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 for your exhaustive reply!

You asked which panspermia/cosmic ancestry objections are indistinguishable from Intelligent Design objections. There are many examples on the panspermia.org link above - but here is an example from their FAQ/RAQ:

Q. Why is a new understanding of evolution necessary? Isn't the existing theory of evolution satisfactory?

A. The theory that more organized forms of life on Earth evolved from less organized forms over about four billion years is well-established. But new genes are necessary for this process. The theory that new genes arise by random mutation of old genes and natural selection is not established. The result of every known mutation is either neutral or deleterious, except when the disabling of a gene is advantageous. It is possible that "gene duplication" followed by other mutations could have occasionally produced a closely related new gene with a function very similar to the original one. But a convincing account of even one wholly new gene with an unrelated specific new function, arising from mutations of an existing gene, or assembled from random strands of nucleotides, has not been given.

Q. What is the new understanding of evolution that comes with Cosmic Ancestry?

A. It is that new genes, already wholly composed, are installed into the genomes of species to enable evolution to advance.

Q. Doesn't the fossil record indicate that the first cells on Earth evolved after a long, gradual process that started with nonliving chemicals?

A. No. The oldest rocks that are capable of containing evidence of life (the rocks whose information hasn't been erased by melting or otherwise) contain evidence that the metabolism of bacterial cells was already under way. The best guess to make from that clue is that bacterial life — whole cells — were present on Earth from day one. (The standard prebiotic soup theory is now compelled to say that the first cells evolved from nonliving chemicals very quickly.)

You continued:

But I have no problem moving along with that: show me evidence of your uncharacterized intelligence.

That’s a tall order for a reply post and has been addressed already on myriad threads. In a general category, I would call it geometric physics (dimensionality, forms, etc.). More specific to life v. non-life/death in nature: information (successful communication), autonomy, semiosis, complexity and intelligence. If you care to specify which area interests you the most, I’ll be glad to gather up information and post it later this evening. I have to be gone this afternoon again.

I'm not sure what you mean to say here, but "intelligence" is by definition a personified concept. Below you seem to think that when I use the term "entity" I mean "corporeal" but, if so, that would be incorrect. I'm not at all confused about the terms.

I do not doubt that in your worldview, intelligence is personified.

I do not limit "all that there is" to space/time.

That is very, very good to know!

So what? We aren't talking about what "most of us would say" but rather of what reality is.

Then by all means, please give us your definition of reality!

The rest of your post seems to “cut” between objectivism and relativism. I am not at all a relativist:

Relativism

Relativism is the view that the meaning and value of human beliefs and behaviors have no absolute reference. Relativists claim that humans understand and evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of, for example, their historical and cultural context. Philosophers identify many different kinds of relativism depending upon which classes of beliefs allegedly depend upon what.

The absolute reference for meaning and value of human beliefs is God Himself.

The objective truth is the same for both classes you've identified. That's why it's the objective truth. It's very neat, though, how you play this little trick all the time of making objectivity subjective, but it's not.

Objectivity in the sense that any mortal wisdom can conjure is clearly, in my view, subjective. Man can only think and see in four dimensions. His sense of time is limited to a light cone at its best. He has neither absolute precognition nor retrocognition – nor can he sense remotely. He cannot read the mind of another being or share the physical senses of another being. Therefore, anything a man imagines is relative per se.

But the question at hand does not regard what God is to you. The question regards what, if anything, God is.

God is unknowable in His fullness. We who inhabit space/time can only receive whatever revelations of Himself He allows. These revelations are the Scriptures and the indwelling Spirit. To one who does not have the Spirit, the Scriptures are merely text on paper – but to those who have the indwelling Spirit, the Word of God is alive and is Jesus Christ. The Scriptures become alive within us. This is not “knowledge” that can be obtained empirically or by observation. One either has “ears to hear” or he does not. We are not created equal in the spiritual sense.

To be blunt, truth is not contingent on your opinion. So, if this is actually meant to present an argument for the existence of God, why don't you try presenting an argument to support the premises, rather than informing me of your feelings.

My observation that three things in space/time (unreasonable effectiveness of math, the fact of the beginning, information in life) - scream that God is to me was not offered as “truth”. Objective Truth can only be received as a revelation from God. I was indeed sharing my views for anyone interested. You are not interested. That's fine with me!

Thank you for your reply!

What sense of of the word "random" does ID object to?

Of course, the word conjures up various meanings - but as evolution theory would use it, it roughly equates to a fair toss of a coin.

In ID objections, and that of a growing number of non-ID investigators, the evidence speaks to an organization of functional complexity in fits and starts which would require more than a fair toss of a single coin - a single, random mutation.

Some are inclined to self-organizing complexity, some to metatransition. But the evidence speaks to a direction such as in eyeness developing concurrently across phyla - rather than a randomness in the mutation, i.e. because of the master control genes it could not have gone just any old random direction.

In the usual formulation of evolution, mutation is stochastic, or at least not "aware" of its consequenses.

I'm interested in watching the developments in two areas related to the issue: self-organizing complexity and information (successful communication) in molecular biology. Either could speak to the question of "awareness".

Swarm intelligence investigations may also help find a cause for the whole being more the sum of the parts. And then there's Wolfram's approach...

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