Over on Veritas Center, Mark posted an entry on…uhm, I guess the difference between facts and faith? Which doesn’t really match with the bulk of the post being in defense of Creationism. Or rather, a proponent of Creationism expressing his hole-ridden beliefs in a staged “interview” format.
http://www.hunsakers.net/blogger/2005/04/of-faith-and-facts.html
Anyway, here’s my reply, which I think is a good post by itself for my own blog. =)
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One of the best things about science and the scientific method, is it’s self correcting.
If a component of a theory is incorrect, constant testing and observation can root it out and identify it, and then continued testing and observation can find a solution to that problem.
Not only that, but generally if a component of a theory is incorrect, it doesn’t necessarily make the entire theory incorrect.
For example, evolution. Just because the bones of “Lucy” weren’t what archeologists and anthropologists thought, doesn’t disprove evolution. Because some moths were thought of as a good example of evolution in action were later discovered not to be, doesn’t mean the whole theory is in trouble.
At one time it was thought that gravity was a force generated by bodies that increased based on mass. That has since been proven wrong, but that doesn’t make gravity non-real. Decades of research that gets improved upon over time has helped us understand it better. So we have a new explanation for the THEORY of gravity that currently tests accurate.
Could that be found as erroneous some time in the future? Sure. That doesn’t mean gravity ceases to exist.
There’s more than enough evidence to prove that the theory of evolution is valid and real. Decades and decades of research and observation, so that a few examples proven to be erroneous does not change the fact the evolution is valid.
That’s another great thing about science that religion does not have: it improves and progresses and itself evolves over time.
It used to be believed that people got sick by the will of god(s) or spirits or kami or demons, or whatever. Then Hippocrates came along 2500 years ago and suggested there are natural causes for illness. Over the centuries (Dark Ages notwithstanding) healers observed and scientists tested and researched, and it was eventually accepted that indeed illness came from natural causes, not spirits. The exact cause, still highly in debate. Lots of theories to explain the natural sources for illnesses, lots of explanations accepted then disproven–but practitioners of medicine knew it wasn’t evil spirits.
Then finally equipment and procedures advanced enough so that we could discover germs and bacteria and then viruses. It was accepted, known, that natural sources were the cause for illness long before we knew exactly what those causes were.
Science improves upon itself, finds the errors, finds improvement, gets better and better. To say that a few errors in the application of the theory of evolution casts doubt upon the whole theory is like saying there’s doubt about illness not being caused by spirits during the few hundred years that scientists and healers were getting to the bottom of the actual cause.
A few errors and mistakes does not discredit the mountains of observations and evidence supporting evolution.
Creationism on the other hand (and “Intelligent Design” really is nothing more than Creationism trying to sound legitimate,) does not benefit from time. It does not improve, it does not self-correct, it does not seek to find the truth. It states what IS “truth” and expects people to accept it.
In fact, Creationism is hurt by the passage of time and the contradiction of science. For example, the Bible (the source of Creationism) claims that the stars were created, then the sun. Obviously people “back then” did not know (how could they?) that the sun was in fact a star much like most of the visible stars. The Bible states that everything was created in 6 days, and by counting back the “begats” and stated ages of people, this happened about 6,000 years ago. It’s been proven that the earth is a few billion years old, the universe several billion years old, and the formation of the sun and planets took thousands of years, not to mention the millions of years it took just to get even a single celled lifeform on Earth not to mention plants and animals!
What happens when a component of evolutionary study is wrong? That part is wrong and that’s it. The theory itself still stands, and continued study and research finds an explanation and an alternative. What happens when a component of the Creationism is proven incorrect? When the whole story is being presented as inerrant fact….
Besides, who is it that finds these problems with the moths and Lucy and other errors? Scientists. Paleontologists, anthropologists, geologists, biologists, etc. Scientists correct scientists and are always testing and proving and correcting.
The nature of science is self-correcting.
There is a danger of scientific dogma as there is religious dogma. But you can rely on the fact that what’s generally being presented in a textbook as fact either is, or if not will be altered eventually and corrected. Can’t depend on that with a religious story of How Something Works.
