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
That's probably because scientists don't believe that what you suggest is possible. Scientists actually believe that humans arose from genetic modification of previously existing organisms
Manipulating genes to make something 'new' isn't new at all.
Actually if you manipulate the genes to such an extent that the new organism can't reproduce with the old one, then by definition, you have produced a new species. To suggest otherwise is simply begging the question of whether or not the formation of new species is possible. How else would you propose forming new species? If you're not going to count a genetically modified organism as a new species, then you have simply assumed at the outset that evolution is impossible rather than considering the evidence and concluding from the evidence that evolution is impossible. That might fly in religion, but never in science.
so? I'm not convinced enough to believe it but thanks anyway.
I think I'll stick with "dextr-" and "alate" giving "dexralate" (accent on the first syllable) for right-wing.
Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.
Note that, unlike the other list, the Project Steve list carries full current titles, and includes only scientists; I suspect some of the Ph.D.s on the other list are bagging groceries. On the other hand, Project Steve has 8 (count 'em!) members of the National Academy of Sciences.
Even despite the decision to restrict the list to a very tiny subset of scientists, I do believe Project Steve's lead over the creationists is now unbeatable.
Only in your own mind, where apparently you think that evolution = atheism. One can choose to believe in God AND consider the vast mountain of evidence out there that suggests that evolution was the process by which He created the different species of life.
Fortunately my local library has a copy of the text cited at the above reference to this G.A. Magnini. I've made a note to myself to check into it when I return some books next week, and I'll get back to you on whether it provides any further insight on his character and rationale.
Well, we've pretty much gone through the Boeing series. I wonder what's next?
Excuse me professor, but it is you who wander the dark halls of academia surrounded by Liberal Atheists, not I. I'm not restricted by those walls. Furthermore, I am free to express how I feel without fear of being ridiculed and shunned by my peers.
Actually, 'any serious thinker' knows trilobite eyes evolved;
Didn't you mean to say "every Atheist/Materialist knows how trilobite eyes evolved?"
15 Answers to John Rennie and Scientific American’s Nonsense—Argument #14
According to evolutionists, the eye has evolved to the pinnacle at which we now find it. Yet, the trilobite, an index fossil that evolutionists claim is 450 million years old, possessed an even more complex eye (with a dual lens system) than anything seen in nature today. And even the evolutionists know this to be true. Writing in Science News, Lisa Shawver wrote that trilobites possessed “the most sophisticated eye lenses ever produced by nature” (1974, 105:72, emp. added). Indeed they did! Trilobites possessed a lens system known in ophthalmology as an “optical doublet.” But in order to make such a lens system function properly, it is necessary to have what is known as a “refracting interface” between the two lenses. And that is exactly what the trilobites—which evolutionists believe is one of the first living things on the Earth, and which is an index fossil for the Cambrian period)—do indeed possess! The acknowledged worldwide expert on the trilobites, Riccardo Levi-Setti of the University of Chicago, literally “wrote the book” on these creatures. In his volume, Trilobites, he said:
In fact, this optical doublet is a device so typically associated with human invention that its discovery in trilobites comes as something of a shock. The realization that trilobites developed and used such devices half a billion years ago makes the shock even greater. And a final discovery—that the refracting interface between the two lens elements in a trilobite’s eye was designed in accordance with optical constructions worked out by Descartes and Huygens in the mid-seventeenth century—borders on sheer science fiction…. The design of the trilobite’s eye lens could well qualify for a patent disclosure (1993, pp. 57,58, emp. added).
Niles Eldredge, paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History (and a scientist who devoted a portion of his doctoral dissertation to the trilobite’s eye), remarked:
These lenses—technically termed aspherical, aplanatic lenses—optimize both light collecting and image formation better than any lens ever conceived. We can be justifiably amazed that these trilobites, very early in the history of life on Earth, hit upon the best possible lens design that optical physics has ever been able to formulate (as quoted in Ellis, 2001, p. 49, emp. added).
