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In the Beginning was Information

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Written by lithgow lithgow

Category: Reviews Reviews

Published: 08 April 2011 08 April 2011

Last Updated: 08 January 2015 08 January 2015

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A review of In the Beginning was Information by Werner Gitt, Chistliche Literatur-Verbreitung, 2000.

This work, by the prolific German scientist Werner Gitt, should be better known.  It takes the form of a carefully structured argument for the non-materialistic origin of information, and for biological information (as encoded in DNA) to be considered in the legitimate domain of this claim.  He completes the book with a wide-ranging discussion of the implications of his claims.

Gitt organises his arguments well, progressing carefully and marking his claims as theorems, laws, or whatever is appropriate.  He builds his theory of information quickly and succinctly, perhaps too quickly for sceptics would will struggle at each of his theorems.  Nonetheless, he provides reasonable evidence as he goes, and his thesis is structured carefully so that it is very open to falsification.  Indeed, he claims that he has presented it many times and requested evidence for falsification, but has never received any such.

The key to Gitt's thinking is to realise that information is a metaphysical entity that is used for communication between a sender and receiver, and should not be confused with its physical representation.  Shannon's theorem, which is really the only tool modern science has for information, really only deals with the lowest level of information (according to Gitt), the statistical level.  Gitt adds four more levels: syntax (the rules that define how information is structured so that a sender can construct a message that a receiver can properly decode), semantics (the definitions of what the information actually means so that the sender can encode meaning that the receiver then understands), pragmatics (the actions the sender is attempting to get the sender to perform by sending the message), and apobetics (the end result the sender is attempting to achieve in the sender).  By understanding information at all these levels we can better understand the processes used at each level.

Gitt carefully develops a number of rules of information that shows that information, so understood, must always have a non-materialistic, indeed sentient, source.  (In other words, the sender of such information must be personal, like a human being or the Christian god.)  He then goes on to show how the genetic code is a form of biological information, and how, if these laws of information apply (and there is no reason to think otherwise), then DNA must have a sentient source, and the only ration candidate is God.  Gitt spends some time exploring how beautifully the biological world shows brilliant optimisation based on information.  The first part of the book thus forms both a foundation for a new domain of science, and an argument for God from scientific principals.  Like all scientific arguments it is, of course, wide open to refutation, and Gitt welcomes this, and has, as mentioned, carefully constructed his argument to make such refutation easy and clear.  I note that the criticism of his work online has not attempted any such refutation.

But Gitt doesn't stop there, he also applies his information theories to the Bible, and sheds light on the beauty of the Word of God as analysed using these scientific tools.  This is perhaps the best example I've seen of how a truly Biblical, God-centred science could work.  Poythress, in Redeeming Science spends a lot of time talking about that concept, but seems completely bereft of any real examples, probably because his idea of God-centred science is actually not so God-centred as Gitt's.  In any case, Gitt provides a number of insights into scripture with his analysis.  And that ends the main content of the book.

However, Gitt has provided extensive information in three interesting appendicies.  The first appendix provides a technical explanation of Shannon's theory of information and its uses, and applies it to natural languages as an interesting exercise.  The second appendix provides a very brief overview of the wonder of natural (human) languages -- they really are marvellous things.  The final appendix discusses energy in the context of the two main laws of energy (the laws of conservation and entropy), and investigates the difference between the energy inefficiency of human designed systems and the amazing efficiency (and other properties) of biological (ie. God-designed) systems.  This provides more evidence for Gitt's claim that biological information can have no other source than a divine creator.

This work would simply annoy materialists, since it flies in the face of their entire belief system at almost every step.  However, Gitt has made a valiant, and largely successful I think, attempt to present his arguments in a clear, easily disproved form.  It would be good if authors such as Richard Dawkins could write with such clarity and honesty, but I guess their house of cards would be self-evidently unstable to even the most thoughtless reader in that case.

For Christians, however, this is a thought-provoking and challenging work.  It provides an innovative mix of science and theology, without diminishing either.  For non-technical readers the scientific method and approach used throughout the book (and particularly the very technical Appendix 1) might be a bit difficult, but (with the exception of Appendix 1) Gitt's writing is lucid enough to be approachable by almost anyone.

Recommended reading.  The book is freely available direct from Werner Gitt in PDF form here, and you can find all of Gitt's publications (in English) on his page here.

Bones of Contention

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Written by lithgow lithgow

Category: Reviews Reviews

Published: 30 March 2011 30 March 2011

Last Updated: 08 January 2015 08 January 2015

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A review of Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils, Revised Edition, by Marvin L. Lubenow, Baker Books, 2004.

