On the Origin of Articles
You might think that someone wrote this article. But of course, you would be mistaken. Articles are not written by people. They are the result of chance. Every intelligent person knows it. There might be some people who want you to think that articles are written by people. But this view is totally unscientific. After all, we cannot see the person who allegedly wrote the article. We cannot detect him or her in any way. The claim that this article has an author cannot be empirically verified, and therefore it must be rejected. All we have is the article itself, and we must find a scientific explanation for its origin.
Since no intelligent source can be empirically detected within this article, empirical science must look to the chance processes of nature for its formation. In other words, we must not allow ourselves to think that this article came about from a mind; for this would be unscientific. Since it is not the result of a mind, it follows logically that this article is the result of chance. The article has not been designed – it is not the result of some unseen conscious forethought.
Naysayers might suggest that this article bears evidence of design. They might point out that it has a logical flow, that its sentences are coherent, and that it contains creative information. True enough. But this is only evidence of apparent design at best. We must certainly grant that many articles appear designed, as if they had been planned by a mind and written with creative forethought. But to assume that the design came from some unseen, undetectable author would be unscientific.
What then is the true origin of articles? We know that articles can be copied. Articles on paper can be duplicated using a Xerox machine, and electronic articles can be copied from one computer to another. We also know that errors can occur in this duplication process. A simple glitch in the computer can result in a letter being changed, or a sentence or paragraph being duplicated or removed. Most of these random changes would make the article less readable than the original. But such variations would not be copied. (Who would bother to Xerox a bad article?) And so eventually they would be lost.
We must assume that occasionally, very rarely, a mistake in the copy would actually improve the quality of the article – making it more readable and more interesting. In such cases, the improved article would be much more likely to be copied than the original. In this fashion, articles gradually improve, often growing in length, complexity, and interest. It stands to reason, therefore, that all articles started out as a simple word, or perhaps even a single letter, which was gradually changed as it was duplicated due to errors in the duplication process and selection of the more readable variations.
It is also sensible to conclude that all articles have diverged from a common original article which itself consisted of nothing more than a single word. This is obvious by virtue of the fact that all articles have certain things in common. For example, all articles use words. And in all cases these words are organized into sentences. Many of the words used in many articles are exactly the same! For example, the word “the” appears very commonly in almost all articles. Are we to believe that this is just a coincidence? Clearly not. It is evidence that these articles share a common source. They have each diverged from a common article in the distant past.
Naysayers argue that articles are written by people. But would people use the very same words in different articles? The common words, common grammar, and common sentence structure clearly point to a common origin for articles. It is reasonable to conclude that articles which share more common words and sentences are more closely related than those that have fewer common words and sentences. Clearly this extends to larger works of literature – books for example. Books are the most advanced form of literary diversification, and so they must also be the most recent.
Critics of our position (“authorists”) might object that we have never seen one article transform into a completely different article. In other words, all observed changes have been only minor transformations. But is this really surprising? After all, it would take a very long time for an article to have accumulated enough changes to be classified as a completely different article. And people simply don’t live long enough for this to happen within our lifetime. But the fact that all articles share common words is positive evidence that it has happened, even though the process is too slow to see it in its entirety today. We do see minor transformations today. And it is reasonable to conclude that these minor changes will add up to major changes over long periods of time.
Some readers might be bothered by the fact that we do not have a complete record of how the simpler articles diversified into the wide variety of complex articles in our present world. But this does not in any way disqualify our basic thesis that articles do share a common original source. After all, considering the trillions of variations that must have existed and been destroyed in the vast time necessary for this process, we would expect that the record of links in the chain would be fragmentary at best. And we do know of some links. For example, there are several minor variations of the book “the Hobbit.” These are known to exist, and it is obvious they stem from a common original. So it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that all works of literature share a common source.
Given the slowness of the diversification of articles, it is reasonable to conclude that articles are far older than “authorists” assume. The process of an article becoming longer and more interesting likely takes millions of years – perhaps even hundreds of millions of years. It may even happen in spurts, rapid diversification followed by long periods of relative stasis. This may account for the fact that we find so few intermediate forms in ancient libraries.
One objection to our position is the idea that some sentences in some articles contain a degree of “irreducible complexity.” This is to say that even a minor change of any kind would make the sentence unclear or unreadable. However, this notion fails to consider that multiple simultaneous changes – though rare – can occur in the process of time. The fact that we cannot conceptualize an intermediate sentence does not actually prove that no such intermediate is possible. The process by which articles diversify from a common source is still being studied, and so we do not have the answers to every detail yet. But this does not mean that such answers will not be forthcoming in the process of time. The formation and diversification of articles from a common source is a scientific fact and well supported by the evidence even though some of the details are not yet understood.
