 2 viables is therefore 1 in 2 x 2, which I will write as 1 in 2^2.

The probability of getting 3 viables is therefore 1 in 2^3 etc etc.

What is the probability of getting 2000 viables?

Answer: 1 in 2^2000 !

Which makes a complete nonsense of the climb of Mt Improbable! In the case above, fish could never, in the time the universe has existed, have become amphibians.

Now let us apply the same reasoning to the evolution of reptiles into birds.

Q: How many steps will be required to perform this amazing feat?

A: Something like 500 steps, at a guess - because of the complexity of the transition involved. For instance, scales into feathers, cold-bloodedness into the highest metabolic rate in the animal kingdom, complete alteration of the respiratory system, and all the consequent alterations needed. Each of which requires 300 consequential mutations.

500 steps is possibly a gross underestimate.

So what is the probability of a reptile evolving by 500 small steps into a bird??

Answer: 1 in 2^500.

Which is too small a probability to be seriously considered as a scientifically valid hypothesis.

Dawkins knows this, and so has to invent another method for making the impossible happen. What does he propose?

Take the sentence from Shakespeare: methinks it is like a weasel.

He imagines a vast number of monkeys thundering away on a vast number of typewriters,

Now here's the cheat:

Whenever a correct letter is typed, that letter is selected, and that monkey stops typing.

Doing it that way, takes only 43 goes.

But do you see the problems?

1 There is a target sentence. Evolution has no targets.

2 There must be a Head Monkey who selects the time for any given monkey to stop typing. Evolution has no Head Monkeys!

This is importing intelligence into the evolutionary process - and there isn't any!

This is importing intelligent selection into the evolutionary process - which is Darwinian anathema.

It simply could not happen without sneaking an intelligence in by the back way.

So Dawkins RIP, slain by John Lennox.

I trust that you will be able to see the relentless logic of Lennox's analysis and the reduction of Mount Improbable into rubble.

So where does Dawkins go from there, I wonder?

To the bank, doubtless, bearing the spoils of the sale of thousands of that piece of nonsense.

 

[lordkalvan]

Re: Profeso5 John Lennox Demolishes Evolution

And like many a mathematician before him, Lennox displays a profound ignorance of the mechanisms of evolution and natural selection and the assumptions he makes in assigning probabilities, in other words he ignores the fact that each 'step' along his postulated 'highway' is wholly independent of and unaffected by those that precede it. This is, quite simply, either a profound misunderstanding of evolutionary processes or a deliberate misrepresentation of them.

 

[Asyncritus]

Re: Profeso5 John Lennox Demolishes Evolution

And like many a mathematician before him, Lennox displays a profound ignorance of the mechanisms of evolution and natural selection and the assumptions he makes in assigning probabilities, in other words he ignores the fact that each 'step' along his postulated 'highway' is wholly independent of and unaffected by those that precede it. This is, quite simply, either a profound misunderstanding of evolutionary processes or a deliberate misrepresentation of them.

Your parochialism is quite inexcusable.

He presents a MATHEMATICAL argument, using very reasonable basic assumptions - which you will probably be able to verify.

The very fact that you admit that each step "wholly independent of and unaffected by those that precede it" demonstrates the validity of the calculation of independent probabilities.

The probability of 2 independent events is calculated by MULTIPLYING the probability of each event by the probability of the other.

Lennox does just that, and it is irrational and unreasonable for you to condemn him as if he knows nothing about evolution. Dawkins obviously knows no mathematics, or he could not have proposed such a fatuous solution to his problems.

Or maybe he was being dishonest.

You cannot fault the man's mathematics, and all that is left is a bit of academic snobbery and assassination.

PS Free, could you please correct the spelling of 'Professor' in the title? Thanks.

 

[Grazer]

Re: Profeso5 John Lennox Demolishes Evolution

All Professor Lennox has done is shown why he believes that evolution by purely blind physical forces is slightly impossible and, as he has repeatedly said in lectures/Q&A/debates, it undermines the very logic he needs to do science. He has never dismissed/refuted the theory of evolution, merely what atheists have attempted to conclude/derive from it. In this case, what Dawkins claims.

