Consciousness

On Intelligent Design

Those who are opposed to the theory of Intelligent Design (so-called 'Creationism by the back door') and who would insulate tender minds from the pernicious influence of this diabolical idea by banning its mention in the schools, have obviously benefited from a sanitized education themselves and consequently missed making an acquaintance with the meditative writings of such physicists as Einstein, Bohr, Kelper, Jeans, Eddington, de Broglie, (shall I go on?) Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Planck or Pauli. There are no Americans here, and none born after 1945, so perhaps one can understand why these men, despite the fact that virtually all were Nobel laureates in their time, are little regarded today except as useful history and as persons who no longer speak for science or even for physics.

All of these men undertook, in their personal writings, to compare the roles of science and religion. While they certainly did not agree point-for-point, they nevertheless assumed to exist what de Broglie (citing Duhem) called an 'ontological order,' an order in Nature pre-existing and independent of any human and heuristic representation of that order. The term 'intelligent design' is perhaps an unfortunate choice since it suggests – especially to the persnickety promoters of brain hygiene – the existence of a godlike Designer. 'Ontological order' is a better choice since it does not inevitably bring God into theargument. It allows us to concentrate on the important question whichis the nature of the Reality.

The Reality can be of two kinds, and the kind will determine whether man is held accountable only to himself or to a 'higher' purpose. Today's masters of the universe are satisfied that the Reality is a human creation, a human construct. This malleable Reality, they say, is the ever-changing answer to fundamental human needs. Additionally, they point out that the experimenter actually influences the experimental apparatus and not simply the reading or the interpretation of the experimental results. The truth is individual, they insist, and the tree ceases to be when the observer turns away.

If the Reality is a human creation and man is responsible for that creation, then he is only responsible to himself or to whatever Identi-Kit identity he chooses for himself. This is irresponsible behavior … and we wonder why we are in such an ecological and economic mess.

Those who argue for the existence of an ontological order, easily refute the proposition that the Reality isa heuristic one, an invention of the human mind, or an existentialone. [Existence precedes essence.] If the Reality were simply auseful representation devised in the light of experience, then the first men – men without experience and thus without a useful representation of the world -- would have perished and we would not be here today. These first men must have known, a priori, the essentials of how the world worked.

In recent times, it has become quite obvious that the Reality is not a thing shaped by human experience and human need. Herein lies a second powerful argument against human design and for an ontological order. I yield to de Broglie, as he makes this argument far better than I could do.

'Starting from extremely delicate andprecise experiments, the results of which could not be foreseen bythe older theories, the theory of relativity built up a new conception of space and time and of the reciprocal relations, a conception absolutely contrary to all the data of our usual intuition. It thus shows us that our mind can find in itself the necessary elements logically to constitute an interpretation of the ideas of space and time quite different from that which the experience of daily life suggests. By its successes, the theory of relativity therefore shows us how extensive is the parallelism which exists between the rule of our reasoning and the order which conceals itself behind the subtle phenomena which physics of today studies. It shows us that this parallelism infinitely surpasses all that the daily experience of the older generations was able to suggest to us.'

What is the role of man in this'larger,' ontological order? Science cannot help us here, but religion can. The fact of a pre-existent order at least suggests that human limits, needs and responsibilities are not determined bymen alone.

Consciousness and the Brain

There have been a lot of 'brain' books published lately, evidence of a rush to propose solutions to one of the few remaining 'problems' in science, namely consciousness. Like the Theory of Everything, a theory of consciousness is proving elusive. It seems there is a lot 'we don't know yet.' Nevertheless, it seems 'we' must plunge on.

If God were measurable or if His behavior or its physical correlates could be observed, He would be a bona fide scientific fact. He would be real, for in science, the Reality is what can be measured. The scientist 'knows' only that which can be observed and measured. This limitation gives rise to a good deal of uncertainty as you can imagine, for it puts the Observer – a mere mortal – in the driver's seat.

