Posted on 08/18/2005 5:16:50 PM PDT by RightWingAtheist
This year contains two notable scientific anniversaries. The one most widely mentioned is the centenary of Albert Einstein’s three trailblazing papers in the German scientific journal Annalen der Physik on the nature of matter, energy, and motion. Those papers opened up broad new territories for exploration by physicists. The discoveries that followed, and the technology that flowed from those discoveries, helped shape the whole 20th century. Radiation therapy and nuclear weapons, the laser and the personal computer, global positioning satellites and fiber-optic cables — all trace at least part of their lineage to Einstein’s papers. The 20th century was the Age of Physics. The first quarter of that century — when dramatic discoveries in the field were coming thick and fast, with theory racing to keep up — was a wonderfully exciting time to be a young physicist.
It seems to me that we are passing from the Age of Physics to the Age of Biology. It is not quite the case that nothing is happening in physics, but certainly there is nothing like the excitement of the early 20th century. Physics seems, in fact, to have got itself into a cul-de-sac, obsessing over theories so mathematically abstruse that nobody even knows how to test them.
The life sciences, by contrast, are blooming, with major new results coming in all the time from genetics, zoology, demography, biochemistry, neuroscience, psychometrics, and other “hot” disciplines. The physics building may be hushed and dark while its inhabitants mentally wrestle with 26-dimensional manifolds, but over at biology the joint is jumpin’. A gifted and ambitious young person of scientific inclination would be well advised to try for a career researching in the life sciences. There is, as one such youngster said to me recently, a lot of low-hanging fruit to be picked. Charles Murray, in his elegant New York Times op-ed piece on the Larry Summers flap (for more on which, see Christina Hoff Sommers elsewhere in this issue), wrote of the “vibrancy and excitement” of scholarship about innate male-female differences, in contrast to the stale, repetitive nature of research seeking environmental sources for those differences. Sell sociology, buy biology.
This fizzing vitality in the life sciences is, as Larry Summers learned, very unsettling to the guardians of political correctness. It is at least as disturbing to some Biblical fundamentalists, which brings me to this year’s second scientific anniversary. The famous “monkey trial” in Dayton, Tenn., happened 80 years ago this summer. John Scopes, a young schoolteacher, was found guilty of violating a state statute forbidding the teaching of evolution theory. Well, well, the wheel turns, and the other day I found myself looking at a newspaper headline that read: “Pa. School Board at the Center of Evolution Debate.” The story concerned the town of Dover, Pa., which was sued by the ACLU in federal court at the end of last year over its incorporation of “intelligent design” (I.D.) arguments in the public-school biology curriculum.
It is odd to be reminded that I.D. is still around. I had written it off as a 1990s fad infecting religious and metaphysical circles, not really touching on science at all, since it framed no hypotheses that could be tested experimentally. The greater part of I.D. is just negative, a critique of the standard model of evolution by natural selection, in which random mutations that add to an organism’s chances of survival and reproduction lead to divergences of form and function and eventually to new species. This theory, said I.D. proponents such as Phillip E. Johnson (Darwin on Trial, 1991), Michael J. Behe (Darwin’s Black Box, 1996), and William A. Dembski (The Design Inference, 1998), is full of conundrums and unexplained gaps — the mechanisms of mutation, for instance, are poorly understood.
Biologists are not much impressed with this critique, since conundrums and gaps are normal features of scientific theories. Atomic theory was in considerably worse shape in this regard when Einstein published his three great papers. A few decades of research clarified matters to the point where the theory’s practical applicability and predictive value could revolutionize human existence. Nor are scientists much impressed by the facts of Behe’s being a biochemist and Dembski’s having done postgraduate work in math and physics. (Johnson is a lawyer.) This just recalls Newton’s fascination with alchemy and Kepler’s work on the Music of the Spheres. Scientists have all sorts of quirky off-duty obsessions.
And I.D. was always off-duty. Scientifically credentialed I.D.-ers have been reluctant to submit their theories to peer review. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University and a critic of I.D., wonders why Behe has never presented his ideas to the annual conference of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, as is his right as a member. As Miller explained, “If I thought I had an idea that would completely revolutionize cell biology in the same way that Professor Behe thinks he has an idea that would revolutionize biochemistry, I would be talking about that idea at every single meeting of my peers I could possibly get to.” Dembski likewise declines to publicize his research through peer-review conferences and journals. His explanation: “I find I can actually get the turnaround faster by writing a book and getting the ideas expressed there. My books sell well. I get a royalty. And the material gets read more.” Ah.
It is not surprising that most working scientists turn away from I.D. with a smile and a shrug. Phillip Johnson, in a 1992 lecture, predicted that Darwinism would “soon” be thoroughly discredited, leading to a “paradigm shift” and a whole new view of biology. Thirteen years later there is not the faintest trace of a sign that anything like this is going to happen. To the contrary, the fired-up young biologists who will revolutionize our lives in these coming decades take the standard evolutionary model for granted, not only because it is an elegant and parsimonious theory, but because I.D. promises them nothing — no reproducible results, no research leads, no fortune-making discoveries in genomics or neuroscience.