 

[Free]

Re: Profeso5 John Lennox Demolishes Evolution

And like many a mathematician before him, Lennox displays a profound ignorance of the mechanisms of evolution and natural selection and the assumptions he makes in assigning probabilities, in other words he ignores the fact that each 'step' along his postulated 'highway' is wholly independent of and unaffected by those that precede it. This is, quite simply, either a profound misunderstanding of evolutionary processes or a deliberate misrepresentation of them.

Having read a couple of Lennox's books, he never sets out to destroy evolution; unguided evolution (scientific naturalism) sure, but not evolution as a mechanism. Of course one would have to know the context of the argument to really know what Lennox is trying to say.

 

[lordkalvan]

Re: Profeso5 John Lennox Demolishes Evolution

Your parochialism is quite inexcusable.

He presents a MATHEMATICAL argument, using very reasonable basic assumptions - which you will probably be able to verify.

The very fact that you admit that each step "wholly independent of and unaffected by those that precede it" demonstrates the validity of the calculation of independent probabilities.

I think a moment's reflection would have led you to realise this is a typo on my part. 'Not' should appear between 'is' and 'wholly'. I don't need to verify Lennox's assumptions as he has done nothing to validate them, but simply presented them as givens. It's up to him (or you on his behalf as you are presenting his argument here) to show the validity of these assumptions.

The probability of 2 independent events is calculated by MULTIPLYING the probability of each event by the probability of the other.

Lennox does just that, and it is irrational and unreasonable for you to condemn him as if he knows nothing about evolution. Dawkins obviously knows no mathematics, or he could not have proposed such a fatuous solution to his problems.

Well there you go: they're not independent events.

Or maybe he was being dishonest.

Any fatuous arguments here reside with Lennox. I leave others to decide whether this is down to ignorance or dishonesty.

You cannot fault the man's mathematics, and all that is left is a bit of academic snobbery and assassination.

His maths is fine, it's the assumptions that underlie them that are tosh, as any biologist worth his salary can tell you. Interesting that, in the light of your comments on Professor Dawkins, you get on your high horse about 'academic snobbery and assassination' in respect of my comments on Lennox's faulty arguments.

 

[Barbarian]

Lennox shows that the name is misleading, because it should really be Mount Impossible, not mount Improbable.

Here is his statistical argument.

Suppose that it takes 2000 steps to get from the bottom to the top of the mount - meaning, to go from a fish to an amphibian requires 2000 steps.

Assume also that at every step of the way, there are only 2 possibilities: viable, and non-viable.

Actually a range of viabilities. But let's go on...

Natural selection will wipe out the non-viables and only the viable ones will survive.

The probability of getting a viable mutation is therefore 1 in 2.

Like the old statistician's joke; "A thing will either happen, or it won't. Therefore, all probabilities are 50%." Except Lennox appears to take the joke seriously.

Unless Async is up to his old games, Lennox is a mathematical ignoramus.

The probability of getting 2 viables is therefore 1 in 2 x 2, which I will write as 1 in 2^2.

Well, let's give that a test. Take a population of 100,000 organisms (much smaller than most species populations). Let's say the likelihood of a useful mutation is about 0.1 percent (one in a thousand). Let's say that the organisms are much less likely to have a mutation than humans, and say there are six per organism.

So we end up with 600,000 mutations per generation, of which 600 are useful.

Let's say that the mutations have a favorability of only 1.1, which means that it will be 1.1 times as common each generation. So in 11 generations, it's essentially fixed. So in 11 generations, we have 600 mutations. But we're talking about millions of generations.

You see, the real world just slapped Lennox upside the head. (assuming you've honestly represented what he said)

Surprise.

 

[cupid dave]

Re: Profeso5 John Lennox Demolishes Evolution

And like many a mathematician before him, Lennox displays a profound ignorance of the mechanisms of evolution and natural selection and the assumptions he makes in assigning probabilities, in other words he ignores the fact that each 'step' along his postulated 'highway' is wholly independent of and unaffected by those that precede it. This is, quite simply, either a profound misunderstanding of evolutionary processes or a deliberate misrepresentation of them.

So the religious argument is that everyone of the species living today is the resulf of an individual Spontaneous Generastion that took place illioms of years ago when its first ancestor suddenly manifested?
And these also iclude all the now extinct species?

 

[Tri Unity]

So where does Dawkins go from there, I wonder? To the bank, doubtless, bearing the spoils of the sale of thousands of that piece of nonsense.

