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, it could be treated as a good theory strongly substatiated by evidence.
As for a 969 year-old human observer, I take it by faith that the biblical proposition is true. However I am disinclined to think the Gregorian calendar was in use when these words were first spoken.
Unlikely the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars made much difference to Methuselah's age. Unless you mean we had a 50 day year back then. That would be impossible too.
Hehe. You ought to know by know that I think and post by the seat of my pants. I've asked for a textbook source that documents exactly where the fossils have been found, along with their condition and exact position relative to the physical, geoloic column. So far no one has been forthcoming.
I can find a host of books showing fossils crammed into the author's preconceived notion of where they ought to be "in time." Have yet to see one that allows the reader to look at the evidence for himself and think about it for himself.
Frankly it is a shame that the lion's share of geologic study has taken place under the aegis of Darwinist thought. It is also a shame that the same people who publish their findings do not list from the get go what assmptions they've made in interpreting the evidence.
BTW whether Dawkins is a Marxist or not has no bearing on the validity of his views of biology.
Certainly, what you say seems to come from a point in the center of that region.
I've asked for a textbook source that documents exactly where the fossils have been found, along with their condition and exact position relative to the physical, geoloic column. So far no one has been forthcoming
You won't find that in textbooks. You'll find it in primary sources; journal articles.
Frankly it is a shame that the lion's share of geologic study has taken place under the aegis of Darwinist thought. It is also a shame that the same people who publish their findings do not list from the get go what assmptions they've made in interpreting the evidence.
Why? Because some twit on FR doesn't understand the interrelationships between human knowledge? Let's see, I'm working on a paper on the infrared spectroscopy of molecules. Let's start by assuming that my readers don't believe in atoms or molecules, so we'll review the entire body of evidence for both. That'll take care of the first 1000 pages.
Are you people still debating this? I though it was settled several hundred posts ago: evidence of the application of manual implements.
If you can't figure it out by glancing at it, then pick it up and study it. LOL
If I thought Walsh was an idiot, I wouldn't spend time responding to his posts.
I simply feel that those making the assertion that everyone else is using bad logic without analysing their own logic needs to re-evaluate their argument.
I'm sorry. Is there something about the words "reaonable conjecture" that conflicts with the above? If so, I don't see it.
. . . a 50 day year back then. That would be impossible too.
The biblical account does not specify how long a year is. The word was spoken and had a conventional meaning long before Moses wrote it down. I doubt it was 365.25 days.
No. That is a circular argument. I am asking for a set of attributes. What is it about a man-made object that tells you intelligent design was applied in its manufacture?
No, it's not.
I am asking for a set of attributes.
Evidence of the application of manual implements.
What is it about a man-made object that tells you intelligent design was applied in its manufacture?
Evidence that said application of manual implements was toward some intentional purpose. LOL
A conjecture is not a theory. It is weaker than a theory. That's why we have two different words. If a conjecture were a theory, we wouldn't need a different word for it.
The biblical account does not specify how long a year is. The word was spoken and had a conventional meaning long before Moses wrote it down. I doubt it was 365.25 days.
If the year were 50 days, most of the worlds plants, which are genetically programmed based on a 365 day growning season, would have become extinct.
PS. If you can find me a manmade object that cannot be identified as such via evidence of the application of manual implements, or alternatively of a non-manmade object that evidences the application of manual implements, then I'll reconsider.
Now there's a man with a head on his shoulders.
QUOTE
But the modern intelligent design-theorists, the IDevotees, as I have called them, are not arguing to the existence of a designer, a point noted by that somewhat notorious philosopher Anthony Flew in his book Darwinism. Now they are arguing from a designer to an explanation of the properties of living things. Somehow, "design" is an explanation of why bacteria have flagella, why we have hemoglobin, and so on. So what is "design" that it explains anything?
http://evolvethought.blogspot.com/2005/03/what-actually-is-design.html
Hi, AG. I don't have much time to get into it today, but it seems that it's necessary as well to think in other directions. Let's say, hypothetically, that it's a given that random natural selection is not an acceptable solution.
Does it necessarily follow that the actual solution must lie in the direction of intelligence? It seems that the only thing we've ruled out is "random." Every direction other than random is still ruled in.
Is intelligence the only direction other than random?
Did I quote you? Or is your "vision" kicking in?
One cannot assert as much without making some large, unprovable, assumptions.
Natural science doesn't deal in proof. All of natural science and, for that matter, nearly all human reasoning, relies on unprovable assumptions.
Secondly, it's difficult to properly answer your question because natural selection is not random. For example, "survival of the fittest" does not hold that traits emerge or prevail at random (for no apparent reason, with no apparent structure) but rather that those traits which confer a competitive advantage or make an organism more adaptable are most likely to propagate.
Regardless, the short answer is the same: No, intelligence is not the only direction other than random (whatever you meant by random).
"What I most object to about Dawkins is his habit of invoking "the mysterious," while at the same time his entire method is dedicated to utterly destroying it (as you perceptively note) -- by "reducing" all of reality to (the entirely directly observable and thus readily explicable) category of "matter in its motions." Which is hardly "mysterious," since the physical laws explicate such "matters" very, very well."
You are using the term "mysterious" equivocally to mean "wondrous" as Dawkins uses it to explain the way scientists view the unknown, and "mystical" as Dawkins views religion. Dawkins is very precise in his separation of what feelings motivate him and other scientists to examine the unknown and the unscientific pursuit of religiosity one finds outside of scientific methodological naturalism. Condemning a person for an attitude that he doesn't express seems a bit narrow.
PS. It'd be easier to seriously discuss your question if you reframe it to state exactly what you mean instead of random. If you mean "undirected" or "unguided" or "undesigned" or whatever.
Surely you've seen pictures of what normally happens aqt a paleological site? The topsoil removed with tiny paintbrushes, a quarter inch at a time, so that every little nit can be mapped? No one is going to find this for you in a book, if you really need to see it, go to your nearest university paleontology department and ask to see the map archives.
you: When new instruments are invented, science uses them. Examples: the compass, the telescope, the microscope, etc. I know of not a single instance of science refusing to investigate when it had the tools for conducting an investigation. There are, unfortunately, historical (and current) examples of areas of research being closed to science by political or ecclesiastical authorities.
Evidence for such historical science is incomplete though certainly whatever evidence exists can be and is measured in a variety of ways. But the scientist in all these disciplines must reach to tools other than measurement to fill in the gaps and offer an explanation – tools such as analysis, modeling, reasoning and the ilk.
Personally, I find evolution to be even closer to cosmology than to other historical sciences because certain features and components can be more strictly tested against other observations or under laboratory conditions.
Conversely, I find evolution to be completely opposite of cosmology in that there are many theories of cosmology which accept the evidence but have alternative explanations for the gaps and big picture --- whereas evolution is taken as a paradigm which does not allow alternative explanations for the gaps or the big picture.
Like alternative cosmologies, it differs from evolution theory in explaining the gaps and big picture: asserting that certain features of life v non-life/death in nature are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process.
But unlike alternative cosmologies, it is dismissed out-of-hand by those who hold to evolution as a paradigm.
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