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
Note, I was careful not to attribute the obfuscation. (In a way it's the most maddening thing about the debate, because both sides use the same confusions in their polemics.)
At one level I agree with you: Behe's wrong because his assertions of non-evolvability are based on a priori probability estimates, which are necessarily bogus since we don't have an adequate understanding of the genome to functionality mapping and no one seems to have done the necessary work on the probablistic and information theoretic properties of actually occuring DNA transcription errors.
On the other hand, I'm dubious about the claims made on behalf of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, partly on the basis the fact that I hold a probably extreme view of falsifiablity and the predictive part--natural selection--usually ends up being tautolgous, and partly because the other part 'random variation' either has randomness defined away in any statistically meaningful sense, or is untested. (Try a Google search for DNA, transciption and "test for randomness" to see what I mean. Google is usually pretty good at turning up scientific papers, so the paucity is evidence of lack of evidence, if you take my meaning.)
"The Helianthus experiments were designed to repeat what happened naturally
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."
Now we are getting somewhere.
1. If you read more carefully, you will see that the laboratory derived H. anomalus does indeed cross with and is fully fertile with wild H. anomalus.
2. The parental species are wild, natural Helianthus species. H. anomalus is a wild, natural species of Helianthus.
3. Genetic analyses of the putative parents and H. anomalus indicated that the 'parents" were evolutionary precursors to H. anomalus. The laboratory experiments fully support that hypothesis.
4. I know you'd like to think this is "just horticulture" and "hybridization", but these experiments clearly show a mechanism for the evolution of wild, natural H. anomalus from other wild, natural Helianthus spp. It has nothing to do with horticulture and everything to do with evolution.
5. Experts in the field of plant evolution state that about 40% of today's plant species have arisen from a hybridization mechanism. It is quite common. That hybridization is the mechanism for the formation of H. anomalus does in no way denigrate H. anomalus as a natural species.
6. If you do not think that H. anomalus arose by the mechanism described in these experiments, then show where the experiments are faulty and offer a better explanation for the origin of H. anomalus.
He broke a legal agreement.
A better question might be, what was Galileo's punishment?
Is it your position that the church should be above criticism?
Since ArGee criticized the Church in his last post, I have to assume this question is rhetorical.
Dawkins might lean left, but he's certainly no Marxist.
The "Selfish Gene" aims at the heart of socialist/communist doctrine that behavior is infinitely malleable.
Dawkins, Wilson and other Sociobiologists actually take quite a bit of flak from the radical left.
Uh huh. How many heretics did Galileo burn at the stake?
was much more complicated than a simple "proof" that faith and science can not exist.
Insofar as I know, there was no wrestling match between faith and science in Galileo's mind, only the churches--rather as is now the case with creationists and biologists.
These thread tend to be, moreover, screaming matches not merely between people with positions set in concrete, but between people who have a bed of Procrustes on which to fit all their opponents so that they can't see any nuance, variety or distinction among any possible positions contrary to their own.
I don't care about the "total." The FACT is, there are quite a few scientists that hold Ph.D's (not pseudo scientists or Talkorg. regurgitators) who are anti-darwinists. Why do you think that is?
Scientists routinely review the data of their colleagues, to check the validity of their conclusions, and to try to devise alternative explanations. The difficulty of the creation "scientists" is that their peculiar re-interpretations just don't jibe with those pesky "problem areas of geology, archaeology, anthropology, and astronomy" that Morris mentioned. In other words (if I may be bold enough to reinterpret Morris, a self-admitted re interpreter) they're trying to construct an alternative reality, but the world just won't cooperate.
Perhaps you are unaware of Dawkins' notorious quote "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist"?
The hottest polemicists on both sides see such a conflict.
Ah Pascals gambit.
You do realize there are more then two religions in the world. More then one condemn you.
I share Mark Twains attitude. I paraphrase.
'I'm not sure where I'm going, but I'm glad its not the same place as the people who go around condemning everybody who does'nt share there beliefs!'
All though you either didn't read all the thread or understand it completly, that you for at least making the effort.
Twain also said, "Heaven for climate. Hell for society."
It's great stuff. Appreciate your postings too when I have time to peruse these threads. Who, btw, is Ich?
How many Christians have atheists and non-Christians killed throughout the ages? Your question is no more germaine to our discussion than mine.
Insofar as I know, there was no wrestling match between faith and science in Galileo's mind,
Look harder. Actually, you may be right. But Galileo had a bone to pick with the Church and he used his scientific idea to pick that bone, loudly and publicly. Whether for good or ill (and I choose ill) the Church was a powerful political force at the time. They didn't like Galileo attacking them, period. The fact that he used science in his attack was irrelevent to them. They didn't react to his science. They reacted to his politics.
only the churches--rather as is now the case with creationists and biologists.
Broad brush bigotry again.
Shalom.
Phylloscopus trochiloides trochiloides has one daughter species called Phylloscopus trochiloides viridanus and another called Phylloscopus trochiloides plumbeitarsus which although in the same geographic area do not interbreed and are now considered separate species.
Yeah, this is great news for conservatives.
This is exactly why many of us take part in these threads. The conservative movement is about to derailed by the theocons.
Damn! Can't even say "Thank You" right.
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