Depending on the day and the state of his digestion, the Observer may 'know' a disturbance that is detected by his instruments as a wave or a particle. Which is it then? As Heisenberg pointed out, the 'wavicle' is both. It is a superpostion of states until the Observer resolves the uncertainty by recording his observation. By so doing, he causes the wave function to collapse, yielding a single outcome. The Observer, then, is in a position to influence the Reality. Furthermore, in the opinion of quite a few, he may go so far as to construct the entire Reality. When a tree falls in a remote forest, and there is no one about to observe the event, did it happen or did it not? Apparently, in the view of many, it did not.

If the argument advanced in the 'brain' books could be put in a nutshell, it would be this. The Reality is a derivative of electro-chemical processes occurring in brain tissue; it is a function of the brain; it is a world-picture produced by neuron-firings and the like. The proof of this lies in the observation that particular brain behavior correlates with particular physical behavior and mental imagery.

Cognitive scientists, like all scientists, are bound to try and describe Things in terms of their behavior. Thus their attempts to describe consciousness as brain behavior. I can appreciate that their intention is to demonstrate a causal connection between brain and behavior, for where this correlation can be established, one can control the behavior by physical and chemical interventions. Medical scientists have come up with drugs which can control mood and Third World drug barons have supplied the civilized world with agents which can alter brain states. These successes encourage the view that the brain is the agency responsible for organizing human affects and behavior, and this includes consciousness which is considered simply as another brain behavior.

It all sounds very impressive, but in actuality scientists have erected here a house of cards on quicksand.

Their first mistake is to assume that describing the behavior is the same as describing the Thing. Gravity, for example, is never defined for what it IS; always in terms of its (predictable) effects. Scientists are on the hunt for the 'graviton' in order to lay blame on it for gravitational effects. Supposing that the graviton is detected. It will only be 'known' by its effects; the traces it leaves on a photographic plate on in a cloud chamber or the equivalent.

If you focus on the elephant's ear, as scientists do, then you miss the gorilla in the room. Their monocular focus is (conveniently perhaps) the second great mistake which scientists routinely make. If you narrow your focus sufficiently, then you fail to answer the hard questions. The two hard questions are: (1) What IS? and, (2) What does IT mean?

Many see God as the First Cause. I think it is wrong to make God responsible for what is wrong with the world, or to make him responsible at all. The role of God – the one and only role of God, as I see it – is to supply meaning to what happens. The personal counterpart of this God, as I see it, is individual Consciousness, for it is this Consciousness which supplies meaning to the events in our lives. Meaning comes out of a relation, a relation between one's self and what I would call a Reference. Code of any kind: a language, a traffic sign, Morse code, genetic code, a mariners' chart, an element of musical notation, a gesture, etc. is meaningless without a Reference which serves as a key to unlock its meaning. Consciousness is the key to the meanings of the things and events we experience. The fact that we experience or know things and events as more than data or more than information; the fact that we attach meanings to data or information, is proof in my view of consciousness.

Life and survival on Earth depend entirely on meanings. It is not the physical relationships (which obsess scientists) which matter, but their meanings. If a young child touches a hot stove, it learns something. It learns that hot stoves MEAN hurt. It does not learn the atomic number of iron or its specific heat. This information is of interest only to the scientist who is intent on exploiting the properties of iron in order to manufacture iron suitable for stoves. What the scientist might learn in probing the stove has meaning in relation to a purpose which is, so to say, 'objective.' The meaning of the stove for the child, on the other hand, is subjective.

The hurtful encounter with the stove increases the child's awareness of self or self-in-the-world. Every such encounter serves to increase a child's awareness of self. The child's encounters may CAUSE pleasure or pain, but the MEANING of them is NOT pleasure or pain (as we suppose.) It is the increased self-awareness or Consciousness which they provoke. The meaning is not objective, but reflexive. Now, if you try to imagine an encounter which would increase self-awareness or Consciousness to the maximum, then that encounter would have to be an encounter with God, (although some would argue that it would have to be an encounter with the 'travel agent' who books you on a trip on LSD.) In either case your's is an encounter with or an entrance into a reality which lies outside the box, which is to say, outside the world of sensible things and therefore outside the world known to scientists and other monists.

