Fester the
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
Really? It took Russell and Whitehead about 800 pages of proof, starting with Peano's axioms reach that point. Please don't do it here. (Oh, and by the way, they actually got it wrong--a fact that wasn't noticed until a grad student found the flaw about 50 years later).
The Law of Gravity might as well be the Resurrection of the Dead as far as our understanding of physical matters is concerned. The physical and the spiritual are no more meant to be separated from one another by "science" than they were meant to be separated by God when he created man, placed him in a garden, and walked with him.
This separation we endure for a short time - maybe 100 years max per person. Looking forward to bellying up to the bar with Matt, the IRS agent, for a little chat before sitting down with Methuselah to hear him out on how Noah behaved himself at age 205.
We're in for a fine party, thanks be to Christ Jesus.
Ha! But, by golly, science knows intelligent design is not worth consideration as a cause for the universe as we know it. Amazing.
So why aren't you out water skiing and sunning yourself on this wonderful weekend?
You got it!!
Shotgunning doesnt count!
Oh, I just know you are, dear Patrick!!!
And likewise I'm sure. :^)
I am also sure that the information deficits you cite will be explained in good time. Meanwhile your challenge notwithstanding, I will have to be quiet for a time. As i have already indicated, the materials in my possession are not my property to do with as I please.
BTW, the author in question was very recently published (4Q 2004) in yet another (U.S.-based) peer review journal -- which solicited another article from him, which in due course was written and submitted. The publishing decision is pending as we speak.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me, dear PH.
Funny, how many of their arguments are based on both ignorance and a lack of vision.
It seems to me that if science is to be an ongoing process, then "intellectual fulfillment" is to be an unreachable goal. Or am I basing my argument on "ignorance and a lack of vision?" If, however, by "intellectual fulfillment" you mean satisfaction with one's own knowledge about the universe, you may be right. Otherwise your remark smacks of "stirupshitism."
And what's with this "us and them" thing? Are you saying you are completely lacking in ignorance and vision?
LOL! Now you tell me. Time to square the pie.
Man, I know you've got more class than that.
Most people arrive at where you are with this guy. I sure did. It's there for anyone to see.
2 is a prime.
And, for the gazillionth time, that isn't what science knows. Science only knows that it ain't science NOT that it ain't true.
ok, all primes above 2.
So why aren't you out water skiing and sunning yourself on this wonderful weekend?
I'd have said this was unresponsive in any other context, but in an FR evo thread, it's actually pretty close. As it happens, thanks to wireless, I am, in fact, out sunning myself.
True, but you don't.
Really? Where did he stand to do that? Mars?
Much of science is built upon first-hand observation. In fact, it really doesn't have anything else to go on.
Well now, what do you mean, exactly, by first hand observation? Is it first hand observation when I record a stellar event that happened 200 million years ago using gravitational lensing and tacking into an array of photogate amplifiers into an image cleanup program?
Is it first hand observation when I use a scientific oscilloscope to characterize a signal that only lasts for a few nanoseconds?
Science, by definition, entails first-hand human observation and reporting.
As you are defining it, no it doesn't. You cannot reasonably assert definitions of science most scientists would consider childishly silly.
Don't get me started ...
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