The Limits Of Science When Discussing God

There are a few blogs I try to read whenever something new is posted on them. One such blog is Rationally Speaking, an excellent if not a little too infrequent source of stimulating commentary. One recent post was asking for comments on the limits of science when discussing God. I made a comment on the thread, but I wish to expand it here. My position, science has plenty to say on phenomena associated with God so take away the phenomena and there's nothing left to explain.


A homoeopathic counter
I also happen to listen to quite a few podcasts, one of them being The Skeptic Zone. One a recent episode, they had an except of a "debate" between a sceptic and a homoeopath in New Zealand. In response to a claim there's no active ingredient in homoeopathic solutions, the homoeopath claimed the sceptic was a materialist and thus couldn't appreciate that homoeopathic medicine works but just not through natural means.

Homoeopathic medicine does work - just as good as a placebo. Studies have shown that there's no increased effect from taking homoeopathic solutions over placebos in double-blind trials. So in my mind it is reasonably fair to say that homoeopathic medicine doesn't have any discernible effects, so regardless of whether it's a natural or supernatural mechanism there's nothing to explain.

A potential homoeopath counter would be similar to the Last Thursdayism, that there is an external force at bay that just happens to have the same efficacy of a placebo. It's just a matter of philosophical distinction; because the sceptic won't recognised supernatural causes, they can't appreciate that there's a difference between a placebo and a homoeopathic solution. In other words, because of the limitations of science I'm dismissing what is an issue of philosophy.


Just what am I needing to explain?
In this case I would say there's nothing actually to explain, yet philosophically it would seem that I'm pinned. So when they make claims such as "like cures like", or "dilution increases potency" I can't say that it's bunk because it's only bunk in my material understanding of causation.

I wonder, though, what good this actually does. If there's no real effect to point to, what exactly am I being asked to explain? And this is where my concern lies with those who say God is outside scientific inquiry: it's being posited that there is an interventionist deity acting in our reality - surely this claim itself is a scientific claim.

When people say they heard God's revelation, surely this is a scientific claim. Somehow they are positing that their natural forms had somehow interacted with the supernatural. To explain this position further, people may call ghosts supernatural but the alleged evidence for ghosts always involves being able to sense them - usually by vision or touch. Likewise when someone hears God's voice, surely that involves some form of physical interaction that should be present in the real world.

When people try to turn it into a philosophical issue, I can't help but feel that they are trying to have their metaphysical cake and eat it too. Can science comment on the veracity of homoeopathic medicine any more than it can on the question of God? If there are no measurable phenomena to explain, then are we engaging in anything more than sophistry?


Science-informed atheism
I agree it would be fallacious to presume that atheism is a scientific position, but at the same time it would be fallacious not to think that science influences our thinking on God. What is the problem of evil, if not taking observation (suffering exists) and then placing that up against the notion of a benevolent deity?

What does it mean to attribute anything to God? Can one say that God is benevolent, let alone omnibenevolent? Can one say that God knows, let alone is all-knowing? To say "God loves you" is utterly meaningless without understanding what love is, and the more that is learnt about love through scientific inquiry changes what it means to attribute it to God.

It's impossible to shy away from grounding one's world-view in the reality we reside in. The thought experiments made are grounded in our own understanding of how things work, for example the brain in a vat conjecture. We simply cannot discuss reality beyond our experience in it.

Using the word science in the most broad sense is critical to our understanding. While the God question might strictly be a philosophical issue, it simply cannot be addressed without appealing to our knowledge and our experiences. Science as a discipline can't help but have a say on the notion of gods because claims about god stem from and / or involve reality.

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/23/2827704.htm

A Sydney man who became an overnight millionaire after gluing a coin to his doorstep had more than one type of luck working in his favour, according to feng shui experts.

The retired police officer won almost $2 million in a BoysTown lotto after following advice in an article on the ancient Chinese art.

Association of Feng Shui Consultants president Elizabeth Wiggins says three types of luck have to align for such events to occur.

"We have our heaven luck, which is our Chinese astrology, and that's the luck we're born with," she said.