I read the first edition of this book years ago and was impressed with the way that Lubenow used evolutionary data to debunk human evolution.  That strength has not changed in this edition, and the bulk of the data presented in the book is, indeed, from evolutionists.  Lubenow does an excellent job of separating his YEC (Young Earth Creationist) beliefs from his presentation of the data.  One is never unaware of his position, but he makes it very clear that he doesn't need to fudge any data to support his case (indeed, the more data from evolutionists that he presents the stronger his case grows).

The goal of this book is to present the data available on human (or hominid) fossils and clarify the relationship of this data to actual history.  Lubenow does this in an engaging fashion, using short chapters linked into longer sections to tell a range of historic vignets presenting the various hominid fossils in their broader context.  His style is easy to read and engaging, unashamedly admitting his position and yet not being disparaging of any individual evolutionists (though he is certainly critical of their beliefs).  Surrounding the rather dry data of hominid fossil discoveries with the very human stories of their discoverers and promoters both makes the material more engaging and also helps us to understand the true state of the data.  For example, the story of Java Man involves an ego so huge that its own covered up a contemporaneous discovery of modern Homo sapiens fossils in order to solidify his Java Man's claim to missing link fame.

Throughout these accounts, Lubenow makes clear his doubts, but doesn't confuse matters by trying to introduce his own dating or theories.  He reserves such until the final section of the book, which is almost entirely new to this edition, I believe.  This final section contains evidence from recent creationist research on dating which undermines the already precarious assumptions of evolutionists' interpretations of radiological dating.  He also contains interesting sections on the Noahic Flood Ice Age (as modelled by Baumgardner), and the theory of written transmission for the contents of Genesis.

The strength of this book is its thorough presentation and analysis of hominid fossil data purportedly supporting human evolution.  The data is well referenced, clearly and engagingly presented, and explained with clarity and precision.  Possibly new is Lubenow's analysis of the hopelessly flawed mtDNA analysis behind my of the African Eve theories -- he does an excellent job of clearly explaining this work and its weaknesses.  Lubenow's previous work, which focused exclusively on the paleontological data, was so powerful that his updates, including creationist dating research, hardly adds any strength to his argument.  What this revision does achieve, though, is a strong case against human evolution (and, indeed, cosmological evolution).  Lubenow even presents a case that evolution is inherently racist, and that an attempt to minimise this inherent racism is driving a lot of evolutionary research nowdays.

One weakness of the work is that Lubenow's own interpretation of the hominid fossil data never seems to be fully explained.  In the previous edition that was clearly beyond the scope of the work, but this new edition has a broader scope and this lack becomes obvious.  Perhaps his comments are scattered throughout the book, but one never quite grasps exactly how he would explain all of the data that he presents.  For example, he gives possible explanations for the Neandertal morphology exhibiting itself in Homo sapiens, but he never quite connects that into a coherent picture.  He also never attempts to explain how the culture associated with the various finds fits into his YEC view.  If Lubenow could further develop this type of content then this work, already very important, would be a seminal work on paleoanthropology.

Overall, a must-read book for anyone interested in human evolution.

Redeeming Science

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Written by lithgow lithgow

Category: Reviews Reviews

Published: 23 March 2011 23 March 2011

Last Updated: 08 January 2015 08 January 2015

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A review of Redeeming Science, Vern S. Poythress, Crossway Books, 2006.

This is a useful, but deeply flawed book on the relationship between Biblical Christianity and modern science.  Poythress, a New Testament scholar, presents a broad analysis of how science should fit into a Christian, and specifically Biblical, worldview.  He introduces some useful concepts, including the correspondence between God's actions in upholding creation and the laws of nature and the concept of "imaging" which God applies throughout reality.  However these concepts are communicated in an unclear, unecessarily verbose fashion -- Poythress needs a lot more clarity in his thought and language.  Poythress's lack of clarity also shows in his attempts to understand Genesis 1, an issue that is important thanks to its constant influence through the book's analysis of Biblical science.

Let's look at specific issues.

In the first chapter Poythress makes a good, well researched argument for the correspondence between God's upholding word and the laws of nature.  Unfortunately he errs by referring to these laws as "scientific laws", thus creating a confusion between the actual laws of nature and the scientific theories (called "laws" when they reach a particular level of certainty) that approximate them.  This simple mis-choice in terminology greatly complicates his arguments and fogs his point.  This sort of clumsiness is evident throughout the book, making it unecessarily hard to read.  Poythress perhaps should have spent several years refining this work before publication.  Nonetheless, this section is useful, especially the carefully prepared footnotes presented in the argument.  This is not a light-weight piece of work, despite the easily fixed mistep in terminology.