Funny Asyn... you have here the very same evolution cheer-leaders with their pom poms who were trying to discredit any and all evidence to the contrary on another thread too. It is doubly funny that the atheists and the theistic evolutionists sing the same choir. That is saying a great deal!

Do I understand that you are a faithful believer in the creation account of Genesis?

 

[lordkalvan]

Re: Profeso5 John Lennox Demolishes Evolution

So the religious argument is that everyone of the species living today is the resulf of an individual Spontaneous Generastion that took place illioms of years ago when its first ancestor suddenly manifested?
And these also iclude all the now extinct species?

Are you asking me if this is what I believe? It isn't. There seem to be as many religious arguments as their are religions, even within those that are ostensibly the same. So I prefer to go with the evidence shorn of competing religious baggage. If God exists I am persuaded that s/he/it would prefer we use our curiosity-driven intelligence to do exactly this, rather than idolaters of Late Bronze Age legend.

 

[lordkalvan]

Funny Asyn... you have here the very same evolution cheer-leaders with their pom poms who were trying to discredit any and all evidence to the contrary on another thread too. It is doubly funny that the atheists and the theistic evolutionists sing the same choir. That is saying a great deal!

Probably that we prefer the evidence in creation (whatever brought it about) rather than worshipping a bizarrely literalist understanding that a prescientific, nomadic culture's understanding of creation trumps that evidence.

 

[Hammer]

I've decided not to try reason with the Evolutionists (bio/cosmo) here. They think anyone who disagrees does so only out of ignorance, not out of a different perspective. And, they defend Evolution with the blindness of a True Believer.

Evolutionists don't believe that nature needs to take 500, or some large number, changes to leap to the next viable form. They believe believe that every step, of a single mutation, along the way between any two organisms is viable on its own.

They have no proof that there are no valleys between various forms. They can't even provide an example of it. So, they pull a bait and switch, and provide the argument that the OP refutes, selection with a target, and all the steps in between being non-viable.

Richard Dawkins commits this fraud in his book The Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins boasts that it only took 41 generations to turn WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO P into METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. But, don't expect the Evolutionist True Believers to take Dawkins to task for this, like they did the OP for refuting Dawkins' lie.

 

[Tri Unity]

Probably that we prefer the evidence in creation (whatever brought it about) rather than worshipping a bizarrely literalist understanding that a prescientific, nomadic culture's understanding of creation trumps that evidence.

That's only showing your ignorance. Jesus and the apostles rejected the science of their day, and that "science" and "mechanaism" is no different to what Darwin developed. You need to read a bit more before you make such wide-sweeping generalizations.

 

[lordkalvan]

I've decided not to try reason with the Evolutionists (bio/cosmo) here. They think anyone who disagrees does so only out of ignorance, not out of a different perspective. And, they defend Evolution with the blindness of a True Believer.

If you think it's simply a matter of 'same evidence, different interpretation', then it is surely your responsibility to support that understanding, rather than simply run away when confronted with reasoned counterargument?

Evolutionists don't believe that nature needs to take 500, or some large number, changes to leap to the next viable form.

No one here has demonstrated thatvthis strawman argument bears any relation to evolutionary theory or reality.

They believe believe that every step, of a single mutation, along the way between any two organisms is viable on its own.

Nor do we believe that change is solely driven by mutation. Are you different from your parents? Is this difference solely due to mutation? Are you 'viable'?

They have no proof that there are no valleys between various forms. They can't even provide an example of it. So, they pull a bait and switch, and provide the argument that the OP refutes, selection with a target, and all the steps in between being non-viable.

There is no pre-existing target in evolution and so no bait-and-switch. The analogy simply demonstrates how an unintelligent selection process can result in an apparently designed outcome.

Richard Dawkins commits this fraud in his book The Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins boasts that it only took 41 generations to turn WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO P into METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. But, don't expect the Evolutionist True Believers to take Dawkins to task for this, like they did the OP for refuting Dawkins' lie.

On the contrary, it is the content of the OP that represents either a profound ignorance or a deliberate misrepresentation of evolutionary processes which, simply stated, can be summarised as modify, if successful repeat, otherwise discard. To take this one stage further back, it is a s if suggesting all chemical reactions are entirely random and that the binding of two hydrogen atoms with one oxygen atom to form a water molecule is quite inexplicable and simply a matter of blind chance without the guiding hand of an intelligent designer.

