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
No. If we are arguing seriously about formal reasoning, only assumptions are chosen based upon the hope that they accurately reflect reality.
Once one makes a conclusion, he uses it as an assumption upon which to base further thought.
No, intermediate terms are called predicates, mostly, in modern literature.
Besides, it is common usage to make use of the word "theory" in a manner that deflects the meaning of "fact" or "absolute truth."
Common usage doesn't reveal too much of a serious nature in a serious discussion about what scientists think about their occupation.
Therefore, the proper step would be to modify our definition as follows:
Intelligent Design: A hypothesis that given features of actuality are explained by an intelligent cause, rather than by an undirected process such as natural selection.
Your formulation "life v non-life/death in nature" would be a subset of actuality. Do you have an objection to this final revision?
Dawkins: Yes. I come to it through the analogy to computer viruses. We have two kinds of viruses that have a lot in common--namely real biological viruses and computer viruses. In both cases they are parasitic self-replicating codes which exploit the existence of machinery that was set up to copy and obey that kind of code. So I then ask the question, "What if there were a third kind of milieu in which a different kind of self-replicating code could become an effective parasite?" Human brains with their powerful communication systems seem to be a likely candidate. Then I ask, "What would it feel like if you were the victim of a mind virus?" Well, you would feel within yourself this deep conviction that seems to come from nowhere. It doesn't result from any evidence, but you have a total conviction that you know what's true about the world and the cosmos and life. You just know it and you're even prepared to kill people who disagree with you. You go around proselytizing and persuading other people to accept your view. The more you write down the features that such a mind virus would have, the more it starts to look like religion. I do think that the Roman Catholic religion is a disease of the mind which has a particular epidemiology similar to that of a virus.
Skeptic: But couldn't the Pope (or Evangelical Protestants for that matter), reply, "Look, we just have a terrific meme. It's winning what you would describe as a Darwinian battle and you're angry because you just don't like it."
Dawkins: Religion is a terrific meme. That's right. But that doesn't make it true and I care about what's true. Smallpox virus is a terrific virus. It does its job magnificently well. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing. It doesn't mean that I don't want to see it stamped out.
----------------------------------------------------------
Enough context for ya Ed?
It is, of course, people like jwalsh, who conflate religious unorthodoxy with marxism and treason, are the very ones that cause ACLU types to conflate conservatism with the inquisition.
I think it is my duty as a human being to be equally unwelcome in both camps.
I do know something about the people who defend the rosenbergs, having lived next door to Robert Meeropol in college.
Well, since Dawkins is British he can't commit treason against America regardless..... ;)
Thanks.
Small reason not to make the assertion. After all, I am the impetus behind the ACLU's misdeeds. Why use a .22 when a 12 gauge hits so much more.
No, I feel no compulsion to post to you at all, any more than you feel compelled to check with the people you are calling marxists before calling them marxists.
Actual scientist, when they think about it a ll, which is seldom, consider marxism to be a religion like any other.
It is interesting that the word religion is generally used as a pejorative, as in, "Evolution is a religion." But science is a desirable epithet, as in, "ID is real science."
I've just noticed on these threads over the years that every form of quackery wants to be labeled science or scientific, but no one wants their ideas labeled religious, particularly ID.
I have no idea what you're talking about. In fact forget the admonition. Make all the unfounded lunatic assertions that your little heart desires to whomever you please.
No problem.
Your formulation "life v non-life/death in nature" would be a subset of actuality. Do you have an objection to this final revision?
Kant would have us understand actuality as "existence in some determinate time" but his definition of time is not up-to-date with geometric physics (i.e. 3 spatial dimensions evolving over time v time as a dimension) and thus would beg the question.
It also leaves the door open for modal logic which I doubt you would want.