To assume that articles have an author is a faith position. It is a belief in something that cannot be perceived with the senses. As such, it is unscientific and should be rejected. If some people feel that they must believe in an author, that’s okay, but please remember that your view is religious and not scientific. Please don’t force it on others or teach it in school.
Just think about it. This very article which you are now reading is the result of countless copying errors which gradually increased its length and complexity over time. How amazing that such a process of nature has resulted in so many wonderful works of literature! Such literature is not the result of some mysterious, unseen, undetectable “author.” It is simply the inevitable result of the mindless duplication process working over unimaginable periods of time.
Hey Dr. Lisle. This is absolutely brilliant! I posted it to my facebook, i hope that is okay. Seems a couple of my friends have already re-posted it. Natural Selection in progress!!
Thanks. Yes – fine to re-post.
Dr. Lisle,
Can I begin by stating that I am a Christian of the ‘6×24 creation’ persuasion – and yet I find this product of evolution somewhat disturbing. The Christian’s faith is quite unlike any other faith – such as the faith demonstrated by evolutionists – in that it is faith in its truest sense (i.e. not a firmly held, intellectual conviction) and we understand that it is a gift from God.
I think that any defence of the Christian faith (not that this article is – as that would imply purpose and therefore design) that does not explicitly point to Christ is rather cruel, as it seeks to bring about humiliation without showing the way for restoration. Rather like if Peter and John had pulled the lame man to his feet saying “Rise up and walk !” without saying “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth …”
Hi Paul,
Thanks for this. Ultimately, our apologetic must always focus on Christ. No doubt about that! Sometimes people need to be humbled before they will even consider the Gospel. God did this with Paul. Remember, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. The proud man must be humbled if he is to receive God’s grace.
Even the moral law of God as expressed in our conscience brings about humiliation without showing the way for restoration. Was it a mistake on God’s part to give us a conscience that does this? Of course not. God knew that man must be made aware of the fact that He is a sinner before man will consider needing a Savior. So while I agree that we should at some point show the solution, this need not happen in the same instant (or in the same article) as showing the problem. For everything there is a right time (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
Thanks for the blog – excellently written. The analogy breaks down in the fact that people and animals have life themselves, and so can apparently reproduce without outside help, and so there appears to be no observable need right now for a superior being. (Of course, go back to the first person or animal and you have the blatant need for God.)
Whereas articles are lifeless and cannot reproduce without another agent that does have life. This particular copy of the article must have been brought into existence by this other agent with life, and so the article has a creator.
Hi Mark,
Well, people and animals do need “outside” help to reproduce. Without God upholding the universe in a consistent a logical way, people and animals couldn’t even continue to exist (Acts 17:28) let alone reproduce. Even God-deniers must acknowledge that life requires an outside environment to do anything.
Articles might be copied by people; but this has no logical connection to whether or not the article has an author. And people are not strictly needed for the copying process either. Xerox machines do this perfectly well. And computers can copy articles electronically without any human intervention.
So if people are going to invoke a creator for the tiny amount of information in a typical article, how much more should they invoke a Creator for the information in DNA?
Authorists = PWNED!
Great job Dr. Lisle! Especially in the comments. I certainly do not have the patience nor the education to debate specifically with these inconsistent Internet… eh, hobbyists.
Brilliant, but sadly i have learned today that many school teachers who teach that authors must have wrote these articles are being harassed and bullied into teaching that all these things happened by pure chance and magic. It gets worse, Nill Bye the Authorist guy is quoted as saying “as there is a now a consenus of Authorists who accept authorism as fact there is no place in world for these flat earthists who believe in the myths that articles can write themselves. Where are we going to be get our engineers and scientists in the future if these people teach our children these myths. Dick Rawkins, a well known champion of authorism said that “we know that authorism is true or we would not be even be able to even debate it’s existence” Rawkins went on to describe how articles creating themselves out of nothing by magic and no explanation as to how or why was imppossible and simply absurd in a rational world. “It’s like a frog changing into a Prince by the magic wand of time, just fairy tales” ” Rawkins told his audience.
Dr. Lisle
Reductio ad absurdum at it’s finest! So sad they don’t see the paradox as they argue, may God grant them, as He did all of us who believe, repentance and the gift of faith! No one is born a follower of Jesus, keep up the good work!
