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
When I am wearing my computer scientist hat, 1 + 1 = 0 usually.
When I am wearing my numerical analyst hat, 1 + 1 generally bigger than 1 but smaller than 4; depending on the size of 1.
Therefore, by definition, where the philosophy prevails, science itself is small minded, tunnel visioned, incomplete.
Well, it is worth bearing in mind that I also reject the type of frequent assertions one sees that science cannot examine and discover the supernatural (if there's anything there to discover) or whatever else may be external to this universe's space-time for that matter. I am my own little personal Tower of Babylon! =)
For any atheist, the quality of life after physical death is zero. No wonder they are so interested in avoiding it.
I am neutral with regard to what may come after life; our minds are energy fields and it's not entirely clear what happens to them once we die. My suspicion is that they just dissipate, but we don't know for certain. However, bear in mind that whatever, if anything, may come after life is something other than life, or else it would not be after life, now would it?
Indeed, this is the only path to immortality for an atheist who is not a metaphysical naturalist.
Well, my suspicion is that if we were to achieve perpetual youth, then most people would choose to die sooner or later, but that's just my guess. However, if one wanted immortality, then that's the only path we can have any confidence about.
Moreover, I am not properly described as an atheist, but rather as an agnostic. Since I believe that the universe is not self-contained - that it was originated of, from, or by something outside of itself - and moreover that this something may have been something that we could classify as a deity, I am not properly speaking an atheist.
Finally, as I have said before, it is not that I'm convinced gods don't exist, but rather that I am convinced no gods exist that one need concern oneself with from a practical standpoint.
If I were to bet my life on it, however, I would certainly bet that there are no gods as the term is commonly understood.
To the contrary, abiogenesis (life from non-life) requires a definition of non-life v life. Likewise, how could one assert they have overcome death without a definition of life v death.
Nonetheless, the question of abiogenesis also has no great practical bearing. We are here, however we came to be here. That's the only practical definition we require in that regard.
PS. I am not ignoring your comments on defining life v non-life; I'm just not prepared/inclined to discuss them at the moment.
For very large values of one place mark.
"It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short... until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow... until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him."
So, there ya go!
I get along fine in life. People who demand that I accept their particular unproven viewpoint are frustrated, however. You post a simple terminating summation and prove my point, its result is rational. Ad Hominems prove your desperate lack of substance.
you: 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.
Jeepers, AntiGuv, forgive me for saying so, but this is nutz. How can you rationally expect that man can gain sovereign control over nature and the universe -- which seems to be what your proposal amounts to -- when he cannot even gain sovereign control over himself???
I suppose it is "pointless" to debate this issue. So consider this reply just for the record, too.
Man does not require sovereign control over the nature and the universe to achieve those things.
PS. And no, I will have to decline. I consider ignorant statements unforgivable. If there were any sign that you'd actually investigated and contemplated the matter, then I'd consider forgiving you. Sorry.
That is no more different than the probability of a needle touching a line as I have described. That has been my point all along. You can't "stop".
Beautifully put, marron. Yet it does take all kinds to make a universe, and we all have to get along.
My main point is that science does not have ALL the answers. It is one of two branches of the total episteme, the other being the so-called humanities including philosophy, theology, cosmology, psychology, et al. To me, it is the leading theoretical thinkers from both branches that make the discoveries that end up benefiting mankind.
Science cannot make man "good," but then neither can philosophy. But at least philosophy asks questions about the nature of human existence and its prospects. It engages the great questions of Life in a way that science never does. At least, not so far.
And so when folks tell me that some day science is going to "cure mortality," to abolish death, I just have to ask: How is it going to do that, when it doesn't even seem to know what Life is?
The point, which everyone gets but obtuse old you, is that the limit of the calculation gives a number well known to be irrational. Consequently rational arithmetic is not closed under that limit operation and the formula you posted contains the operation and hence it can have an irrational result.
And please try to bear in mind that a pretty sentence containing nonsense is still nonsense no matter how pretty it is.
Whew! I’m glad you clarified that you are agnostic – I was fixing to have to abandon my habit of referring to metaphysical naturalists with a parenthetical “atheists” following. It is always true that metaphysical naturalists are atheists but not necessarily true that all atheists are metaphysical naturalists though I had never met one until you.
On the other point, when you actually meet the One resurrected from the dead, Jesus Christ, then I’m confident you will understand what comes next.
One final point before we leave this sidebar discussion – it is very curious to me that you have formulated an opinion about the beginning with regard to cosmology but not with regard to life.
LOLOLOLOL!!!!!! Simply splendid, Alamo-Girl!
AntiGuv wrote in answer to the question of What is life/non-life in Nature?: "[this] is a 'meta' question with no real practical bearing. It serves to pass the time of philosophes and mystics, but achieves little more."
What is a "meta-question?" Is there some new practice whereby a person can just stick the prefix "meta" on something and find justification to avoid the subject matter altogether?
Strangely, atheists seem in a certain sense to be quite "reduced" human beings: They reduce their own possibilities by denying God and Spirit. One practical way the reduction works is by refusing to engage the most vital questions of human existence, reducing such things to epiphenomena or outright hallucinations. Any thing the atheist (and any other type of ideologue) doesn't want to think about is simply, conveniently flushed; and then he goes on his merry way, hardly suspecting that the "flushed stuff" is what most vitally pertains to his own existential being, in the here and now and beyond.
Further, it seems to me they reduce themselves when they insist on exiling God and Spirit from the universe. Of course, the very attempt is futile, since i don't think God is planning on "leaving" anytime soon. Still, the attempt to banish Him has very ill effects on the human beings seeking this end, and also on the societies that they help to constitute. FWIW.
Anyhoot, I do pray for atheists, that somehow the Grace of God will bring them to their senses.... I am sure many of them would not appreciate my little efforts on their behalf.
That is incorrect, I have most certainly formulated an opinion with regard to the beginning of life. When I sit out on my front deck and gaze at the trees and the wildlife I don't fabricate this stark disjunction with the elements surrounding them. I envision the ecosystem as but an extension of the earth, reaching up to the skies, with the same essence coursing through all of it. I regard life as an inherent extension of the properties of this universe, that perpetually attempts to organize itself even as entropy inevitably breaks it all down. Wherever the elements of the universe are arranged in such manner that they might organize organically, then they will do so, and the longer they are serendipitously graced with a stable environment, they will arrange themselves in ever more complex forms, until at some juncture they organize themselves into something like us, that can then turn around and master the less organized properties of the universe, and shape them into yet more elaborate forms and functions.
And, as it were, I do not envision mankind or any of his constructs as apart from nature and the properties of the universe itself. Whatever we are and whatever we do and whatever we make is perfectly and completely natural.
I really don't care that much what silly nonsense you want to post, but just don't ascribe it to me and we will get along OK.
I join with you in praying for all atheists and agnostics!
Your post reminds me of the challenge that you and Right Wing Professor had begun earlier on this thread - that a "fulfilled atheist" is an oxymoron.
How can one be “fulfilled” when he sees himself as an epiphenomenon of his physical brain? What is there to fill for him but his skull with a few more brain cells? And what is the point of seeking recognition at all if the man really thinks he is just an epiphenomenon of the brain?
IMHO, by denying God and Spirit the true atheist life is both shallow and meaningless.
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