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
Whew! That is truly the bottom line, isn't it! It actually answers any, and all critics ms. Truly a matter of what one chooses to believe or not believe and I, as you, choose to believe in God. Can't imagine it being simpler.
I am right with ya.
You're in luck!
And yet, no experiments I can actually perform come to mind, apropos to my initial objection: that I see design in every detail of every living thing. Your example is not enlightening me. I don't see why the test proposed points to as yet undiscovered ID evolutionary explanations any more than it points to as yet undiscovered Darwinian evolutionary explanations. Perhaps you could explain, so I can model my proposed experiments after the one published in an italian journal that ranks below the top 100,000 in cite frequency, and is edited by an avowed anti-darwinist.
Dawkins is not a Marxist. Please retract.
The Helianthus experiments were designed to repeat what happened naturally, and they just did that. That, semi-asleep-wideawake is what is called testing a theory. And the answer was unequivocal.
Oh, well, that certainly improves the Discovery Institution's scientific credentials. Much as the Pope's scientific credentials were improved over Galileo's by his access to the offices of the Inquisition.
You asked a question.
I gave you an answer, that you ignored.
What else am I supposed to think?
***************
I have only recently begun to follow these threads, but there does seem to be far too much ill-will and rudeness expressed. I would like to see a kinder, gentler discourse.
"It reinforces the biblical version of creation."
Yeah - and that part about "let there be light" sure sounds a lot like the "Big Bang" theory that seems to be popular nowadays.
I see. Galileo was actually a child-abuser, and the recantation and imprisonment was a plea-bargain? Rather than a major event in world history, like they taught us in high school?
No doubt to continue their pursuit of science-through-lobbying.
Why do you think there are so many, as you say, "avowed anti-darwinist" scientists? Just curious.
I'll point out that sunflowers have been commercially hybridized for decades before these experiments. The experiment was designed to to create not an atmosphere of natural selection that would create a new, mutated species, but to recreate an existing species from hybridized variants.
The experiment shows that recrossing these hybridized variants results in a "new species" which "is virtually identical to H. anomalus" - I suspect that this new species virtually identical to H. anomalus can actually be cross-bred with H. anomalus and is not therefore a truly unique species.
This experiment tends to show the remarkable phenotypic stability of the sunflower, and does not demonstrate a naturally occurring mutation radical enough to even achieve the level of alteration typical of horticultural hybridization.
Any new idea goes through at least three stages before common acceptance.
Stage one: It's absolutely untrue. Stage two: it might be true, but it's trivial. Stage three: Its true and important, but we knew it all along. It's in the Bible.
Because there's one born every minute.
No, Galileo was using his science as a platform to attack the Church. On the other hand, the Church was using faith as a platform to attack anyone who disagreed with her. A bad situation all around and one that obscured the truth behind the hidden political agendas of the actors.
The Church did misbehave. So did Galileo. The persecution and the recanting of Galileo's position was much more complicated than a simple "proof" that faith and science can not exist.
What we know of as the modern scientific method was developed by a Franciscan Friar and is based on the Judeo-Christian faith - specifically that G-d is not arbitrary and did not create an arbitrary universe. Bacon based his work on similar work by the Greeks who also had a worldview that believed in an orderly Universe. Bacon's belief in an orderly universe was based in his faith in G-d.
Modern Taxonomy was developed by Linnaeus because of his desire to glorify G-d in his study of nature. Again, faith was the driver and supporter of his scientific research.
As this thread shows, either side can bash the other with abstractions. And either side can find examples of the other side misbehaving. But the broad-brush statement that faith is incompatible with science is bigoted and unworthy. Many scientists have based their desire for personal excellence and accurate scientific work on their faith.
As an aside, why is it impossible to have discussions on FR? I'd like to talk about ideas, not play some vague debating game with vague rules and no referees.
Shalom.
So many???? Out of what total, do you suppose? Do you think that ratio improves or falls off if we just consider scientists whose opinions are worth a tinker's poop on this subject: biologists. Do you think that that ratio is as high as the ratio of galactic astronomers to scientists who read their horoscopes every day?
And what, in your view, was Galileo's 'crime'? Is it your position that the church should be above criticism?
...and rarely seen here coming from the defenders of evolutionary theory posting here, nor from scientists, that I am aware of.
As an aside, why is it impossible to have discussions on FR? I'd like to talk about ideas, not play some vague debating game with vague rules and no referees.
Just off hand, I'd guess that your distaste for some particular thrust of rhetoric is probably not universally the same thing as "playing some vague debating game". Let me recommend that you endulge a little in "the debating game" by studying the debating Principle of Charity--you can probably massage all the ideas you want if you are willing to reach out for it.
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