God bless your efforts at ICR and the “path of good works He has laid before you”,
Your Brother in Christ,
Eric
I hope that you don’t grow tired of the work you do here. It must be exhausting to deal with even just a handful of folks for whom intransigence is a religion. One clumsy phrase commonly used by such buffoons is “unintended comedy”. I’m quite certain, whenever they say it’s funny, you can be sure they’ve gotten trapped in a logical corner, from which the favorite escape route is a fake smile. Pathetic.
qwerty asdf
qwordy asdef
wordy as def
wordy as defined by
wordy as defined by the following comment
wordy as defined by
Notice, even now, how this article is morphing over time. The original qwerty asdf (a common mutation in many articles, particularly in their comments) would, at first, appear nonsensical.
But, over time and through additional mutations, it has re-formed into the phrase “wordy as defined by”. This is a clear example of an evolutionary process at work, albeit on a smaller scale. Clearly, given the amount of time that has passed since the original article (an astounding 14,169,600 seconds, according to the fossil records), is it not reasonable to expect additional mutations, which, when combined, will produce some new form of the article.
Furthermore, mutations are not necessarily gradual. Sometimes, morphological “leaps” may occur (such as this one). Some may argue that this leap has “appeared out of nowhere”, but in reality, the seed of the mutation can be seen in the smaller “asdf” and “qwerty”, which are present in the current form of this comment.
This article serves to actually prove that mutations do indeed occur over time. The clue, obviously, is to read the comments, and the replies. Some comments may not appear to make sense, but eventually, through the survival of the fittest, meaningful words, phrases and sentences will eventually appear.
(For the date and time calculations, please see Date Duration Calculator.)
Dan, “qwerty asdf” and “wordy as defined by” are exactly the same they are both nonsensical. But what you have done is imposed meaning to one of them which intrinsically is outside the morphing scope. There was no purpose to its morphing; you assigned a purpose to it and then you assigned a ‘meaning’ to its contents. So you established rules that were not inherent to morphing.
“qwerty asdf” could actually have meant something, just as you assumed “wordy as defined by” had meaning, but you assumed that it was nonsense. So, your morphing was the destruction of the meaning within “qwerty asdf”. Ultimately you proved mutations are destructive to meaning because it cannot tell meaning from nonsense.
Very Good!!!
I’m a little surprised that this particular article has survived the information filtering process, as it appears to do very little apart from state that it exists.
Unfortunately, by adding this comment, I’ll be perpetrating its continued existence, but after this I’ll be reading a whole load of other useful articles, which hopefully will balance everything out.
Maybe I judged the article too harshly. It does contain a hypothesis about the origins of its own existence, and generalizes this to all articles. Unfortunately, this hypothesis requires the existence of an external agent (which it calls “Xerox” or “computer”) in order for the article to exist in the first place, as by itself it has no way to produce any kind of copies of itself. This agent appears able to perform more functions than the article itself, and it might be asked where it came from.
It would be a more plausible hypothesis if it included some method for the article to self-replicate, but instead it just shifts the problem up to this mysterious but more potent “Xerox”/”computer”.
As this hypothesis doesn’t provide any answers about the origins of articles, it is at best an intellectual backwater, and maybe some progress on the problem could be made if “Xerox”/”computer” were give some attention.
I’ve yet to receive a reply, so by way of reminder I’m going to clarify my position.
There are a number of flaws in your article.
1.) I just said “your article”. You wrote it, with the evidence pointing towards “you” being someone on the other side of a computer screen who is along the Intelligent Design spectrum of beliefs. I say this for subsequent reasons below.
2.) Each time someone has tried to apply some kind of reasoning to show that this article was written by a person (using evidence such as observations of similar activity, IP logs, etc), you reject them saying that such information isn’t part of the scenario. How exactly do you mean this article appeared “as is”? Am I to assume it just suddenly appeared on my screen? Or did it just appear, hosted on your webserver amongst all the other pages? Such information is a vital part of the scientific process to link an effect to its cause. Of course its going to be hard to link this article to authorship if you remove all links of evidence. Your approach is verging on solipsism, which is very hard to refute. The nature of the scientific method is to suggest and prove plausible links between islands of fact.
3.) The analogy itself is flawed. Obviously you’ve tried to construct a (slightly derisory) model of ambiogenesis and evolution by natural selection. Whatever aspect of life you care to consider is represented by the information content of the article, copying errors introduce some variation, and articles are selected to produce the next generation of articles by their perceived value to human readers.
