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
Double blind field studies are traditionally appropriate only to certain questions: such as, for example, how a given group of people feel about some particular thing, and why.
I thought you'd be a hardcase. This is easy.
I'm always impressed by arguments that come with their own applause tracks.
Every time you say Science, you acknowledge that it does in fact make claims to be the center of truth. There are other, humbler sciences such as political science and computer science, that don't do this. I've never seen a political scientist or a computer scientist stand up and say "Science says...."
I can confidently criticize the whole kit and kaboodle because I have become convinced that God will sweep the entire occasion for it away someday, ushering in a whole new regime of reality. The bible calls it a new heaven and new earth. The deepest insights of what parades as Science now, will be but a footnote in heaven's history books, if it even keeps books on such things.
It seems to me that in the days before scientific materialism took over as the official mindset (at least here in the U.S.) – that science and philosophy/religion were connected in a common pursuit.
I suspect that Dawkins has yet another fatal attraction – he appeals to the sense of the mysterious for authentication (or equity) in one breath - and then utterly rejects the mysterious in practice of scientific materialism.
Things weren’t so hostile even back in Einstein’s day:
Einstein's speech 'My Credo' to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, page 262
When you start asking for questions of history to be answered by doubleblind studies, I know you've gone off the deep end.
Neat how you've managed to be self referential here.
Which is chronologically irrelevant.
It appears that materialism had pretty much walked away with his thought by that point. Other Christians were more successful in keeping their faith while exploring down the avenues of biological evolution. It became a problem for mankind when it became the basis of a whole new philosophy that denied it WAS "a philosophy" but reduced the plants, animals AND man to self organized matter.
This is NOT science's position on this matter, even if you repeat it 100 times, and hold your breath until you turn blue. Very few scientists take the position that scientific explanations can exclude other explanations for what goes on in the universe, now or ever.
I guess I am sounding a lot like C. S. Lewis. He was one cool thinker who knew that when you take 1 - 1, you shouldn't expect anything other than 0.
I guess you are sounding like a broken record, so enamored of the theory of science you have constructed in your own head, that you can't detect what's going on in the real world.
I don't have a problem agreeing to a more expansive definition so long as it's a valid one. Since we are discussing modifications specific to the modern synthesis theory of genetic evolution, then the definition for our purposes needs to bear some relation to that. We are not talking about whether, say, star formation or the value of 2+2 can be attributed to intelligent design..
So, will the following work:
Intelligent Design: A hypothesis wherein any biological process is explained by an intelligent cause, rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.
Is that our definition? That covers both "functional molecular machinery" and "points of differentiation" (and a number of other things beside).
Good for you. I think I'll just muddle along on to the tools of rational discourse, as embodied in science.
Such a case did arise as reported on FR some time ago. The professor would refuse to give a good review to the aptitude of a macroevolution denying medical student unless said student could convince the professor that macroevolution was wrong. After that policy attained to a few weeks in the glaring public eye, the professor admitted he had no basis for such a belief other than his hunch, and changed his policy.
You didn't ask me a question about history. You offered a totally unverifiable universal claim about how scientists who are christians feel about certain philosophical issues, and rather than attempt to defend our position, you offer up this snarky, irrelevant insult. God must really appreciate having you on his defense team, what with you offering up such an honorable affirmative defense.
Intelligent Design: A hypothesis wherein given features of life v non-life are explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
Is that now our definition moving forward?
They concur on This Is The Thing To Be Taught And Called Science [skientia]. The term cannot escape its implications. Up until the most advanced years, students simply go to "Science" class or have "Science" studies. They do not go to "Physical Science" class. Or "Biological Science" class. Or anything that would imply there is some kind of limited scope of this study which is parading itself as Science [skientia].
Nice switch of tenses to create and mow down a straw man; I speak of history and what the records of history tell us. History isn't a science, so I guess it doesn't count?
There are probably thousands of astronomical scientists that read their astrological forecasts every morning. I doubt that that interferes materially in their work, and I expect that the vast majority of working scientists would agree with me. I also doubt that that makes astrological forecasting a fit subject for astronomy classes.
What's your point?
Yea? What does history tell us about Isaac Newton's feelings about David Hume?
I guess you want some God's eye view doubleblind study, while I want to speak of what people were actually recorded doing. Until you can turn history into a science, you have defined away the possibility of ever being convinced of such a thing.
Is that the size of your view of philosophy -- Hume?
You made it for me. You answered with a lame analogy when I related the ... history ... of how a hypocrite was caught.
Indeed. And that is because it is the case. What scientists presently think, is science. What non-scientists presently think, is irrelevant.
Up until the most advanced years, students simply go to "Science" class or have "Science" studies.
Advanced years? Meaning high school?
They do not go to "Physical Science" class. Or "Biological Science" class. Or anything that would imply there is some kind of limited scope of this study which is parading itself as Science [skientia].
Gee. They also go to English class, and only study english. Aren't you concerned that children will conclude that english is the only language in the world?
Continue that parade.
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