“Justifiably amazed?” What an understatement! Darwin once said that it made him turn “cold” to think of something as complex as an eye evolving. With that in mind, Ian Taylor observed: “If Darwin turned cold at the thought of the human eye at the end of the evolutionary cycle, what, one wonders, would he have thought of the trilobite eye near the beginning?” (1984, p. 169, emp. added).
Yes, one does “wonder,” doesn’t one, Mr. Rennie?
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------------------ Me: What do you make of these two letters? You: If creationists didn't talk nonsense, they'd have nothing at all to say? You think those scientists are creationists? |
I thought so. Just another creationist lie.
first sentence should read "historical EVIDENCE for the resurrection....."
Lyin' Placemarker
FIRST Living things on Earth? Maybe you should read what you post before you post it. What about the 3 billion years of life preceeding Trilobites? Do you feel no shame when you say something so wrong and so patently absurd?
I can categorically assure you that there is no evolutionist that thinks that trilobites were one of the first living things on Earth. When you spout this stuff the whole rest of your post will be ignored, even if there is something that is true in it.
It's called credibility - get some.
513 scientists and researchers named SteveActually 570 Steve's (as of 5/23/05). Click the Steve-o-meter link at this page. ;)
Yes. My personal philosophy has room for both though I must admit I have serious problems with orthodox religion and True Believers in general whether sacred or secular.
Dawkins himself is a perfect example of the latter. Read his "The Selfish Gene" sometime and tell me whether it requires more faith to believe his version of human "creation" or that in the Bible. To me they are indistinguishable.
I am free to express myself, and I do so, frequently and loudly. It's easy to be brave when there is nothing to be afraid of.
According to evolutionists, the eye has evolved to the pinnacle at which we now find it. Yet, the trilobite, an index fossil that evolutionists claim is 450 million years old, possessed an even more complex eye (with a dual lens system) than anything seen in nature today. And even the evolutionists know this to be true. Writing in Science News, Lisa Shawver wrote that trilobites possessed “the most sophisticated eye lenses ever produced by nature” (1974, 105:72, emp. added). Indeed they did! Trilobites possessed a lens system known in ophthalmology as an “optical doublet.” But in order to make such a lens system function properly, it is necessary to have what is known as a “refracting interface” between the two lenses. And that is exactly what the trilobites—which evolutionists believe is one of the first living things on the Earth, and which is an index fossil for the Cambrian period)—do indeed possess
The double-lensed schizochroal eyes you cite did not appear in the Cambrian, but in the Ordovician, long after first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record. McIntosh, who makes himself an arbiter of what 'every thinking person' knows, has his facts wrong. Trilobite eyes in the Cambrian were holochroal.
Another error in what you posted. Evolutionists certainly do not believe trilobites were on of the first living things on earth. The first life on earth is currently dated at 3.8 By before present; trilobites appeared circa 450 million years before present.
As I wrote; nonsense, or nothing at all.
Justifiably amazed?” What an understatement! Darwin once said that it made him turn “cold” to think of something as complex as an eye evolving.
Did you read the Dawkins article? How many times has this particular piece of quote mining been debunked? How many times has it been reposted?
You think those scientists are creationists?
McIntosh is.
I am a conservative who thinks history has something to teach us. The restriction to naturalistic explanations is amply justified - they are the only kind that have worked. Even the ones that we know are false in some fundamental way are better than ID which explains nothing.
Sent to the TImes Online
Lincoln, Nebraska, May 26, 2005.
Sir:
Professor Andy McIntosh, in yesterday's letters, appoints himself arbiter what 'any serious thinker' knows. If he wishes to include himself among that august tribe, he should get his facts straight. While trilobites did indeed first appear in the fossil record at the base of the Cambrian, the first trilobites had simple, holochroal eyes. The complex, double-lensed schizochroal eyes which he claims 'have no precursor in the rocks' are in fact derived from these simpler eyes, and appeared much later, in the Ordovician. A convincing account of their evolution has been given by Levi -Setti (2002).
Yours Faithfully
Gerard S. Harbison, Professor of Chemistry
University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68588-0304
USA.
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