 Especially for you, I've made a sound snippet with your honey-bunny, Kathy Martin, where she admits not to have read the proposed Kansas science standard draft. 30 seconds of pure Kathy Martin (119kb MP3) |
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
Rupert Sheldrake investigations (biology)
The Science of Collective Consciousness
Thank you so much for your post!
It's not, as the ID advocates claim, a case of narrow-minded intolerance for alternatives. Alternative explanations for the proliferation of life on earth (or for any other natural phenomenon) are allowed, provided -- as in your example of cosmology, or any other science -- they can fit the existing evidence. And provided further, as with any scientific hypothesis, such an alternative explanation leads to some kind of prediction that would distinguish it from the current theory. (As the cosmic background radiation did in the days when Steady State was a competing theory.)
As it is, given the chronological fossil record, and then the amazingly consistent picture that the DNA evidence provides, it's been rather difficult (an understatement) to take the immensity of that evidence and rearrange it into any coherent scenario other than the one that evolution provides. It's true that where gaps still remain in the record (and I assume there will always be some gaps) one can imaginatively insert any desired causal agent. But does such a conjecture lead to any testable observations? So far, the ID camp has failed to come up with anything -- thus the "intolerance" for what is rightly seen as an unscientific proposal.
With an equal dose of imagination, I could assert that the hemisphere of a planet that faces away from us has a big smiley face on it, which always moves out of sight when the planet rotates that side toward us. I can make such a claim because there's aways a "gap" in our observational ability where my smiley face may exist. But to me, that's not much of an alternative theory.
Many seem to be more concerned about where this will end than the structure itself. Personally, I doubt if any of the correspondents will have a complete change of mind but the effort should help all of us communicate better in the future.
Shall we now define the above words used in the definition or move to the definition of panspermia/cosmic ancestry and collective consciousness?
I'll be offline again for several hours (was up until 4:30 a.m. and need a nap) - but I'll be glad to engage the next step when I return!
| Especially for you, I've made a sound snippet with your honey-bunny, Kathy Martin, where she admits not to have read the proposed Kansas science standard draft. 30 seconds of pure Kathy Martin (119kb MP3) |
Catch you later!
Sort of like attributing intelligence to the construction of the Oklo nuclear reactor.
Lovely voice!LOL! Indeed, but I got a bit disappointed when the audience's groans (as reported by the press) weren't that audible (due to the nature of the recording) during her remarkable confession.
Hey, no problem, when the weather changes I move from FR to the golf course, the beach and bike rides with my grandkids.
My beef was with your poor logic in this particular case. The argument you used can be expressed as a categorical syllogism with propositions of type 'a'. When expressed this way it shows clearly that you have formed an example of the fallacy of undistributed middle.
Whatever.
All Marxists are atheists who want to ban religion
Here you've made an unwarranted aaumption. Not all Marxists are atheists and not all atheists are Marxists. But Karl Marx viewed religion as something that should be banned. So does Dawkins and in that way Dawkins is marxist.
Dawkins is an atheist who wants to ban religion
To recap, it is my opinuion that Dawkins would ban religion if he were King.
Therefore Dawkins is a Marxist.
Not my view. My view is that Dakins view on religion is marxist in that he would ban it if he could.
Let's try this:
Did Karl Marx advocate for the abolition of religion?
Do you think Richard Dawkins would abolish religion if he could?
I will use the term strong atheist to describe those atheists that would like to get rid of all religion.
Why? Why not simply use the term bigot?
If you meant that Dawkins' religious views are like those of Marxists then you are right, but if you meant that Dawkins is a Marxist, your argument fails to show it.
I said what I meant. Dawkins' views on religion are marxist. Nobody on this thread has demonstrated otherwise while I have demonstrated exactly what I claimed.
BTW whether Dawkins is a Marxist or not has no bearing on the validity of his views of biology.
Dawkins writes on relgion and politics often. He doesn't get a 'No criticism because he is a scientist card'.
I'm smitten....
I meant random.
As I remember the theory, survival of the fittest only applies after the advent of some random mutation based change.
Given that understanding, I'm certain I meant random. That's not to say you won't argue with my understanding, but is the understanding that I have.
You didn't say "random mutation" before; you said "random natural selection".....
However, that clarifies your meaning so that I can frame my response in more detail. I've been feeling really ill for about an hour though, so I'm gonna go lie down. =(
If I recover, I'll be back!
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