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

Yes, but WHY does a tRNA code for an amino acid? What is there about it that says that this group of nucleotides "means" this amino acid?

A few semi-relevant papers:

Genetic Code Origin: Are the Pathways of Type Glu-tRNAGln \rightarrow Gln-tRNAGln Molecular Fossils or Not?
Abstract: A logical-evolutionary analysis is conducted to clarify whether or not pathways of type Glu-tRNAGln -> Gln-tRNAGln are molecular fossils of the mechanism that gave rise to the evolutionary organization of the genetic code. The result of this analysis is that these pathways are most likely a manifestation of this mechanism. This provides strong evidence in favor of the coevolution theory of genetic code origin, as this theory is based on the amino acid biosynthetic transformation taking place on tRNA-like molecules which imprinted the genetic code structuring. Comments on the different interpretations of these pathways found in the literature are also provided.
Phylogeny from Function: The Origin of tRNA Is in Replication, not Translation
Excerpt: Here we propose a phylogeny for the origin of tRNA based on the ubiquity and conservation of tRNA-like structures in the replication of contemporary genomes, and we discuss the evidence in contemporary molecules that leads to and supports this phylogeny. The unique aspect of this phylogeny is that it places the origin of tRNA in replication, before the advent of templated protein synthesis. This implies that tRNAs arose before the other components of the translation apparatus, that aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases arose next, and that both tRNA and aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases predated the anticodon and mRNA.
[...]
Transitional Genomes as Clues to Early Replication Strategies. If the original role of tRNA-like structures was in replication, as suggested by the single-stranded bacteriophage and plant virus genomes, one might expect to find additional examples of contemporary genomes in which tRNA plays that same role. When we first proposed the genomic tag hypothesis (Weiner and Maizels, 1987), only one other example of tRNA involvement in replication was known: In modern retroviruses, tRNAs function as primers for initiation of cDNA synthesis by the retroviral reverse transcriptase. Over the past few years, additional novel replication strategies have been described that employ tRNA-like structures. These appear to link replication of single-stranded RNA viruses with retroviral replication and with the synthesis of modern chromosomal telomeres. In each of these instances, a genomic RNA replicates via a DNA intermediate. We call these "transitional genomes," because they can be viewed as reenacting the transition from an RNA world to the contemporary DNA world.

So any "beast of the field" could evolve into any other "beast of the field" without becoming a different kind?

It is apparent to me that there can be significant changes within the biosphere from generation to generation. Let me answer your question in one word based purely upon gut feeling and in the hope I understand what you are asking (Please understand that I am not speaking from a position of one who has recently perused the text of Genesis):

No.

I say that because, as I recall, the words "beasts of the field" are followed by the words "according to their kinds." And yet it may be that the grammar requires reaching back and applying the words "according to their kinds" to a range of critters that fly, or creep, or swim.

There is most definitely a distinction in Genesis between the plant and animal kingdom, so I would not predict that science will discover a certifiable connection between reefer and hyaena.

Someone confused wrote: You stated random mechanisms always yield complexity. A random mechanism yielded pi which you said was not complex.

I responded: Clue for the confused #2: This random process does *not* yield pi (nor did Doctor Stochastic say that it did). It yields a random rational number of rather high complexity which is statistically constrained to likely be in the close neighborhood of pi, because the probability of a "hit" is related to pi itself. But the result itself is guaranteed to *not* actually be the non-complex constant "pi" (because pi is irrational, whereas the result of the Buffon needle-throwing experiment will be rational since it is the quotient of two integers).

The confused person responded:

The astute reader will note that Mr. Confused's rudimentary ability to cut-and-paste an image of a formula from the pi formulas page of mathworld.wolfram.com hardly constitutes any sort of actual rebuttal, especially when it in no way contradicts any of the points I made concerning Mr. Confused's errors.

It's most likely that, lacking any sort of actual defense for his mistakes, and being unwilling to admit them, he decided to go for a "baffle-'em-with-BS" approach and to just fling impressive looking formulae (borrowed from elsewhere) in an attempt to look erudite.

But on the off-chance that he actually thought that he was making some sort of point by posting a well-known formula for pi, the only conceivable point may have been that he was under the mistaken impression that the above formula demonstrates that pi must be a rational number after all, since all the terms are quotients of integer values. If that be the case, then:

Clue for the confused #6: Infinite series of rational numbers do not necessarily produce rational results, and indeed this one does not. One of the most elementary facts about pi, known to almost anyone with even a rudimentary education in geometry or basic math, is that pi is, indeed, an irrational number.

Mr. Confused went on to cut-and-paste thusly:

Needles follow

Why yes, yes they do. Mr. Confused can cut-and-paste from this webpage. Here's a cookie.

But yet again, this does nothing whatsoever to defend Mr. Confused's error-prone post from my various refutations. This appears nothing more than further "baffle-'em-with-BS". Further support for that hypothesis is the fact that this same poster has engaged in such time-wasting tactics numerous times in the past as well whenever one of his points began to crumble.

The needle problem was not setup to generate complex numbers.

That's nice. Again, though, this doesn't repair any of the errors that Mr. Confused has made in this thread, many of which I've pointed out.

It was setup as a question.

Oh, it was a "setup" all right -- Mr. Confused is often in the habit of asking "innocent" questions, waiting for someone to respond and fall into his "trap" (so he imagines) so that he can spring forth in response and nail the responder with a "gotcha". More often than not, though, his carefully laid traps are not the clever bit of mental outmaneuvering he thinks them to be, they are transparent cheap tricks which don't stand up to examination. Rather like this one. He thought he could "catch" Doctor Stochastic by getting him to commit to a response to the Buffon's Needle question which would contradict Doctor Stochastic's earlier comment about random processes and complexity -- but instead Mr. Confused fell on his butt by revealing that he misunderstood the manner in which his own example related to complexity theory.

What is the probability of the needle landing on a line? The analysis of that question yields pi.

Yup, the *analysis* does indeed. But Mr. Confused was, well, confused enough to think that this meant that the needle-dropping and tallying *process* actually yields pi. As I pointed out, it does not. He wrote:

Yes it is 2/pi, but you can take that and divide it into one and multiply by two and bingo you have pi. Which you said is not complex. You have a contradiction. [...] You stated random mechanisms always yield complexity. A random mechanism yielded pi which you said was not complex.

Mr. Confused was and still is wrong -- the random mechanism of the Buffon's Needle drop does *not* "yield pi", as I've already explained in detail, and which Mr. Confused's response fails to rebut in any way -- it's just hand-waving, an attempt to divert from a) the point he tried to make, and b) the fact that his point was a complete dud.

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