Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Introduction: The Illusion of Design [Richard Dawkins]
Natural History Magazine ^ | November 2005 | Richard Dawkins

Posted on 12/07/2005 3:31:28 AM PST by snarks_when_bored

Introduction: The Illusion of Design

By Richard Dawkins

The world is divided into things that look as though somebody designed them (wings and wagon-wheels, hearts and televisions), and things that just happened through the unintended workings of physics (mountains and rivers, sand dunes, and solar systems).

Mount Rushmore belonged firmly in the second category until the sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved it into the first. Charles Darwin moved in the other direction. He discovered a way in which the unaided laws of physics—the laws according to which things “just happen”—could, in the fullness of geologic time, come to mimic deliberate design. The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion. To such people, if a heart (or an eye or a bacterial flagellum) looks designed, that’s proof enough that it is designed.

No wonder Thomas Henry Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog,” was moved to chide himself on reading the Origin of Species: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.” And Huxley was the least stupid of men.

Charles Darwin discovered a way in which the unaided laws of physics could, in the fullness of geologic time, come to mimic deliberate design.

The breathtaking power and reach of Darwin’s idea—extensively documented in the field, as Jonathan Weiner reports in “Evolution in Action”—is matched by its audacious simplicity. You can write it out in a phrase: nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary instructions for building embryos. Yet, given the opportunities afforded by deep time, this simple little algorithm generates prodigies of complexity, elegance, and diversity of apparent design. True design, the kind we see in a knapped flint, a jet plane, or a personal computer, turns out to be a manifestation of an entity—the human brain—that itself was never designed, but is an evolved product of Darwin’s mill.

Paradoxically, the extreme simplicity of what the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett called Darwin’s dangerous idea may be its greatest barrier to acceptance. People have a hard time believing that so simple a mechanism could deliver such powerful results.

The arguments of creationists, including those creationists who cloak their pretensions under the politically devious phrase “intelligent-design theory,” repeatedly return to the same big fallacy. Such-and-such looks designed. Therefore it was designed.

Many people cannot bear to think that they are cousins not just of chimpanzees and monkeys, but of tapeworms, spiders, and bacteria. The unpalatability of a proposition, however, has no bearing on its truth.

To pursue my paradox, there is a sense in which the skepticism that often greets Darwin’s idea is a measure of its greatness. Paraphrasing the twentieth-century population geneticist Ronald A. Fisher, natural selection is a mechanism for generating improbability on an enormous scale. Improbable is pretty much a synonym for unbelievable. Any theory that explains the highly improbable is asking to be disbelieved by those who don’t understand it.

Yet the highly improbable does exist in the real world, and it must be explained. Adaptive improbability—complexity—is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve and that natural selection, uniquely as far as science knows, does solve. In truth, it is intelligent design that is the biggest victim of the argument from improbability. Any entity capable of deliberately designing a living creature, to say nothing of a universe, would have to be hugely complex in its own right.

If, as the maverick astronomer Fred Hoyle mistakenly thought, the spontaneous origin of life is as improbable as a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and having the luck to assemble a Boeing 747, then a divine designer is the ultimate Boeing 747. The designer’s spontaneous origin ex nihilo would have to be even more improbable than the most complex of his alleged creations. Unless, of course, he relied on natural selection to do his work for him! And in that case, one might pardonably wonder (though this is not the place to pursue the question), does he need to exist at all?

The achievement of nonrandom natural selection is to tame chance. By smearing out the luck, breaking down the improbability into a large number of small steps—each one somewhat improbable but not ridiculously so—natural selection ratchets up the improbability.

Darwin himself expressed dismay at the callousness of natural selection: “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!”

As the generations unfold, ratcheting takes the cumulative improbability up to levels that—in the absence of the ratcheting—would exceed all sensible credence.