There is certainly a correlation between function and specific tissue in the brain. The evidence for this is that damage to brain tissue in a particular location results in loss of a particular function. If we are talking about music, then the brain is like an electric guitar. Without an external supply of energy, it is dead. When it is powered up, it translates finger movements to sounds and does this according to a set of rules. Although it behaves according to rule, it is unaware of what it is doing or why. If one of its strings should break, then it loses an aspect of its function.

Cognitive scientists, as well as other scientists, are satisfied that their model of the brain (the brainless brain) accounts for human action and feeling, including consciousness. Besides the logical difficulties which their description presents, their description is contradicted by a number of factual findings. I will mention three of these that I know of. The first is the phantom-leg phenomenon. Amputees will occasionally sense that they still possess the leg which has been amputated. An automaton brain could not make this mistake since it is entirely devoid of imagination. All it knows is what it directly experiences (including its own behavior.) There is a question, too, as to whether it knows even this much since it is not capable of self-reflection. It lacks self-awareness or consciousness.

The second contradiction of the standard model comes out of an experiment with a blind man. He was not blind a birth, but suffered destruction of his sight in his youth. This meant that, provided he could see at all, he could recognize and name familiar objects if he 'saw' them. Experimenters wired up his back with a grid of small adhesive, metal discs which could be could be selectively heated across a range of comfortable temperatures. Think of a halftone. Here is a grid of dots which can be selectively adjusted across a range of neutral colors from pure white to fully saturated black. Once you have the picture of the halftone in your mind, just imagine the dots as heat pads whose temperatures can be varied.

A halftone, as is well known, can be altered to produce any picture you choose just by adjusting the color density of the dots. In the same way the experimenters' 'halftone' of heat pads could be used to produce pictures by selectively altering the heat intensity of the pads. To complete the experiment, the researchers hitched their electrical halftone to a video camera so that the camera's sensor controlled the 'halftone' on the skin of the blind man's back. The experimenters then darkened the room and pointed the camera at a lighted candle. The blind man recognized ('saw') the candle and confirmed this by naming it and describing it.

What this experiment implies is that the brain is much more than an operating system embedded in tissue; an operating system which runs a continuous program for translating sensory inputs to physical or behavioral outputs. In the case of the blind man, the brain was able to deduce that the signals coming from the heat matrix were meant to convey picture information. As well as information content, it recognized MEANINGS, and in light of this was able to alter its own translation rules. An automaton brain could not possibly do this. It can only respond to signals as if they were physical stimuli. It has no understanding and therefore no understanding of meanings.

Finally, we have numerous cases of persons able to conceive in the mind things which do not exist and never did exist in the sensible world. This simple fact breaks the sacred-to-science causal tie between experience and brain behavior or between sensory experience and its alleged neural correlates. The square root of a negative number exists only in the mind of a mathematician and never in nature. Likewise prime numbers. As physicists are the first to say, the whole quantum conception defies common-sense experience. It has no counterpart or correlate in experience. From here, it is a short step to a dual universe and dualism. Clearly there are things which exist which are not behaviors or other attributes of physical processes susceptible to objective observation, measurement, and control. The construct Pi originated in the mind of a mathematician. It was not 'caused' nor was it found in Nature.

Consciousness & Evolution

Let me make it clear. I do not deny evolution. My quarrel is with the mechanism proposed by Darwin, namely that the wheels and levers of random mutation and natural selection can, over time, originate and adapt species. This description ignores the role of Consciousness in evolution. Consciousness not only plays a role in evolution, it MUST play a role. Consciousness does and must mediate between environment and organism.

In the hard sciences it is conceded that the 'environment' is subjective. The 'environment' is a construct engineered by conscious human beings. It is both objectively and subjectively 'constructed' by human beings. Although they seem not to realize it, this fact spikes the Darwinists' and Neo-Darwinists guns. Human kind is not adapted by circumstances, but the other way around. We adapt our circumstances, our environment. For as long as man has been conscious, he has shaped his own evolution.

