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
Nope. Gotta be a jock strap.
As I read this, if you aren't making a grammatical error, you are saying that many modern reform churches are not christian.
I don't do theology
At least, not very well.
Oh, the observations are there alright. The evidence is just as stong, if not stronger, for intelligent design. It amuses me in a queer way to hear an intelligently designed being tell me there is no such thing as intelligent design involved is his existence. Galileo would be rolling his eyes. The proponents of ID are the modern day Galileos, and this time folks like you are on the side of ignorance.
Given the equipment used in your discovery, I have no interest whatever in grasping it.
ROFLMAO!
I admire a man who's in touch with his insane megalomaniacal side. That inner child stuff is for wimps.
Yeah, that. :-)
An ambient fellow named Patrick,
Developed a luminal metric,
Involving marshmallows,
And plenty of pillows,
And a jock strap, quite oddly, electric.
Lots of idle time today...
Well, that's one less neighbor we have to worry about being on the list.
You're begging the question, Fester. That's a logical fallacy.
I am in awe.
The "for sale" sign is already on the front lawn.
That wouldn't include anyone I see on these threads. Some of don't have any expertise in politics, so we are mostly lurkers. But we didn't show up here the first time for the science threads.
Not when emanations from the entity with which I am communicating evidence both intelligence and design.
Step 1: Put on the jock strap.
Step 2: Eat the marshmallows.
Step 3: Now get a microwave oven, some chocolate, and a ruler ...
You apparently don't understand the concept.
I have close relatives in Kansas. I think they're fine folks, and I don't appreciate them being characterized as yokels. Dawkins probably does have an over-inflated ego, and he very well may be a big asshole. He wouldn't be the first scientist to be lacking in the personality department.
No, it's not, the book's name is "Sidereus Nuncius"--look it up yourself--it won't be too hard to find, it's one of the Great Books. Had it not been so popular, there would have been no compelling need for the Church to crack down on it.
Take the bra. Put one marshmallow in each cup. Take a ride on the space shuttle and do a space walk. While there and using the bra as a slingshot, shoot the marshmallows toward Jupiter. With each orbit take detailed measurements of the marshmallows. After a few millenia, who knows?
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