The term "reality" might substitute, but the problem of definition remains. In a prior survey here on Free Republic, we compiled these different views of what reality "is":
To an autonomist "reality" is all that is, the way it is
To an objectivist "reality" is that which exists
To a mystic "reality" may include thought as substantive force and hence, a part of "reality"
To Plato "reality" includes constructs such as redness, chairness, numbers, geometry and pi
To Aristotle these constructs are not part of "reality" but merely language
To some physicists, "reality" is the illusion of quantum mechanics
To Christians "reality" is God's will and unknowable in its fullness.
I have to go help with construction again this afternoon, but have a few minutes more now and will be back later on.
How would you categorize the figurine I made from clay I dug from the bank of a stream and air dried? No implements involved.
Actually I consider it a word game that science would make propositions related to unobserved, unrecorded history, call it a "theory," and proceed as if making statements of unassailable certitude. It's a huge word game of self-delusion perpetrated upon an often uncritical audience. In some circles it appears to be coming to an end.
Please restrict yourself to posts in English.
I have been, and I will continue to do so.
If scientists want to be taken seriously when they present their theories, then they had better remind themselves of a host of assumptions that have been made in order to arrive at their "system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure." Otherwise they simply play themselves and their audience for suckers.
Whatever you used to handle the clay, including your hands, are manual implements, and will leave evidence of their handling. I don't know what you're imagining, but if you're imagining what I think you're imagining, then not only can I identify the figurine as manmade, I can identify the man who made it via his fingerprints.......
Time to modify your imagination. Try again!
=)
OR both. It seems that scientific materialists cling to the idea that the only thing going on in the world is matter in its motions. Yet this seems to be a flying jump to conclusions, IMHO. As far as I know, there has never been a single formal study of this issue as such in all of science. That is, it is just a generalized, vague assumption, something just "taken for granted"....
Notwithstanding, there seem to be things in the world which are not materially-based (e.g., the "informational" -- physical laws themselves and also worldviews, which often furnish an undisclosed premise on which research and analysis are based); and then there are others that are "physical" (e.g., vacuum fields, which are presumably not "material" in any usual sense).
One major problem I see regarding "classical" neo-Darwinist theory is that it does not take the quantum world into effect at all, nor is it otherwise the least bit interested in questioning whether there are deeper organizational levels beyond what can be "seen" -- e.g., recursive algorithms, vacuum fields, geometry, cellular automata, and suchlike -- outside of "random mutation" and "natural selection." Which, when you boil it all down, refer to processes thought to be spontaneously produced by environmental pressures -- i.e., from "inside" the visible world.
What this most reminds me of is the creation myth of the ancient Sumerians, who figured that the whole world was riding on the back of a huge sea turtle, swimming or floating in an infinite sea. Like the old Sumerians, it seems to me there are quite a few people around today who want to study the world, but they have no interest in the turtle, nor in the infinite sea.
To translate this analogy, the world is the visible, material world that materialism wants to reduce to matter and its motions. The turtle represents the physical laws and any deeper cosmic principles from which they may derive. And the infinite sea is the quantum world.
Of course, the only part of the Sumerian insight (and the directly analogous scientific materialist one) that is directly observable is the physical world. But that doesn't make the turtle or the sea "go away."
I know the analogy is a tad fanciful; but the parallels are there in my view. In the end, "classical" science wants to look at "the tip of the iceberg" and at not at the vast depths that lie beneath the surface....
FWIW, for as long as it takes this attitude, Darwinian evolutionary theory necessarily would constitute little more than a "just-so story" to my mind.
Alamo-Girl, thank you so much for your excellent posts today!
The The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition gives the following definition of "actuality": the state or fact of being actual.
In other words: what is, by contrast to what isn't.
Is that definition adequate?
Since you were using the term "manual implements" rather than saying hands or implements, I was checking the boundaries of your terminology.
Sorry if you feel distressed my that.
Corrction: the Sumerian creation story does not involve turtles, and, to some, has distinct parallels with Genesis.
http://www.geocities.com/garyweb65/creation1.html
my that = by that
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.