Depends on who's doing the dealing.
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
No. They're just pyrites crystals. They're perfect cubes, and they're common as dirt in some parts of the west.
If anything or anyone made the crystal it was bacteria. They reduce sulfate to sulfide; that then combines with iron, and slowly crystallizes. It's tough to think of bacteria as intelligent designers.
Hey, when the evidence changes, so do the goalposts. No harm in that.
Were you born every minute?
The second and more important lesson is, you can greatly boost your success if you can get half-way and hang on to the partial success. And that's what happens in evolution. That's what having a genome lets us do. It lets us keep our partial successes, and try again (by mutation - another throw of the dice). The probability of creating a perfect myoglobin molecule in one shot from component amino acids is vanishingly small, But if you can synthesize some large number of other molecules each of which is maybe 1/100 as good as real myoglobin; not great, but good enough to let you survive and reproduce, you can pass on the result to the next generation, and throw the dice again, and eventually get it right.
And that's why Professor Dumbass at Baylor is full of it. Because he knows what I know, and he knows that calculating an a priori probability without knowing the details of the process impresses only the mathematically naive.
Most to-the-point post I've read in quite a while. This is *exactly* the heart of the "probability" issue. Very well said, and exactly correct.
Some folks seem to have been born in the barrel.
That's a good rule of thumb. See to it that you make use of it when posting to me. It takes me about 7.3782 minutes to chug a brew.
Not really. You've been using your ignorance as a debating point.You seem quite proud of it, and it's served you well. Why would I rob from you your most powerful tool?
Gawd, try to do a guy a favor....
I have my good points (presumably), but brevity isn't one of them, unfortunately.
Amateur!
In a word, yes. As for your oxymoronic term "random assembly," it is my contention that once it is an "assembly," the "random" nature takes a back seat to the purpose and function of the assembly, which you were using to demonstrate the (unobserved) mathematical potential for rapid evolution. Or are these "random assemblies" mere junk that have no biological function and thus serve no purpose in the greater cause of survival?
Depends on who's doing the dealing.
Congratulations. Your incomprehension streak remains unbroken.
In a word, yes. As for your oxymoronic term "random assembly," it is my contention that once it is an "assembly," the "random" nature takes a back seat to the purpose and function of the assembly, which you were using to demonstrate the (unobserved) mathematical potential for rapid evolution. Or are these "random assemblies" mere junk that have no biological function and thus serve no purpose in the greater cause of survival?
In a word, yes.
In a few more words, try reading that post of mine again -- I was indeed speaking of random "junk" sequences, since I was pointing out that polymers can assemble in an unordered (i.e. random) manner faster than they can assemble in a more controlled, ordered manner which produces a specific sequence.
Too many words, too many sylables per word. Try and get them down to 1 and 1, respectively.
Absolutely. The designer was the one that composed the photograph.(the rock formation itself has redesigned itself)
But you may not recognize it now.
Intelligent design?
A little earlier in the year, the Economist, extolling simple prose, wrote an entire editorial in monosyllables. It was a bit strained in some sections, but all and all, a creditable and amusing effort.
I started composing a letter in reply entirely in polysyllables, but got busy at something else, and never finished it.
I did. When it comes to the fossil record, evolutionists don't even bother "calculating the probability of things that have already happened." They just forge ahead and make conclusions based on the similar or dissimilar appearances of the critters on display.
But they certainly are starting with an "existing outcome," namely the fossil record itself.
We're probably not that likely to end up on different SCOTUS sides very often at all, unless gays are concerned. As you know, that's a point where I sharply disagree with the general FR consensus. As far as the government is involved, adults should be free to have sex with whatever adult will have them!
Note to self: If antiguv is winning the argument, tell him to shut the heck up.
Hey, if nothing else works, might as well give it a shot!
Nope. I think the horizontal striations are a result of sedimentary processes; and the front is largely a result of erosion.
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