Posted on 01/20/2002 12:07:19 PM PST by PatrickHenry
In one of the most existentially penetrating statements ever made by a scientist, Richard Dawkins concluded that "the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."
Facing such a reality, perhaps we should not be surprised at the results of a 2001 Gallup poll confirming that 45 percent of Americans believe "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so"; 37 percent prefer a blended belief that "human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process"; and a paltry 12 percent accept the standard scientific theory that "human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process."
In a forced binary choice between the "theory of creationism" and the "theory of evolution," 57 percent chose creationism against only 33 percent for evolution (10 percent said that they were "unsure"). One explanation for these findings can be seen in additional results showing that just 34 percent considered themselves to be "very informed" about evolution.
Although such findings are disturbing, truth in science is not determined democratically. It does not matter what percentage of the public believes a theory. It must stand or fall on the evidence, and there are few theories in science that are more robust than the theory of evolution. The preponderance of evidence from numerous converging lines of inquiry (geology, paleontology, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, genetics, biogeography, and so on) points to the same conclusion--evolution is real. The 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell called this process of independent lines of inquiry converging together to a conclusion a "consilience of inductions." I call it a "convergence of evidence." Whatever you call it, it is how historical events are proved.
The reason we are experiencing this peculiarly American phenomenon of evolution denial (the doppelgnäger of Holocaust denial, using the same techniques of rhetoric and debate) is that a small but vocal minority of religious fundamentalists misread the theory of evolution as a challenge to their deeply held religious convictions. Given this misunderstanding, their response is to attack the theory. It is no coincidence that most evolution deniers are Christians who believe that if God did not personally create life, then they have no basis for belief, morality and the meaning of life. Clearly for some, much is at stake in the findings of science.
Because the Constitution prohibits public schools from promoting any brand of religion, this has led to the oxymoronic movement known as "creation science" or, in its more recent incarnation, "intelligent design" (ID). ID (aka God) miraculously intervenes just in the places where science has yet to offer a comprehensive explanation for a particular phenomenon. (ID used to control the weather, but now that we understand it, He has moved on to more difficult problems, such as the origins of DNA and cellular life. Once these problems are mastered, then ID will no doubt find even more intractable conundrums.) Thus, IDers would have us teach children nonthreatening theories of science, but when it comes to the origins of life and certain aspects of evolution, children are to learn that "ID did it." I fail to see how this is science--or what, exactly, ID-ers hope will be taught in these public schools. "ID did it" makes for a rather short semester.
To counter the nefarious influence of the ID creationists, we need to employ a proactive strategy of science education and evolution explanation. It is not enough to argue that creationism is wrong; we must also show that evolution is right. The theory's founder, Charles Darwin, knew this when he reflected: "It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science."
Michael Shermer [the author] is founding publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com) and author of The Borderlands of Science.
You sure you're not confusing him with somebody else? He's nothing but[there's reductionism for you! :) ] an anti-religious bigot with a degree and a Hewlett-Packard billionaire for a patron. Didn't you see his screed in the NYTimes blaming belief in the afterlife for 9-11?
Moreover, his mimetics destroy rational inquiry. Observe:
My favorite passage in that regard comes from his chapter on the raw hokum purveyed under the fancy name of “evolutionary psychology,” which “discipline” insists that the mind is just a collection of copycat units of mental replication called “memes” (analogous to, and pronounced like, “genes”). As Johnson rightly points out, a “memetic” account of the mind is fatal to science, “since it implies that even the scientists are not really scientists [just mindless copiers], and that their boasted rationality is really rationalization. In that case, why imagine that scientific reasoning can make true statements about ultimate reality? Extreme forms of modernist rationalism thus merge seamlessly with postmodernist relativism.”As this review notes, Johnson has some bizzare theories himself, but he's got Dawkins nailed. What's more, from such a subjectivist theory of knowledge one expects the sort of nihilism exhibited in the opening lines of this thread. Thankfully, most nihilists haven't taken their proposals to the logical conclusion. But I'm not willing to bet on his epigones' similar failures of consistency.Similarly, under this rubric both “religion” and “natural selection” are memes. But what makes one true and the other false? Victory inside the brain of one meme over another? The elevation of one meme over another by state censorship? Some extreme Darwinians are fond of calling the meme of religion a “computer virus,” but that implies that the very idea of religion somehow undermines the efficient functioning of the human brain. Not only is there no evidence for that, even if there were, it would reintroduce the teleological question—what is human functioning for—so that one could distinguish a meme as virus from one that helps the brain correspond to reality. As Johnson pointedly asks: “If unthinking matter causes thoughts the materialists don’t like, then what causes the thoughts they do like?”Source
I don't think I said Dawkins denied objective truth, just that his memetics destroys human capacity to know it and act to discover it. Because, again, if there is neither good nor evil, there is no *reason* to look at truth, since in the nihilistic view, truth cannot be good-in-itself because there is no good.
I don't think that logically follows. There can be other reasons to look for truth.
Sorry, but science is only as divorced from culture as are the practioners of science (which is one reason so many revolutions in science are introduced by cultural outcasts--who are often punished or ignored in their own lifetimes).
Objective science is myth . . .
As is the unprejudiced mind.
What do you mean failed? He did get a degree in 1831. Please post some evidence that he failed in his courses.
But not any good ones.
It confers religion upon science.... oh.. science has become a religion to many?
Anything else and I would refer you back to my original post. :o)
This is a very religious tilt.... evolutionists and their freakish cult are now trying to make it seem as if we'll evolve into more perfect beings.... maybe even Dolphins I suppose.
humbly submit... Genesis 1: And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
No, some person wrote that god said. blah, blah, blah .... and a bunch of other people copied it over the years, and to the children that have it drilled into their heads, it becomes truth.
God forbid we try to better ourselves.
Or this summary: memetics is an attempt to explain why a lot of people believe false and foolish things. It nowhere claims that everything believed by everybody must inevitably be false or foolish. Indeed, it gives us tools - poor ones, but better than none - for clarifying our own thinking.
Scientists, being people, are not immune to this problem. Much damage has been done to science by memes such as natura non facit saltum, or nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, to quote two very famous ones. But once you are aware the debate is being polluted by slogans, you can try to get it back on track.
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