Why We Are Still Arguing About Darwin

TCS Daily ^ | 10 Jan 2008 | Lee Harris

[neverdem]

Today, almost one hundred and fifty years after the publication of The Origin of Species, we are still arguing about Darwin. How is this possible? If Darwin's theory of natural selection is a scientific theory, as its defenders claim, then why hasn't it been able to establish itself securely in the public mind? Why, in short, is Darwin still the subject of continuing controversy and acrimonious debate?

Contrast this on-going battle over Darwin with the fate of the other great scientific revolutions. The same Christian fundamentalists who argue that public school should teach creationism have no quarrel with the Copernican revolution. No one argues that public schools should be forced to teach the Ptolemaic system because it permits Joshua to make the sun stand still. Yet polls in the USA show that a large segment of American society continues to reject Darwin's scientific revolution.

Modern proponents of Darwin, like Richard Dawkins, have an elegant explanation for this puzzling phenomenon. Those who reject Darwin are ignorant boobs who take the Bible literally. The Bible says God created man in his own image, and so that is what they believe, despite the evidence that shows that human beings share more than 98% of their genes with chimpanzees. Therefore, in order to get people to accept Darwin, you must first destroy their adherence to Biblical fundamentalism. Once people see that the story of Adam and Eve is simply a fairy tale, they will be in a position to embrace the idea that we all descended from lower primates. But is this interpretation really psychologically plausible? Is it only the second chapter of Genesis that stands in the way of a universal acceptance of Darwin's theory that we descended from creatures far more monkey-like than us-like?

The stumbling block to an acceptance of Darwin, I would like to submit, has little to do with Christian fundamentalism, but a whole lot to do with our intense visceral revulsion at monkeys and apes. This revulsion, while certainly not universal, is widely shared, and it is a psychological phenomenon that is completely independent of our ideas about the literal truth of the Bible.

Our visceral revulsion at the mere sight of lower primates has been noted by the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal. Observing the visitors to the chimpanzee colony at the Arnhem Zoo, de Waal noticed a frequent pattern among them. Many people would stare at the chimps for a few minutes, then, after saying, "Oh I could watch them all day," they would swiftly make their way to the nearest exit. They had had enough monkey business. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, another great naturalist, was equally aware of this deep-seated revulsion against monkeys. In his novel Elective Affinities, a character declares her feelings about monkeys in no uncertain terms: "How can anyone bring himself to expend such care on depicting horrid monkeys! It is debasing simply to regard them as animal [!], but it is really more malicious to succumb to the temptation of seeking in them the likeness of people you know."

This visceral revulsion against monkeys explains why so many people prefer to hold on to the far more flattering mythology of man's creation as it was presented in Genesis. It is not Genesis that turns them against Darwin; it is Darwin that makes them turn to Genesis.

Now the proponents of Darwin will argue that a visceral revulsion is not a logical argument, and the proponents of Darwin will of course be right. From the fact that most people are horrified to think of themselves as descending from the lower primates, it does not follow that they must have arisen from a more respectable ancestry.

At the same time, those who accept Darwin (as I do) need to understand the true origin of the revulsion so many people feel against his theory. For the basis of this revulsion is none other than "the civilizing process" that has been instilled into us from infancy. The civilizing process has taught us never to throw our feces at other people, not even in jest. It has taught us not to snatch food from other people, not even when they are much weaker than we. It has taught us not to play with our genitals in front of other people, not even when we are very bored. It has taught us not to mount the posterior of other people, not even when they have cute butts.

Those who are horrified by our resemblance to the lower primates are not wrong, because it is by means of this very horror of the primate-within that men have been able to transcend our original primate state of nature. It is by refusing to accept our embarrassing kinship with primates that men have been able to create societies that prohibit precisely the kind of monkey business that civilized men and women invariably find so revolting and disgusting. Thou shalt not act like a monkey - this is the essence of all the higher religions, and the summation of all ethical systems.

Those who continue to resist Darwin are not standing up for science, but they may well be standing up for something even more important - a Dawkinsian meme, if you will, that has been instrumental in permitting mankind to transcend the brutal level of our primate origins. Our lofty humanitarian ethical standards have been derived not by observing our primate kin, but by imagining that we were made in the image of God. It was only by assuming that we were expected to come up to heavenly standards that we did not lower our standards to those of our biological next of kin. The meme that asserts that we are the children of God, and not merely a bunch of wild monkeys may be an illusion; but it is the illusion upon which all humane civilizations have been constructed. Those who wish to eliminate this illusionary meme from our general meme pool may be acting in the name of science; but it is by no means obvious that they are acting in the name of civilization and humanity.

[From many - one.]

So, all of a sudden, Biblical literalism includes poetic analogies.

Your “trod upon” is particularly funny. Do you think they mowed lawns back then?

Show me a source for your interpretation that is not part of a literalist apologia.

[metmom]

Well, here are some of those *myths* that the Bible teaches....

