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
No. Science is about things that turn up when one investigates nature itself. Political and military power can only bury the truth for a time, in a place. The Church supported geocentrism over the growing evidence against it. For a time in a place, it won. Stalin supported Lysenkoism over genetics and evolution. For a time in a place, he won. However, nature was still out there to be investigated and there were no victories over that.
The evidence doesn't go away. You don't change it in the streets. The diversity of life on Earth shows common descent with variation and natural selection. If it was suppressed today and all the books were burned, someone would figure it out again in a week.
Reconcile this with the fact that places like MIT are copying the evolutionary process and using genetic algorithms as efficient problem solving strategies?
True.
G. A. Magnini.
It would be more difficult to name a scientist in Galileo's day who did not subscribe to Aristotelianism where the "natural" sciences were concerned. Galileo represents a manner and degree of inquiry that outstripped the best of them. Fortunately he did not give up in the face of persecution.
Today the picture is much the same. The power, authority, egoism, and ignorance rests in the hands of a few who bring only unjustifiable bias to the pursuit of knowledge, namely dogmatic evolutionists.
I also think part of the problem is that creationists don't understand that evolution doesn't even attempt to provide all the answers. Evolution deals only with a limited scope, namely the development of different varieties of organisms. I can't count the number of times that creationists argue that evolution can't be true because "life can't arise from nonliving matter" or that they deride evolutionists for believing that "there was nothing and then that nothing exploded." Evolution doesn't attempt to answer the questions of the origin of the universe or even the origin of life. Even within its scope, however, scientists are more than willing to admit that they might be wrong. However, it seems that it is the details that are debatable currently. It seems unlikely that the overall idea of genetic variability leading to all the species of life will be found to be wrong. Creationists even seize upon the debate over the details, however, in a desparate attempt to show that evolution is in trouble.
Remember to include them in the "special thanks"! :-)
Now included in The List-O-Links.
Whoa, now here's an original thought. I'm a Creationist liar if I don't make Ed drink at the trough he's been led to.
Ed, the word liar has lost all meaning on these threads. But feel free to continue using it, it amuses me. :-}
What is the airspeed of an African proto-sparrow laden with army ants?
The church has changed its stance in relation to scientific discovery many times and will continue to do so. It will not accept a challenge to its spiritual authority.
BTW: I believe the Church's stance on evolution is one you would agree with, which makes most of this focus on Galileo moot. And nobody has ever discussed Bacon, Linnaeus, or Newton. Neither science and faith, nor science and Church, are in opposition except in the minds of a few. That was the central point that we seem to have strayed from.
Gimme a break, general Catholic apologetics wasn't on the table in this discussion up until now, but, as long as you've asked...
The church behaves itself better now because the rise of the nation-states and the reformation pulled it's fangs. The building in the Vatican used to house the children of jews kidnapped by the church to be raised christian didn't fall into disuse until after the US Civil War, and the church's stance on evolution didn't heel to until 1996. About the only interesting thing you've said, apropos to this debate, is "It [The Church] will not accept a challenge to its spiritual authority."
And that, dear hearts, is what has been wrong with this arrogant church for 1400 years, and why it is, quite rightly, synonymous with the bogeyman in the hearts of so many Jewish and Muslim children--way too many of their ancestors murdered by deputies of a church that "will not accept a challenge to its spiritual authority".
Lighten up a little, you'll live longer and prosper.
I provide information. Not everyone is at the same knowledge level on every subject and I find discussions go better when the participants have enough information to be on a par with one another.
True enough.
In addition, because of the pervasive poor quality of teaching the basic sciences, many people think they know a good deal that is actually incorrect. It is not their fault if they trusted their teachers and it should not be used against them to score debate type points.
It should when they let their hubris outrun their knowledge base and they attempt to score "debate type points" based on erroneous information, assumptions or assertions.
Other than that I agree with you whole heartedly.
Obviously, the willingness of some people to engage in fanatical acts for their religion does not prove the truth thereof.
Sometimes effective, but really pretty hard to call efficient, problem solving strategies, given the right problem, entailing debugging and support challenges of substantial daunt-itude.
I would classify the attitude you (accurately) describe in the first sentence as superstition, not religion. It reduces the transcendant God of true religion to the level of a primitive tribal sun/thunder/fertility/whatever god.
There is some truth to that -- crediting the church with refraining from inquisitions, etc in modern times is sort of like crediting the Democrats for not raising our taxes since January 2001.
I'll get to your rather amusing post a bit later. Duty calls!
Very interesting. Other than seeing references to his name, I didn't know about him.
Alas! It is supported increasingly by recent history, especially in Kansas.
From my vantage point, I'd say evolution *is* in trouble. Scientists are speaking out more and more about the limitations of the theory. What do you make of these two letters?
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Letters to the Editor
May 25, 2005
Sir, Like many biologists, Richard Dawkins (Weekend Review, May 21) views the theory of intelligent design merely as an attack on evolution when, being essentially identical to the anthropic principle, it has far wider implications. Such ideas should not be dismissed simply because they have been hijacked by creationists. Despite Dawkins’s relentless propaganda, rational criticism of evolution and a distaste for biological reductionism do not equate to religious fundamentalism; bigotry should be resisted from whichever direction it comes.
Yours faithfully,
MILTON WAINWRIGHT, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN. May 21.
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From Professor Andy McIntosh
Sir, By building a straw man of creationists (supposedly) misquoting Darwin and Lewontin, Professor Dawkins labels the lot as “ignorant” and skirts the big issue — there is no hard evidence for molecules-to-man evolution.
Dawkins has long touted stories on how the eye and other organs came into being by supposed slow evolutionary processes, but there is no experimental evidence, even if one did accept the fossils as a record of such changes. Any serious thinker knows that the fossils of the “Cambrian Explosion” period, near the base of the geological column, include some of the most sophisticated eyes ever known to have existed — the compound eyes of trilobites have double calcite lenses, which defeat any slow evolutionary explanation, and, what is more, they have no precursor in the rocks.
The non-evolutionist side of the argument is growing not because of ignorance, but because of the rise of knowledge about the real facts of science without the fairytale additions of evolutionism. A growing number of academics on both sides of the Atlantic are attracted to the straightforward logic of scientific reasoning.
The logical, coded machinery of DNA and the information system it carries shout design to an unprejudiced mind. Dawkins’s defence is based not on scientific facts, but on ideology. Evolutionary thinking is teetering as a way of looking at the evidence, not because of some isolated problems here and there, but because the whole structure is scientifically wrong.
Yours faithfully,
ANDY C. McINTOSH, (Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory), Energy and Resources Research Institute, Houldsworth Building, University of Leeds, Clarendon Road, Leeds LS2 9JT. May 23.
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Stremba - literally EVERY DAY I read things from scientists telling me evolution has problems and alone can't account for the incredible complexity and biological systems on Earth and that ID should be given a fair shake. What am I and the general public to think? I mean, if it (evolution) were a SOLID theory, would we even be having this discussion?
Thanks in advance for your comments.
MM
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