Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant (Religion bashing alert)

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

Thank you so much for the pings to your engaging discussion, xzins! A lot of correspondence has posted since and I confess that I have not read everything on this thread.

But I do have a few comments for the record on what is the “cut” between creationism and intelligent design. They are most certainly not the same thing at all – and attempts to paint the ID supporters with the creationist brush reflects poorly on those who do so, much like attempts to paint evolutionists with the Nazi brush reflects poorly on those who do so. Both arguments seem to crop up when the correspondent has run out of “ammunition” and has to throw “spit wads” to stay in the game.

But back to the point of my reply…

Creationism generally refers to a Christian interpretation of Scriptures which says that Adam was the first man (mortal or ensouled) based on a strict reading of Romans 5:12-14 and I Corinthians 15:42-48. By genealogy, Adam had to be created 6000 years ago. A group of Jewish mystics also agree that Adam had to be created 6000 years ago.

Naturally, there are differences in specific doctrine – but the narrowing in on Genesis 1 is a misdirection when speaking to Christians. It is a doctrinal issue which can only be addressed by theological argument.

The creationist group breaks down into several sub-groups:

One side believes that the physical evidence supports a young earth (Answers in Genesis, Creation Institute, et al) – these are “easy prey” for mainstream scientists and thus the “spit wad” arguments are directed to this group as if they were representative of all (which they are not).

Another side believes that God created an “old” looking universe, 6000 years ago. There is no scientific argument against this group at all – because there can be no scientific argument that God did not create ‘all that there is’ last Thursday. It is theological and everyone knows it.

Another side believes that Adam was specially created and zapped into an old universe, 6000 years ago. Again, there is no scientific argument against this group.

Another group – a mid ground between creationism and evolution – is the interpretation that Adam was the first ensouled man. This is the Catholic doctrine and again, there is no scientific argument against this group.

Still another group (my group) – says that God was the only observer of creation week and thus those 6 days must be viewed from inception space/time coordinates (inflationary theory and relativity). Using that formula, 6 days at the inception coordinates equals approximately 15 billion years at our space/time coordinates, Genesis 1-3 apply to heaven and earth and Adams’ time begins when he is banished to mortality in Genesis 4 (6000 years ago).

Intelligent Design – unlike creationism – has no basis in theology at all. It does not specify the designer. The designer could be God, collective consciousness, or aliens.

Alien seeding of life on earth is called “panspermia”. Crick – of DNA double helix fame – was a panspermiast. The subject is not far afield of NASA research in exobiology and astrobiology.

Collective consciousness is Eastern metaphysics and very popular among a number of scientists outside the United States. Again, this is not far afield of research in swarm intelligence, the behavior of ants, bees and the ilk.

God, of course, is the most logical candidate for designer among most Western civilizations whether Judeo/Christian, Islamic or myriad other religions.

At bottom, the Intelligent Design argument is a collection of objections to the paradigm of scientific materialism to account for the origin of species. The theory of evolution is frankly incomplete – Darwin never asked or answered the question “what is life?”

The chief objection to the theory is that “randomness” cannot be the prime factor in the formulation: random mutations – natural selection > species.

In the naturalistic, determinist view (and theological, predestination view) – every effect has a prior cause – and therefore - even under strict scientific materialism - there is no such thing as randomness per se - only pseudo-randomness. Chaitin's Omega, for instance, is the effect of a cause. Brownian motion is caused, etc.

This is fairly basic stuff these days – that is why the mathematicians have turned to “self organizing complexity” to explain master control genes and the ilk which allow such functions as eyeness to evolve concurrently across phyla, i.e. it is not “random”.

For all the objections to Intelligent Design and the tossing of spit wads – the mathematicians and physicists are already engaged and working on the very things which are necessary to give a complete picture of origin of species: information (successful communications), autonomy, semiosis, complexity, intelligence.

IMHO, it doesn't matter whether the work is done because of Intelligent Design objections or despite them - in the end, the randomness pillar will be pitched and we will be looking for non-corporeal causation for the "will to live", "fecundity principle", "evolution of one" - or whatever one wishes to call it.

Strangely, they always balk when I suggest time travelling humans.

I wouldn't know why. Whenever I see those artists' depictions which purport to be of the "alien visitors" that people have spotted running around abducting people and molesting cows and so forth, my reaction is always, "you know, that looks too damned *human*-like to be an actual alien."

There's absolutely no reason to expect aliens from [wherever] to be anywhere near that humanoid (hell, they're more humanlike than chimps or gorillas, and we're *really* close to them genetically), as opposed to more closely resembling any of the other several million species on Earth (e.g. lobsters, moose, begonias), or even something totally unlike any Earth-like life form.

So if these "visitors" actually exist, their shape strongly suggests that they're actually modified humans instead of "aliens", and their advanced technology would indicate they're from the future. QED.

...either that, or the folks making up (or hallucinating) these "visits" have poor imaginations and can't come up with anything better than a tweaked human form.

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