Gen 1:1 In the beginning.....

There was a beginning supported by the Big Bang Theory and Einstein’s equations and Hubble’s observations.

Gen 1:2 The earth was formless and void,...

Supported by the solar nebula theory and the proto earth.

Gen 1:20 ”Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures,

Scientists say that life arose in the seas.

Gen 1:24 ”Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind...

Gen 2:7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground,

“Shaped from clay [origin of life]” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1515522/posts

Scientists have concluded that clay was necessary for the formation of life.

Eccles 1:6 Blowing toward the south, Then turning toward the north, The wind continues swirling along; And on its circular courses the wind returns.

Scripture describes the circulating system of winds.

Eccles 1:7 All the rivers flow into the sea, Yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, There they flow again.

The Bible also describes the water cycle.

Lev 17:10 - 12 `And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. `For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.’ “Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, `No person among you may eat blood, nor may any alien who sojourns among you eat blood.’

Blood is necessary for life. The life is in the blood.

Isa 40:22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

Job 9 5, 8 ”It is God who removes the mountains, they know not how, When He overturns them in His anger; 8.Who alone stretches out the heavens And tramples down the waves of the sea;

Earth is round. Could also refer to the orbit of the earth as seen from space. Also, in those verses, the expansion of the universe.

Col 1: 15- 17 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

All things are being held together; gravitation, strong and weak nuclear forces, magnetism.

bb can perhaps elaborate on the expansion of the universe some. I recall reading somewhere that the universe's expansion is quite possibly more like a tent being expanded. Does this sound familiar to you, bb?

[metmom]

Nobody ever claimed that the Bible was to be taken word for word literally in every little detail. Everyone, except apparently evos, recognizes that Scripture contains poetry, analogy, metaphor, simile, parables, prophecy, songs, psalms, etc.

The only ones hung up on literalism are those who wish in some way to discredit the Bible and make anyone who believes in it look like a fool.

The box you’re trying to stuff people in doesn’t exist except in the minds of the evos and/or atheists.

[bvw]

Learn to read first.

[bvw]

All of a sudden there was an all of a sudden.

[gondramB]

>>What did YOU understand that Georgia Tech Professor to mean by the word “random”? And what is the definition of “chaotic randomness”? And just to be certain — when you say “macroscopic randomness” I understand you to mean that there is a set of individual events which is very large and we observe and derive some single summarizing measure of randomness. Of course, then we’d need to know what YOU mean by randomness.

BTW, js has made a claim that is foolish, and not deserving of a response. It is NOT a fact that evolution is an example of learning. It may be a posited for the sake of discussion that there are some aspects of learning that are evolutionary, but it is unhelpful to make such a nonsense assertion that “as a fact evolution is an example of learning”. I mean, what the heck does that statement mean?

And the coda to js’s statement “is neither random nor, in the strictest sense, unintelligent.”: how is that even parsed, much less understandable?

Of course it does explain why it draws responses with further gibberish.<<

Well it would take several scholarly papers to give good answers to all that but I’ll take a brief shot.

1. This is the paper I referred to but I can’t find the whole thing online. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983ltpd.conf...79F

2. Random: An event where the outcome cannot be determined based on knowledge of the initial conditions. Example: Its raining outside at a rate of one inch per hour. Will a raindrop hit a particular spot in the next second?

3. Chaos: Order that emerges from random events Example: Anything that can predicted about rain like how much will the average rainfall be given certain conditions.

4. Macroscopic randomness: When the cumulative, visible effect of random events is also random

I’m gonna let JS1138 take the first shot at evolution, intelligence, learning and randomness from a biology perspective. My understanding as a physicist is that while natural selection for an individual has a random component, for a species it is a chaotic system because patterns emerge and that these patterns are similar to the learning process in that the results of previous steps appear to be a factor in subsequent steps.

But I have no expertise whatsoever in biology so someone else will really have to take that if we are to get a good answer.

[From many - one.]

You, perhaps, are not a literalist on the days of Creation, but many are, and that is who I am arguing with.

On the other hand, you seem to take the Flood literally, do you not?

[metmom]

Sorry gondram, posted that to the wrong person.

Bert, see post 582

[From many - one.]

Reduced to insults?

[From many - one.]

I’m discussing evolution. What are you discussing?

[gondramB]

Not a problem. Thanks for the courtesy.

[MHGinTN]

Google the website reasons.org. where Hugh Ross does a masterful job of explaining the ‘unfolding’ of the universe like unfolding a tent with the analogy in Jeremiah (I think it was Jeremiah; may have been Isaiah or even in the last part of Job)... lecture from 11-05-2001 available in the lectures section, Astronomy and Design [http://www.reasons.org/resources/multimedia/interview/]. He was speaking to University students (if memory serves) and gave a beautiful explanation of how astrophysics has been verifying the things already taught in the Bible.

