Divine Name Verification: An Essay on Anti-Darwinism, Intelligent Design, and the Computational Nature of Reality

427 Pages·2013·3.5 MB·English

by  Noah Horwitz

DIVINE NAME VERIFICATION

DIVINE NAME VERIFICATION

AN ESSAY ON ANTI-DARWINISM,
INTELLIGENT DESIGN, AND THE
COMPUTATIONAL NATURE OF REALITY

Noah Horwitz

punctum books ✶ brooklyn, ny
DIVINE NAME VERIFICATION: AN ESSAY ON ANTI-
DARWINISM, INTELLIGENT DESIGN, AND THE COMPUTA-
TIONAL NATURE OF REALITY
© Noah Horwitz, 2013.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0
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First published in 2013 by
punctum books
Brooklyn, New York
http://punctumbooks.com

ISBN-13: 978-0615839080
ISBN-10: 0615839088

Cover Image: detail from Rembrandt, Belshazaar’s
Feast (c. 1635), The National Gallery, London, UK.

Facing-page drawing by Heather Masciandaro.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

V

Introduction
§1. Introduction: From Hardware to Software 1

Part One: Anti-Darwinism

§2. Irreducible Complexity 23
§3. The Edge of Evolution 27
§4. Not By Chance 41
§5. The Developmentalist Critique of Compu- 49
tationalism
§6. Further Criticisms of Biological Darwinism 61
§7. Convergence 71
§8. Lynn Margulis and Parts, Wholes, and 81
Code
§9. Philosophical Excursus: A Critique of ‘Ob- 85
ject-Oriented Ontology’
§10. Symbiogenesis 109
§11. Maximo Sandin: Nosotros Somos Bacteria 121
y Virus
§12. Critique of ‘Self-Organization’ 129
§13. The Irony of Darwinist Computer Simula- 163
tion
§14. CSI: Dembski—A Critique 175

Part Two: The Computational Nature of Reality

§15. The Computational Nature of Reality 199
§16. Darwinian Metaphysics 237
§17. Darwin’s Apotheosis: Quentin Meilla- 255
ssoux’s Atheism of Radical Contingency