Given the choice, human beings will always adapt their circumstances (their physical and economic circumstances and their world view) to suit their needs, rather than change their minds, their behavior, their life styles, or their expectations. The penchant for avoiding reality rather than facing it and perforce adapting to it is what drives Progress – technical and cultural. It is an unwillingness to adapt from within which motivates people to 'better themselves,' although in doing this, they are not bettering themselves but their circumstances or environments.

While the evolution of the birds and the beasts may yet (in spite of domestication and destructive changes to their environments) be shaped by purely physical factors, the evolution of man is shaped almost exclusively by cultural factors. As it is man who creates culture, it is man who is responsible for his own evolution. It is conscious man who drives his own evolution, not the impersonal facts of random mutation and natural selection.

This conclusion will not surprise anyone who takes two minutes to consider the matter. So called 'primitive man' understood it well enough. He wondered how he and his fellows had come to have sufficient understanding of themselves and their environment that they could know that they were not accidents, not sparks thrown off by the grinding of stone against stone over geologic epochs, not epiphenomena produced by a mindless rearrangement of genes, not zombies. Our primitive forbear told himself stories in order to account for his sensibilities and his presence on this Earth. From these stories eventually came institutionalized religion.

Darwin's 'story' is a threat to those who take the old stories to be literally true. This is a threat of little account in my view, particularly as the Darwinists pose a much larger threat to man's cultural, moral, and spiritual evolution. Darwinism would render evolution merely a dumb, mechanical procedure and so render human will, moral decision, courage, generosity, and grand design simply meaningless.

There is more.

There is something badly wrong with the mechanics of evolution. The engines of random mutation and natural selection lack the means to transmit power to the wheels of evolution. The theory proposes no gearbox and drive shaft with the result that no rubber gets applied to the road. It is not immediately apparent why Darwin's theory revs energetically but goes nowhere. To understand why this is so, one must understand CODE.

For Darwin's theory to work 'information' has to pass from mutant individuals (who enjoy a survival advantage because of the mutations they carry) to their offspring. Information is a funny substance. It has no tangible existence. It is neither a behavior nor a thing, hence it is something quite different from facts. Perhaps the best way to describe information is to call it a property of facts, which are in their turn tangible and objective.

A piece of sheet music is a thing, a fact. The lines and blobs of dried ink on its surface are also facts. The lines and blobs are a code. Because the lines and blobs are not put down randomly, but according to a set of rules (a 'key') they are not meaningless, but meaningful. These marks mean something, but only to someone (some CONSCIOUS somebody) who understands the code and who therefore comprehends the meaning of the marks. The code does not yield its meaning or yield up its information automatically. Something must be introduced from outside the box, namely a conscious agent.

Conscious of the information or meanings enciphered in the marks, a musician may then transpose that information to a musical instrument, entering the information by means of a new code of fingering and blowing or bowing. The musical instrument will produce pressure waves in air. These waves are yet another code bearing information or meanings. The sequence of pressure waves, depending on their pitch, amplitude and accompanying overtones will vibrate the ear drums of listeners. The human ear is another transponder and it will place a succession of electro-chemical pulses on a neural pathway in response to the pressure waves. The pulses are eventually heard, rendered intelligible, or decoded by human brains.

The point I mean to make here is quite simple. If information or meaning is to pass between one medium and another or if information is to pass between individuals, it has to be encoded and then decoded; enciphered and then deciphered, encrypted and then decrypted.

Just as a 100 monkeys pounding a hundred typewriters can very possibly duplicate the works of Shakespeare, so time, accident, and mindless manipulation can very possibly eventuate in a coded message such as a piece of sheet music. On the other hand it is safe to say that neither time, nor accident, nor mindless manipulation can decode such a piece of sheet music for the simple reason that the key and the meaning are supplied from elsewhere. The meaning does NOT lie in the message itself, but is supplied by a conscious agency; an agency capable of understanding that the message is code; an agency capable of seeing the message in the code; and most importantly, an agency conscious of self and thus capable of relating the message to self and thus endowing it with meaning.

