Posted on 11/18/2005 4:34:43 AM PST by StatenIsland
Why intelligent design proponents are wrong.
Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous - that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious. Newton's religiosity was traditional. He was a staunch believer in Christianity and member of the Church of England. Einstein's was a more diffuse belief in a deity who set the rules for everything that occurs in the universe.
Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. "He believed he was doing God's work," wrote James Gleick in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation - understanding the workings of the universe - as an attempt to understand the mind of God.
Not a crude and willful God who pushes and pulls and does things according to whim. Newton was trying to supplant the view that first believed the sun's motion around the Earth was the work of Apollo and his chariot, and later believed it was a complicated system of cycles and epicycles, one tacked on upon the other every time some wobble in the orbit of a planet was found. Newton's God was not at all so crude. The laws of his universe were so simple, so elegant, so economical, and therefore so beautiful that they could only be divine.
Which brings us to Dover (Pa.), Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.
Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose "intelligent design" - today's tarted-up version of creationism - on the biology curriculum. Robertson then called down the wrath of God upon the good people of Dover for voting "God out of your city." Meanwhile in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.
Let's be clear. "Intelligent design" may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge - in this case, evolution - they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species, but that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science - that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution - or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?
In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase "natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying - by fiat of definition, no less - that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and to science.
The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernable direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which the Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?
He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions - arguably, the most important questions in life - that lie beyond the material.
How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.
Originally published on November 18, 2005
I disagree. I think the process you describe -- where the source of hypothesis or the mode of their generation, whether for instance prosaic or inspirational, doesn't really matter; and what does matter is how they pan out under examination, application and testing -- IS exactly scientific. That it is describes how science actually works.
(Note that I'm not saying something silly like one will be as successful in forming hypotheses by casting the I-Ching as by ruminations based in sound craft knowledge and broad familiarity with applicable data. Nor am I denying that there is obviously a filtering process whereby scientists use insight and instinct to decide which hypothesis are worth pursuing. I'm just saying that the origin of hypothesis is logically irrelevant to their validity.)
And we know what political movement blames capitalism for exploitation and wars.
If you'd like to connect yourself intellectually to a buffoon like William Jennings Bryan, be my guest. I'm interested ... do you also support the prohibition of alcohol and the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1?
William jennings Bryan was compelled to oppose the teaching of biological evolution in the schools because he associated it with social darwinism, which he thought justified exploitive capitalism and imperialism, and led to the catastrophe of 1914.
This is a new hypothesis to me...that WWI was caused by the Theory of Evolution. I've read about the hypothesis that the TOE caused WWII, but not this one. Sounds fascinating. Please elaborate.
QED.
Also, the 1919 Influenza outbreak, jazz music, naughty dancing, the Great Depression, juvenile delinquency, and the failure of Studebaker.
Why do you think that Bryan was a buffoon? I urge you to take your copy of inherett the wind and throw it in the trash. It is bad history. Of course he was an intellectual lightweight, but he didn't invent the monetary theory you mention and her certainly didn't start the temperance movement. The latter goes back to the early 19th century and the huge problem the country had with drunkedness. Abraham Lincoln belonged to the movement and was a teetotler.
As for the connection of eugenics with Darwin, the fact is that Hitler's racist statements in Mein Kampf were basically sophomoric paraphrases of Haeckel's textbooks.
There are a lot of people in high places who DID read Montagu when they were in college, or heard about him there. His ideas are part of their worldview, just as Marx's views are.
The First World War happened after Darwin's Theory was published, therefore, Darwin's Theory caused World War One.
I see. Then Darwin's Theory also caused jets, cars, computers, TV, radio, CAT scans, ibuprofen, frozen dinners, vacuum cleaners, Starbucks, McDonalds, cellular phones, Caller ID (one of my favorites), Hamburger Helper, microwave ovens, etc. No wonder the Amish are upset.
On the other hand, the California gold rush happened exactly before the publication of "Origins". We can therefore conclude that evolution was the first cultural fallout from the founding of California.
During World War I the news media carried numerous stories of the German military engaging in barbarous acts, from poisoning children to gassing soldiers. What, some people asked, could possibly have prompted the most scientifically advanced nation on earth to behave so badly. Bryan, the U. S. secretary of state at the beginning of the war, explained that "The same science that manufactured poisonous gases to suffocate soldiers is preaching that man has a brute ancestry and eliminating the miraculous and the supernatural from the Bible." A popular book by the Stanford biologist Vernon L. Kellogg, Headquarters Nights (1917), reported firsthand evidence of German officers discussing the Darwinian rationale for their declaration of war. [source]
The full title of the book is "Headquarters Nights: A Record Of Conversations And Experiences At The Headquarters Of The German Army In France And Belgium." Amazon's page has a quote from the foreword by Teddy Roosevelt:
One of the most graphic pictures of the German attitude, the attitude which has rendered this war inevitable, is contained in this book. It is a convincing, and an evidently truthful, exposition of the shocking, the unspeakably dreadful moral and intellectual perversion of character which makes Germany at present a menace to the whole civilized world.
I think this is basically correct: Germany militarism was influenced by Darwinism (at least the German misunderstanding thereof).
I've read about the hypothesis that the TOE caused WWII, but not this one.
Yeah, the case "that the TOE caused WWII" is pure bull. The case that it was something of an influence in WWI is far stronger. There were many other German justifications for militarism by WWII. Specifically the Nazis with their racist philosophy -- which by contrast to their militarism was NOT significantly influenced by evolution -- believed that militarism, or more generally a drive and destiny to conquer and enslave other races, was inherent in the Aryan "blood" or "race soul". They believed this "race soul" was "created".
I was talking about Bryan and his experience. Social Darwinism was an influencial theory developed by Herbert Spencer BEFORE Wallace or Darwin came to public attention. He used Darwin's theory to buttress his theory which found much favor among the Anglo-Saxon elites. Darwins' biological theory was widely applied to make social and political points, none of which had an NECESSARY connection with the biology. It was even used to justify
good things, like the notion of the White man's Burden. White people, as the superior race, were obliged to take care of their inferiors.
So what? Clinton probably read Keynes, but by the time he became POTUS Keynesian economics was nevertheless surpassed and even a 'Rat like The Rapist wasn't stupid enough to pretend otherwise. Montagu is at best "quaint". Kinda like Peter Max posters.
"Created" in the Hegelian sense, not the Christian sense. Recall why Hitler titled his book "Mein Kampf." He was talking about a HISTORICAL struggle, somewhat like Marx's class warfare.
Germany militarism was influenced by Darwinism (at least the German misunderstanding thereof).
I think the idea that one tribe is superior to another, and so is justified in enslaving them, significantly predates Darwin. If the propagandists of any stripe cite Darwin, it's just to influence the ignorant. People like this will lie about and distort anything anyone says to advance their agenda.
Did Clinton give up Montagu's notion of the equality of the races? A decent man like Richard Russell never abandoned the racist notions he inbibed with his mother's milk. I dare say that most people never abandon the ideas they learned as young people. The Jesuits managed to counter the Reformation by setting up a chain of secondary schools for the European aristocracy. The notion was; Catch them when they are young, and they are yours forever. That is, except for rebels like Voltaire.
On the other hand, the California gold rush happened exactly before the publication of "Origins". We can therefore conclude that evolution was the first cultural fallout from the founding of California.
And from this point on, we can accurately trace the cultural and moral degradation of the USA. It all started in California.
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