Vampires, Intelligent Design and Nafta While watching parts of the movie Orange County last night, I got an idea for a sweet post about vampires, ostensibly of course, but underneath it's about the reunification of Germany... but its funny.
Anyway, I'm waiting to get some things emailed to me so I can finish up my GPTP crap- so until I get that I might throw a post or two up.
Last night, while reading The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, I came across a passage that reminded of the evolution debate over at Pragmaticism, and I'll quote-
Pinker also tries to allude that the motives behind anyone advocating an idea different than Darwinism are less than scientific. As "it is not clear whether these worldly thinkers are really convinced that Darwinism is false or whether they think it is important for other people to believe it is false," Pinker ascribes this line from Inherit the Wind (based on the Scopes Monkey Trial) to them. "They're simple people, Henry; poor people, They work hard and they need to believe in something, something beautiful. Why do you want to take it awar from them? It's all they have." Something is seriously wrong when scientific discussions degenerate to the point where one side is accused is using religion to opiate the masses.
While I'm discussing the nature of public discourse, I'll also comment on a conversation from two days ago and a commercial I heard today advocating opposition to CAFTA. First, the conversation involved a guy we hired to dive for golf balls in the ponds bashing G.W. Bush over NAFTA, as "over one hundred tomato farmers I knew lost their jobs." I wasn't even aware NAFTA was ever a topic of conversation to bring up the first time you met somebody. However, this conversation caused me to pay attention to a radio ad mentioning NAFTA. Basically, the entire commercial was a Ross Perot (campaigned against NAFTA) imitation saying, "NAFTA cost us one million American jobs, CAFTA rhymes with NAFTA, therefore it's obvious CAFTA is bad for America." No joke. Not a single thing on why CAFTA will be bad, just that NAFTA was bad and CAFTA rhymes with NAFTA. What's worse is that you know some people will vote knowing nothing other on a topic than a small blurb they heard on the radio.
Anyway, I'm waiting to get some things emailed to me so I can finish up my GPTP crap- so until I get that I might throw a post or two up.
Last night, while reading The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, I came across a passage that reminded of the evolution debate over at Pragmaticism, and I'll quote-
"Today evolution is being challenged by some of the most cerebral theorists in the formerly secular neo conservative movement. They are embracing a hypothesis called Intelligent Design, originated by the biochemist Michael Behe... Biologists reject Behe's argument for a number of reasons. His specific claims about the "irreducible complexity" or biochemistry are either unproven or just plain wrong. He takes every phenomenon whose evolutionary history has not yet been figured out and chalks it up to design by default."It isn't that I object to this paragraph on the grounds I find Intelligent Design irrefutable, but that the author can write off any theory that isn't evolution so cursorily. Without providing any evidence, Pinker doesn't hesitate to label ID "wrong" or to declare that an entire field is unanimous in its condemnation of a competing theory. As for "every phenomenon whose evolutionary history hasn't been figured out," only if some failure had been made in the scientific process could a theory be assumed true when it doesn't match all available data. I think the focus for evolutionists should be to prove that evolution can produce something as complex as an eye, or that life can arise randomly out of nothing- rather than labeling every competing idea uneducated and false.
Pinker also tries to allude that the motives behind anyone advocating an idea different than Darwinism are less than scientific. As "it is not clear whether these worldly thinkers are really convinced that Darwinism is false or whether they think it is important for other people to believe it is false," Pinker ascribes this line from Inherit the Wind (based on the Scopes Monkey Trial) to them. "They're simple people, Henry; poor people, They work hard and they need to believe in something, something beautiful. Why do you want to take it awar from them? It's all they have." Something is seriously wrong when scientific discussions degenerate to the point where one side is accused is using religion to opiate the masses.
While I'm discussing the nature of public discourse, I'll also comment on a conversation from two days ago and a commercial I heard today advocating opposition to CAFTA. First, the conversation involved a guy we hired to dive for golf balls in the ponds bashing G.W. Bush over NAFTA, as "over one hundred tomato farmers I knew lost their jobs." I wasn't even aware NAFTA was ever a topic of conversation to bring up the first time you met somebody. However, this conversation caused me to pay attention to a radio ad mentioning NAFTA. Basically, the entire commercial was a Ross Perot (campaigned against NAFTA) imitation saying, "NAFTA cost us one million American jobs, CAFTA rhymes with NAFTA, therefore it's obvious CAFTA is bad for America." No joke. Not a single thing on why CAFTA will be bad, just that NAFTA was bad and CAFTA rhymes with NAFTA. What's worse is that you know some people will vote knowing nothing other on a topic than a small blurb they heard on the radio.
posted by Justin at 12:25 PM 
4 Comments:
Yeah - I don't know a single thing about CAFTA. That's a bad ad.
