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 dont yet know; that which we dont 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 isnt 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 cant 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 scientists rejoicing in uncertainty. Todays scientist in America dare not say: Hm, interesting point. I wonder how the weasel frogs ancestors did evolve their elbow joint. Ill 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 readers 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 dont know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You dont understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please dont go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, dont work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Dont squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is Gods 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 Ancestors Tale
What external forces? And please don't change the meaning of the word force - the accepted definition is perfectly fine.
Yes he considered it incomplete but I think it is fair to say, as I did, that Einstein never reconciled himself to the reality of QM. He didn't want to give up determinism and locality - philosophically he could not completely accept a theory that didn't have them.
Under what conditions do the different snow crystal types form? |
This is a key point for understanding snow crystals. By growing snow crystals in the laboratory under controlled conditions, one finds that snow crystals grow in different forms depending on the temperature and humidity in which the crystal grows. This behavior is summarized in a "morphology diagram," which gives the crystal shape under different conditions. From this diagram, we see that the crystal shape depends mainly on temperature. The growth changes from plates around -2 C to columns near -5 C, to plates again near -15 C, and to a combination of plates and columns around -30 C. |
Why do snow crystals form such complex shapes in the first place? |
Snow crystal shapes depend on a delicate combination of faceting and branching. These are explained further in Crystal Faceting and Snowflake Branching. |
Why do snow crystals grow differently at different temperatures? |
This is still not known, believe it or not. The different ice facets grow at different rates in different temperatures, and to date we don't really know why the growth rates depend so strongly on temperature. The growth depends on exactly how water vapor molecules are incorporated into the growing ice crystal, and the physics behind this is quite complex and not well understood. It is the subject of current research in my lab and elsewhere. |
Certainly you can have correlation without causation, but can you cite an example of causation without correlation?
The examples you cite are post selection.
I'm sorry, you said external forces. I see no external forces mentioned.
I will propose a merger of our various alternatives:
Intelligence - abstract comprehension, experiential awareness, and reasoned purpose whether fractal, emergent, or otherwise.
That would work great in my view.
PS. And, to modify that very slightly, I would insert "calculation" or "intentionality" where we both have "purpose" above (to distinguish from "purpose" in the sense of exhibiting utility or function).
Given the assumptions with which you operate and the evidence presented to your senses and reason, it is no surprise to me that you find the theory of evolution to be a simple explanation. I do, too. Copernicus' idea was not "simple" where direct sense and reason is concerned. That is in large part why he and his successors had to fight an uphill battle against the scientific conservatism of the day.
As for ascribing the word "conservative" to science, in certain respects this is obviously the case. In other respects it is not. As further evidence of intelligent design I would like to point out the capacity for human language to make use of the same word yet apply it with different meanings and still communicate an idea.
Incidentally, that is why reports of similar genetic material between man and monkey need not be interpreted as if the former is necessarily derived from the latter in history. Human language, as common and simple as it might appear to science, has yet to be fully explored by science, yet it allows the same word to have entirely different meanings depending on context. It would not surpise me in the least to find out that the biochemical world demonstrates the same attribute of variable expressions emanating from the same molecular substance.
Why do you think I or anyone should find that convincing?
If by "convincing" you mean "conclusive," "provable," "unfalsifiable," and the like, then I would not expect as much. Given the information that has come my way, namely that God created man in His image, it stands to reason that man would bear the imprint of creativity, which he does. Having been told that God spoke the creation into existence, it stands to reason that man, if created in the image of God, would also bear the imprint of speech that is instrumental in causing change.
Analogy is not science.
No, but science often makes use of analogy to express its ideas.
I'm curious, what do you say to people who would claim that God is made in man's image? Analogy works both ways you know.
No one has ever attempted to communicate such a thing to me in so many words, but there are a good many reports of people who make up their own gods, or try to make God say something He has not said.
If someone were to say "God is made in man's image" I would probably ask what makes them believe as much. As far as my personal observations go, the universe often demonstrates a line of progression from source to product. "God," by the language of human convention, is a source, not a product.
I'll do that, A-G, and ASAP. I am still a little "bogged down" with a project, probably for the next couple of weeks. As soon as I can free up time to write, that will be my topic. I'm already gathering my sources....
Thank you so much for your kind words of encouragement!
I'm interested in both your thoughts on the subject...
Questions of meaning with respect to the natural world external to humans have no basis. Obviously, since humans are volitional, questions of meaning have a basis.
Contrast 'why did you do that?', which is completely different from 'how did you do that?'; but 'why did the earthquake occur?' really means little more than 'how did the earthquake occur?'.
If atheists say "there is no God," then it seems to me they are hoist on the same petard as their "banished" God; for such an assertion renders not only God meaningless, but also the atheist as well. And everything else in the world for that matter, especially including human reason.
Let's follow the course of the fallacy as it develops, boys and girls. Here we transition from a reasonably well-formed statement
questions 'why' pertaining to the natural world have no meaning, or are really questions 'how'
to
a person has no meaning.