If the science of I.D. is a joke, the theology is little better. Its principal characteristic is a flat-footed poverty of imagination. “Don’t eff the Ineffable,” went the sergeant-major’s injunction against blasphemy. With a different reading having nothing to do with blasphemy, effing the Ineffable — what A. N. Whitehead called “misplaced concreteness” — is exactly what the I.D.-ers are up to. Their God is a science-fiction God, a high-I.Q. space alien plodding along a decade or two ahead of our understanding. The God of Judaism and Christianity is infinitely vaster and stranger than that, and far above our poking, groping inquiries into the furniture of our rocky little daytime cosmos. His nature and deeds are as remote from our comprehension as, to quote Darwin himself on this precise point, Newton’s laws are from a dog’s. The prophet Isaiah held the same opinion: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
I.D. had its little hour in the spotlight of public curiosity, and will linger on for a while among those who cannot bear the thought that living tissue might be a part of the natural universe, under natural laws. Neither science nor religion ever had much use for I.D. Both will proceed happily on their ways without it
"Live long and prosper!"
I can see not to expect any intellectual honesty from you. Yours was a clear allusion to the first two sentences of my post number 40. Granted, long experience has leads me to expect little else from self-proclaimed Christians; still, that's the first time I've heard it called 'nuance'.
Good wriggling, g_w, or, as my cousin would put it, "Oink-oink!" (His side of the family got all of the eloquence, dang it.)
I see you combine mendacity with breathtaking arrogance. Now you're telling Jews what they should believe!
LOL, very good, you got me. You'd think a guy who shops at Bear Arms in Foster, RI would be more careful with that particular language.
One reason for the vigor of my review is rooted in my conviction that Paley did far more damage to nineteenth–century Christianity than Friedrich Nietzsche ever managed to do to twentieth–century religion. Design is the founding axiom of Deist religion; and as Darwin’s own life attests, nothing more rapidly congeals into atheism (or agnosticism) than Deism (see James Turner’s Without God, Without Creed for an account of this declension).
...
But for me the greatest difference between Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument and any and all arguments from design comes from what all the advocates of design admit: that the candidate for the Intelligent Designer could be, at least theoretically, just about any supra–human intelligent manipulator of complex artifacts, from outer–space aliens to Al Gore’s Mama Gaia.
...
Now Prof. Johnson’s concession of microevolution to materialist Darwinism while cordoning off macro evolution as a redoubt of Intelligent Design is either Creation “Science” on the installment plan, or (more likely) Deism put under a stroboscope. If one must conceive of the universe as an artifact (and how odd that materialist Darwinians and Intelligent Designers both hold that life is a mechanical artifact), then the idea of a Clockmaker God who winds it all up and then departs the scene has a certain plausibility, I suppose. But the idea that God swooshed down from heaven 3.5 billion years ago to toggle some organic–soup chemicals into self–replicating molecules and thereafter, as occasion warranted, had to intervene to jump–start new species is, quite literally, incredible. Prof. Johnson’s God is not even the recessive Clockmaker God of the Deists. Rather, his God is one who, with disconcerting inconsistency, intervenes every now and again. As I say, Deism under a stroboscope.
"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that does by the name of patriotism--how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press."
Oddly enough, in the same war, a certain Alvin York also declined (at first) to fight; even though in his case he was actually fighting for a democracy. I guess he wasn't a great man either. The First World War was the most pointless waste of human life in the entire misbegotten history of this planet. It produced a lot of pacifists.
Still, I can't believe I'm reading a born American criticizing a man for objecting to fight for the Kaiser.
You missed a few:
"Thus I came--despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious parents--to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived."
"From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."
God does not play dice.
Albert Einstein
Shows Einstein's understanding of the world was not always preminent. He could not comprehend or even accept what is truly observed in the study of quantum physics.
Each idea should be judged on its own merits, without regard to who articulates it, be it Einstein or Moses.
Corollary: The most reliable way to learn about God's world, is without regard, reference, or even presumption of God.
There is this strange cult that thinks "evolution" and "randomness" are twin sisters.
(From one of your posts, quoting from "On Einstein and God")...
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one
It's odd how well this comports with Jesus' statement quoted in Matthew 18--
In that hour the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who then is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?" Jesus called a little child to himself, and set him in the midst of them, and said, "Most certainly I tell you, unless you turn, and become as little children, you will in no way enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
So Einstein discovered some nineteen centuries later exactly what Jesus had been saying all along; and somehow this is supposed to contradict Christianity?
Full Disclosure: Look at the last sentence of your Einstein quote, about "an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."
If Einstein himself felt himself compelled to humility, and you are quoting him, shouldn't you try engaging in a little more humility yourself? (At least towards other Freepers?) :-)
Do you have any information about his opinions concerning the gulags? Either way?
Ypres and the Somme did kill lotsa folks needlessly, because the generals did not have the common sense of a tree stump--marching hundreds of yards into the face of dug-in machine guns, protected by barbed wire, does not have much survival value.
But you forgot good old Uncle Joe Stalin, paraphrased: "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
I'd rank the gulags and Mao's Great Leap Forward (as well as Pol Pot, and some of the inter-tribal African fighting/genocides of the recent past), right up there with WW I.
I am so much out of here, I'm not even going to bother with your ad hominem.
Well maybe not, but mother Nature certainly does. Quantum mechanics is a successful theory.
By the way, the version I have of that particular Einstein quote indicates your version has been 'simplified' for the masses. Mine has it as:
"Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice."
The actual quote is more opaque and subtle, no? I've seen other versions that have it as: "...doesn't play dice with the universe."
It would be a nontrivial project to track down what he actually said. One possibility is that Albert himself recognized it as a good 'money quote' and used it more than once - with subtle variations.
Well, you better get back before too long.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.