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
Is there no poetry in your soul? God gave all of us both rational, linear mental abilities and non-rational imaginative mental abilities, and I firmly believe that we are meant to use both. To allow one to cancel out the other is to live an impoverished life.
So the Bible is imperfect? And since God inspired it, God is imperfect?
So you haven't heard about the worship of the goddess Gaia?
Environmentalisim is as much a religion as any. Just because it's the religion of many in the media, don't mistake it as "science".
And there are plenty of climatoligists that dispute global warming. And plenty of scientists who would relish the chance to study the evolutionary changes it would bring about if GW turns out to be true.
I'm simply pointing out that anyone who claims that dawkins is friendly to religion in general and only unfirendly to the doctrine of creationism, is lying.
Dawkins is a committed and doctrinaire atheist.
Briefly delurking to say, When was that then? Which scientists believed that the world was flat? What evidence led them to that conclusion? I ask because this particular claim is often made by those who wish to have the option to reject current scientific evidence, yet I have never seen the slightest evidence that any scientists ever believed that the world is flat.
"I tend to call ID the UNscience.
I prefer "NON-science", which if you say it quickily comes out "Nonsense".
Fine. I can agree with that. However, how do you define the beginning? If the "beginning" included all the processes science says led to the creation of the heavens and the earth, such as the big bang, the stellar development, and the planetary accretion that formed the earth, then I agree. Using modern science, it's even possible to make the case that six literal days is not inconsistent with these processes. It just requires the realization that time measurement is dependent on the reference frame. The reference frame of the universe immediately after the big bang would have been one in which a large gravitational field is present. Such large gravitational fields result in large time dilations, meaning that six days measured in that frame of reference could appear to be billions of years from our low-gravity reference frame. My question is this, if God is powerful enough to have created everything instantly just by speaking, why did it take Him six days? Why not just create everything instantly? The fact that God created everything over some time period, indicates that the processes described by modern science are not incompatible with the Scriptures.
The Song of Solomon is great poetry.
There are such people? Besides Biblical scholars, that is.
Are they working on the God-o-meter, so they can tell where He is or what He want's us to do. Just ask the God-o-meter a question and a little light tells us what God thinks.
Sorry, I just don't think science and technology mix well with faith. That's the whole fly in the ointment of "ID", which is seeking to make the study of Christianity a recognized science.
"The Bottom line is really quite simple....
(1)Do you believe in a creator God and the words & teachings He's given us in His book? (2)Or do you choose not to believe."
No exactly so simple. I do believe the God of Abraham gave us His Word in the Bible. That said, I do not necessarily believe the anti-evolutionists are reading the Genesis correctly.
And "correcting" a quote, essetially employing the same tactics that you denounce (rightly) strengthens your position and enhances the clarity of the debate? Now I am really curious about that thought process.
This is precisely why Dawkins' faith in evolution is not science.
You forgot to include the part of your post where you actually supported your ludicrous belief.
Evolution is science, and is based on "objective study of verifiable phenomena", no matter what the creationist propaganda may have said to the contrary.
Is there any evidence of evolution that would make it a "law"?
we are talking about fallible humans, both sides, I am not getting into the tit for tat.
all you have done is push back "miracles" in time. "laws" (lawgiver??), "life" (life giver). to the point where you can rationalize away a miracle subtitute it with "first cause" and suggest its not about it. however, if a first cause miracle can happen, whould there be any reason for there not to be more.
I for one applaud his article.
Its alright, now I'm not addicted I can keep myself to just one post. That was a demonstration..... Oh No, what am I doing? AAARRGGGHHHH!!!
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