It takes two to create meaning, otherwise what you have is the sound of one hand clapping. On the one hand you must have information and on the other an agent who understands how the information relates to self; an agent who is conscious of what meaning the information has in the context of Self and the World.

Let's now get back to the theory of evolution and follow the information trail.

Let us just suppose that mindless, accidental mutation manages to encipher a potentially meaningful message in the genetic material of an individual. Let us also suppose that this individual distributes the altered genome generously. We then have a circumstance where some useful information or instructions are introduced into the cells of offspring at the very start of their development. At some point in their ongoing development this useful information will, according to evolutionary theory, equip the offspring with new organs, new functions, new properties, or new behaviors.

This scenario supposes that the code or the encrypted message is a kind of physical force. There is the unspoken assumption here that the message does not have to be understood in order to have physical effect. Since when do instructions alone accomplish the task? When have an architect's plans ever built a building? The instructions must be understood and acted on before they can have effect. A CONSCIOUS entity must be a part of the equation. It is this agency which understands and acts.

The theory of evolution does not address this lack of a conscious agency. The theory omits a necessary bridge between code and action. Code only means something to a conscious agency capable of acting. No conscious agency is identified by Darwin's theory. There is no mediator or bridge where there should be one.

Of course, the lack of a bridge is disguised by the assertion that stimuli carry their own meanings and that they are themselves capable of pushing all the right buttons to get appropriate responses. After all computers respond appropriately when the right keys are pressed. Yes, yes. But this overlooks the fact that the meanings of the key presses have already been laid down in silicon by the manufacturer of the chip which holds the computer's BIOS (Basic Input Output System). The chip was without doubt designed by a conscious agent. Present theories of the brain hold that cranial networks are a BIOS on steroids. Would they agree that the brain is a BIOS designed by a conscious agent?

Consciousness

When it is apple blossom time in West Orange, New Jersey and we are having a peach of a time, we are likely to proclaim that life is a bowl of cherries. Many more of us are likely to agree that life or living things are a homeostatic system, one constantly adapting to internal and environmental changes in order to maintain a healthy and energetic equilibrium or stasis. Then there are a few who argue that living things are dissipative systems, meaning that they change and adapt, NOT only in order to maintain a status quo, but in order to grow and to move to new and different equilibria. Darwin and his neo-darwinist followers appear to have forgotten that living things have to do more than simply adapt. They must also grow; meaning that they must change form and function, not only according to external pressures, but also to meet internal demands according to their particular program of growth. Stasis does not allow for growth, and here we have a problem.

The idea that living things are dissipative systems overcomes the problems incurred by the homeostatic model, but this idea also sets up 'problems' of its own. But first, what is a dissipative system? Here is what Ilya Prigogine, who coined the term 'dissipative system,' might say:

“In classical thermodynamics we have to do with equilibrium structures like, for instance, crystals. In non-equilibrium thermodynamics other ways of organization (into wholes) emerge. So when a dynamical system interacts with the outside world, it can be forced into a far-from-equilibrium condition by continually taking in, and exporting matter and energy. In this way dissipative systems can be formed which exhibit special behaviors.

“Dissipative systems can lead to a form of supramolecular organization. While the parameters, which describe the generation of crystal structures, can be deduced from the properties of the crystal components, especially from the range of their attraction and repulsion forces, dissipative structures are a reflection of the global situation of the condition of non-equilibrium which produces them.” (PRIGOGINE & STENGERS, 1986, Order out of Chaos, p. 144).

I say the concept of dissipative systems is a 'problem' because it causes problems for Darwinists and all evolutionists who are gradualists. It causes problems for scientists generally whether they are determinists or whether they are probablists who subscribe to the Copenhagen Interpretation; and who thus eschew the individual case and opt instead to deal (statistically) only with aggregates. It causes problems for anyone attempting to model form and function in Nature and in living things in the standard three dimensions. There are no straight lines in Nature, no equilateral triangles, and no linear mathematics.