Immediately afterwards, however, Poythree takes a seriously wrong turn. He recognises the key position of the Genesis 1 creation account in both Christian theology and science, and attempts to tackle it head on.  Unfortunately his research in this area has not been as careful as in the linkage between God's word and natural law.  He makes several elementary mistakes that lead him astray:

1. He misunderstands the genre and purpose of Genesis. It is history intended to explain Israel's role in God's redemptive work in the world.  It necessarily must be historic because analogies only help to explain something, they don't provide causes for real things, but Genesis is attempting to map the causes in the real world that led to Israel's purpose in the real world.  The fact that Genesis starts at the beginning is not surprising, since it must explain why Israel offers hope to the whole world -- it's God must be the God of all creation.  It also needs to explain the cause of the fallenness of the world (otherwise there is no need for a redemptive plan).  Genesis 1 and 2 address both these issues.
   Poythress at one point seems to be attempting to force Genesis 1 into a polemic against polytheism, but fortunately he understands that it is intended to real in some sense.  However he never seems to grasp how Genesis is a history tracing historic causes.  Though he treats the rest of Genesis as historic (even the flood story, though he offers a ridiculous suggestion about how it might be describing a local flood, a suggestion he seems so uncomfortable with that he never follows through on it in later discussions), he never justifies why the first chapter shouldn't be read as historic, despite the very careful language clearly designed to indicated chronological (the thus historical) narrative, and the lack of any indication that there is a genre break between Genesis 1 and the rest of the book.
2. He provides a reasonable analysis of various positions except for two: the 24 hour creation day position (generally known as Young Earth Creation or YEC) and the "analogical" position (which posits that the entire seven day account is an analogy).  He fails in different ways on these two views.
   1. He hastily dismisses the YEC position for several reasons.
      First, he dismisses Russell Humphreys' cosmology which addresses the issue of an old cosmos in a way that shows a complete misunderstanding of Humphrey's theory: "Third, D. Russell Humphreys employs the general theory of relativity in order to try to “rescale” the time back to the Big Bang. But he misapplies the mathematics of general relativity, and does not realize that in any case general relativity would not significantly affect the time estimates to nearby galaxies like the Andromeda galaxy."  Embarassingly for Poythress, Humphreys isn't misapplying the mathematics of general relativity any more than the Big Bangers are, and Humphreys' application of the maths is indeed proving to have better predictive power than the slew of Big Bang models.  Poythress clearly doesn't understand Humphreys' model and thus his critique regarding the "nearby" Andromeda galaxy has no force.  He provides no references or arguments to support his assertions, but merely dismisses Humphreys' efforts offhand.  This is very sloppy, and substantially undermines his argument.
      Second, instead of dealing properly with the YEC position, Poythress tilts madly at a position that no serious scientists hold: the "mature creation" theory.  He inexplicably spends almost an entire chapter dealing with this instead of the far more viable YEC position.  It's hard to understand why Poythress wastes so much ink on this position, especially since he eventually dismisses it.  Perhaps he thinks the naive non-scientist is more attracted to such a position so he'd better deal with it.  If so, he does a very poor job of explaining it for the layman, using confusing and unclear terminology (such as "ideal time") in his explanations.
      Third, Poythress treats Genesis 1 almost as if it stands in exegetical isolation.  Never (in this section) does he look at how the rest of scripture regards the record of Genesis 1.  He doesn't even attempt to understand the position and purpose of Genesis in the scriptures.  Thus he is free to make up theories that are untested against the rest of scripture -- a basic mistake.
      Fourth, Poythress shows an inexplicable hostility towards taking the carefully recorded days of Genesis 1 at face value.  This creates enormous difficulties for him later on, as this bizarre statement demonstrates: "Days are days because of their event content. People in various preindustrial cultures, through the centuries, have read Genesis 1 and understood it in this way, because they too naturally used an interactive orientation."  Tell that to Australian Aboriginals, Mr Poythress ("No, you don't understand -- those things you measure by the pattern of light and dark are not days, it's the cycle of work that forms your days, and don't tell me that your cycle of work is fitted into the pattern of light and dark, because I simply won't believe you.")  This ridiculous position is forced on Poythress by his preference for the analagical day view.