"We have our earth luck, which represents our environment, and that's where feng shui falls into place, so how does our environment affect us?

"Then we have our man luck, which is basically how we decide to live our life. Are we positive people? Do we do the right thing?

"I'd say that in his Chinese astrology there was some kind of indication that there was some unconventional wealth coming to him. Maybe in addition to that his feng shui's quite good."

But Ms Wiggins says the most important fact is the ex-policeman bought a ticket.

"Because if he didn't buy the ticket and didn't use his man luck he wouldn't have won," she said.

So Ms Wiggins says racing out to place money under your doormat will not necessarily bring riches.

"If it was that easy we'd all be doing it. Many things have to line up for something like that to happen," she said.

The feng shui expert says placing money at the entrance of the home symbolises wealth coming to the occupants.

"Tradition says that the energy coming through our front door will give us an indication of whether your home supports your ability to make money," she said.

So many things wrong in such a little space. Firstly, people win lotteries. Statistically there has to be winners every now and then. Secondly, every time there's one winner there's bound to be many losers. We don't hear about the statistical majority. Thirdly, that one person kissed their lottery ticket or was wearing lucky underwear when they purchased it, has nothing to do with the outcome. Fourthly, using the words feng shui experts as an authoritative means on how the world works decries the importance of expertise. Finally, this is all total nonsense. What is it doing in the news?

To give a personal example, a few years ago I won a ticket to the Big Day Out. Positive thinking? I don't see how. More that I messaged in the dead of night when they were giving away tickets hourly, because I thought it would maximise my chances purely on the fact that most people are asleep. Even then, I just got lucky. Wasn't born that way, wasn't my environment, I just happened to be the right person at the right time.

That people want to attribute intentionality to good fortune makes sense, that they want to feel in control of what essentially are random events, that they are trying to detect patterns in the world. It's what humans do. But the flip-side of that is seeing patterns that aren't there, trying to attribute intentionality to what are random elements beyond our control. And unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there who will claim dominion of what is out of our control.

And that's fine, I suppose. If people think that kissing dice will help them win at craps or that gluing a coin to the doorstep will help bring them fortune, that's their business. Publishing it as if it were news though? This is just selling people on credulity. This is tabloid journalism, and bad tabloid journalism at that on what's meant to be a reputable website. It's pushing nonsense claims without even so much as a critical eye cast over such nonsense.

Someone winning the lottery is not news, that they read "advice" out of a magazine beforehand is completely irrelevant. Feng shui may attempt to try to explain how following the advice implies causation, but what is their explanation? An appeal to a mystical force. I'd like to see if placing money under your doormat at all can affect the outcome of lottery, surely this can be tested. I'm going to bet there's no more statistical significance to that than the number of people who wear boxers over briefs when purchasing tickets.

Bearing False Witness

There's been an annoying creationists infesting the comments of pharyngula in recent weeks. Well his inanity finally got him plonked, and his response? This. His argument that "Atheist's can't handle the truth"? Darwin make a comment that shows that the eye evolving is absurd. What he quoted was this following passage from The Origin Of Species:

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

Game over for atheists right? If only we had read Darwin's Origin past the bit where he pronounced the death of God^[1] and failed to see the point where he showed that he was having us on. There must be some explanation for this... it's missing half the quote

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of Spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei ["the voice of the people = the voice of God "], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.

So it seems Darwin was using a rhetorical device to make a prediction, that his theory does have an explanation for the eye. Two things come to mind.

• First: If you're going to make a post saying "atheists can't handle the truth, it's important to make sure that your post doesn't actually lie. By omitting the lines after what was quoted, it's completely changed what Darwin was stating - creating a false impression and lying by omission.
• Second: The truth of evolution or atheism do not rest on what Mr Darwin said. So even if it were in context, even if it was Mr Darwin's view, it wouldn't make one bit of difference to how modern evolutionary theory stands today - nor would it say anything of the question of whether there are such things as interventionist deities. Quoting Darwin on hereditary for example wouldn't disprove modern evolutionary theory. And again, evolution != atheism. Atheism is a philosophical position on the existence of interventionist deities and doesn't rest on the words of Mr Darwin or the truth of evolution. It's a massive category error.