The notion of dissipative systems causes problems for those who conceive of systems as unconscious meat grinders whose Outputs are strictly determined by the nature of their Inputs. The dynamics of weather systems and other dynamical systems in Nature are not deterministic in the usual sense. Cause does not produce effect in a linear fashion, but in a disproportionate, non-linear fashion. Hence natural processes such as evolution do not adhere to the gradualist model, but are better described by the cladists in England or by a series of eruptions in Stephen Jay Gould's long-trending 'punctuated equilibrium.'

In financial markets, estimates of deviation from the mean price (also known as estimates of 'risk') habitually rely on the Gaussian curve, an artifact of the linear, gradualist world of the 19^th Century. Here is what Benoit Mandelbrot has to say about this retrograde state of affairs:

'Any attempts to refine the tools of modern portfolio theory by relaxing the bell curve assumptions, or by "fudging” and adding the occasional “jumps” will not be sufficient. We live in a world primarily driven by random jumps, and tools designed for random walks address the wrong problem. It would be like tinkering with models of gases in an attempt to characterise them as solids and call them “a good approximation”. While scalable laws do not yet yield precise recipes, they have become an alternative way to view the world, and a methodology where large deviation and stressful events dominate the analysis instead of the other way around. We do not know of a more robust manner for decision-making in an uncertain world.'

The failure of the 'financial services industry' and of ts risk managers to anticipate the flight of Black Swans which have toppled the credit house of cards erected by these 'masters of the universe,' can be traced directly to their reliance on 'bell curve assumptions,' the same assumptions which underlie virtually all reasoning from statical data in science.

We say we live in a 3-dimensional word, but the world we live in is not one of three regular dimensions, but of one of an infinite number of irregular, fractal (fractional) dimensions. The regularities to be found in Nature are those, not of lines and angles, but of scale. The only thing regular about a cumulus cloud is the self-similarity of its constituent puffs and billows at different scales. Computer renditions of mountains, trees and other natural forms take advantage of self-similarity at successive scales by simply repeating a simple pattern, but at varying scales.

A great deal more could be said on the subject of dissipative systems, but what I have given in the way of description so far suffices, I believe, to make clear that there are rational and powerful objections to the reigning 'scientific' prejudices of the day. It is not only 'fundamentalists' who find fault with a purposeless evolution and a cogs & levers or an electro-mechanical explanation of human behavior. I have labored in previous submissions to point out that life depends on a flow of coded information. As the information is in code – either in the genetic code or in the sequence of signals routed through the brain – it requires interpretation. Interpretation, in turn, demands a conscious agent to interrogate the coded input and then to initiate the appropriate action. Today I present yet another line of reasoning which ordinary, rational people may use to panic the super-rationalists among us who cling desperately to their 19^th Century prejudices.

Consciousness

In a previous post I talked about dissipative systems, a subject which would appear to have nothing to do with consciousness. There is, I believe, a vital connection between the two, which I tried to make clear. I will try harder this time around.

I can do no better, perhaps, than to quote Mr. Dissipative Systems himself, Ilya Prigonone, a Nobel winner and a life-long student of these systems. I quote from the book he co-authored with Isabelle Stengers: 'Order Out of Chaos; Man's new dialogue with Nature,' Flamingo, 1985.

First here is Prigonone's definition of a dissipative system.

“During the nineteenth century the final state of thermodynamic evolution was at the center of scientific research. This was equilibrium thermodynamics. Irreversible processes were looked down on as nuisances, as disturbances, as subjects not worthy of study. Today this situation has completely changed. We now know that far from equilibrium, new types of structures may originate spontaneously. In far from equilibrium conditions we may have transformation from disorder; from thermal chaos, into order. New dynamic states of matter may originate, states that reflect the interaction of a given system with its surroundings. We have called these new structures 'dissipative structures' to emphasize the constructive role of dissipative processes in their formation. …”

And he goes on, eventually making the link with what he calls a function which is “able to perceive, to take into account … differences in the external world.” I call this function consciousness. While I confine it to living things, Prigonone finds it even in 'prebiological' entities.

