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
Time is meaningless to God. If it took 3 billion of years of what we call "evolution", then that is "instantly" in Gods eyes.
By definition, there can be no conflict between Gods word, and Gods creation. And Gods creation tells us that evolution occured.
Since humans always disagree on the meanings of the Bible, and there is such massive evidence to support sciences view of "how things are". I think that it's the "creationists" interpretation that is wrong.
bump
Could you point me in the direction of this research? And what, exactly, would this data look like?
Check out PatrickHenry's links. There's lots of them. Yes, I'm sure you'll bring out the beef with "micro" vs. "macro". But until a creationist discovers the mechanisim that limits evolution to a micro scale, then logic dictates that evolution continues unabated.
Correct
Thanks for the ping!
It's never been observed anymore than creation has. All of PH's links won't show that ANYONE has observed evolution happening. If that was true, it would be world wide. I don't get into debates on cre/evo threads because I already know what I believe and don't care about changing your mind.
"According to your view, the laws of themodynamics are not science. After all, they rely on interpretation and not accumulation of data."
The interpretation arises from phenomena which are observable, repeatable and verifiable because they are phenomena which occur in the here and now in the same timeframe that the observer exists in.
We cannot travel back in time to observe the transition from a world without life to a world with life, or the point at which a new species appeared, and therefore all the evidence that we can ever hope to have will be circumstantial and will be left-overs from a timeframe which the observer can never be a part of.
Both "evolution" and "creation" are theories which relate to events which happened in a different timeframe than which the observer exists in. Consequently there is a fundamental difference to your citation of experiments which are consistently repeatable and verifiable.
Ping to that!
As I have said before,all liberals are atheist!!
The only thing which modern science will collapse is the superstructure of rationalistic Western Christianity with its false assumptions arising from over emphasis on the speculations of Blessed Augustine. (Even protestants who don't know Augustine from Tertullian share them, too, because they are all-pervasive in Western Christian thought.)
I suggest others on the thread read it too.
The problem is that the "tenets of the left" are basically BS. Socialism is a lousy way to run an economy. Immorality is damaging. Etc. Etc.
But the problem is that they are RIGHT about evolution. Evolution is easily provable to anyone willing to consider the available evidence.
Creationists make all conservatives appear to be ignorant buffoons. Attempting to dissuade conservatives from engaging on this sure-to-lose battle is my reason for posting here.
"Evolution has been directly observed."
What do you mean by that statement? Have you seen "macro-evolution" in action - or do you mean the "micro-evolution" which produces genetic variation in an individual species?
Dear Lord, why is it I keep ending up conversing with people who are unable to parse simple English? Must be the government education system.
We were discussing Dawkins' article, above, not anything else he may have written.
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