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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
Creation ping list
See my profile for info
I don't think your example has it's intended effect. For your example to prove your point, scientists would still have to believe that the world is flat and refuse to believe any new evidence that the world is indeed round.
Science history is full of instances where scientists once thought one thing, only to have it proven wrong. But at that point, they (eventually, in some cases) accept the new facts and move on.
I think you just arent taking Gods word for what it says. Gen 1:1, In the beginning God created...
God says he created. I'll take it thats exactly what happened. Its not putting God in a "box" its accepting what he tells us.
call it what you want, impressive way to rationalize away importance of a first cause.
By doing this, not only accepting new evidence but actively seeking it all the time, science relentlessly converges on an increasingly accurate description of nature. It may never be perfectly right, but it gets very, very accurate. The people who argue that it's just some big pendulum that swings back and forth between flat-Earth and round-Earth are ignoring what is going on as a matter of their own convenience in argument. Creationism is full of intentional little errors of observation and logic like this one. Or, you could say it's full of bull.
but I doubt you are so cavalier when YOU are the (seemingly) first cause of something. I bet you enjoy being complemented on your hard work.
Another way of putting it, your mtDNA line can die out but your nuclear genes can be spreading around the world at the same time.
Evolution definitely exists and is ongoing. Spotted owls learn to live next to Quickie Mart...
I don't think spotted owls learning to live next to the Quickie Mart is any evidence of evolution.
Should their off-spring begin to show signs of acquiring the attributes of say, a winged shopping cart, then you may have something there...
best line of the day.
Interesting how you "fixed the quote".
Is'nt that something the "knuckle draggers", "fundies" or whatever derisive term is your pet slander are regularly accused of doing?
I'm sure you do not hypocrisy when gazing upon it from afar. How does it look in the mirror?
"Science depends on an objective study of verifiable phenomena."
This is precisely why Dawkins' faith in evolution is not science.
That assertion is wrong on so many levels...
Did you ever study history? What standards of "empirical proof" did you apply to your history textbooks?
Do you believe that Julius Ceaser was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate? If so, upon what do base that belief?
Science history is full of instances where scientists once thought one thing, only to have it proven wrong.
That is exactly my point.
That science changes according to evidence? I think not.
Evolution has been studied for a century and the evidence only grows stronger.
If the evidence for evolution is as weak as implied, why aren't more scientists changing their minds, as they did with the "flat earth"?
Yep.
The problem is that Luddite isn't strong enough. Creationism/ID works at tearing down the foundations of science as diligently and as cunningly as the ACLU works to undermine the foundations of the US. One day they'll wake up and discover -- to their mutual surprise -- that they're both on the same team.
And as for your tagline, which I've quoted often (Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.) I don't thing that's strong enough either. Creationism is a cancer on Western Civilization.
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