Sadly this is typical creationist dishonesty, and these are usually the same people who claim that you need God for morality. Wasn't there something in the bible about bearing false witness^[2]? Surely if one had intellectual honesty, they would strive for accuracy, to make sure they aren't misrepresenting what they are quoting and try to argue the points on their own merits. It would be dishonest to do otherwise.

As for how the eye did evolve, much work has been done on this. I'll let Richard Dawkins explain just how the evolutionary process could build an eye.



[1] - Well maybe that was Nietzsche, but both lead humanity to nihilism, right?
[2] - It's only a commandment, it's not like it's as important as those passages that condemns homosexuality as an abomination.

Why Jerry Fodor Doesn't Have Laser Eyes

It's now over 150 years since Darwin and Wallace presented the case for natural selection, and by now you'd think it's a non-issue. But no, it's just one of those ideas that keeps sustaining criticism. Usually from creationists who are seeking to push their moral doctrine by pushing for the necessity of God, but in this case it's not to put God in there.

Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini have fired a broadside at natural selection. First with an article two years ago, and now a book (and accompanying New Scientist article). After 150 years and plenty of experimental support, Fodor has come along and tried to argue the whole concept to be incoherent. Not an attack on evolution, just on the underlying mechanism touted to explain it.


Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
The problem with reconstructing our past under current evolutionary framework is the danger of making post-hoc rationalisations that might not have any bearing on reality. That while there may be the potential to create a story for survival value that may not be the case. What we are describing might simply be a by-product of something else that was selected for, or just happened to be a product of chance.

The realisation is that not everything about us can be directly selected against. The question of why is blood red shouldn't be put down to anything that has to do with being selected for the colour. But there's little doubt that the reason the colour of blood is red to begin with is because of selection - selection on the ability to carry oxygenated blood cells.

And this is where I feel Fodor is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. From the extreme of using selection to explain everything to explaining nothing at all. Are polar bears selected for being white or selected for being camouflaged? It really doesn't matter because the fact that they're white means that they're camouflaged in their present environment.

Fodor has taken the metaphor of natural selection and turned it into a tautology. Skin may not be designed for getting dirty, but the fact that it can get dirty doesn't mean that there haven't been survival advantages to the way our skin is now. You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater just because the baby gets dirty in the first place!


Contingency?
Why don't pigs have wings? It's a simple enough question with a simple enough answer. Yet Fodor labours out this point as if there's something profoundly paradoxical about a world with wingless pigs in it. Flight has evolved multiple times in tetrapods, and there are many more animals who can't fly but can glide. But pigs aren't one of them, nor do they ever look likely to make it in the air.

The simple answer is contingency, the evolutionary algorithm can only ever modify what's already there. So wings develop not as extra appendages but as modifications of existing appendages. Birds didn't have wings spring up, but modified their arms. Same for bats, same for pterosaurs. Why would we expect winged pigs to begin with when nothing about their lifestyle should lead to such winged creatures?

The surprising thing is that Fodor seems to think this somehow contradicts natural selection, yet contingency has been part of modern evolutionary theory for decades now. Of course it's doing to be that way, descent with heritable modification, how can we expect it to be anything else? The constraints itself build what is possible through the process, the selection is what of those possibilities carry on.

Contingency and developmental constraints play a role, no doubt. But it's not the whole story, and doing away with natural selection is just as problematic as trying to explain every facet of life with it.


The necessity of natural selection
As a species we are essentially blind. All the colours of the rainbow is just a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. So why is it we can see only these frequencies of light? Natural selection does give an answer - it happens to correspond with the black body radiation of the sun as seen through our atmosphere. The European kestrel has a modification on its violet opsin gene that allows it to see in the ultra-violet. Why? It just so happens that its prey, the vole, signals with urine that reflects in the ultra-violet.

