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
Do these chaps have anywhere even close to a good enough view of "macro" gravity to back up the theory of universal gravitation? The evidence, after all consists mostly of vast gaps in the intergalactic void where there is absolutely no evidence of the long range effects of gravitational attraction between galaxies.
Hey, it's a lot easier to carry out gravity experiments. It's kind of hard to get a dog to evolve into a cat (and yes, the cat is the higher form, all four of mine agree).
Or even more to the point, can you crank in all the data you DO have and get better empirical support for this mathematical model than for any other possibility? You can sure do that for gravitational attraction, from small to large gaps and everything in between.
What is so inhumane about "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need"? It sounds like lots of things Jesus says in the bible. There was near-famine in Russia, twice, on account of using the principles of Lysenko-ism, instead of Darwinism, to improve corn and wheat genetics.
There are no universal gravity experiments. Galactic astronomy is conducted entirely on fossil evidence left over from events that occured hundreds of thousands of years ago.
What is the difference between accepting that gravity works where I can't see evidence of it, from induction on the apparent interactive behavior of the galaxies that I can see--and accepting that evolution works where I can't see evidence of it, from induction on the apparently related behaviors and forms I can see.
Well, no, you most definitely can't. The law of gravity as observed in the interactions of large bodies, only appears to account for about 10% of the matter in the universe, and to make matters worse, this discrepency is not uniformly distributed. You really have no idea what you will actually get for the measured effect of gravitation in a gap, until you luck out and have a body large enough to observe wonder into it.
This would be as opposed to the effect of evolution in its gaps, literally thousands of which said gaps have been successfully predicted-and-then-found by the continuity of the morphology of forms on either side of the supposed gap.
A pure admission not unknown to science. I take it as a given. I assume it, if you will. Those who prattle on about science without admitting to ignorance exclude themselves from being taken seriously.
Thanks, but I prefer to lurk this one out, still for the reasons I gave back in post 1894. Your current definition of ID -- which isn't binding on the Discovery Institute even if I did like it -- fails to satisfy me because, inter alia, it isn't restricted to things that are "otherwise inexplicable" and it states that things "are explained" by ID, rather than that they "may be explained" by ID. So as it stands, your version of ID is less of a scientific hypothesis and more of a declaration of dogma. It's mysticism -- a wishy-washy version that won't come out of the closet and admit that it's creationism.
It seems to me that the propositions "1 +1 = 2" and "the earth is some 4.5 billion years old" are made and accepted by many in this forum as if they were to be granted equal certitude; as if they were both a "matter of fact." Does science deal in matters of fact or not? If you want to say science has no business dealing in matters of fact or proof; no business seeking out, knowing, and teaching truths, then you and your hearers are subject to universe of fantasy no more grounded in science than any other source of presumed knowledge. Anything goes where fact and conjecture have an equal footing.
To maintain on the one hand that science deals in "matters of fact," and then on the other hand to deny that it deals in matters of fact or proof, is truly to engage in the delight of eating one's cake and having it, too. Those who posess a small amount of common sense are happy to pull on that goofy mask and let it smack back into the face of those who promote folly while dressed in the garb of science.
It is painfully apparent that dogmatic evolutionists have difficulty accepting and expressing the fact there are varying degrees of certitude in the faith they hold dear, their practice of logic being de-testicled under the strain of semantic gymnastics.
Long on pompous hot air, short on sense.
Hehe. I am not the one filling the world with books to explain away the obvious fact that the heavens and the earth demonstrate more design, intelligence, and order than unguided process like natural selection and random mutation. That label and libel belongs elsewhere.
I was always taught to raise an eyebrow at a definition that used within it the word in question. I sense some of the same thing with the definition of intelligent design that has been devised. It is weakened because by saying that reality is explained "by an intelligent cause."
If one takes a definition of "design" alone, what is the result.
The applicable merriam-webster definitions of the noun design are:
1b:... deliberate purposive planning5a:... an underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding : PATTERN, MOTIF
Carrying on in the same vein we have this applicable portion of Merriam-Webster's definition of intelligence:
1 a (1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : REASON; also : the skilled use of reason (2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)
Intelligent design appears to = "underlying, grand patterns brought about by intentional, reasoned manipulation of the environment"
If you had anything to say other than "creationist liar", I would welcome that as well. But keep it on the thread, not in Freepmail.
So, it would seem that PatrickHenry and Alamo-Girl may have irreconcilable differences, with a very poor mediator between them (my mediation skills usually amount to telling someone to f*** off!) Nonetheless, once Alamo-Girl replies then those items you raise could very well get reopened, because if we are to narrow the definition in any way then it remains to be determined to what degree it is to be narrowed. I am patient here; let's build us a 7000 post thread! =)
I suggest PH takes his Theory to a court of law where it would have to be judged on facts. He loses. Must be an exciting life eating, sleeping, breathing, and farting evolution. This may be how "boring" evolved!
And while he's here I can explain to him that this is not 17th Century England where folks with opinions about "royalty" posted in public get their heads cut off for "libel". I'd be happy to discuss American jurisprudence and the First Amendment while he's here as well.
What do you mean here? Easier or more accurate? They are both equally easy to predict.
This must mean something other than trying to predict the outcomes of a toss. In that case, it's much more accurate to predict the outcomes of many coins than of one. A short stroll along Las Vegas Blvd should be convincing.
you: What do you mean here? Easier or more accurate? They are both equally easy to predict.
If you are tossing a single coin, the results can be heads, tails, or sitting on its edge.
But if you have a pocketful of change, the number of possibilites per coin does not change - but you must first count the number of coins and then figure all possible permutations according to geometry as they may fall, i.e. the coins may fall in a straight line, in bunches or stacked, etc.
I didn't notice this posted earlier. Not looking to debate, but for the record, I consider all three premises as quite false. In fact, the first two should be well on their way to achievement within the next century (a couple centuries at most) and the third as well within this next millennium.
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