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
An intelligent entity by definition has personhood. Get it?
But what you are really getting at is whether the objections raised by "Intelligent Design" advocates require an entity to resolve them, assuming that the theory of evolution is inadequate to do so. No, they don't, but then you wouldn't have "intelligent design" but rather something from the options in the excluded middle that ID advocates ignore. By example: panspermia.
There is nothing in the above that the 4 categories cannot incorporate.
Given that I had already excluded #3 (intentional misleading = outright fabrication), then #4 would have been the worst case.
For whatever reason we're not communicating. Probably because I had potato chips, chili, and coffee for breakfast. :>)
Again you are making common mistakes in probability. Just because a random mechanism yields pi does not make pi complex. By your reasoning, 1/2 would be complex as there are random mechanisms which yield 1/2.
Pi is not complex because there are simple mechanisms, which I already posted to you, that yield pi.
Likewise you are mistaken in the meaning of probability 1. These matters are covered in elementary courses in probability theory.
I think your C & CI are incorporated with the K and UK.
(No...not Kansas vs UKentucky....in basketball, UK would definitely romp!)
But there were extenuating circumstances! :>)
But, in any case, C & I would not be incorporated with K and UK.
T = a true account of an apparent resurrection
UT = an untruthful account of an apparent resurrection
K = providing said account knowingly
UK = providing said account unknowingly
C = a correct explanation for what had been seen
I = an incorrect explanation for what had been seen
I don't like your letters though, so I'm gonna change them :)
T = a true eyewitness account
F = a false eyewitness account
K = said account given knowingly
U = said account given unknowingly
C = a correct explanation for witnessed events
I = an incorrect explanation for witnessed events
Possible options: TKC, TKI, TUC, TUI, FKC, FKI, FUC, FUI.
So, by example, TKI would be: a knowingly truthful account of an apparent resurrection incorrectly attributed to the intervention of a deity.
The reason is because you've excluded #3 (intentional misleading) and I haven't. Your stated reason for excluding #3, that people died for the belief, is nonsense. Many people have died for their beliefs and that didn't make their beliefs any more valid.
It didn't make their beliefs any more or less valid than they were otherwise.
A difficulty presents itself: why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity? What is drawn up must cool, and what has been cooled must become water and descend, the result of this being that the corn grows. Similarly if a man’s crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this-in order that the crop might be spoiled-but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that our teeth should come up of necessity-the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food-since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his ‘man-faced ox-progeny’ did.
The other reason we're not communicating is because your #1, #2, and #4 cases that you haven't excluded are not evidence for deities. They would be evidence for people believing they witnessed a resurrection.
Telling people about JESUS isn't debating the word. John 3:16 tells us what a person must do to be saved. Plus, when Jesus told the disciples to go into all the world to spread the gospel Jesus was not telling them to debate the word but to show the Love of Christ Jesus. Furthermore, the Father tells us to NOT add to His word and to NOT take away from His word. Do what you must but it will be between you and the Holy Spirit. OH and back to the point which sparked this discussion, the secular humanist who believes Christians are wrong is wrong with his take on Creationism. There is an evolutionary process we have been going through but not the type of evolution as Humanist believe. Good day.
It's the nature of how they died. Horribly, unnecessarily, and sequentially over time.
So, if I presented a man to you who had been killed, resurrected, and stayed that way, then you wouldn't consider that a bit different than the average bear?
This discussion is getting pointless. Anyhow, my mouse is getting ready to die on me and I don't have any charged batteries ready. =(
Your argument was that at minimum the apostles thought they saw something extraordinary. Fine, I'm not interested in arguing about that. Thinking one saw a resurrection is not evidence for deities. If you come up with something new, I'm ready. If that's all you have, then I guess we're done. You didn't persuade me.
Yeah, I'd consider that unusual if it weren't a hoax. So what?
But keep in mind you haven't presented me with any such thing, so it's irrelevant to the debate at hand.
“Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.”
Yeah, but they think ignorance is a bad thing.
You too proud and too chicken to admit your own ignorance
Verb in sentence necessary. I think what annoys you is that I'm not ignorant in any way you can demonstrate. Actually, there are several people posting here regularly who make me feel ignorant.
Stay away from the schools for which I pay taxes.
I'm surprised you pay taxes. It just goes to show, anyone can find work if they really need it.
I hope you don't get paid to teach.
This has not been a good week for you.
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