Meanwhile there have been nocturnal creatures sequenced, whose violet opsin genes have been shot to pieces. In dim-light, such abilities aren't really needed and thus not selected for or against. Just as moles or cave-fish are blind - it just doesn't matter to their survivability if they have sight or not. Makes perfect sense under natural selection.

Natural selection works because the algorithm works. It's able to filter through variation that arises because of the survival advantages and disadvantages that development brings. The process of accumulated advantageous or neutral variation, and the deletion of disadvantageous mutation as per the environmental constraints is what makes the idea so powerful. Evidentially it's not the answer to life, the universe and everything, but remove it completely from biology and nothing makes sense.

Let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life. Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic." - Charles Darwin (The Origin Of Species, Chapter 4)

The Stupid, It Burns!

Right up front I've got to say I'm no fan of Deepak Chopra. For some reason, his brand of nonsense is a big seller. Even my dear sweet mother asked me to get her Deepak Chopra books for her birthday once. He's a very able snake oil salesman, I'll give him that.

That said, this morning I came across a piece he wrote in the Huffington Post refuting evolution. Which would be fine if he could even grasp the topic, but no. Instead he harps onto intelligent design as an explanatory leap and then gives his account of problems in biology.

1. How does nature take creative leaps? In the fossil record there are repeated gaps that no "missing link" can fill. The most glaring is the leap by which inorganic molecules turned into DNA. For billions of years after the Big Bang, no other molecule replicated itself. No other molecule was remotely as complicated. No other molecule has the capacity to string billions of pieces of information that remain self-sustaining despite countless transformations into all the life forms that DNA has produced.

Nature takes creative leaps by new mutations that allow for new exploratory paths to be explored. The simplest way to think of this is culturally, look at modern electronics. It was only ~65 years ago that the transistor was invented, from there an explosion of advances took place with that at the core. Why is it that for 200,000 years our species didn't invent computers or mobile phones, but in the end of the 20th century there was an explosion of technology?

As for his statement about DNA, how does he know that there wasn't any other molecule that replicated itself? There are something like 10²³ stars out there, has he explored everyone from the beginning of time to say that it didn't just happen? Our vantage point is this planet. As for the capacity to explain DNA, there's a lot of stages in between inorganic molecules and DNA, including organic molecules that can be seen forming in space and even in experiments on earth. To go back to the transistor example, the invention of the transistor was not made with mobile phones in mind. Why should we expect DNA to have come about with us and bees in mind?

2. If mutations are random, why does the fossil record demonstrate so many positive mutations -- those that lead to new species -- and so few negative ones? Random chance should produce useless mutations thousands of times more often than positive ones.

And Chopra here shows his complete misunderstanding of natural selection. Mutations are random, but natural selection weeds out bad mutations. Darwin even lays this out in The Origin Of Species, bad mutations that offer a disadvantage to the organism fail to get passed on, while any mutations that give an advantage, however slight, do. It's not that hard to grasp, yet Chopra has taken his misunderstanding of the principle and run with it.

3. How does evolution know where to stop? The pressure to evolve is constant; therefore it is hard to understand why evolution isn't a constant. Yet sharks and turtles and insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years without apparent evolution except to diversify among their kind. These species stopped in place while others, notably hominids, kept evolving with tremendous speed, even though our primate ancestors didn't have to. The many species of monkeys which persist in original form tell us that human evolution, like the shark's, could have ended. Why didn't it?

Evolution doesn't know anything, the pressure to evolve is not constant either. Different selection factors drive different rates of change. And if an organism is perfectly suited to its environment, why should we expect the morphology to change? It's no mere accident that the jaw of a dog and the jaw of the thylacine are almost identical in shape, or that sharks, ichthyosaurs and dolphins have similar streamlined shapes.

4. Evolutionary biology is stuck with regard to simultaneous mutations. One kind of primordial skin cell, for example, mutated into scales, fur, and feathers. These are hugely different adaptations, and each is tremendously complex. How could one kind of cell take three different routes purely at random?