I don't know that I completely agree with your critique of the ID basher. Behe is pretty freaking ridiculous sometimes, and there are absolutely many many many proponents, I'd even say the vast majority, of ID who oppose it first on religious and philosophical bounds and second on scientific. Religious people who don't have an axe to grind against evolution are more often agnostic or simply theistic evolutionists.
I'm not sold on evolution myself. The vast number of missing links and reliance on random mutation is, in my opinion, a stagerring blow to it's validity as a wholesale theory. At the same time, ID is even worse - at least how Behe sells it. It's hardly scientific and very very specious. Behe relies on something he's invented called a "white hole" to be present at the dawn of creation. The opposite of a black hole, it repels everything near it with some sort of anti-gravity and changes time around so that the literal 7 days of the bible can be true. ID goes down hill from here.
I think it's ridiculous to look at the world and not see and intelligence behind the design, but I think it's equally ridiculous to start distorting science to fit your religious beliefs whether they're Christian in the case of ID or Atheist in the case of non-theistic evolution.
Another slightly wakked out guy who's got a far better undersatnding of Science is Hugh Ross, the head of Reasons to Believe (www.reasons.org) and holder of a large number of doctorates in things like Astro Physics. I've heard Ross speak a number of times as my Dad is a big fan, and while I don't subscribe to all of his ideas, it's funny to hear him talk about Behe. He said something like, "you know, I've sat down with Michael a number of tmies and shown him how his equations are flawed and how this white hole can't exist, but he just won't stop writing books on it." It's funny.
I do think that evolutionary biologists should be able to run through a few quick arguments offhand (if needed) to disprove intelligent design, and shouldn't just dimiss it out of hand. HOWEVER, some paradigms are just obsolete--Ptolemaic astronomy, the phlogiston theories in chemistry--and further disproof is unneeded. So their offhand dismissals in one context (a science book) might be appropriate, whereas in another context (Johnny Rural Christian's school in South Carolina) they might be harsh and inappropriate.
I thought of something else. Some parts of intelligent design might be true, but even IF THEY WERE, they STILL don't belong in a biology textbook. They belong in a meta-discussion of biology in a church, or in the context of an open discussion NOT in a government-funded institution.
The book I read by Behe (Darwin's Black Box) didn't really have anything to do with "white holes", it basically just gave a bunch of examples of "irreducibly complex" parts of the body and tried to show how modern evolutionary theory wasn't sufficient to explain them. THAT is the only part of ID that I agree with... the part saying evolutionary theory is incapable of explaining everything at the current time. I'm not in anyway saying that we should give up trying to explain things we don't understand- I just think the whole argument is ridiculous unless they are arguing points that can be backed up scientifically...
Irreducible complexity seems viable to me. I've heard biologists casually dismiss it, and that, I agree, is a little irresponsible. I'd like to hear why it's not a valid criticism of evolution.
Still, my problem with ID is it's whole as a movement. Behe and co. are supported and endorsed largely by the incredibly un-scientific creation research institute and promote a very divisive campaign based more on rhetoric than science. I grew up in the midst of it here in Colorado and was very much a fan. I went to seminars and summer camps, listened to tapes and read books, as a kid about the improbability of evolution and how God could "scientifically" create the world in 7 days. Looking back now, the science was absolutely ridiculous. It's all based on contriving impossibly outlandish extreme occurances to give the appearance of time when in fact things like the grand canyon were said to have occurred in a matter of hours. It's entirely based on an interpretation of Genesis 1 that says the earth was literally created in 7 historic days, and an interpretation of the genesis flood narrative that says the entire earth became quickly covered in catastrophically powerful waters in a matter of days.
So while I do think the theory of evolution has a lot to answer for and secular evolutionists should be forced to face the difficulties of their theory, the ID movement is nothing better.
Post a Comment
<< Home