Many people don’t understand such nonrandom cumulative ratcheting. They think natural selection is a theory of chance, so no wonder they don’t believe it! The battle that we biologists face, in our struggle to convince the public and their elected representatives that evolution is a fact, amounts to the battle to convey to them the power of Darwin’s ratchet—the blind watchmaker—to propel lineages up the gentle slopes of Mount Improbable.

The misapplied argument from improbability is not the only one deployed by creationists. They are quite fond of gaps, both literal gaps in the fossil record and gaps in their understanding of what Darwinism is all about. In both cases the (lack of) logic in the argument is the same. They allege a gap or deficiency in the Darwinian account. Then, without even inquiring whether intelligent design suffers from the same deficiency, they award victory to the rival “theory” by default. Such reasoning is no way to do science. But science is precisely not what creation “scientists,” despite the ambitions of their intelligent-design bullyboys, are doing.

In the case of fossils, as Donald R. Prothero documents in “The Fossils Say Yes” [see the print issue], today’s biologists are more fortunate than Darwin was in having access to beautiful series of transitional stages: almost cinematic records of evolutionary changes in action. Not all transitions are so attested, of course—hence the vaunted gaps. Some small animals just don’t fossilize; their phyla are known only from modern specimens: their history is one big gap. The equivalent gaps for any creationist or intelligent-design theory would be the absence of a cinematic record of God’s every move on the morning that he created, for example, the bacterial flagellar motor. Not only is there no such divine videotape: there is a complete absence of evidence of any kind for intelligent design.

Absence of evidence for is not positive evidence against, of course. Positive evidence against evolution could easily be found—if it exists. Fisher’s contemporary and rival J.B.S. Haldane was asked by a Popperian zealot what would falsify evolution. Haldane quipped, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.” No such fossil has ever been found, of course, despite numerous searches for anachronistic species.

There are other barriers to accepting the truth of Darwinism. Many people cannot bear to think that they are cousins not just of chimpanzees and monkeys, but of tapeworms, spiders, and bacteria. The unpalatability of a proposition, however, has no bearing on its truth. I personally find the idea of cousinship to all living species positively agreeable, but neither my warmth toward it, nor the cringing of a creationist, has the slightest bearing on its truth.

Even without his major theoretical achievements, Darwin would have won lasting recognition as an experimenter.

The same could be said of political or moral objections to Darwinism. “Tell children they are nothing more than animals and they will behave like animals.” I do not for a moment accept that the conclusion follows from the premise. But even if it did, once again, a disagreeable consequence cannot undermine the truth of a premise. Some have said that Hitler founded his political philosophy on Darwinism. This is nonsense: doctrines of racial superiority in no way follow from natural selection, properly understood. Nevertheless, a good case can be made that a society run on Darwinian lines would be a very disagreeable society in which to live. But, yet again, the unpleasantness of a proposition has no bearing on its truth.

Huxley, George C. Williams, and other evolutionists have opposed Darwinism as a political and moral doctrine just as passionately as they have advocated its scientific truth. I count myself in that company. Science needs to understand natural selection as a force in nature, the better to oppose it as a normative force in politics. Darwin himself expressed dismay at the callousness of natural selection: “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!”

In spite of the success and admiration that he earned, and despite his large and loving family, Darwin’s life was not an especially happy one. Troubled about genetic deterioration in general and the possible effects of inbreeding closer to home, as James Moore documents in “Good Breeding,” [see print issue], and tormented by illness and bereavement, as Richard Milner’s interview with the psychiatrist Ralph Colp Jr. shows in “Darwin’s Shrink,” Darwin’s achievements seem all the more. He even found the time to excel as an experimenter, particularly with plants. David Kohn’s and Sheila Ann Dean’s essays (“The Miraculous Season” and “Bee Lines and Worm Burrows” [see print issue]) lead me to think that, even without his major theoretical achievements, Darwin would have won lasting recognition as an experimenter, albeit an experimenter with the style of a gentlemanly amateur, which might not find favor with modern journal referees.

