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
Most scientists I know don't care enough about religion even to call themselves atheists.
I call myself an atheist because I do not practice a religion, don't pray (even in dire straits), and my mental pitcure of the universe does not include a deity. I don't do any of these things because in my experience religious practice is a waste of time, I see no evidence that prayer by me or anyone else works, and because a deity has no explanatory or predictive power. Atheist is a short and reasonably accurate label. If a supernatural being appearted tomorrow and said 'Hi, I'm God', having discounted trickery and hallucinations I'd certainly change my view, though I'd be more inclined to study said being than worship him. You can call this agnostic or atheist or anything you want; I don't see anything fruitful in a discussion about the particular mode in which people don't believe in a deity.
Christianity has entertained itelf for two millenia by dividing itself into hundreds of feuding sects, often based on the most idiotic minutiae of doctrine; but Christians shouldn't assume that the non-religious share the same fascination with hair-splitting about the ineffable.
I'd avoid discussion of religion altogether if religious people stayed out of my space; if they stopped trying to force their supernatural ideas into science; and if they stopped denigrating those who don't happen to share their view of the Universe (e.g. by asking if 'atheists can be intellectually fulfilled', by suggesting that atheists are inherently amoral, etc.). My parents were, and one of my brothers' wives is religious; I don't denigrate their beliefs, and I respect their intellect. I don't go asking if their Christianity is attended by some intellectual defect. Why are so many religious people unable to muster up the same level of tolerance?
That would be, the wife of one of my brothers. He isn't polygamist, at least to my knowledge :-)
I don't disagree with anything you've said here. My children have children of their own. Some go to public school some to Catholic school.
You do understand though that you've made a persusasive argument for those in Cobb County, Ga who wish to put a disclaimer in their biology book, right?
Perhaps he's English, and you're American, and the term has some different nuances over there?
It is when used in the smallpox metaphor.
The label "atheist" much like other labels is a neon flashing bulls-eye on various threads around here.
Seems to me that the ones who do not see "Does God exist?" as a proposition - the ones who don't know and don't care - would be much better off ignoring posts where the word "atheism" is used.
IMHO, the intensity for the deeply religious or irreligious (regardless of flavor) is that reality for us is framed by our understanding and thus all affronts are of the highest order.
Even the scientific materialists aka empirical naturalists aka methodological naturalists may prioritize that ideology above all else in their sense of reality. For such as these, I would not be surprised if affronts to the ideology were taken viscerally as well.
Perhaps but as I've stated before I don't base my opinion on selected quotes and thus I don't look at that quote in a vacuum. But I'm sure Ed has sent him a link to this thread and he's certainly welcome to explain or correct any time he pleases.
No it's not. Read the interview in its entirety, post 2043 gives a link. He equates religion with a virus. He didn't say he wanted to inoculate humans, he said he wanted to "stamp out" the virus. The virus is the subject, the verb he chose is synonymous with extinguish, annihilate, crush, boot heel.
You can't urinate down my leg and tell me it's April showers js.
I'll extend the guy the courtesy of thinking he misspoke or the Professors notion that somehow stamped out has a different colloquial meaning in Britain but I'm not buying the other crap.
In fact, I think I'm done here. This particular horse is as tender as it gets, the weather is getting nicer and duty calls. Till next time Kemo Sabes, adios.
No. I've made a case for their right to try, using the legal system and politics.
And I will oppose them by the same means, just as I oppose anyone who teaches something I believe to be wrong and harmful. I am not a conservative by birth or by education or by party affiliation or by social convenience. I care deeply about my children and the world they will inherit. I have personal reasons for opposing the anti-evolutionists. I will not go into this, but I have a huge number of close relatives having a wide variety of faiths. I am not impressed by the products of fundamentalist education.
Is English a second language for you? Read your sentence.
I grew up in England and Ireland. In England, in particular, 'stamp out' is used in contexts from 'stamp our racism', where they really might mean state action, to 'credit-card companies should stamp out deceptive practices', where they're referring to voluntary behavior. And everything in between. It really just means 'end' or 'eliminate', without any necessary condition of compulsion.
LOL. Is that why *everyone* on this thread completely disagrees with you on the Dawkins issue?
You and G3K heavily engage in "master-debation": arguing for your own versions of reality, completely impervious to reason.
Your credibility has reached rock bottom. Perhaps you should consider posting in blue.
Really? Galileo had a spaceship that allowed him to travel into space and actually observe this? Nobody has actually directly observed the motion of the earth around the sun. It is inferred from other observations, just as most theories and laws in science are.
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.
I am vetoing the idea of narrowing the definition at this stage. We require a definition that will cover any hypothesis that may be classified as an "intelligent design" hypothesis and the above seems to qualify. Now, you asked for a definition of "actuality" and I provided the following dictionary definition:
actuality: the state or fact of being actual.
Then, you responded:
That definition doesn't help because it is inherently vague. It puts us back to the question of "what is all that there is?" - or in the short form, "what is reality?".
To which, I would say: So what? You don't require answers to those questions to classify a hypothesis, and that's all we're doing.
You then continue:
Either way though, we are going way beyond life v non-life/death in nature into cosmology - which is fine with me, btw.
Excellent! Then so it shall be.
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.
That is not a "specialized" definition of actuality. Actuality covers all that there is, and if those things exist, then they are inherently included. If they don't, then they are properly excluded.
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?"
No, I am not interested in expanding the boundaries of our inquiry, and the above is unnecessary.
So, are we finally settled on our working definition?
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.
If so, then we can move onward. As far as I'm concerned, we can agree to revisit this definition as we proceed, and determine at that time if it would be preferable to narrow it.
You are free to delude yourselves into reading ID into my descriptions, but my viewpoint is the very antithesis of everything ID stands for.
Einstein declared himself a socialist in his writings. Does that have any bearing whatsoever on his science?
Well, I would, because Marxism is totalizing. I think Gould and Lewontin allowed their Marxism to influence their science. Scientific integrity is a bourgeois value.
That's very poetically put. We don't often enough try to capture in our words the 'grandeur in this view of life', that Darwin pointed out.
With viral diseases, stamping out means immunization of the host population. Perhaps this is a rude phrase to apply to an idea or a religion, but it is non-violent and, in our country, non-coersive.
I might add that the Soviet Union invested 70 years trying to stamp out religion by coersive means and failed utterly. Dawkins' phrase is unfortunate for its counterproductive tone and for its implication that some sort of active resistence to religion would be successful. Religions, by and large, feed on persecution and the perception of persecution. What offends them most is being ignored, as by science. What offends them most of all is competetive ideas that produce cool things like immunization from disease.
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