Posted on 05/25/2005 3:41:22 AM PDT by billorites
Science feeds on mystery. As my colleague Matt Ridley has put it: “Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.” Science mines ignorance. Mystery — that which we don’t yet know; that which we don’t yet understand — is the mother lode that scientists seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do.
Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science. It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse, it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that creationism or “intelligent design theory” (ID) is having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well financed. ID, by the way, is not a new form of creationism. It simply is creationism disguised, for political reasons, under a new name.
It isn’t even safe for a scientist to express temporary doubt as a rhetorical device before going on to dispel it.
“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.” You will find this sentence of Charles Darwin quoted again and again by creationists. They never quote what follows. Darwin immediately went on to confound his initial incredulity. Others have built on his foundation, and the eye is today a showpiece of the gradual, cumulative evolution of an almost perfect illusion of design. The relevant chapter of my Climbing Mount Improbable is called “The fortyfold Path to Enlightenment” in honour of the fact that, far from being difficult to evolve, the eye has evolved at least 40 times independently around the animal kingdom.
The distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin is widely quoted as saying that organisms “appear to have been carefully and artfully designed”. Again, this was a rhetorical preliminary to explaining how the powerful illusion of design actually comes about by natural selection. The isolated quotation strips out the implied emphasis on “appear to”, leaving exactly what a simple-mindedly pious audience — in Kansas, for instance — wants to hear.
The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors. But such Telling Lies for God (the book title of the splendidly pugnacious Australian geologist Ian Plimer) is not the most serious problem. There is a more important point to be made, and it goes right to the philosophical heart of creationism.
The standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature which Darwinism cannot readily explain. Darwin said: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty in order to abuse his challenge. “Bet you can’t tell me how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?” If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: “Right, then, the alternative theory; ‘intelligent design’ wins by default.”
Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the scientist’s rejoicing in uncertainty. Today’s scientist in America dare not say: “Hm, interesting point. I wonder how the weasel frog’s ancestors did evolve their elbow joint. I’ll have to go to the university library and take a look.” No, the moment a scientist said something like that the default conclusion would become a headline in a creationist pamphlet: “Weasel frog could only have been designed by God.”
I once introduced a chapter on the so-called Cambrian Explosion with the words: “It is as though the fossils were planted there without any evolutionary history.” Again, this was a rhetorical overture, intended to whet the reader’s appetite for the explanation. Inevitably, my remark was gleefully quoted out of context. Creationists adore “gaps” in the fossil record.
Many evolutionary transitions are elegantly documented by more or less continuous series of changing intermediate fossils. Some are not, and these are the famous “gaps”. Michael Shermer has wittily pointed out that if a new fossil discovery neatly bisects a “gap”, the creationist will declare that there are now two gaps! Note yet again the use of a default. If there are no fossils to document a postulated evolutionary transition, the assumption is that there was no evolutionary transition: God must have intervened.
The creationists’ fondness for “gaps” in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas.
Richard Dawkins, FRS, is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, at Oxford University. His latest book is The Ancestor’s Tale
Dear Doc, but that is precisely the point the article makes, at least one of them. Wave functions, probability spaces, offer infinite "possibilities" from a selection set which, at least to our 4D view looks very much like a totally random or chaotic distribution. The article specifically states, over and over again, that high thermodynamic entropy presents more favorable conditions for biological organization than low entropy. To the extent that (this would be the classical view) high entropy is associated with maximal dissipation of thermal energy such that the subject system has fewer and fewer energetic resources available for useful work, one would think that high entropy ineluctibly points to the thermal equilibrium or "heat death" of the organism. The point of the article is to show that high entropy is closely related to the optimization of Gibbs free energy (the formula for which is handily convertible into an entropic measure simply by dividing each of its terms by T) in living organisms, and that the Gibbs in its turn is closely involved with the vitality of living systems, in large part because of its coupled relation with Shannon entropy, which refers to informational possibilities (another type of probability distribution indicated here). The article asserts these relations and their subsequent processes are field-mediated phenomena.
If I were a scientific materialist, I would probably find such insights "disturbing." But I'm not, so I don't.
Probability distributions are reservoirs of chaos. This chaos is the basis of life though; for without it, nothing in the world could ever happen or change. Chaos provides absolutely every opportunity that can possibly be realized in this world. But once a "selection" has been made, a result has been obtained that shapes the development of the system irreversibly along the arrow of time.... At least within our 4D universe.
FWIW. Thanks for writing, Doc!
Well, they are, as far as I know, currently at Hebrew University, in Israel. If the Catholic church controls them there, now that would be very interesting, indeed.
Isn't that going to be a mighty short philosophy segment? Other than, stating, "it's in theory possible that some unspecified portion of the Universe or its contents were constructed at some unspecified time by some unspecified intelligence", exactly what else *is* there to the "philosophy of ID" (especially after it's divorced from theology, as the IDers studiously assert)?
As paper-thin as the "science" of ID is, the "philosophy" of it is even more limited in scope.