As for his major theoretical achievements, of course, the details of our understanding have moved on since Darwin’s time. That was particularly the case during the synthesis of Darwinism with Mendelian digital genetics. And beyond the synthesis, as Douglas J. Futuyma explains in “On Darwin’s Shoulders,” [see print issue] and Sean B. Carroll details further for the exciting new field of “evo-devo” in “The Origins of Form,” Darwinism proves to be a flourishing population of theories, itself undergoing rapid evolutionary change.

In any developing science there are disagreements. But scientists—and here is what separates real scientists from the pseudoscientists of the school of intelligent design—always know what evidence it would take to change their minds. One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun. It is not a theory, and for pity’s sake, let’s stop confusing the philosophically naive by calling it so. Evolution is a fact.

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins, a world-renowned explicator of Darwinian evolution, is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, where he was educated. Dawkins’s popular books about evolution and science include The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 1976), The Blind Watchmaker (W.W. Norton, 1986), Climbing Mount Improbable (W.W. Norton, 1996), and most recently, The Ancestor’s Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), which retells the saga of evolution in a Chaucerian mode.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: biology; crevolist; darwin; dawkins; evolution; intelligentdesign; mireckiwhatmirecki; paleontology; religion; richarddawkins; science
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 741-760761-780781-800 ... 1,001-1,002 next last
To: snarks_when_bored; Alamo-Girl; betty boop
[ Do you have not even an ounce of respect anywhere in your body for the idea of evidence? You're telling a fairy story as if it were settled fact, but there's just no evidence for it. And even if it were true, how could you possibly know that it's true? Wake up...hone your critical faculties a bit...ask for a little evidence before you commit yourself to believing something... ]

Science is known for past and fairly current fairy storys.. A mere one hundred years ago and after that.. medical doctors gave ladinum(opium and mercury(ous) compounds) as "healing agents".. And today if people got cured it would hurt the Pharm industry bottom line..

Honeing spiritual skills might be more useful to both of us.. But then you have no idea of my critical faculties.. we just met, kinda.. A little more honeing could never hurt though all around... point accepted..

I stand by what I said.. on WHY you were born.. mee too..

761 posted on 12/09/2005 4:49:22 PM PST by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 760 | View Replies]

To: hosepipe
But then you have no idea of my critical faculties..

You are correct about that. I was responding simply to the few words you'd addressed to me in your previous posts.

But, again, you might well be correct in your assessment that humans were placed here on Earth to fulfill some sort of spiritual testing purpose, but the fact remains that there is not a scintilla of empirical evidence to support that view, and so to believe it is to believe something for which there is no empirical evidence.

A story may be coherent without being true.

762 posted on 12/09/2005 4:58:47 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 761 | View Replies]

To: snarks_when_bored; betty boop
[ But, again, you might well be correct in your assessment that humans were placed here on Earth to fulfill some sort of spiritual testing purpose, but the fact remains that there is not a scintilla of empirical evidence to support that view, and so to believe it is to believe something for which there is no empirical evidence. ]

I Spent a lifetime chaseing empirical evidence.. What did I find.?. More questions.. Questions seem to generate more questions..

Made me feel like Sysephus(googleable data)..
Thats simply not good enough for a fullfilled human life..

Comes a time in a persons life when they need answers.. and questions are acidic..
Hopefully sooner than later..

Life cannot be reduced to cute couplets.. Reality don't ride on questions or answers..
Reality is simple.. and sometimes not intelligent..

763 posted on 12/09/2005 5:53:04 PM PST by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 762 | View Replies]

To: hosepipe

Hey, what is that hosepipe connected to, anyway?? (laugh)


764 posted on 12/09/2005 6:01:44 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 763 | View Replies]

To: snarks_when_bored; hosepipe; Alamo-Girl; marron; Physicist; js1138; b_sharp; aNYCguy; ...
A story may be coherent without being true.

Then again, a story might be true without its being coherent -- from our point of view.