[MHGinTN]

Here's a link to the program, if it comes through correctly. [http://reasons.org/resources/multimedia/interview/20011105.ram ]

[MHGinTN]

Apparently my html skills are kaput! You’ll have to go to the website and look under multimedia, lectures and interviews, Astronomy and Design, it’s the 11-05-2001 program.

[MHGinTN]

Here ya go ...

Personally, I believe God had a goal in mind, the man Christ Jesus, even before He expressed sapce and time and the expansion of the energy in this universe. He truly made Adam of the dust of the ground ... in a few billion years. Tells me just how precious His goals must be that He would take so long to get it the way He conceived it in His providence.... And we're just still in the process! He is still evolving us, more on the spiritual dimension now, however.

Old Charlie Darwin was a pretty sharp cookie to discern the method of God in achieving what He designed from the start, what is yet unfolding by His calling it forth.

[CottShop]

[[I think the Second Law argument has been put on the back burner. No one has been able to suggest what physical law is violated by evolution that would not also apply to metabolism.]]

Lol- the answer has been given- ignoring it and saying that noone has cited which law has been violated won’ty make the answers go away.

Have you discovered yet any evidence that shows organisms violating entropy and moving from simple to complex and gaining NEW information IN VIOLATION of the second law yet? No? Didn’t htink so- there are NO examples in nature beyond simplistic systems which STILL involve entropy. Everythign is subject to work, heat, entropy. Macroevolution is the exact oppsite of Entropy, adding more and more complexity that avoids entropy. The more complex systems get, the greater the entropy, yet Macroevolution MUST be just the opposite, it MUST involve a process whereby them ore complex systems get, the less entropy they encounter and are subjected to. What law does it violate? The second one of course.

[[Nor has anyone responded to the fact that evolution is an example of learning, and is neither random nor, in the strictest sense, unintelligent.]]

We’ve responded, yuou haven’t listened. Natural selection isn’t random- BUT Mutations ARE random. Natural selection involves intelligent ADAPTION of a system to an intrusion/mistake. Intelligence is seen in the isntructions within systems that adapt to mistakes.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

here- why not start your search here- I assure you Desmki doesn’t state “they can’t be right because...well, they just can’t”

You're right, as far as that goes, for this particular essay. By the way, I was unclear: I wasn't referring specifically to rebuttals of the evolutionary algorithm argument, but to other things you've pointed to as rebuttals in the past.

Which is not to say that there aren't huge problems with Dembski's essay. I noticed some of them myself, for instance the fact that Dembski assumes that Schneider had a particular result in mind (he keeps referring to "complex specified information") (italics mine), while from what I can find out about Schneider's paper, he just had "information" as a goal, not any particular information. Dembski writes as though the result Schneider got was the only result he wanted, but he doesn't demonstrate that.

Dembski also takes Schneider's "from scratch" and says it means the same thing as "for free," and then proceeds to argue against "for free." They don't mean the same thing, and it's incredibly sloppy or deceptive to pretend they do.

Dembski makes a big deal out of Schneider's sentence, "First [as part of the selection stage], the number of mistakes made by each organism in the population is determined." Dembski takes "is determined" to mean that Schneider's program established in advance how many mistakes each organism would make. Without access to Schneider's paper, I can't see if that's the right interpretation; but when I read it, I thought it meant "determine" as in "discover" or "ascertain"--in other words, that the mistakes were counted after the fact, and that's how the number was determined. Maybe Dembskis' interpretation is right, but it's hardly clear enough to base so much of his paper on.

But why listen to me? In looking for Schneider's original paper, I came across his own rebuttal of Dembski. He finds the flaws I found and more, especially cases where Dembski implies that he used wording that he never used. Enjoy:

http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/dembski/rebuttal.html.

[MHGinTN]

May avoid entropy for a season, but the great accelerated expansion eventually will get it all ... what is the longest living organism currently on earth?

[bvw]

Ideas. Darwin presented a theory that was "literally" confusing, being a subtle tautology, where because words have meanings specific and non-specific, a local interpretation of a word or a term may not be consistent with how the statement is best interpreted as a whole.

However Darwin's theory, accepted as some marvel of logic, was very liberating to science because educated folks -- the leaders of the times -- had indulged not so much in a "biblical literalism" but more a stiffling intellectual and social literalism. In England, see Dickens. The prior generations -- to some significant extent -- thought everything was known, so why ask.

A question is an appreciation. Every "appreciated thing or event or person" is both a blessing and a question. An awareness provoked at the spiritual level. When we stop asking questions, we have stopped appreciating, we have stopped drawing out the Divine -- stopped our blessings, made G-d lonely by our estrangements.

The grass of intellect and spirit no longer sprouts -- our mechanical lip-services trod it down.

Hooray for Darwin! Hooray for Huxley! Hooray for Wilberforce!

Still, I reserve any kudos for Dawkins and his kind.

[bvw]

You are the literalist!