However, the analogy falls down when it comes to modelling reproduction. An intrinsic part of evolutionary theory is that organisms are selected by their ability to self-reproduce. However, in this model, no matter how you argue it, articles can only reproduce by external forces. As these external forces therefore have more abilities, or “potency”, than the articles, you now have something more complicated whose origin also needs explaining. As such, the problem of the origin of information has simply been shifted up a level, which sounds very similar to an Intelligent Design style of argument.
4.) As someone who doesn’t believe in a supernatural origin of the universe, I am very conversant with the consequences of my thinking. Simplifying things into an analogy is not going to suddenly make things confusing for me.
> There are a number of flaws in your article.
Considering the random-chance way the article evolved, considering it has no intelligent author, it makes perfect sense that it would have some flaws. This strongly confirms the evolutionary origin of articles.
> I just said “your article”. You wrote it,
That’s a very interesting religious belief. But what you lack is evidence. You are perfectly free to believe in some magical unseen “author”, but that’s hardly a scientific position. If you’re going to be so dogmatic, you should have really compelling evidence; but you have none.
> with the evidence pointing towards “you”
What evidence? You didn’t give any.
> Each time someone has tried to apply some kind of reasoning to show that this article was written by a person (using evidence such as observations of similar activity, IP logs, etc)…
So far, no one has provided any actual evidence for an author. I certainly grant if there were such a thing as an “author” he, she, or it could probably write an article. But why invoke such a belief when there is a perfectly rational scientific explanation?
> How exactly do you mean this article appeared “as is”? Am I to assume it just suddenly appeared on my screen?
Did you actually read the article? The article explains its own origins. It did not just “appear”, but in fact gradually evolved over long periods of time, slowly changing as beneficial typos improved its quality. No doubt it has been copied many times, from computer to computer, and so on.
> Or did it just appear, hosted on your webserver amongst all the other pages? Such information is a vital part of the scientific process to link an effect to its cause.
You are trying to rely on the authority of an eye-witness to the article’s origin. Is that really scientific? Why don’t you instead attempt to scientifically explain the article’s origin instead of blindly accepting the words of some alleged (and unproven) eye-witness?
> Of course its [sic] going to be hard to link this article to authorship if you remove all links of evidence.
So you’re claiming that the reason there is no evidence of an author is because the author has removed all such evidence? That’s cute. Why not simply accept the scientific explanation?
There is plenty of evidence that the article indeed came about the way it says. We have seen copying errors. And no doubt a copying error could on rare occasions be beneficial. So the scientific explanation of the origin of articles is well-supported by evidence. These are things we actually scientifically observe – unlike your imaginary author.
> The nature of the scientific method is to suggest and prove plausible links between islands of fact.
Actually, the scientific method involves observation and experimentation. What observations do you have of the supposed author of the article? What experiments confirm his/her/its existence? None. But we have plenty of observations of articles being copied, plenty of observations of typos, and plenty of observations of inferior articles being rejected in favor of better articles. So the scientific view that articles evolve by chance seems far superior to your religious belief in some unobserved (and thus unscientific) author.
> The analogy itself is flawed.
No analogy is exact or it wouldn’t be an analogy. Besides, some flaws in the analogy are to be expected given that the article has evolved by chance processes.
> Obviously you’ve…
It’s bad enough that you believe in some unseen author, but now you have decided to believe it is me? Yet you have no observational evidence of this. Your blind faith is impressive.
> However, the analogy falls down when it comes to modelling reproduction. An intrinsic part of evolutionary theory is that organisms are selected by their ability to self-reproduce. However, in this model, no matter how you argue it, articles can only reproduce by external forces.
Biological viruses also cannot reproduce on their own, but require external forces. Should I assume that you believe that viruses have been intelligently designed? Even living cells require external things from their environment to replicate – food for example. And cells depend on the physics and chemistry of the universe, which is external to the cell.
> As these external forces therefore have more abilities, or “potency”, than the articles, you now have something more complicated whose origin also needs explaining.
The article was merely about the origin of articles, not the origin of the external forces that help with their replication. No doubt there is a naturalistic explanation for those as well, but that is a different issue entirely.
Likewise, living cells require the “external” forces of physics and chemistry in the universe in order to function or replicate. And such laws are complicated and require some explanation, as does the origin of the universe. But that is a different matter, isn’t it?
> As such, the problem of the origin of information has simply been shifted up a level, which sounds very similar to an Intelligent Design style of argument.
You are the one arguing for intelligent design of articles.
> As someone who doesn’t believe in a supernatural origin of the universe, I am very conversant with the consequences of my thinking.
But not very consistent apparently. Why believe in some unobserved, magical, “author” when we have a perfectly feasible scientific explanation for the origin of articles?