When that sort of thing happens, that ought to tell us we are in dire need of a larger context, leading to a deeper perspective, from which we might safely and truthfully regard the merits of the contending arguments.

To sound an old theme here: The scientific method can only take us so far WRT the "larger context."

I've so much enjoyed your recent posts, snarks. You do great work. (IMHO FWIW)

765 posted on 12/09/2005 6:05:02 PM PST by betty boop (Dominus illuminatio mea.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 762 | View Replies]

To: snarks_when_bored; hosepipe; Alamo-Girl
Hey, what is that hosepipe connected to, anyway?? (laugh)

You might be surprised, snarks. But 'til you know for sure, I'd suggest a little more "reticence" on your part.

Kindness, courtesy, and civility to our fellow man are still all virtues in my book.

But then I'm so "old-fashioned" that you'd probably regard me as some species of dinosaur. Truly, I am "paleo-" in certain regards....

Or you could say: orthodox.

Whatever. Please "make nice" with my friends?

766 posted on 12/09/2005 6:10:44 PM PST by betty boop (Dominus illuminatio mea.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 764 | View Replies]

To: betty boop; hosepipe
bb, when I wrote to hosepipe that "a story may be coherent without being true", I intentionally omitted the converse ("a story may be true without being coherent"). Why? Because religious stories are for the most part quite coherent (hence their wide appeal). The problem with religious stories is not their coherence but rather their truth.

In the search for what's going on around us, I prefer the bottom up method, beginning from what we can experience (and experiment with) and moving outwards from there as best we can at a measured pace. Many people aren't satisfied with such a procedure; it doesn't give them the answers to the 'big' questions that they crave to have answered. For my part, I'd prefer to say "I don't know" rather than to try to manufacture belief in an answer for which there's little or no evidence.

With regard to your closing comment, you're much too kind (blush). Take care...

767 posted on 12/09/2005 6:23:17 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 765 | View Replies]

To: snarks_when_bored
[ Hey, what is that hosepipe connected to, anyway?? (laugh) ]

MoonEagle Central.. we eat Moonbats.. they be good..

768 posted on 12/09/2005 6:24:02 PM PST by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 764 | View Replies]

To: betty boop; hosepipe
hosepipe and bb: lighthearted fun, please be assured! But I'll confess that my sense of humor sometimes gets away from me. No offense intended, ever. (If I ever intend to offend, the recipient rarely fails to notice.)

Best regards in all ways...

769 posted on 12/09/2005 6:27:28 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 766 | View Replies]

To: hosepipe

That explains it all! (laugh)


770 posted on 12/09/2005 6:35:14 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 768 | View Replies]

To: snarks_when_bored; Alamo-Girl; betty boop; cornelis
[ I prefer the bottom up method, beginning from what we can experience (and experiment with) and moving outwards from there as best we can at a measured pace. ]

Me too snarks.. I lived my life that way, and made a living that way too.. and more..

THEN, one dark stormy night, the wind screamed like a Harpy Eagle killing a Howler Monkey.. I addressed God, or what I thought might be God if there was one.. And challenged "it" (surely god has no gender).. to make itself known to me.. NOTHING HAPPENED.. immediately.. so I went on my way considering myself stupid and weak (in that moment)..

{snip}

To wit, the drooling MoonEagle you see before you..
CAUTION: Don't do the same.. Starting all over again can be a scary thing..

771 posted on 12/09/2005 6:44:46 PM PST by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 767 | View Replies]

To: tortoise
But if we observe that lower order expression, it is nearly impossible to discern the higher order algorithm that generated it even in toy cases where very little information is involved.

As a "practical" example, trying to discern the hyperspatial expression for the interaction potential for two molecules, solely from the experiemental scattering information, can be a pain in the ass to say the least...

...even aside from the difficulties of fitting a functional form that behaves in the way you want.

Cheers!

