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
Another attack....my my how intellectual of you and no, I don't debate the Word of G-d. As a Christian it is wrong.
I'll remember that the next time we on different sides of a SCOTUS holding.
Note to self: If antiguv is winning the argument, tell him to shut the heck up.
Although you say so in jest, I believe you are correct.
Thunderous applause. This one's a keeper.
Weren't they going to try and rebuild it? Or was it not feasible? I was a bit sad when he fell off the mountain. =(
If I view the image you posted correctly, my conclusion in that case would have to be modified. God made the cube, and you are God.
Am I close?
When someone notices the five extra cards you've snuck into the deck, you're going to be in a heap of trouble.
hehe I could feel those goalposts flying by before you even posted!
(Donh) - As I read this, if you aren't making a grammatical error, you are saying that many modern reform churches are not Christian.
I am not sure I understand what you mean by “modern reform churches”. The word “reform” or “reformed” is often used by Calvinist churches. You are not referring to those, are you? Are there really many churches that call themselves “reform” and as part of their beliefs deny the virgin birth and the resurrection, but believe Jesus is the son of God?
Closer than a lot of your other conclusions, certainly.
What are the odds of walking away from the table with 57 cards in the deck?
Sure.
Hehe. That is far from a brief example, and I have no idea whether you are addressing one who presrents the proponents of ID. Be that as it may, I stopped and chuckled at your words, "'random assembly' could take place." If nothing else, you are a living, breathing, oxymoron.
1,035 posted on 05/26/2005 9:19:41 PM EDT by Fester Chugabrew
Oh! No! TOO! MANY! WORDS!
Ichny, if you can't post a scientific concept in less time than it takes to chuggabrew, fuggedaboudit!
This would be true if other lines of evidence were not available. This is forensice science, and no single line of evidence can be convincing in isolation.Pretty ironic that this is done by people who profess to believe in design.
Should I gather then, that science has no business examining the geologic column and extrapolating from the evidence backward as to what might have happened to cause it's present condition?
No, you shouldn't. Try rereading his comment (or better yet, all the posts on this topic) and try again. You're not only mixing apples and oranges, your doing apples and typewriters.
I must have had my reason clouded by thoughts of the lovely Mrs. Kerry. Well, okay. 52 factorial. And that computes out to be 8.06581752 × 1067.
Are you arguing that gene or chromosome count never varies within a species?
The briefer they are, the more invalid, as a rule. Biology is seldom simple, and any attempts to model it with "brief" analysis are pretty much doomed to be fatally oversimplified.
and I have no idea whether you are addressing one who presrents the proponents of ID.
His worship of Behe didn't tip you off?
Be that as it may, I stopped and chuckled at your words, "'random assembly' could take place."
Why? Is it truly your contention that molecules are incapable of joining in random order? Fascinating...
If nothing else, you are a living, breathing, oxymoron.
In what way?
That's not very nice, using a post to me to lecture everyone else while enjoining me to refrain from reading and comprehending out of a concern that I remain ignorant. Piss poor attitude, in short, for a perfesser.
But, just to spite your arrogant buns I won't shield my eyes. Instead I will do my best to read and comprehend your screed in an effort to determine whether it truly addresses the value, or lack thereof, in using mathematics and probabilities as a tool for obtaining evidence of intelligence or design.
My first clue of its value is that an intelligent agent is giving us a lecture about numbers as a non-factor, while using numbers to make the point. You wouldn't be related ot that other oxymoron, would you? Sind sie ein "Ich?"
About as intelligent as the human body.
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