Ok fine, I’ll take the article at face value.
I have seen other people write blogs, and they generally take the form of a personalized webpage with a number of individual entries, or “articles”, if you will. Here we have a personalized webpage, and a number of individual entries, including the article at the top of this page. It’s likely that they were all written by the same person. I’m fairly sure if I applied some more sophisticated IT tools, I could link the IP of your other activity on this site to the source IP of this article (or similar. I’m not that good with network analysis, but I know people who are).
Now I have arrived at the author’s contrived “contradiction”. How can I argue for “intelligent design” of articles, but deny intelligent design of life? The answer is evidence. I have seen people write articles, but have never seen gods (or intelligent creators, if you prefer) create life. Sure, I didn’t personally witness you write this article, but having seen other people write other articles, and post them on the internet with similar results, what reason do I have to question the origin of this article?
>I have seen other people write blogs,
But what does that have to do with this article? Or articles in general? It just shows that people have finally been able to duplicate a process that takes millions of years to happen in nature.
> It’s likely that they were all written by the same person.
You are suggesting that the similarity in articles implies a common creator. But the scientific explanation is that it implies a common origin. Articles have all evolved from the same original article, which was very simple. That’s why there is a certain similarity in articles. Those articles that are most similar are likely the most closely related. To invoke some unseen magical “author” is unscientific and unnecessary.
> I’m fairly sure if I applied some more sophisticated IT tools, I could link the IP of your other activity on this site to the source IP of this article (or similar. I’m not that good with network analysis, but I know people who are).
You’re “fairly sure” based on what? You have a belief that evidence exists, but you have no evidence. I would call that blind faith.
> Now I have arrived at the author’s contrived “contradiction”.
What author? What is your evidence for her/him/it?
> How can I argue for “intelligent design” of articles, but deny intelligent design of life? The answer is evidence.
What is your evidence that this article (or articles in general) has an author? You haven’t presented any. You have merely stated that you believe that such evidence exists. But that is blind religious faith.
> I have seen people write articles, but have never seen gods (or intelligent creators, if you prefer) create life.
I’ve never seen Antarctica; does that disprove its existence? Scientists have been able to create the building blocks of life – amino acids. Would you conclude that all amino acids were created by scientists? Just because people are able to duplicate processes that happen in nature does not mean that such processes do not happen in nature.
> Sure, I didn’t personally witness you write this article, but having seen other people write other articles, and post them on the internet with similar results, what reason do I have to question the origin of this article?
Fallacious reasoning. We’ve seen scientists create diamonds in the laboratory. Would you then conclude that all diamonds found on Earth were created by scientists in a laboratory? Scientists can create fossils in the laboratory. Is it reasonable to assume that all fossils were created this way? People have been able to replicate quickly what takes enormous periods of time to happen in nature. Why should articles be any different?
[…] On the Origin of Articles […]
Do I know anyone who could have written this article…well, yes, I know numerous people who could have but didn’t write this article.
Dr. Lisle: [But that’s not a scientific explanation. We must accept the evidence that this article wrote itself by chance processes, guided by selection. Why else would it use exactly the same letters and many of the same words as other articles, if they did not share a common origin? Why invoke the existence of some unseen, magical author?]
Do I know anyone who can create a universe on a whim? Nope, not that I can think of.
[Exactly! Anyone who could create a universe on a whim would have to be some sort of God. And we’ve never seen God, thus He doesn’t exist – just as we’ve never seen the Earth’s core, therefore it does not exist. Since we have not seen anyone write this article, we must conclude that there is no such thing as an “author.”]
When a leaf falls in your path, you might look for a tree, and be surprised if you didn’t see one. If you were surprised not to see a tree, you wouldn’t presume the leaf had appeared from nothing. Why? Because there are plenty of trees around, and you can see their leaves everywhere – you’ve studied the world, and drawn the conclusion long previously that trees are where leaves come from. It’s not the whole of scientific method, but it’s a start.
[Exactly. As scientists have studied all the other universes out there, and have observed such universes coming into existence, we’ve been able to draw the logical conclusion that universes come into existence from nothing. We have many documented cases. We certainly don’t see a “God” creating them, and if something cannot be seen then it does not exist. This is also how we know that articles do not have authors.]
I’d like to illustrate an important difference between Abrahamic-Religious worldviews and science-based worldviews.
