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.
The only reason Dawkins can even make such an assertion and make it intelligible is because human beings have the capacity to discern and create design, and to fit it to a clear purpose. They also understand and employ concepts of good and evil, pity and cruelty. To be logically consistent Dawkins would have to deny the existence of such things in human experience. Dawkins is a highly educated, well-written, blind fool.
No, it completely ignores religion. If you consider it to have a goal to confound religion, then it is not one specific religion that it confounds, but hundreds or possibly thousands that have origins stories based on ancient tribal explanations for what we see around us.
Intentionally or not, you've just written something very profound that should always be at the forefront of these arguments.
Evolution can only teach by what physical process -- HOW -- we got here. It is science and only science, and therefore only answers the less important half of the big question. The other half, which evolution can't even touch, is WHY are we here, what purpose do we have. This is the job of religion.
Unfortunately, Creation Science tries to cross the line and also explain how, and does a quite pitiful job of it. Religion's useful place in explaining the physical world went away a long time ago, when we realized lightning and storms were not God's wrath, and that rain was not coming down through openings in the firmament.
Heh heh. Ever see the original "Connections" TV series, which beautifully illustrated the evolution of invention from the battle of Hastings in 1066 (first use of stirrups in battle) to the first landing on the moon in 1968? To ignore that science and invention evolve through human generations via teaching, learning, trial, and error is to put them into the category of magic and superstition.
This is not necessarily inconsistent with evolution. Evolution cannot account for the possibility of a "guiding hand" behind the scenes making evolution happen. Evolution is inconsistent with Biblical literalism and inerrancy.
The parameters for this are so narrow, that the odds of this happening on earth are next to impossible, even with billions of years of blind chance working.
Odds only matter if in the beginning you set the end result to be the current state. Odds have nothing to do with it when the end state is unknown. According to evolution, we are just as likely to have our current world as we would be to have any other.
In other words, what are the chances you will be doing something, anything, in the late afternoon tomorrow? 100%. What are the chances you'll be doing a specific thing? Then odds then could possibly be calculated.
This sounds like Kent Hovind's bogus $250,000 reward for "proving" evolution.
Yes, this guy is definitely one you don't want trying to defend evolution well. Zorobabel caught another of his screw-ups. Evolution only has logic going for it, and when its proponents make mistakes in that area, it hurts a lot.
"Most Existentially penetrating?" Try most Nihilistic. Shermer has the logical incompetence to say, in effect, "Oh yes, Nihilism in neo-Darwinian dress is perfectly compatible with all religion except for those icky fundamentalists, whose popularity is regrettable." (Challenge Dawkins, and of course you are an icky fundamentalist.) Not to mention that, if the Universe is blind and pitifully indifferent, and we are the products of said blind and pitiably insouciant Universe, then why are we humans truth-loving and truth-seeing organisms? Why are we not in the image of our "creator"? One who accepts Dawkins' initial fantasies truly risks ending in indifferentist subjectivism, for his sophomoric attempts at metaphysical gravitas end in irrationalism: just look at his memetic theory of knowledge, where science itself is but a matter of copying other people. No doubt I shall soon be shouted down by those screeching "Hail, High Priest of neo-Darwinian Fundamentalism and Most Hieratic Hierophant of Memes!" (But I must admit: The First Church of Memetic-Scientific Irrationalism has a nice ring to it.)
Moreover, Shermer caricatures the ID movement; at least one of its proponents, Michael Behe, is not a young-earth Creationist. Even more, if ID is in fact a valid method of investigation, then it is silent on the matter of a given entity's creator. ID could support Francis Crick's speculation about intelligent extraterrestrial DNA "seeders" just as easily as basic monotheistic creation tenents.
Bad arguments matched with political advocacy like those shown here do Scientific American no good, and they only serve to further undermine my trust in the scientific establishment. Shermer's forays into education advocacy are exactly what one would expect from a member of the Governmental-Educational Complex, whose only apparent purpose is to strangle intelligent thought among our youth.
Incorrect.
Theory is determined culturally.
Theory does not stand or fall on "evidence."
Rather, the culture that believes in a theory will stand or fall if belief in that theory increases or decreases that culture's ability to survive.
When logical arguments against another's point fail, always go ad hominem.
And Mendel was a monk.
Whoa, I just caught this. His column is even under the "Skeptic" section--did SA add that back during its "Popular Science" makeover? The scientific method is pragmatic, not ontological; tacking on people in the "Worldview business" imprudently obscures this.
As I earlier complained of religious people such as Kent Hovind pitifully trying to use religious text to explain scientific phenomena, here you've shown an example in the other direction. Dawkins is a scientist, not a philosopher, and he should stick to his science. He seems to be trying to make science address the WHY question, and he doesn't do well.
--- if the Universe is blind and pitifully indifferent, and we are the products of said blind and pitiably insouciant Universe, then why are we humans truth-loving and truth-seeing organisms?
Because we die if we don't establish true ideas from false ideology?
IE - We have learned, through the scientific method, to cure many ills, -- instead of listening to a medicine mans munbo-jumbo.
Now that is a blind, pitiless, indifferent truth. -- Right?
First, to state the obvious, evolution can't teach, only teachers can. One can exaggerate the evolutionary biologist's capacity to tell us "HOW" we got here. Are histories of human immigration--in many ways a physical process--within the competence of evolutionary theory? And if one only means that it can tell us how we inherited our particular genes, I suspect we are mistaking the theoretical construct for observation. (The observable science, of course, being the field of genetics.) But to ignore that point, it seems historical geneaology has far surer methods of proof than related attempts at extending its fields back into prehistorical times.
In comprehending how an endeavour like natural history proceeds, my greatest difficulty came not from reading scientific-sounding idiots like Dawkins, or his highly creative opponents, but rather from my own thought experiment:
Pretend a massive event like World War II extended over a million years.
Now reconstruct it using the physical evidence.
Oh, and there are no written records whatsoever. Have a nice day.
The task is staggering, and I suspect it would take another million years to recreate even an approximation of it. Not that nobody should try such a reconstruction, but it seems that both the sheer quantity of required information, and the presence of insurmountable information gaps--"knowledge bottlenecks" if you will--precludes natural history, and thus evolutionary theory, from being anything other than a highly, highly speculative endeavor.
But according to Dawkins, death is neither good nor bad.
Shermer is an incompetent philosopher who confuses realism with nihilism.
Well one of my questions can be turned into a "How," in fact it probably should have been. HOW is it that we products of an [allegedly] blind, indifferent universe can see the truth about it? This question certainly can use the work of the physical sciences, like neurobiology, but its own sphere is epistemology proper.
One of the axioms of science being a variant of epistemological realism, it is quite humorous to see folk like Dawkins inadvertently destroying it in the name of Science. I just wish he'd do it in private, and save the rest of us a lot of trouble.
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