Mr. Prigonone continues:

“Matter near equilibrium behaves in a repetitive [predictable Ed.] way. On the other hand, far from equilibrium, there appears a variety of mechanisms corresponding to the possibility of occurrence of various types of dissipative structures. [What a gargle! Blame the translator. What I believe he means to say is that something new and not determined by initial conditions may appear. Ed.] For example, far from equilibrium, we may witness the appearance of chemical clocks; chemical reactions which behave in a coherent, rhythmical fashion. We may also have processes of self-organization leading to non-homogeneous structures and to nonequilibrium crystals.

“We would like to emphasize the unexpected character of this behavior. Every one of us has an intuitive view of how a chemical reaction takes place; we imagine molecules floating through space, colliding, and reappearing in new forms. We see chaotic behavior similar to what the atomists describe when they spoke about dust dancing in the air. But in a chemical clock the behavior is quite different. Oversimplifying somewhat, we can say that in a chemical clock all molecules change their chemical identity simultaneously, at regular time intervals. If the molecules can be imagined as blue or red, we would see their change of color following the rhythm of the chemical clock reactions.

“Obviously such a situation can no longer be described in terms of chaotic behavior. A new type of order has appeared. We can speak of a new coherence, of a mechanism of 'communication' among molecules. But this type of communication can arise only in far from equilibrium conditions. It is quite interesting that such communication seems to be the rule in the world of biology. It may in fact be taken as the very basis of the definition of a biological system.

We begin to see how, starting from chemistry, we may build complex structures, complex forms, some of which may have been the precursors of life. What seems certain is that these far from equilibrium phenomena illustrate an essential and unexpected property of matter: physics may henceforth describe structures as adapted to outside conditions. [That is adapted as if they 'know' these outside conditions. Ed.] We meet in rather simple chemical systems a kind of prebiological adaptation mechanism. To use somewhat anthropomorphic language: in equilibrium, matter is blind, but in far from equilibrium conditions it begins to be able to perceive, to 'take into account,' in its way of functioning, differences in the external world.

“The artificial may be deterministic and reversible. The natural contains essential elements of randomness and irreversibility. This leads to new view of matter in which matter is no longer the passive substance described in the mechanistic world view, but is associated with spontaneous activity. … Today interest is shifting from substance to relation, to communication, to time. … This change is so profound that, as we stated in our Preface, we can really speak of a new dialog of man with nature.”

While Prigogine uses the word 'mechanism' quite often, (perhaps in order not to rattle the cages of the mechanists too strongly) he denies and refutes the concept. His argument, stripped of its nods to reigning scientific dogma, may be readily construed as asserting that matter or 'chemical systems' are, when in 'far-from-equilibrium' conditions, conscious. These systems are capable of responding or adapting efficiently. Efficiency is always measured relative to a purpose.

Reason vs. Illusion?

Why so many recent books and articles debunking religion? I will venture here an explanation of why there are so many of these anti-religious diatribes of late.

In the West there are many who perceive in Islamic revolutionary fervor another world-wide conspiracy; a conspiracy to destroy democracy, free enterprise, and the 4-wheel, gas-fired, outdoor barbecue, and especially the one with the 5-speed gearbox. Now that these fearful folks have discovered that there is, after all, not a Red under every bed, they are compelled to invent a new threat or must have one invented for them by the usual political hacks, media quacks, and last but not least, the philosophers.

The book-length attacks mounted by Richard Dawkins, among others, harry the 'stories' which attach to the Christian religion particularly and show the inconsistencies of the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection when compared to reasonable, scientific fact. Apparently religionists must give way to delusions out of some psychological necessity. This is a bit rich considering that Dawkins is hardly dispassionate and reasonable, and in fact may well be mad and unhinged. If anybody is deluded, it might well be Dawkins himself, who projects his inner demons upon religionists of every stripe, but particularly upon the black tide of Muslim fundamentalists threatening to emerge in full force from the dank wells of ignorance and superstition in the East.