[Dr. Lisle: Thank you for your comments. I’ll address some of them. First, a worldview is a network of presuppositions, untested by the natural sciences, and in light of which all experience is interpreted. And so there really cannot be a “science-based worldview” because worldviews are not tested by science. But perhaps you mean a strict empiricist worldview, which claims that all truth claims are tested by scientific procedures. That is a worldview. Or maybe you mean naturalism – the belief that there is nothing beyond nature – atoms and energy. Perhaps you can clarify in a follow-up message.]
In basing your beliefs on scripture and a God, you are starting with the assumption that is is possible to have -absolute- knowledge.
[Dr. Lisle: Sometimes people think they can have probable knowledge, without having any absolute knowledge. But it seems to me that this view is self-refuting. For anything that a person claims that he or she knows with high probability, I will ask, “How probable?” If they say, “90%”, then I will ask them if they are 100% certain that their assessment of probability is accurate. If they say, “no” then I will ask how probable is it that their probability assessment for their truth claim is correct. Maybe they will say, “I’m 90% sure that my estimate of 90% is correct.” And then I will ask them how sure they are that their assessment of the probability of their probability assessment of their truth claim is, and so on.
Now, either this chain of questioning will end with something that is known with certainty, or it will go on forever, with each probability assessment being less than 100%. But probabilities add in quadrature (90% of 90% is 81%). So if there are an infinite number of less-than-certain probabilities, then the combined probability that you actually know the truth claim is 0%. So, if nothing can be known for certain, then neither can anything be known with probability.]
That facts and information are immutable, and what you have as reference is perfect and eternal and divine. Which is fine, I guess, if you ignore how those words have been altered
[Dr. Lisle: What is your evidence that the “words have been altered?” Often, people who have not studied the issue have a tendency to assume that since the Bible is very ancient, and since it has been copied many times, that current copies cannot be all that authentic. But a little research will reveal the opposite. We have discovered very ancient manuscripts of the Bible, and are therefore in a position to evaluate how much the text has changed over time. Remarkably, there have been very few changes indeed, and they tend to be spelling changes rather than content. So it just won’t do to claim that the text has been altered. We have evidence to the contrary.]
and reinterpreted every few generations to suit changing social trends. Perhaps it was meant to be reinterpreted to fit the context of your era.
[Dr. Lisle: No, it wasn’t intended to be reinterpreted every few generations. But some people do. The correct interpretation of Scripture is the one that matches the author’s intention, and this will not change with time.]
Science, on the other hand, does not claim absolute or total knowledge or understanding of anything. It seeks the best possible information, and is never happy when it finds it.
[Dr. Lisle: As Brian pointed out, it would be better to say “scientists seek…” rather than “science seeks” because science is not a person. Science doesn’t think or seek or be happy; rather it is a useful tool that people use to test certain types of truth claims.]
Science tests, questions, undermines itself, in the hopes of reaching ever more accurate, more current data. Science knows that things change, and it must also change. It is fluid and flawed and itself evolving.
[Dr. Lisle: I think you may be equivocating on the meaning of “science.” Perhaps it is best to define terms so as to avoid this. I tend to use the term “science” to refer to “operational science” – the procedure by which we test certain truth claims through observation and experimentation in the present. If we use this definition, then science actually does not change, or undermine itself. Scientists may change their conclusions in light of new data. But the basic procedure remains unchanged.]
And science can also be reinterpreted and altered to suit changing social trends.
[Dr. Lisle: The conclusions perhaps. But if people are motivated to change scientific conclusions based on social trends rather than data, then I don’t think they are really doing science properly.]
People with agendas can choose to misuse it to their own ends. This however, goes against its own basic principals, and where scientists have not been taught that they must not challenge or question or point out when their leaders are misleading people, they do exactly that.
[Dr. Lisle: Do you suppose people misuse science in an attempt to support a belief in evolution so that they can justify their rejection of God? Do you suppose that some people are intimidated to challenge evolution because many scientific leaders embrace it? Are people ever afraid to publicly challenge evolution because they might be fired – say from a university or a research firm?]
Creationists are fond of pointing out past hoaxes, like Piltdown Man. Or mistakes, like Brontosaurus. They use them as examples of how ‘scientists’ are dishonest. But think about this: If the scientific community weren’t constantly on its toes, if they accepted the idea of immutable, perfect facts, would the hoaxes and mistakes have ever been discovered, much less made public record?
[Dr. Lisle: One problem with the scientific community at the time of the Piltdown Man hoax is exactly that it wasn’t “constantly on its toes” and many of its leaders did accept evolution as an immutable, perfect fact. Piltdown Man was a very obvious fraud, yet it persisted unchallenged for decades because the secular scientists really wanted to believe it. Lies eventually get found out. But how much earlier would this lie have been found out if the secularists were actually doing science?]