   2. He supports the analogical day view for several reasons:
      First, though never clearly stated, Poythress is obviously cowed by the enourmous dates given in contemporary science.  He completely fails to grasp the YEC counter to this (which is simply to point out that these dates are based on a set of assumptions that can be easily replaced).
      Second, Poythress argues that the seventh day is still ongoing, and thus must be analogical.  This is the only positive scriptural argument he presents for the analogical view.  It revolves around his assertion that, since God rested from his creative work on the seventh day, and there has never been any more creative work to do, he must still be resting, thus making the seventh day an extended time period, thus requiring the "days" in Genesis 1 to be analogical rather than some period of time.  (If the days were varying periods of time, then the analogy to the human week would break down -- at least Poythress understand this.)  The problem is that Poythress's argument that God is still resting in the seventh day is that it assumes a very narrow understanding of the account.  Certainly God rested from his creative work, since that's what sort of work he'd been doing.  And Poythress is also correct in pointing out that God's providential upholding of the universe could not be rested from.  But isn't it possible that there are more forms of work for God than merely creative or providential?  Indeed, Poythress even recognises this when he dismisses the possibility that God had already forseen that he would need to start on redemptive work (and I agree with his dismissal).  However, surely there are even more than these three types of work!  Couldn't God have planned teaching or mentoring work with Adam, for example?  One only needs to be able to suggest one possible type of work that God could have planned to engage in (dismissing the possibility of God's planning for the fall, though of course he had) in order to demolish Poythress's sole positive argument for the analogical day view.  I have just done that, so I see no reason to be forced into the position Poythress takes.
      Just as importantly, Poythress never deals with the important question of what the analogical day view is an analogy for!  After all, the purpose of analogies is to aid in explaining something, to clarify (often by simplifying).  However, an analogy cannot provide a cause for something.  So the analogical day view has no explanatory power as a creation account: it cannot explain the cause of the universe, because it's an analogy, not a history (a narrative of events with causal linkages).  So what is it an analogy for?  Just think about the analogy between the human work week and the days of creation.  How does this analogy work if the days of creation are themselves an analogy?  Poythress's suggestion seems to be that it's merely the idea of days that are analogical, not the work done during them.  The problem with this is that he has the same problem as all long age creationists: the order of activities in Genesis 1 doesn't sync with the Big Bang account -- plants are not around before stellar bodies in any version of the Big Bang, and Poythress never even attempts to deal with this.
      Thus his attempt at arguing for an analogical day view fails dismally, failing to provide a scientifically viable explanation, failing to have any positive scriptural support, and failing to sync with scriptural views of creation.
3. Poythress fails to distinguish between the different types of science, often labelled as "historic science" (like biological evolution, uniformitarian geology, cosmology) and operational science (such as biology, physics, etc.).  The differences are very simply explained: historic science deals with unrepeatable events (historic events), while operational science deals with experimentally repeatable events.  If Poythress had this simple understanding he would find his job much easier.  At times he hints at this understanding, but at other times he seems completely oblivious.  For example, he says, " Conversely, we cannot assume that the products of science are thoroughly valid. Not only are scientists fallible, but idolatry corrupts the practice of science through distortion of the conception of scientific law. So we will find a mixture of good and bad. No simple recipe enables us to sort it out. We ourselves, the would-be sorters, remain fallible and sinful. Sometimes science may yield very good products in spite of the flawed assumptions of the practitioners. Sometimes not. We just have to look, and do the best we can."  This take is appropriately humble, but it neglects the very real difference in "self-correcting" that exists in operational science, properly practiced, and historic science.  Since Genesis 1 addresses areas of historic science, which is only indirectly testable (by attempting to create models that can both explain the historic record and provide measurable predictions in the near future), it resides in a different domain from, say physics or chemistry, but Poythress never explains this.

