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 problem, been there, done that. Even had to apologize using the word testy!
I respect the work you and Alamo-Girl are doing in trying to get a mutually agreeable definition of ID.
This is getting pretty silly. Science is not subject to tinkering by non-scientists, and so has no need to have its procedures justified to the unwashed masses. Unlike most civilians, scientists are professionally required to vet their assumptions with extreme critical rigor. It is the audience that needs to come up to speed, or get lost, unlike politics, science is not dependent on winning a popularity contest amongst the under-educated masses that vote. Science has a product to offer, and the countries stupidly enough run not to buy it, fall off the map, eventually. For two obvious examples of countries that thought that politicians should examine science and improve its thought processes, try China and Russia in the last century.
I should hope the second link to be better than the first. The former points to an error. How about you just cite the title and author of a book that presents fossil evidence where is has been found? I'll go to the library and check it out.
Without apology, I do not engage in much detailed research before posting. You may be in this mostly for the hell of it. I'm in it mostly for the fun of it. I am just an ordinary observer who seeks to apprehend the difference between reasonable conjecture and immutable fact, a distinction herein demonstrably lost upon certain ones who purport to be perfessers, scientists, and the like.
Furthermore, what is a "shame" to you is of little concern to me.
You seem to be deluded in what makes up "science" and what may or may not be submitted as a scientific claim. You also seem to be incapable of recognizing the fact there are varying degrees of certitude with repect to the claims science makes, whether those claims are made by "professionals," as you call them, or the man on the street. In short, your thinking on these matters may be in need of an epistomological enema. One way or another we'll all get one, if not within the next few minutes, then within the next century. That is a scientific prediction.
Your observation shall be noted for posterity.
Without apology, I do not engage in much detailed research before posting.
Obvious to anyone. See above.
You're not an ordinary observer. You refuse to do any research of your own yet expect us to spoon-feed you the entire history of the physical sciences and put up with your militantly ignorant sniping besides. An ordinary observer might be cajoled into participating in the learning process, taking an independent interest in the subject matter, and working out the calculations for himself.
You're content to prattle on about how ignorant you are without making the slightest effort towards a resolution. There must be some explanation other than that you are a colossal tool, but I'm at a loss to formulate one.
You also seem to be incapable of recognizing the fact there are varying degrees of certitude with repect to the claims science makes, whether those claims are made by "professionals," as you call them, or the man on the street.
Define "confidence interval".
humongus placemarker
your last post: 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?
Either way though, we are going way beyond life v non-life/death in nature into cosmology - which is fine with me, btw.
To go cosmological, perhaps we could agree to our own specialized definition of "actuality" to include all corporeals and phenomenon within space/time regardless of dimensions as well as space/time itself and everything "beyond" all dimensions of space and time? That would include mathematical structures, information, Platonic forms, qualia, etc.
Or, if you would rather go back to looking only at the intelligent design hypothesis with regard to life, then perhaps we could agree to a mathematical definition for "what is life v non-life/death in nature?"
Well, in some cases, the prophecies were specific, and they did not understand the time of their visitation. Killing the prophets, when you need them, is never a good idea. Jesus made every effort to get them to understand, that for a spiritual people, his kingdom was a spiritual kingdom, but they were looking for another. Consequently, as the prophecy of Moses states, it was then given to another people, and that is spiritual christians.
Jeepers, A-G -- ain't that the truth!
You cited A. N. Whitehead: "... scientific materialism is so reduced that it cannot help but produce results whereupon the investigators pronounce their reduced view is correct because it is successful." [Itals added]
Which just begs the question: What is success? And I guess the answer to that question depends on who you ask. On the one hand, the pure theorists pursue the "open path" for the sheer love of adventure, of discovery, of the sense of being somehow married to the quest of truth. On the other, science is so brilliant in its achievements, that there are excellent scientists who think we ought to be satisfied with deriving useful, reliable "engineering solutions" to "human problems" -- which at least has the obvious benefit of practicality and utility going for it.
But it seems to me utilitarian solutions to human problems do not and can not reach to the essential problems of the human soul which, in combinatorial fashion, make the person; and the person in turn, "writ in larger letters," makes the family, the community, society, the nation, and in the final analysis the human race.
FWIW, it seems to me that science cannot provide solutions to human problems other than the "material" or physical ones. And even those to a shockingly limited degree as it turns out. (If anyone doubts this, just consider e.g., the high human poverty, morbidity, and mortality rates that persist in large parts of the world to this day. Etc.)
For the stark fact is: Science cannot defeat mortality. It cannot "cure" death. And it cannot make man "good."
All the same, man is more than his body, in the same way that the Universe is more than its material substance. JMHO FWIW.
Thanks ever so much for writing, dear Alamo-Girl!
Let me give this some more thought and get back to you. I'm ready to move on, but it's essential that we have an acceptable definition of "intelligent design" before we do so. The next several steps should be relatively easy, but our entire exercise falls apart if our definition of "intelligent design" is faulty.
And, if we are to reopen the debate on how to more narrowly define the type of features that "intelligent design" contemplates, we will need to entice PatrickHenry back into the discussion, because the primary reason I dismissed the formulation that PH proposed was because it was narrower than 'everything'..
Hey, could you please repost that definition of "Intelligent Design" that we began with as one of our reference points. I think it was from the Discovery Institute. I could go back and find it, but it's buried deep in my comments list by now and you probably have it on hand.
It's not for lack of worship of your Science god, that they had problems. It was for lack of a humane Philosophy.
Do these chaps have anywhere even close to a good enough view of "macro" evolution to back up this kind of claim? They're saying they believe this is what happened, now can they back up this claim with the observation of the bulk of the "evolved" progression of species? Or is this a procrustean bed into which all scenarios of "evolution" must be forced?
"confidence interval" = the amount of time suckers spend believing the theory of evolution.
No, I'm not, and I don't believe there is anything I have posted that remotely suggests that I'm not aware that "there are varying degrees of certitude" of scientific claims. What else do you think I could possibly mean when I point out that there is no such thing as proof in a natural science.
whether those claims are made by "professionals," as you call them, or the man on the street. In short, your thinking on these matters may be in need of an epistomological enema. One way or another we'll all get one, if not within the next few minutes, then within the next century. That is a scientific prediction.
Long on pompous hot air, short on sense.
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.