Because natural selection is the opposite of random. Advantageous mutations accumulate.

5. If design doesn't imply intelligence, why are we so intelligent? The human body is composed of cells that evolved from one-celled blue-green algae, yet that algae is still around. Why did DNA pursue the path of greater and greater intelligence when it could have perfectly survived in one-celled plants and animals, as in fact it did?

For design to imply intelligent, it wouldn't actually tell us anything. If an intelligence designed our intelligence, what designed the designer's intelligence? Intelligence was obviously selected for, brain size increased dramatically over the last few million years. And looking at the command of technology in that time, from crude hand axes, to fire, to the development of language, etc. Having a big brain for a bipedal animal comes at a huge cost. Babies are born premature and are more helpless, women die in childbirth. What is 2% of our mass, takes 20% of our oxygen. The brain evolved, it seems ,because the disadvantages of a big brain were outweighed by the advantages it gave.

6. Why do forms replicate themselves without apparent need? The helix or spiral shape found in the shell of the chambered nautilus, the center of sunflowers, spiral galaxies, and DNA itself seems to be such a replication. It is mathematically elegant and appears to be a design that was suited for hundreds of totally unrelated functions in nature.

Why do certain mathematical shapes form? Because these shapes conform to the laws of nature. In God The Failed Hypothesis by Victor Stenger, he shows how such forms appear purely out of the laws of physics. But again, an emergent property is being mistaken for a divine hand.

7. What happens when simple molecules come into contact with life? Oxygen is a simple molecule in the atmosphere, but once it enters our lungs, it becomes part of the cellular machinery, and far from wandering about randomly, it precisely joins itself with other simple molecules, and together they perform cellular tasks, such as protein-building, whose precision is millions of times greater than anything else seen in nature. If the oxygen doesn't change physically -- and it doesn't -- what invisible change causes it to acquire intelligence the instant it contacts life?

Life has had over 3 billion years of adapting to the environment. If it was advantageous for a mutation to give rise to such molecular machinery, then why should we expect anything else?

8. How can whole systems appear all at once? The leap from reptile to bird is proven by the fossil record. Yet this apparent step in evolution has many simultaneous parts. It would seem that Nature, to our embarrassment, simply struck upon a good idea, not a simple mutation. If you look at how a bird is constructed, with hollow bones, toes elongated into wing bones, feet adapted to clutching branches instead of running, etc., none of the mutations by themselves give an advantage to survival, but taken altogether, they are a brilliant creative leap. Nature takes such leaps all the time, and our attempt to reduce them to bits of a jigsaw puzzle that just happened to fall into place to form a beautifully designed picture seems faulty on the face of it. Why do we insist that we are allowed to have brilliant ideas while Nature isn't?

But there are plenty of fossils showing the gradual evolution of birds. There are feathered non-avian dinosaurs. Fossils showing the gradual changing of feet, the development of wings, and the eventual loss of reptilian features such as teeth, claws and tails. This seems to be that Deepak Chopra can't understand the vast time scales and the gradual accumulation of mutations over time. And that he's looking at forms as final products that one must jump from one to the other instead of looking at each form as an intermediate.

9. Darwin's iron law was that evolution is linked to survival, but it was long ago pointed out that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology. Some mutations survive, and therefore we call them fittest. Yet there is no obvious reason why the dodo, kiwi, and other flightless birds are more fit; they just survived for a while. DNA itself isn't fit at all; unlike a molecule of iron or hydrogen, DNA will blow away into dust if left outside on a sunny day or if attacked by pathogens, x-rays, solar radiation, and mutations like cancer. The key to survival is more than fighting to see which organism is fittest.

Natural selection is a metaphor that describes what happens. It's not a tautology, it's in the same sense as Adam Smith's "invisible hand of the market". Coming from the notion of artificial selection where breeders choose traits they think desirable, natural selection is simply describing that in nature those traits that help pass on the genetic code are going to be inherited. Why would we expect anything else?

