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
And continue the lame, not-quite analogies.
I guess what I'd like is for you to stop shotgunning me with sound bites and show me your "historical" evidence concerning the internal convictions of christian regarding Hume-ian doubt, which, I'll remind you, was the claim you made, in a fairly obnoxious manner.
Oh my. The state of US education is even worse than I thought. I hope you don't work in a technical field.
I said that the doubt of viewing the physical sciences in their scope as less-than-the-story-of-everything, which you paraded to be a "Humean" show-stopper (you brought up the term, not I -- I tried to use it in the same sense you did), DIDN'T stop these Christian scientists. That is reflected by their achievements in the physical sciences. You need a better argument? I could say that wild zebras didn't stop them, and you'd require a treatise on wild zebras before coming to that conclusion. Silly!
the internal convictions of christian regarding
I meant to say "the internal convictions of christian SCIENTISTS regarding". Sorry.
yours: 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.
Also, you’ve dropped the “/death in nature”. Perhaps you are just being economical with the words, but the “/death in nature” was to keep the discussion from drifting into artificial intelligence as well as setting the boundary for the next most likely "issue" in this definition of ID: what is life v. non-life/death in nature.
All of this nit-picking will help define what is "on" the table v what is not for the Lurkers who may be following the discussion.
You cited "Humean doubt" first -- and did it in a context which left no doubt, Humean or otherwise, that you equated it it to the view of keeping in mind that the physical sciences cannot tell the story of all. I said such a view is precisely the view of Christianity (not Churchianity -- Christianity). Somehow these "benighted" Christian souls managed to do what... deny this? Izzat what you say? That's where I get off your boat.
You have made a claim about scientists who were christians, rephrase it as you please, but what I have asked for is some evidence, historical (which you seem to claim) or otherwise, that this is anything more than your internal conviction. Apparently, so far, the case you would like to make is that you say so, and if I continue to ask for evidence, you will continue to fart rudely in my direction.
Well there you have it. When asked for evidence, spew ink like a cuttlefish running for cover, while loudly declaring yourself the winner in a battle you couldn't seem to even find on the map.
They professed to believe the tenets of Christianity. Which makes metaphysical claims including that of special intervention in the physical world. I guess I made the "foolish" mistake of believing them when they say they did. I guess you want to find a mind dump somewhere to prove that they really did believe what they said they did.
You would be a good candidate for the Cuttlefish award. Define Humean doubt as the complement between "science" and reality and then back away in pixelated ink when faced with the fact that Christianity occupies just that position?
Christianity occupies just that position? [and more, but the point is that it isn't less]
Argue with the high school teacher.
The integers are closed under multiplication (if you multiply two integers, you get another integer), but they are _not_ closed under division, since you can divide two integers to get a rational number that isn't an integer.
The rationals, however, are closed under addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Miniaturized American flags for all!
So, once again, is this our definition:
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.
If your answer is "Yes" then we can proceed.
Its in there. Right next to the liter bottle of Crystal Pepsi.
Just so stories about undirected processes can explain anything, just not plausibly
Maybe the tilt came when you looped your summation to infinity. I don't know. Maybe the Mathematician can tell us.
But do they have Crystal Pepsi *tastings*? Without that, how do we know it isn't just a bottle of water?
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