 

[lordkalvan]

That's only showing your ignorance. Jesus and the apostles rejected the science of their day, and that "science" and "mechanaism" is no different to what Darwin developed. You need to read a bit more before you make such wide-sweeping generalizations.

I would find your argument more persuasive if you could provide some reasoned, evidenced argument to support it. For example, your argument that Darwin simply plagiarised pre-existing science, whether with scare quotes or not.

 

[Asyncritus]

Re: Profeso5 John Lennox Demolishes Evolution

I think a moment's reflection would have led you to realise this is a typo on my part. 'Not' should appear between 'is' and 'wholly'. I don't need to verify Lennox's assumptions as he has done nothing to validate them, but simply presented them as givens. It's up to him (or you on his behalf as you are presenting his argument here) to show the validity of these assumptions.

Well there you go: they're not independent events.

Any fatuous arguments here reside with Lennox. I leave others to decide whether this is down to ignorance or dishonesty.

His maths is fine, it's the assumptions that underlie them that are tosh, as any biologist worth his salary can tell you. Interesting that, in the light of your comments on Professor Dawkins, you get on your high horse about 'academic snobbery and assassination' in respect of my comments on Lennox's faulty arguments.

I fail to see how event A influencing event B affects the argument in any meaningful way.

Any movement from A to B has only 2 possible outcomes. B is going to be either viable or non-viable. There are no other options.

You may, as Barbarian is valiantly trying to do, introduce 'partly viable' options, but they merely lengthen the process, and increase the number of steps from 2000 upwards.

With a corresponding increase in the improbability.

So I really don't see any escape from the ruthless logic Lennox is applying.

If he wasn't correct, then Dawkins would not have had to introduce the Head Monkey scenario which I mentioned above. His introduction of the Head Monkey is his vain attempt to shore up the tottering foundations of the theory, and a tacit recognition of the mathematical impossibility he is espousing.

A good bit of special pleading always works wonders for a failing theory. A pity you guys can't see it.

It was remiss of me not to have introduced this line of argumentation before, in the cases I have brought to the board. As of now, Barbarian's efforts to deflect the facts will have to face the statistical consequences of the claims he makes.

We'll see how he gets on with them.

 

[Tri Unity]

I would find your argument more persuasive if you could provide some reasoned, evidenced argument to support it. For example, your argument that Darwin simply plagiarised pre-existing science, whether with scare quotes or not.

For someone who chides others on their ignorance, this knowledge should have been known by you. These facts are even easy to find out, so I am sure somebody with your reasoning capacity should be able to find this out without any trouble.

 

[Asyncritus]

Actually a range of viabilities. But let's go on...

Like the old statistician's joke; "A thing will either happen, or it won't. Therefore, all probabilities are 50%." Except Lennox appears to take the joke seriously.

Unless Async is up to his old games, Lennox is a mathematical ignoramus.

The Professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford - a mathematical ignoramus. Well done, Barbarian, well done.

But a copy of his book (God's Undertaker) and then we'll talk, intelligently, I hope.

Well, let's give that a test. Take a population of 100,000 organisms (much smaller than most species populations). Let's say the likelihood of a useful mutation is about 0.1 percent (one in a thousand). Let's say that the organisms are much less likely to have a mutation than humans, and say there are six per organism.

So we end up with 600,000 mutations per generation, of which 600 are useful.

Let's say that the mutations have a favorability of only 1.1, which means that it will be 1.1 times as common each generation. So in 11 generations, it's essentially fixed. :toofunny So in 11 generations, we have 600 mutations. But we're talking about millions of generations.

This is pure, irrelevant nonsense. Try again.

And answer Lennox's mathematics, not with this farcical ineptitude. The maths is in the OP. Go read.

 

[lordkalvan]

For someone who chides others on their ignorance, this knowledge should have been known by you. These facts are even easy to find out, so I am sure somebody with your reasoning capacity should be able to find this out without any trouble.

Sorry, not my responsibility to research evidence for your unsupported assertions and claims - that would be your job and, in the absence of such support, your claims and assertions can safely be disregarded.

 

[Asyncritus]

Funny Asyn... you have here the very same evolution cheer-leaders with their pom poms who were trying to discredit any and all evidence to the contrary on another thread too. It is doubly funny that the atheists and the theistic evolutionists sing the same choir. That is saying a great deal!

Do I understand that you are a faithful believer in the creation account of Genesis?

Absolutely so.