The problem with Creationism, and “Intelligent Design” (by which I mean Creationism. For example, as a Deist, I believe in the “Divine Watchmaker”–that God created the matter of the universe and set the whole thing in motion with laws of physics and evolution. The common belief of “Intelligent Design”, however, is the Biblical story,) anyway, the problem is that it’s an example of religion following the God of Gaps. Meaning, for whatever there is not an explanation for, the solution is God. “And then a miracle happens,” “God works in mysterious ways.”
Even Hippocrates 2500 years ago recognized this in his own Greco-Roman culture. That gods are constantly being stated as the reasoning behind something not understood. In his specific case, it was health and disease. 4000 years ago most people couldn’t read, much less contemplate the idea of the Laws of Conservation of Energy, radio astronomy, planetary orbits, calculus even. It’s not at all surprising that like EVERY culture, the Jewish tribes had some fantastic, God based story to explain the origin of the world as they knew it. They didn’t know about marsupials in Australia or coyotes in America when they developed the Noah story. They didn’t know that all matter in the universe is expanding away from each other from a central location in the universe. They didn’t know about the existence of brachiosuars or t-rex. Or Neanderthals. Or ice ages. They didn’t;’t know this stuff, so their creation stories reflected what they knew and nothing of what they didn’t know in that time or place.
What saddens me is that after the Age of Reason, after the Industrial Age, Space Age, here in the so-called Information Age most Americans (although NOT most Europeans) believe in the validity of a 6000 year old mythology story of Creation. Despite the mountains of evidence disproving it.
It also saddens me that more people believe in Atlantis and alien abductions than know about the fact we know the “shape” of the outer edge of the universe or that we have recorded evidence of the release of energy that immediately followed the Big Bang. More people can tell you about the various healing properties of crystals than can tell you what a chromosome is. We still have communities that try to force Creationism into school curriculums as “science”. It depresses me greatly that we so welcome ignorance and mythology. That people relish pseudoscience, when the real wonders of actual science is just as if not more exciting than anything the Enquirer or Watchtower can come up with.
“One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
– Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
A crazy mad scientist discusses the misunderstanding of “theory” here and the importance of teaching evolution and not Creationism:
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_devore_theory_050303.html
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_devore_evolution_050210.html
Here’s some more thoughts from a university professor on the double-standard in proof that Creationists expect from Evolution but don’t themselves believe they should be held to:
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=132073
Finally, and more to the direct point, a refutation of Michael Behe, better than I could ever put to words:
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Catalano/box/behe.shtml
It’s actually one of many deconstructions of Behe’s premises and arguments and how they falter.
And so I close with this section of it:
Orgel’s second rule: “Evolution is cleverer than you are.”
“Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, ‘I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection.’ I have dubbed this kind of fallacy ‘the Argument from Personal Incredulity.’ Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience.” Richard Dawkins – River out of Eden
Introduction
‘Scientists say…’
Yes, Michael Behe is a scientist, but is “Intelligent Design” science? If so, it will be the first science established without a single technical paper published for peer-review, including zero by Behe himself. For some reason he has decided to completely bypass professional review and go directly to a Darwin-doubting public. But more to the point, what is wrong with this book? Here is a summary of the critiques you will find included on this page and others:
Surprise! The gradual paths to Irreducible Complexity
SPOCK: “He’s intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking…”
Kirk looks at him, smiles. [ Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ]
First, let’s be clear about something. Michael Behe has not created a “Theory of Intelligent Design” (ID). He offers no general laws, models, or explanations for how design happens, no testable predictions, and no possible way to falsify his hybrid evolution/ID hypothesis. He is simply claiming that design is a fact that is easily detectable in biochemical systems. The real science of ID is yet to come, and Behe just wants to wedge the door open a bit. So what does this magic Intelligent Design Detection Kit look like? Basically open the box and all it contains is a tweezer. Use it to pluck out any part of a system, and if the system stops functioning properly, it must be the product of design. Why? Because it proves that the system was “Irreducibly Complex” (IC)…