10. Competition itself is suspect, for we see just as many examples in Nature of cooperation. Bees cooperate, obviously, to the point that when a honey bee stings an enemy, it acts to save the whole hive. At the moment of stinging, a honeybee dies. In what way is this a survival mechanism, given that the bee doesn't survive at all? For that matter, since a mutation can only survive by breeding -- "survival" is basically a simplified term for passing along gene mutations from one generation to the next -- how did bees develop drones in the hive, that is, bees who cannot and never do have sex?

Cooperation can evolve in competitive areas. Under game theory, reciprocal altruism shines as a stable and mutually beneficial relationships between individuals. As for the bees, if the drone bees who cannot have sex aid in the survival of the reproductive process (by gathering material, protecting from predators, etc.) then it fits the evolutionary framework quite well. The problem here seems to be thinking purely in terms of the individual, not on the DNA itself (and what builds on it).

11. How did symbiotic cooperation develop? Certain flowers, for example, require exactly one kind of insect to pollinate them. A flower might have a very deep calyx, or throat, for example than only an insect with a tremendously long tongue can reach. Both these adaptations are very complex, and they serve no outside use. Nature was getting along very well without this symbiosis, as evident in the thousands of flowers and insects that persist without it. So how did numerous generations pass this symbiosis along if it is so specialized?

In Richard Dawkins' new book, The Greatest Show On Earth, he gives a good account on how symbiotic relationships form by looking at "intermediate" stages in constructing a symbiotic relationship. Nature might be able to get along without symbiosis, but again symbiotic relationships can be mutually beneficial. I house quadrillions of bacteria within my digestive tract, and in return they help break down what I eat. Win-win it would seem. Again Deepak's misunderstanding seems to stem from thinking of evolution purely in individual terms.

12. Finally, why are life forms beautiful? Beauty is everywhere in Nature, yet it serves no obvious purpose. Once a bird of paradise has evolved its incredibly gorgeous plumage, we can say that it is useful to attract mates. But doesn't it also attract predators, for we simultaneously say that camouflaged creatures like the chameleon survive by not being conspicuous. In other words, exact opposites are rationalized by the same logic. This is no logic at all. Non-beautiful creatures have survived for millions of years, so have gorgeous ones. The notion that this is random seems weak on the face of it.

Again to point at Dawkins' new book, he gives a good account of an experiment done with guppies. In these guppies, it was to test sexual selection against natural selection. For a good account read the book, but to quickly summarise: predation led to less elaborate displays. Why are there birds of paradise on New Guinea and not in England? I find it hard to believe that Chopra can see that it serves no obvious purpose, just watching a few seconds of an Attenborough doco on them should give away that the elaborate displays are to attract mates. Studies have been done showing that certain birds' reproductive success is related to the size of their tail.


Just to summarise, Chopra offers these words:

I don't know who will bother to read all these points, which I have had to truncate. But if you think the answers are in safe hands among the ranks of evolutionary biologists, think again. No credible scientific theory has answered these dilemmas, and progress is being discouraged, I imagine, thanks to fundamentalist Christians. By hijacking the whole notion of intelligent design, they have tarred genuine scientific issues with the stain of religious prejudice.

Yes, I read all the points. I found that reading a couple of popular accounts of evolutionary theory were enough to see that Chopra doesn't understand even the basics. It's not like this knowledge is hidden in obscure textbooks, it's there on bookshelves in any half-decent bookstore. So before concluding that no scientific theory has answered these dilemmas, perhaps it would be wise of Chopra to actually read up on the matter. If he honestly thinks that he has the insight that demonstrates the cornerstone of modern biology is false, then he is deluded. Though perhaps he does understand them and is just hoping those reading do not. But we'll see.

It seems, like many, he's been caught up in the cultural dispute over evolution. Which would explain him weighing in against those who are Fundamentalist Christians. But therein lies the problem, he's arguing against a straw-man based on popular misconceptions of evolution. The extensive use of the word random and taking on this discrete notion of forms means that once again a false prophet has come foretelling the death of evolutionary theory. Though from a peddler of new-age woo I shouldn't have expected anything else.