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
Thank you, AG.
Just to kick off the future discussion: intelligence suggests purpose, awareness, direction, thought,.....maybe some of those but not all....maybe much more.
Did the Inquisition team (for lack of better term) initiate this dogma? And was it absent before that team started up?
I just see a conundrum here. Folks are trying to say that they're "Roman Catholics" but not of the "authority of Rome." No can do, unless they can oust the Vatican from the authority of Rome. Hey maybe Billy Graham would want the job? :-) The only practical choice is to step outside that mold. That's what the Greek Orthodox did. That's what the Protestants did. Or perhaps, what the sedevacantists (i.e. Roman Catholics who aver that no qualified person currently occupies the Papal seat) do.
I do understand your objection, however "intelligent design" is not a default hypothesis. If it were, then any explanation - no matter how bizarre - would "do" as a better explanation than intelligent causation.
I'm picturing here a man walking on the beach, picking up a wristwatch with the trademark "Timex" and declaring it came from outer space. Bizarre, yes - possible, yes - best explanation, no.
The intelligent design hypothesis claims to meet all other explanations toe-to-toe in asserting that intelligent causation is the best explanation for certain features in life v non-life.
It may be helpful in this discussion for the correspondents to keep in mind a "least common denominator" for the property of intelligence.
This will have bearing on the next two definitions of hypotheses that AntiGuv wants to explore vis-a-vis intelligent design: panspermia/cosmic ancestry and collective consciousness.
To see interlocking complex systems should cause reflection on origins. It has on many fronts, no doubt. In that regard ID and evolution are similarly trying to understand origins. One can posit a designer, a process, an accident, a combination of designer & process, ....
I don't know if any of those are default, unless one has a presupposition one brings to the table.
Guillermo Richardson, an Hispanic candidate for president. (I also use the term: an hispanophone.)
Yes, that's the claim. There is no supporting evidence yet, and very little published research -- virtually nothing in reputable, peer-reviewed journals. Unless someone wants to regard the Discovery Institute as a bunch of gurus, and take their announcements on faith, I think it's necessary to ignore unsubstantiated claims, and to phrase the hypothesis as a possibility. That's why I worded my last version thusly:
The Intelligent Design Hypothesis: Certain biological features or processes that are otherwise inexplicable may be explained by an intelligent cause, rather than by an undirected process such as natural selection.
Scientific materialism demands that the scientist (in the U.S.) only consider undirected physical causation. In short hand, that is the "randomness" pillar of evolution theory: random mutations - natural selection > species.
The intelligent design hypothesis is bucking that paradigm (which is not demanded in Asia and Eastern Europe) by asserting that intelligent causation is a better explanation for certain features of life.
One side says accidents only - the other accidents + direction.
Until a few years ago, all area codes in the US had a "0" or a "1" as their middle digit. That's what allowed the phone system to "know" whether you were trying to call a local exchange via long distance, or were trying to call into another area code. But because we were running out of phone numbers under that numbering system, they had upgrade the the phone system to handle area codes with middle digits OTHER than zero and one.
I'll bet if you do a Google search, you'll find something that decribes the whole thing in much more detail than I could possible provide, or care about....
;-)
I think that the Catholic church, if in fact it already really has not realized it or not, has broken up, and that there will be an American Catholic Church, in the future. I think Rome has lost its authority, office of the inquisition, notwithstanding.
Another good example. I'm pretty sure it depends on how the speaker chooses to pronounce the h should. If soft, then an should precede it. Thus, I would say: a hypothetical example, and in the next breath I'd also say an hypothesis. But that's just me talking. It's a bit trickier when writing it out.
It wasn't that they had no oil, it was that they went to sleep and let the lamps go out.
Since I don’t accept the bible as having validity on this point, and that giving it validity is in itself an act of faith (by my definition,) it doesn't look like you and I will ever agree. So I won't argue the point with you.
Regards.
A foreshadowing of the y2k problem.
The reason I'm being so picky about the definition of ID is that good definitions are absolutely essential. If we're not careful (and I don't think the Discovery Institute gives a darn about being careful), we can prejudice the whole thing by building into the definition the very conclusions that must be rigorously determined.
I kept your "may be explained" and only added the word "best".
my last: Intelligent Design Hypothesis: Certain features of life v non-life may be best explained by an intelligent cause, rather than by an undirected process.
and purpose, will, intent. something that manifests itself as operations seen on a medium that would be too poor to be expected to support the operations by itself. (e.g. an ordinary piano has no way to play itself, so if you hear music from it you could reason that a pianist is sitting at the keyboard)
I understand. And I resist the use of "best," based on Occam's Razor. It seems to me -- in my always humble opinion -- that if you have two possible explanations for a phenomenon, one being natural and undirected, and the other being (forgive me) an unseen intervention by little green men from Uranus, then without any further evidence to support the Uranus explanation, I don't think it can be seriously considered.
The biggest difference between us that where you have "biological features or processes that are otherwise inexplicable" I prefer "features of life v non-life" so as to not unintentionally limit the discussion to bio/chemistry alone.
Well, yeah. But that really opens it up. In these threads, we're usually discussing the adequacy of the biological theory of evolution.
An American Catholic Church with its headquarters in, say, Washington DC, might be on the cards after the next papacy, if the Malachy predictions play out (no more popes). Of course I don't know what inspired Malachy, but we do know that even demons (worst case) have some power of seeing the future. Eyes on Jesus.
Dawg.
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