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
All of them since around 1200 to about 1900 (or the present--if you were not fooled by the name change).
So then what scientists who were christians are we talking about then? Modern ones?
And then there is the Protestant take on the faith: the stake burnings there (unless you were seemingly a witch) seem to have added up to exactly one (Servetus, at the hands of Calvin).
The hundred years war depopulated Northern Europe, over the question of which church a local community might be allowed to attend. Christianity and winning philosophical arguments at gunpoint were hard philosophies to disentangle for over 1000 years. You can't just pretend that away.
And even one was one too many, but hardly the threat you enunciate.
Hmm, likewise, the reign of terror, say, hardly killed anyone compared to the overall population of France. Clearly, you would have been free to express sympathy for the monarchy throughout the French revolution.
You don't appear to have a fight in you, so it's a non-issue.
Now, they have brought the office of Inquisition back. What do you think of that?
Well, if you have a pursuit, that when it encounters the eye of a needle and the hump of a camel, to infinity tries to get that camel crammed through that eye by very principle, I say "I won't argue with foolishness anymore." I am throwing no Powerball-winning parties. At some point, unless one's mind is wired to an infinite loop, the world we see quite well justifies stepping back and saying "gee, this does look like it was exquisitely set up and didn't just wander into its current state." A belief in a participation of the freewill of created beings that can in some wise influence the course of the world sets up the case even more strongly -- why didn't that derail the Mindless Evolution? if it was a Mindless Evolution? Doesn't it take a Mind to accommodate everything that another Mind can do?
Happy Parsing.
It's a pale shadow of its former self, powerless when it comes to doing anything of more consequence than scolding some Catholics and kicking the resolutely unfaithful out of the Roman Catholic Church. (Whereupon they can now go to just about any other church on earth.) A Pope Benedict XVI "Inquisition" -- fooey. Calvin was nastier.
Well this new Pope has expressed a reversed Catholic view of evolution. Using the office, he has effectively silenced Catholic opposition and rebellion all over the globe. Maybe he will be a positive influence, but not one science-minded folk will like. After all, tyranny is tyranny, no matter what nice cultural revolution sounding name you dress it up in.
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.
PatrickHenry says: Permit me to offer a different formulation of the issue ... As I see it, the central hypothesis of ID is the assertion that there are features of living organisms which -- in principle -- cannot be explained by evolution.
Well, at this juncture, the only thing we're doing is defining our terms. It would seem to me that what you're describing, although typical of ID, is not a necessary attribute of ID (in other words, one may hypothesize that a feature is the product of intelligent design even though it can be explained by evolution). My expectation is that the matter will become relevant once we turn to the actual questions we're gearing up for, but is not requisite for the definition of ID itself.
If you do think that the above definition requires further modification, then the best way to proceed would be for you to take that definition and post an accordingly modified form so that we may consider it. For now, it seems to me that the definition is adequate for our purposes, which is to determine whether or not "panspermia" and/or "collective consciousness" are ID hypotheses.
So he's sticking up for some form of ID philosophy -- good. The bible demands it. The bible would be wrong if the heavens and earth didn't "declare the glory of God" which includes His explicit participation as creation commenced. I don't think you will meet this Pope giving a testimony in any Kenneth Ham 6-24-hour-day-YEC presentations anytime soon, however. He sounds more like he leans to the OEC views of, say, (Protestant) Hugh Ross. And even that as "ordinary teaching" (he's not going to make it an ex cathedra, infallible doctrine over which people get kicked out of the RCC).
Well I think he has shouted to his church "Wake Up! This and This and This are non negotiable doctrines! If you don't like it, here's the door." Now his audience has to choose: will they be Roman Catholics? Or will they be something else, perhaps another flavor of Christian? I am not claiming the Pope is right about all this stuff, by the way. Even the "infallible" stuff. But I just don't see him touching evolutionism in any meaningful sense other than a general bully pulpit. Any more than I see the Pope joining a Southern Baptist Church.
Say whaaa?
I say "I won't argue with foolishness anymore."
Okay.
I am throwing no Powerball-winning parties.
Okay.
At some point, unless one's mind is wired to an infinite loop, the world we see quite well justifies stepping back and saying "gee, this does look like it was exquisitely set up and didn't just wander into its current state."
Until recently, that's been the way the world always looked at things. To some, those were the good old days. But then science got going and explained quite a few previously inexplicable phenomena. Bummer.
A belief in a participation of the freewill of created beings that can in some wise influence the course of the world sets up the case even more strongly -- why didn't that derail the Mindless Evolution? if it was a Mindless Evolution? Doesn't it take a Mind to accommodate everything that another Mind can do?
Say whaaa?
You can believe THAT the whole document is true without having a certitude about WHAT every single part of it means. The bible itself says that being a Christian is not that brittle. It says that a Christian can have incomplete knowledge, he can even have incorrect beliefs about some things, and yet he can still be a Christian, and he can trust that some day he will know the truth perfectly.
He wants the Southern Baptists to join him, and from the praise the Pope now gets from so-called evangelicals, it won't be long.
It's a non-bummer until it claims to have become a perpetual motion machine. The patent on that is God's.
Yes, but if you are going to put your faith in a religious leader, as opposed to sola scriptura, it seems to me that a higher standard of the leader, is required. I don't like to work for a man who knows less about the job than I do.
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.I would modify it as follows:
Intelligent Design: A[n] hypothesis wherein given features of life v non-life that are otherwise inexplicable are explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.And I think you would prefer something like this:
Intelligent Design: A[n] hypothesis wherein given features of life v non-life whether or not they are otherwise inexplicable are explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
It's no secret that the RCC has held the view that it's the true center and sought out home of Christianity, and that all Christendom will someday reunite upon itself. If it ever ceased to do so, it would change its name to something like First Church of Rome (no more of that all-embracing "Catholic" stuff). It wants Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Greek Orthodox, Disciples of Christ, you name it non-RCC Christians to become Roman Catholics as a non negotiable step for the salvation of their souls. And Pope Benedict XVI has said this countless times. Well surprise, the Pope is Roman Catholic.
And no, he won't be giving testimonies with Billy Graham even though they are both well into the senior set.
1600?
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