Of course a person is not a question, and so this is an unwarranted generalization from the specific category of questions to (at least) questions+ human beings. And of course, if we move to specific instances, the speciousness is transparent. What is the meaning of Howard Dean?
And to say that man and everything else is meaningless seems to be the statement of a blind man. For you just have to walk around in the world to see that men are motivated by what is meaningful to them. If there is no meaning, then all men are thus deluded and delusional. (Including atheists -- that is, if they deliberately choose to pursue activities that are important, i.e., meaningful to them.)
Step two of the fallacy. First generalize from questions to questions + people, and now narrow from people to 'questions of people'. It's not a warranted or logically justified extension either, but it's necessary, because otherwise the claim that 'questions about people's motivation are meaningless' would be simply a naked assertion.
The rest, following from the above analyzed piece of logical legerdemain, is specious, because it rests on specious assumpmtions. I do not assert that 'why' is a meaningless question when it applies to human action; nor do I claim that humans are not volitional. In both instances I claim the opposite. And if one wants to show that these two statements follow from my original statement, one will have to do better than this.
For Lurkers: in post 2316, I contrasted this type of complexity to self-organizing complexity (from the link):
A recap for Lurkers on the definition project: we are agreed to the following definition of an intelligent design hypothesis subject to an agreement on a definition for intelligence:
Intelligence - decision-making, awareness and purpose whether fractal, emergent or otherwise.
Conversely, the word experiential would limit intelligence by experience (i.e. embodiment) which would stand in favor of fractal and against emergent intelligence.
Either adjective could also redirect this project into a discussion of the false "Cartesian split" which I don't believe we wish to do at this time.
Also, the phrase reasoned purpose doesnt get the point of intentionality across, as you say, and IMHO doesnt give enough weight to property of decision-making or reasoning.
My counter-proposal:
Intelligence - comprehension, awareness, intentionality, and reasoning whether fractal, emergent, or otherwise.
That attributes the intention and reason to the entity under consideration.
That also gives each of eight different complex terms one of eight different suffixes. A form of linguistic beauty that warms my heart. =)
Intelligence - comprehension, awareness, intentionality, and reasoning whether fractal, emergent, or otherwise.
Since the panspermiasts have now expanded their scope to cosmic ancestry, I suggest we do it as the panspermia/cosmic ancestry hypothesis:
Q. Why are we calling it Cosmic Ancestry now, instead of panspermia?
A. The old theory of panspermia deals with only the origin of life on Earth. The modern version adds a completely new understanding of evolution to the theory. And Cosmic Ancestry integrates the theory called Gaia, according to which life engineers its environment, into the new worldview.
Panspermia is a hypothesis that the seeds of life are prevalent throughout the Universe, and furthermore that life on Earth began by such seeds landing on Earth and propagating. The idea has its origins in the writings of Anaxagoras, but was first proposed in its modern form by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1879. Panspermia can be said to be either interstellar (between star systems) or interplanetary (between planets in the same solar system). There is as yet no compelling evidence to support or contradict it, although the consensus view holds that panspermia - especially in its interstellar form - is unlikely given the challenges of survival and transport in space.
Given your definition of intelligent design, that is a neat and tidy definition of panspermia, AG. Easily understandable and reference to your prior discussions. You have simply named the type of intelligence involved.
If panspermia is cosmic seeding, who or what are the seeders?
It could be God, "Gaia", intelligent beings putting "seeds" on probes capable of surviving space travel (or as we did when we accidentally put bacteria on the moon), some emergent (or fractal) intelligence that itself achieves velocity of matter (which carries the capability of emergence) in order to escape the gravity of its origin and protect itself in space travel.
The concept is not far afield of exogenesis, the difference is in the properties - "engineering" for emergence on the receiving end.
I understand that scientists today are considering something like this to continue life elsewhere in the cosmos as our own sun cannot survive forever.
Panspermia: a hypothesis that the seeds of life are prevalent throughout the universe, and furthermore that life on Earth began by such seeds landing on Earth and propagating.
Cosmic ancestry is (properly) defined by Wikipedia as follows.
Cosmic ancestry: An extreme form of panspermia [that] states [i]ntelligent life is neither the product of supernatural creation nor was it spontaneously generation through abiogenesis (the Origin of Life) but has always existed in the universe. Simply, intelligent life comes only from pre-existing intelligent life forms.
I will absolutely reject any effort to conflate the two or to equate panspermia with cosmic ancestry alone. Cosmic ancestry is an extreme subset of panspermia, but panspermia of its own accord makes a far different (and narrower) statement. I am open to a modified definition of "cosmic ancestry" other than that of Brig Klyce who originated the concept.
Moreover, I see no need to force any of the other definitions to conform with the definition of "intelligent design" that we have settled 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.
Each definition is its own discrete endeavor. They will be compared and contrasted at the proper juncture.
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