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.
If not, what kind of evidence would be acceptable?
The presence of a designer would be a good start.
No.
If not, what kind of evidence would be acceptable?
The presence of a designer would be a good start.
(paraphrasing) "My daddy told me 'never trust a man who tries to bet you that he can make a card jump out of a sealed pack of cards and squirt cider in your ear, for if you do, sure as I'm your daddy, you'll end up with an earful of cider.'"
Because a perfesser now wears the hat of preacher.
So, when you see an automobile, you need to see the person who designed it in order to have suitable evidence it was designed?
I've covered men's eyes (doesn't work on women) and asked them to bet on the color of tie they were wearing. No takers.
So your point is a professor has to be indifferent to ignorance, or else he'll be a preacher?
(Shakes head)
5. Never trust an alleged Darwin quote that contradicts evolution.
6. Never believe anything you read at a creationist website.
Disease is a physical entity we perceive to be a malady because it kills us, and yes, in this case ignorance is a bad thing. There are many areas of knowledge where ignorance can not only be morally neutral, but also blissful.
If "the designer" would go on TV and show off his designs like the auto designers do when they attend car shows, that'd be more than good enough for me. Feel free to hold your breath.
Well, let's just say in this case you and Bhudda could share the same pulpit.
So, if you saw and automobile, but never saw one being built, you would assume it just popped out of nowhere without the aid of intelligence or design?
No, I wouldn't.
Why not? What evidence would you have that it really is a product of intelligent design?
Because it's quite clearly a machine and I've known where machines come from since I was about 5.
"Polka dots!"
;-)
Good or bad, without ignorance there would be no such thing as science. Is that good or bad?
And, when I say machine, I mean technology.
I also thank you for the link to the Wikipedia description/definition of panspermia. You might also enjoy reading the Panspermia.org website for the latest “trends” and news. They have modified their worldview slightly to a “cosmic ancestry” which accepts some of the self-organizing complexity argument. Nevertheless, IMHO, the arguments raised by panspermia/cosmic ancestry are indistinguishable from the Intelligent Design objections to evolution.
you: That sentence looks so utterly silly to any normal human being. One might wonder why it should look any less so if you eliminate the latter two options... Better yet, let's expand them: The designer could be God, collective consciousness, aliens, a host of avatars, flying turtle droppings from beyond, a dragon cleaved in two, the tooth fairy, little green leprechauns from Uranus, the Dao of Qi, a giant's decaying corpse, the tears of the ether, divinely curdled salt, the demiurge, interdimensional summoning, or a celestial sneeze.
At any rate, the specific beliefs are irrelevant since Intelligent Design does not identify who or what the designer is other than to attribute intelligence ipso facto. I leave it to others to discuss comparative metaphysics as that is a sidebar to the subject I engaged.
For some “all that there is” is that which exists in space/time – a microscope to telescope worldview. For many or most of us, “all that there is” is much more than this. We include mathematical structures, forms, qualia and the ilk in “reality”. Moreover, most of us would say that “all that there is” is God’s will and unknowable in its fullness.
Likewise, to those whose worldview of reality is physical – objective truth can be deduced from within space/time because that is "all that there is" for them. But to those of us with the encompassing view, space/time is merely a hypercube of n dimensions which contains corporeal existents – therefore, "objective truth" can only be revealed from outside space/time, everything within space/time is relative per se. To us, God is Truth.
You and I may well have such an irreconcilable difference in worldview. Here are some additional pointers to such differences:
Some would say that the biochemistry of molecular machinery in biological life is a sufficient explanation for the structure of organisms. I would counter that “form” – or geometry – disputes that concept. Not only does DNA have geometric form but the form of the organism survives, e.g. the individual human persists although every cell in his body is replaced every seven years. Likewise the form of the organism can be a collective – a hundred army ants on a plane will walk in a circle until they die of exhaustion. But make it a half million army ants and the colony becomes an organism which executes raids, keeps a calendar, maintains a geometry of search patterns, etc. I would further assert the issue of "form" will not be addressed until all components are resolved: information (successful communication), autonomy, semiosis, complexity and intelligence.
Some would say that this universe with its breathtakingly useful physical constants and laws is the inevitable result of multi-verse cosmology I would counter that this universe is expanding which points to a finite past regardless of cosmology (inflationary, multi-verse, multi-world, imaginary time, cyclic, ekpyrotic, etc.) – that appeals to prior universes merely move the goal post, i.e. any argument short of an infinite past would not make this universe inevitable. Moreover, all cosmologies require prior geometry and therefore a beginning. There cannot be a beginning without an uncaused cause, i.e. God.
Shall we recognize that we have an irreconcilable difference in worldview and agree to disagree? Or would you like to continue?
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