The motto of science is more like ‘Oh oops, we know better now!’
[Dr. Lisle: If that is so, then it would be foolish to have much confidence in it. It is more a record of our misconceptions, which no doubt will continue in the future. I actually think you are being a little bit too critical of science. Because the Christian worldview is true, we can use the tools of science to discover truth in many situations with high probability.]
And considering the improvements in western standards of living that such an attitude has gifted us – I’m not convinced there’s anything wrong with that.
Now, about the authorship of articles.
[Oh no, you’re an “authorist!” 😉 Okay. Here we go.]
Science is logical, and we can use observation, known examples, and deduction to come to a very reasonable position. Since absolute knowledge is not required in the scientific worldview, ‘extremely likely’ is a satisfactory position.
So, considering that A) Articles are written using language and mediums created by humans,
[Whoa? Surely you are not suggesting that humans created language? Isn’t it far more likely that language evolved as articles did?]
and B) we have seen countless millions of examples of human beings writing articles,
[No, no, no. You haven’t seen this. You have seen countless millions of articles, and you have assumed that they were written by some unseen “authors.” But where is your evidence of this? Having just lectured us on the advantages of scientific explanations, why are you now shifting to believing in authors, instead of the scientific/naturalistic explanation for the origin of articles?]
and no examples of other animals or plants writing articles, we can say that it is very likely that only humans write articles.
[Why? Why invoke some unseen intelligence when there is a perfectly good scientific/naturalistic explanation for the origin of articles? We observe typos in the present. We know that most make articles worse, and are selected against. But hypothetically a typo could make an article better, making it more likely to be copied and distributed. In such a way, articles have diversified into the rich field we see today. This is why all articles have certain similarities (due to their common ancestor). They all use language, and words, and even the same grammar in many instances. If articles were written by people, they would all be totally different!]
However, recently, humans have created machines that can write sentences. Could a computer write an article?
[You are just replacing one kind of “author” with another. Why invoke an author at all? Why not stick with the scientific explanation?]
Perhaps in the future, but right now, computers lack the ability to come up with new ideas, to use imagination and art to put those sentences together into a coherent argument.
[So, you think natural processes cannot produce the creative information found in articles? That’s an interesting idea…]
Articles display logical patterns common to human brains,
[Well of course. We read the articles, and it affects our thinking. That doesn’t mean that people are needed to explain the origin of such articles.]
and machines cannot yet reproduce this. It can now be said that is is extremely likely that a human wrote any given article.
[Not at all. Computers are responsible for much of the evolution of articles, because the computer environment is capable of replicating articles very quickly. And when a random error occurs, diversification of the article happens. This has probably been occurring for millions of years.]
Could an alien have written the article?
It’s possible that an alien could write articles, but this is not testable, since we have never studied aliens, or confirmed that they would have written languages. It is extremely unlikely that aliens wrote this article.
[Likewise, there is no evidence to suppose that people ever wrote articles either. You might believe that. But keep it in church man.]
By experimentation, asking a human (myself) to write an article has resulted in an article.
[That’s not science. And even if someday people are able to write an article, that certainly doesn’t mean that previous articles were written that way. It just means that people were able to replicate something that occurs naturally.]
Asking a cat and a potted philodendron to write articles has not. This is, I admit, a very small testing pool, but I submit that there have been no recorded instances of anything other than a human being writing an article that shows typical human emotions, opinions, linguistic memes, and rational thought processes other than a living human being.
[So you’re saying that articles bear evidence of being designed? But this is because if they didn’t they would not have been preserved. Only the typos that made articles more interesting, more logical, etc., were preserved and past on. Sure, articles may look designed. But that’s only because nature has had millions of years to work out all the problems.]
So while I do not know for certain that every single article had a human author, the likelihood that it did is so high, that I believe that it has.
[You really haven’t demonstrated that. Considering we have a perfectly good scientific/naturalistic explanation for articles – one that explains far more than your “authors” hypothesis – why should we invoke some mysterious “author.” Think about it: all article use words – even the very same words, the same sentence structures, and they convey many of the same ideas. Clearly they share a common source. Were your mysterious “authors” just trying to trick us by making it look like articles have descended from a common ancestor? It is far more likely that articles evolved.]
And I will believe it until I am shown evidence to the contrary.
[But there is evidence to the contrary. Articles share commonalities, which shows that they are related. Is that just an amazing accident? And we even have examples where we can see how the articles evolved. Ancient versions of “The Hobbit” are not all identical. We can literally observe the transitional phases.]