The real reason for this persecution of the religious is to prepare
for what our great minds sense is certain to be a world-scale religious
war; a war in which the Light of Reason opposes the Dark of Superstition. Of course our own St. George (Richard Dawkins?) will slay this dragon. (He will succeed where the Republican party's anointed champion and a lesser mind, plain George Dubbya, failed.)

Despite the ravings of Dawkins and the less hysterical mutterings of other paragons of reason, there is not the remotest possibility that a midwestern school board is going to finally deny a child knowledge of the theory of evolution. After all, the theory of Intelligent Design implies its unintelligent, Darwinian counterpart. It is also highly unlikely that Bible Belt fundamentalists are going to hinder the grand march of Science. The Republican Party took up the cry to ban stem cell research for purely cynical and strategic reasons.

Any reasonable, rational atheist must deny himself the soft targets. He
must recognize that there are no arguments to be made against BELIEF. It is not a requirement of belief that it be consistent with fact. Belief
has to do with that which does NOT lie in the domain of fact. For
scientists, facts determine the truth. The truth for religious believers
is not a demonstrable truth, but is discovered INSIDE where it cannot be
confirmed by independent experiment. Is this not obvious?

Eons ago in a college Phil 01 class, we debated the question: Does
God exist. And here it is again in 2009, answered routinely in the negative by gangs of rationalists ganging up on religion. After all this time, perhaps we should ask: Does gravity exist? Apparently gravity is a fact like any other, known at least since Newton's day. But gravity is NOT a fact any more than God is a fact. The term 'gravity' expresses a RELATION between Mass and Acceleration. The term 'God' expresses a
relation between Man and Creation.

We can measure mass and acceleration and attribute these and other properties/behaviors to 'forces,' but these 'forces' have no material existence. They are not facts. Aside from the behaviors or side-effects themselves, there is nothing to prove the existence of 'forces' such as gravity. Behavior is a fact, a fact which IMPLIES a cause, but says nothing about the nature of that cause. It might be that God is doing it, for all we know. Furthermore, it is not rational to define a cause in terms of its effects and then to turn around and define the effects as the product of the self-same cause. Circular reasoning such as this is not a hallmark of rationality.

Is it rational to rely on a mathematical relation as proof of existence? I doubt it, but if rationalists insist, then is it not reasonable to advance the mathematical order in Nature as 'proof' of an order-Maker?

I am aware that any number of ambitious doctoral candidates are intent on 'discovering' the graviton or perhaps the gravity wave. Such a find would undoubtedly provide the waiting world with a Nobel-winning explanation of gravity. I am skeptical. Wave or particle -- take your choice -- both are gods of a sort. Their existence may be implied (by the mathematical model or by 'triangulation,') but neither can be measured DIRECTLY nor ascertained as material fact.

Atheists suppose that there is no conscious principle operating in the
universe. They insist that behavior is driven solely by chance and
necessity; that all phenomena can be satisfactorily accounted for as
physical effects produced mindlessly and mechanically and in timely
succession by material causes.

It is here that atheists must defend their case; defend it against
Godel, Mandelbrot, Gregory Chaitin, Bohm, de Broglie, Arthur Koestler,
Whitehead Jung, and others, all of whom advance (in an impeccably
rational manner) trenchant criticisms of the mechanistic model favored
by Science.  This bottom-up model does NOT account for all observable facts (particularly the facts of living things) and, significantly, does not
account for itself. Even a turn-coat Stephen Hawking has lined up on the
side of the 'exceptionalistists.'

I believe that there is an active principle operating in the universe; one which is conscious. It is this active principle which is responsible for life and creation, not some machine. The religions have concocted various 'stories' to explain this principle to uneducated, simple folk. If you are lazy, like many a rationalist who attacks religion, you can attack the stories and easily show that they are unreasonable and inconsistent with the limited order which Science projects on the world. So what? I think rationalists could do a lot better than confirm the comfortable prejudices of their kindred clockheads.