Once he moves beyond the issues of Genesis 1 (which consumes over half of the book), his ideas of God's imaging, and how this applies to science, can come to the fore.  This makes quite interesting reading and can be usefully applied by setting a perspective in a scientist's mind.  At times he even makes interesting attempts at explaining the relationship between operational science and God's rational and orderly universe (using the concept of imaging as the overarching idea).  However, as mentioned, these sections lack clarity and are unecessarily verbose.  Still, they contain useful ideas and concepts.

So, in conclusion, Poythress has a number of useful contributions for anyone interested in the relationship between Biblical Christianity and science (including practicing scientists), but his thesis is undermined by a lack of clarity and some fundamental errors.

The King's Speech

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Written by lithgow lithgow

Category: Reviews Reviews

Published: 15 March 2011 15 March 2011

Last Updated: 08 January 2015 08 January 2015

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The King's Speech is like the noble, virtuous version of Black Swan's self-centredness.  Both movies are about people overcoming performance pressure.  Both are almost claustrophobically focused on a very small group of people, and express this with numerous closeups (and while Black Swan's camera trails Nina around like a puppy, The King's Speech's camera regularly stands in for people so that you get the characters looking straight out of the screen at you).  Both movies trace the struggles of their protagonist as they are thrust into the limelight (albeit one reluctantly and one with relish).  And both show the unconventional means that are needed to break through to a powerful performance.  But there the similarities stop.

The differences are more stark.  While Black Swan concerns the narcissistic world of ballet and its protagonist's struggle is to become a fawned-over star and "princess", The King's Speech traces a prince's struggle to fulfil his duty to his family and nation despite his desire for obscurity.  Unsurprisingly, with goals so morally separated, the means used to achieve them are also morally diverse.  Black Swan depicts an obsessive, lonely, self-indulgent and ultimately destructive process leading to its climactic "triumph".  The King's Speech, on the other hand depicts an endeavour that involves new friendships, powerful encouragement, humility and ultimately real achievement in service.  The two movies are like black and white.

The King's Speech follows Prince Albert/King George VI (Colin Firth) through the beginning of his relationship with Lionel Logue (Geoffery Rush), an Australian speech therapist.  "Bertie", as Logue insists on calling him, has struggled with stammering since early childhood.  Against her own interests, his wife, Elisabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) encourages him to work on this defect so that he can fulfil his duty as a prince and, in an unexpected and undesired turn of events, as king.  Part of Logue's treatment is to treat Bertie as an equal.  Rush excels in this role of wry, wise adviser and assistant (and eventually, friend) and deserved an Oscar probably more than Firth did.  Of course Firth does an excellent job in his role, too, portraying the prince's slow softening and deep sense of duty with as much facility as one would expect, given his previous roles.  Bonham Carter surprises with a well-judged performance as Elisabeth, displaying the wry humour some of us may remember from the Queen Mum.  Guy Pierce and Derek Jacobi do well in minor roles as the annoying Edward VIII and Archbishop Lang, and Michael Gambon is as good as usual as King George V (it's genuinely distressing to see him in his confused state just before his death).  However, Timothy Spall is slightly grating as Winston Churchill, sounding like someone trying to do an impression rather than providing a convincing characterisation.

The script is well paced, starting and finishing at points in Bertie's life that are appropriately dramatic, but do not feel artificial at all.  Sufficient time is given to his family, including the scandal that led to Edward VIII's abdication, and to Logue's family, to make the major characters human.  While Black Swan flaunts its artistic sensibilities with its clever mirroring and fantasies, The King's Speech shows real people with real lives.  It has heart, and at that heart lies a superbly written script (deserving of its Oscar).  There is drama and humour aplenty in the story, but it is all natural and unforced, flowing from the material rather than forced onto it or even worked into it.  At its heart, this movie is a buddy story -- the story of two very different men becoming friends in a shared adventure facing shared adversity.  Like all stories that build on this theme well, it is both moving and affirming.  (I can't help but compare this to Black Swan, in which the trajectory of relationships are all headed in the opposite direction: towards dissolution.)

Technically the film calls little attention to itself, apart from the regular use of closeups and first-person perspective (involving people talking to the screen).  There are a few startling, ultra-wideangle shots intended to convey Bertie's intimidation, but perhaps the cleverest technique is the way the film portrays mid-20th century London.  Most of the scenes of outdoors London are filmed in heavy fog, thus allowing the producers to expend little effort on dressing up the streets, and allowing the viewer to fill in the gaps themselves, all while avoiding the claustrophobic, small-scale feel of an interior-bound production.  Music is used sparingly but well, and the music over the closing credits in liltingly uplifting.

I mentioned at the start that this movie was almost claustrophobically focused on Bertie, however this doesn't prevent large-scale scenes of crowds listening to the king.  This is a story about a major public figure, after all.  But what this film does, is to humanise that figure.  To provide a glimpse into the soul of an ordinary man, thrust into an unusual role, struggling with a common problem in order to fulfil his duty.  There is a lot to relate to in this story for everyone.  The King's Speech is a movie with plenty of heart.  (But, I should point out, it is still a very conventional movie, not to be compared with the true greats like Babe or Breaker Morant.)