In the case of evolution, we have observed it in action,
[Where?]
we have seen the evidence left behind,
[evidence?]
and we understand why changes in species do not happen now as they did in the early time periods.
[I see. So early on, lots of evolution. But now it doesn’t happen like that. Convenient.]
That it happens is not being debated by anyone except creationists.
[That creation happened is not debated by anyone except evolutionists.]
The Theory of Evolution – an explanation of how it happens – is the subject of some argument, and none of this threatens the acceptance of the phenomenon as real.
[So, we don’t see it happening today (e.g. dogs stay dogs, bacteria stay bacteria), we don’t see evidence of it in the past (no bacteria-like fish or fish-like bacteria), and we don’t really know how it happens… But there is no doubt that it is real. I see.]
I know I’m going to be countered with ‘where’s the proof?!’.
I will provide proof if you can explain to me what you consider to BE proof.
[Dr. Lisle: The interesting thing about this is that you have said that science is all about ‘Oh oops, we know better now!’ It never actually proves anything. So how could evolution be proved? At the very least, you would think that there should be some evidence for it.]
In countless discussions with creationists, the ghost of ‘proof’ has come up, constant demands for it, but when it is provided, the cry changes to ‘that’s not good enough!’, and the goalposts get moved further and further away.
[Dr. Lisle: Although it won’t prove that evolution happened in the past, you could in principle demonstrate that it is possible by showing it in the present. Specifically, you’d have to show one basic kind of creature changing into another basic kind through the addition of brand new genetic information. In the evolution view, people diverged from apes in around 1 million years. Generously assuming 10 years per reproduction, than means about 100,000 generations is sufficient to turn one kind of organism into a fundamentally different kind. You could do a similar experiment with bacteria, which reproduce every twenty minutes. In four years, you will have over 100,000 generations; which means if evolution is true, some of them ought not to be bacteria anymore, at least not the same kind. To be certain, go 40 years. That’s over 1 million generations – humans supposedly evolved from rats in comparable generations – plenty of time to get all sorts of new creatures. On the other hand, if they’re still bacteria, then that pretty well refutes evolution, doesn’t it?]
Everyone knows that truth exists. You have to really dilute yourself to even begin to question it. I’m hungry. I wouldn’t question that fact even in a hypothetical for how dumb it would be. So to say science is never satisfied with an answer is not true. It would be more accurate to say that scientists are never fully satisfied with answers that lack absolute certainty. And I think that can also be said of Christians. Even if I know for a fact that God is good, I will sometimes enumerate the ways and investigate the borders of that goodness. If there’s more to learn, and the topic is interesting, I’m going to try to learn it.
I don’t think you really gave us the major difference between Christianity and science.
As a programmer, I say this:
Computers don’t write anything in the sense of creativity. They can only provide a glimpse of the programmer’s creativity. If you examine the sticks of a dry riverbed, there’s no information there – no creativity. It’s just random.
‘It would be more accurate to say that scientists are never fully satisfied with answers that lack absolute certainty.’
Yes, that’s also true, and well put.
But what I mean (and poorly conveyed, my apologies) is that when you discover some new information, the scientific community doesn’t just accept it and clap… it’s immediately criticized and inspected and tested and challenged and denied and investigated until all possible available methods of disproving it are exhausted.
The very-well-known facts like ‘people get hungry’ aren’t new, and have been so exhaustively explored that there’s no point in challenging it anymore.
While it may not be THE most important difference, it is -one- difference which I consider important: The contrast between mutable and immutable belief of information.
One man’s fact is another man’s supposition. It always comes down to faith.
[…] On the Origin of Articles […]
While looking for this website I found Dr. Lisle’s paper on the young earth model for distant starlight published in the Answers Research Journal and was wondering if Dr. Lisle had attempted publication of the article in a secular peer reviewed journal and if so what the result was. Anyone know?
It was a pleasure meeting you last night. Thank you for referring me to your blog and this article.
FYI-I copied this article for my students. I needed to reformat the layout, change the font size, and put the article into columns for it to fit on a single page. Boy, am I glad there was not an author to this masterpiece. It’s so nice to be able to copy and change things without anyone’s permission or anyone to which to answer.
Without an author, people can justifiably take this document and do whatever they wish without accountability. They may copy, rearrange, delete, add, or even take false credit for the work. That’s what I see happening in genetic research. Without recognizing a designer, some scientists are doing troubling DNA experiments with no regard for the Originator of the DNA document.