Certainly. The Nag Hammandi find is in the possession of the Coptic museum in Cairo. While various scholars held up publication so they might get their works published first, the UNESCO was able to persuade the Egyptian Department of Antiquities to release facsimilie images of the texts around 1972. Since then Egypt has allowed researchers from all over the world to view the find, and released research photographs in the mid-80s.
Although Jews were forbidden to travel in Egypt until after 1978 peace treaty, the Nag Hammandi texts seems to contain little to interest them. Or if it did, then the images are available.
Multiple translations have been made in several languages and interesting books like the 'Gospel of Thomas' have 10 translations, and if you can read Coptic you can do it yourself.
Or maybe you'd just like to sing along?
The Dead Sea scrolls are under the control of one group of people, who release very little of what they know. You have to be wondering why.
The translations of the 1st and 11th cave were released between 1951 & 1956 by the Israeli Commission -- that's rather fast considering that they had to fight a war of independence in 1948 and found a nation. The contents Cave 4 were housed at the Palestine Archaeological Museum under control of archenemy Jordan. A Catholic cleric, Pere de Vaux was in charge of (rather inept) scholarship team. Instead of getting to work on translating the material the de Vaux team busied themselves with trying to prove a pet hypothesis that the Scrolls were the work of a small group of Jewish extremists, the Essenes; and that that group had friendly ties to the nascent Christians. While they were occupied with defending their theory the refused access to their cache of material.
After the victory in the 1967 war, the museum (renamed Rockefeller) came under Israeli control but the de Vaux team remained in charge. In 1991 the US Huntington Library gives access to "qualified scholars" to ciew it's microfilm collection bequeath by Elizabeth Bechtel in 1980. She had financed a -photographing of the scrolls & had a microfilm copy of the project made for herself.
In response the Israeli department of Antiquities announces that it will grant access to official photos of the scrolls to scholars who agree not to publish their findings. A month later the scroll project director, E. Tov, announces lifting of all publication restrictions, allowing any scholar to examine the official scroll photos & publish whatever was discovered.
a. True
b. True
c. True
d. True
e. Call 'em like you sees 'em. I call no.
Intelligent Design: A hypothesis wherein given features of life v non-life are explained by an intelligent cause, rather than by an undirected process such as natural selection.
A number of objections have been raised, so I will remind everyone of the provisional question that we're answering:
What is Intelligent Design? In other words, what makes a hypothesis an Intelligent Design hypothesis?
So, what we are looking for is those attributes that are both necessary and sufficient to classify a hypothesis as an Intelligent Design hypothesis. We are not (yet) restricting ourselves to any given sphere of inquiry, nor are we building standards of evaluation into the basic classification.
These are the latest proposed alternatives:
(from PatrickHenry) The Intelligent Design Hypothesis: Certain biological features or processes that are otherwise inexplicable may be explained by an intelligent cause, rather than by an undirected process such as natural selection.
(from Alamo-Girl) Intelligent Design Hypothesis: Certain features of life v non-life may be best explained by an intelligent cause, rather than by an undirected process.
So, let's review.
1) It is not necessary that an Intelligent Design hypothesis be restricted to biological features or processes. ID hypotheses can (and do) regard non-biological features. There seems to be a silly debate about the origin of the value of pi in this very thread.
2) It is not necessary that an Intelligent Design hypothesis regard features that are otherwise inexplicable. Most (if not all) ID hypotheses don't. This is relevant to the evaluation of the hypothesis, but not to its classification.
3) It is not necessary that an Intelligent Design hypothesis be the "best" explanation. An ID hypothesis could just as well be the worse explanation, and many are, especially the ones that fantasize intelligent causes for the existence of which no evidence has been identified.
4) It is sufficient that an Intelligent Design hypothesis requires an intelligent cause, by contrast to an undirected process. How one defines "intelligence" (or undirectedness) as an abstract concept is extraneous to the basic definition.
5) It is both sufficient and necessary that any one Intelligent Design hypothesis identify given features, not just "certain features" in the abstract.
6) It is necessary that an Intelligent Design hypothesis examine whether the given features "are" explained by intelligent cause, not just whether they "may" be explained by intelligent cause. Anything and everything "may" be explained by intelligent cause...
So, attempts to insert subjectivity, ambiguity, value-judgment, ambivalence, equivocation, and standards of evaluation into the basic classificatory definition are rejected. We are not (yet) speaking of The Intelligent Design Hypothesis, so that formulation is rejected as well. The more precise "that" in lieu of "wherein" is accepted. The excision of "such as natural selection" is provisionally rejected. It is technically redundant - the definition is functional without it - but it helps clarify what is meant by "undirected process" and, in contrast, by "intelligent cause." It also implicitly alerts the reader that such hypotheses are most commonly and ordinarily presented with regard to "biological features or processes" - a decent compromise, no?