772 posted on 12/09/2005 8:04:40 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 622 | View Replies]

To: Doctor Stochastic
There are also observations that don't disturb the object.

OK, I'll bite. Like when Schrödinger's Cat looks at it?

Seriously, though, I've imbibed some Pumpkin Ale (left over from Thanksgiving) and it's slowed my recall. Examples of this on a quantum scale object?

773 posted on 12/09/2005 8:09:06 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 626 | View Replies]

To: Doctor Stochastic
From PDQ Bach's "The Seasonings" Schickle Number 1/2 tsp.

...If you wish to hear how your composition would sound if the composer knew that Brahms had the hots for his wife, press six. :-)

774 posted on 12/09/2005 8:12:14 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 629 | View Replies]

To: caffe
Some true theorems can never be proven true and they are called BELIEVE IT OR NOT - Supernatural Theorems.

Thanks for that post.

Time to throw some Belloc into the mix.

"...the absolute powers ascribed to reason [would] lead to the exclusion of truths which the reason might accept but could not demonstrate."

From The Great Heresies, IIRC.

Cheers!

775 posted on 12/09/2005 8:17:05 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 634 | View Replies]

To: edsheppa
Duh. I meant a polarizer oriented at 45 degrees - obviously the horizontal polarizer will block the light.

I sentence you to go read Dorothy L. Sayers' superb mystery The Documents in the Case.

A mureder mystery involving a racemic mixture of muscarine instead of the expected L-rotatory form.

All wrapped up with a portrait painter, a demented spinster, a newlywed couple, and old school chums.

And published in 1930.

Cheers!

776 posted on 12/09/2005 8:20:48 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 637 | View Replies]

To: Right Wing Professor
in fact, any algorithm that purported to predict the result to better than 50% accuracy would violate the uncertainty principle.

...slightly confusing choice of words to this beer drinker tonight, given that there is a 50% chance for either slit.

But after reading it three times and having another swig I figured it out. :-)

Cheers!

777 posted on 12/09/2005 8:22:45 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 640 | View Replies]

To: Alamo-Girl
There is neither form nor autonomy in the void. There is only existence, and (because there is no autonomy in the void) - only the single existence, which can only be God. We know there must be existence because there was a first cause that was not caused. Thus we know God is transcendent.

This is frightenly reminiscent of what I have been reading recently in a translation of Aquinas' Shorter Summa: "...From all this it is evident that God exists always. For whatever necessarily exists, always exists; it is impossible for a that that has no possibility of not being, not to be. Hence such a thing is never without existence. But it is necessary for God to be, as has been shown. Therefore God exists always. Again, nothing begins to be or ceases to be except through motion or change. But God is absolutely immutable, as has been proved. Therefore it is impossible for Him ever to have begun or to cease to be. Likewise, if anything that has not always existed begins to be, it needs some cause for its existence. Nothing brings itself forth from potency to act or from non-being to being..."

Cheers!

778 posted on 12/09/2005 8:32:02 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 649 | View Replies]

To: js1138
The assumption that all things have causes is based on experience. It holds true at the ordinary level of perception, but fails at the quantum level. So the shoe is on the other foot. Our very best and most careful observations contradict the assumption of causation. We cannot reasonably assert that causation is axiomatic.

Just to stir the pot; feel free to chime in, everyone.

How do you tie this in with the Complementarity Principle?

779 posted on 12/09/2005 8:39:00 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 662 | View Replies]

To: js1138
Experience at the quantum level diverges from experience at the macro level.

And by the way, we don't experience at the quantum level anyway, Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage and the Fairly Oddparents climactic battle between Timmy and Mr. Crocker in Abracatastrophe! notwithstanding.

Just to cheese you off, we don't OBSERVE quantum effects, either. We infer them from observations of macroscopic instruments. ;-)

Cheers!

780 posted on 12/09/2005 8:42:28 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 666 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 741-760761-780781-800 ... 1,001-1,002 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson