"Denying" Laplace
Famously and perhaps legendarily, Pierre Laplace developed a complete mathematical model of the movement of the planets. When he presented his work to the emperor, Napoleon supposedly complained:

"How can this be! You made the system of the world, you explain the laws of all creation, but in all your book you speak not once of the existence of God!"

And Laplace replied: "I did not need such a hypothesis."

In the two centuries since then, anti-theists and "scientists" have been following Laplace with a vengeance, roasting and Inquisiting anyone who dares to think about or speak about the existence of a god.

Now one of their own has tried to set up a mathematical model of evolution. Trouble is, his model does need such a hypothesis to make it work!

Via Uncommon Descent:

Of necessity, this “toy model” of evolution is extremely unrealistic. For example, in Chaitin’s toy model, life itself isn’t even embodied (it’s purely software), there’s no population, there’s only one organism and there’s no sex. As a mathematician, Chaitin believes that if you try to make his toy model much more realistic and true to life, you won’t be able to prove anything with it, mathematically, so there’s a trade-off.

Even Chaitin’s toy model requires something called a Turing oracle to make evolution work. A Turing oracle means that the model is being directed by an outside intelligent source answering Yes-No questions which enable the model to proceed.

I suppose calling the god a Turing Oracle makes it acceptable in the mind of a modern leftist, for obvious reasons.

The weirdest part: Chaitin's model God is more primitive and dictatorial than the God assumed by most modern Muslims, Jews and Christians. Sophisticated theists generally see their God as a top-level executive who knows how to delegate authority. God designs the pattern for life, breathes it into being, and then sits back and watches. He only intervenes when we fuck up massively. Sophisticated theists pray often, but not to receive immediate Yes-No decisions on every little action of their cells; only to stay in harmony (or in phase) with God.

Or in tech talk: Sophisticated theists understand God's best inventions, negative feedback and subsidiarity. They understand that life has the ability to adjust itself to environment and conditions at every level from mitochondria to planets, and they understand that the multiple levels allow each bit of life to carry on independently without constant supervision from upper levels.

Chaitin, being a leftist thinker, assumes everything is dead and passive. He assumes that no aspect of life can take care of itself, and assumes that everything must be locked into one unlayered system.

Same suicidal assumptions that keep the Euro idiots locked into the EU.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:35 AM