There is one final modification that I would recommend, but I will hold off for now until it's determined that the above topics have been resolved for our purposes. To avoid confusion, this is the very slightly modified definition that we are now still debating:
Intelligent Design: A hypothesis that given features of life v non-life are explained by an intelligent cause, rather than by an undirected process such as natural selection.
With no apparent objection, "that" has been inserted in place of "wherein" from the previous definition. We have thereby properly excluded tangential hypotheses wherein Intelligent Design may be implicit, but which do not address specific causes of given features.
Although you are probably aware of this, what you are dsicussing was postluated quite thoroughly several hundred years ago and is known as Pascal's Wager.
Here is a link for your reading pleasure: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
There's nothing of the New Testament among the DSS. A Spanish Jesuit, José O'Callaghan, has argued that one fragment (7Q5) of 14 characters is a New Testament text from the Gospel of Mark 6:52, but his interpretation of the characters is disputed. It might be just a unknown commentary just like the rest of the scrolls found in the same cave (#7)
Anyhow, to be a copy of Mark, the ink would hardly be dry to be included with the rest of the OT scrolls buried at the time (~ 30-60AD). Then there's the question of why the Essenes, a group of Jewish extremists, would have anything to do with the liberal Christians that seemed to flaunt the law of Moses?
"Don't Delay - Measure your god today!" -- The Amazing Online God-O-Meter
Schlitz pie? Now I'm nauseated.
Well, that's an interpretation of another theory altogether
A bucky ball is a 60 atom molecule. Its motion is subject to the, as you say, fully deterministic laws of gravity.
The Israel Museum. Eight manuscripts at the Shrine of the Book display and all others at the Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem.
Thanks for all the work you put in to synthesizing everything. However, after seeing how it's going, and having satisfied myself that there's nothing scientific about ID, I'm dropping back into lurking mode. But I owe an explanation to those whom I've been distracting with my failed commentaries.
As I understand the history of "modern" ID (the flavor currently being ballyhooed by the Discovery Institute), it began with the claim that some biological features are "irreducibly complex." The conjecture of an Intelligent Designer was devised (revived, actually) to be plugged into that alleged explanatory void. Were it not for such otherwise inexplicable features, there would have been -- it seems to me -- no reason to even venture into the un-evidenced, un-observed, un-supported, and un-testable (therefore un-scientific) "explanation" of ID.
I don't object the concept's being extended beyond biology, if the same alleged precondition applies: the presence of "irreducibly complex" features. However, the whole business of ID seems to have been formulated to account for biological features. I'd be open minded about this, if there were -- in my always humble opinion -- any scientific thinking that is worthy of being extended from biology to other fields. But I don't think there is (and I've got doubts that it applies in biology either, but that's not the point I'm making here).
Millennia in the past, our ancestors imagined that everything was the result of some kind of ID. You know ... a dryad in every tree, a nymph in every brook, etc. Scientific progress in those days was just about zero. Slowly, sometimes painfully, our current discipline of science was developed. It deals exclusively with the natural world, leaving the rest of creation to other disciplines. I can't go along with any effort that I see as a retrograde movement, one that contributes to the backsliding of the progress science has made -- indeed, one that, if the "Wedge Document" is examined, seems to be an un-scientific counter-revolution. Discovery Institute's "Wedge Project"
I'm dropping out of this discussion because it now seems agreed -- by all participants but me -- that ID doesn't need to wait for "features or processes that are otherwise inexplicable." I take that to mean that the ID hypothesis would accompany every scientific theory. ID then becomes a "respectable" alternative for the children to decide, as the increasingly-worthless schools "teach the controversy."
I see ID as a blatant effort to turn every scientific theory into a blend of science & mysticism. Tacked onto the end (or inserted at the start?) of every theory would be the expression: "or it may have been the result of ID." Sorry, that's not science. It's the death of science. So count me out. But don't expect me to be silent about this.
Nothing that I've posted thus far is meant to legitimize or validate ID hypotheses as a scientific mode of inquiry. Thus far, we have only classified ID as a mode of inquiry, period. By the time we get to our third question, the exact framing of which we've postponed (re: whether evidence exists of an "intelligent designer" - which I might add, is quite different than whether evidence exists of intelligent design), then all these objections you've raised will certainly become quite relevant.
Some of them will become relevant whenever we reach our first two questions (whether the as-yet-undefined "panspermia" or "collective consciousness" qualify as "intelligent design").
Patience is a virtue! =)
But I do agree with everything you've point out.
One cannot assert as much without making some large, unprovable, assumptions.
How about you try listing a few of them.
This definition of ID contains, among other things, an implicit assumption of vitalism, a concept that thas rather thoroughly been rejected on many grounds.
Likewise, the definition doesn't give any hint what "intellegence" is. Nor does is give any indication that such a determination is possible.
Perhaps you could suggest an alternative that could actually be investigated by science. O perhaps you could suggest some practical reason why this isn;'t the default assumption of science.
Perhaps you could name some phenomenon -- earthquakes, disease, volcanos, storms, etc. -- which were once attributed to the intervention of gods, were investigated by science and found to be caused by the intervention of gods.
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