“By irreducible complexity I mean a single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced gradually by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, since any precursor to an irreducibly complex system is by definition nonfunctional.” [Behe]
But read this argument carefully. Behe is not offering a way to detect design, he is offering a way to falsify gradual Darwinian evolution, and by elimination, conclude design. But there is one big problem- his falsifier has been falsified. The conclusion that an “irreducibly complex system cannot be produced gradually by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system” is simply wrong. There are at least three different ways that an IC system can be produced by a series of small modifications: 1) Improvements become necessities, 2) Loss of scaffolding 3) Duplication and divergence. By Behe’s definition, many systems we see around us are IC, and yet have developed gradually. Think of the chaotic growth of towns into large cities, the self-organizing forces behind market economies, and the delicate causal webs that define complex ecosystems. Evolutionary algorithms run on computers routinely evolve irreducibly complex designs. So given an IC system, it could either be the product of coordinated design, or of a gradual, cumulative, stochastic process. The truth is, we should expect Darwinian evolution to produce such systems in biology, and not be surprised to find them. The underlying processes are called co-adaptation and co-evolution, and they have been understood for many years. Biochemical structures and pathways are not built up one step at a time in linear assembly-line fashion to meet some static function. They evolve layer upon layer, contingency upon contingency, always in flux, and retooling to serve current functions. The ability of life to evolve in this fashion has itself evolved over time. Detecting IC does not indicate design, and therefore Behe’s hypothesis collapses. H. Allen Orr says it best in his perceptive review:
“Behe’s colossal mistake is that, in rejecting these possibilities, he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become-because of later changes-essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn’t essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required.”
“The point is there’s no guarantee that improvements will remain mere improvements. Indeed because later changes build on previous ones, there’s every reason to think that earlier refinements might become necessary. The transformation of air bladders into lungs that allowed animals to breathe atmospheric oxygen was initially just advantageous: such beasts could explore open niches-like dry land-that were unavailable to their lung-less peers. But as evolution built on this adaptation (modifying limbs for walking, for instance), we grew thoroughly terrestrial and lungs, consequently, are no longer luxuries-they are essential. The punch-line is, I think, obvious: although this process is thoroughly Darwinian, we are often left with a system that is irreducibly complex. I’m afraid there’s no room for compromise here: Behe’s key claim that all the components of an irreducibly complex system ‘have to be there from the beginning’ is dead wrong.” [*]
The Fallacy of Conclusion by Analogy
When it comes to explaining science to the public, analogies and metaphors are essential tools of the trade. We all can better understand something new and unusual, when it is compared to something we already know: a cell is like a factory, the eye is like a camera, an atom is like a billiard ball, a biochemical system is like a mouse trap. An A is like a B, means A shares some conceptual properties with B. It does not mean A has all the properties of B. It does not follow that what is true for B is therefore true for A. Analogies can be used to explain science, but analogies cannot be used to draw conclusions or falsify scientific theories. Yet Behe commits this fallacy throughout his book. For example:
1. A mousetrap is “irreducibly complex” – it requires all of its parts to work properly.
2. A mousetrap is a product of design.
3. The bacterial flagellum is “irreducibly complex” – it requires all of its parts to work properly.
4. Therefore the flagellum is like a mouse trap.
5. Therefore the flagellum is a product of design.
The Psychic Detective
Is it fair to ask for a frame-by-frame instant replay of the evolution of the bacterial flagella or the Krebs cycle? Should Evolutionary Biology perish without it? Of course not. As with any historical science, we arrive on the scene after the fact, as a detective to a crime. We look for evidence and rational explanations to account for that evidence. Even the best detective cannot, and should not, reconstruct every footstep, and every word that took place. But he does not need to in order to solve the crime. Consider the following: The evidence for evolution is overwhelming at all levels of biology. Published attempts have been made to uncover possible historical scenarios. The evidence for intelligent design is simply non-existent.
Designer in the Gaps
I should point out that Behe’s hybrid vision of life does accept common descent as reasonable, and does allow for cases of Darwinian natural selection and random genetic drift. So how can we distinguish evolution from design? Simple: To Behe, a system has evolved when he, or others, can imagine how it has evolved, otherwise it was a product of intelligent design. “Irreducible Complexity” has nothing to do with it.
An unnamed designer?
In the last few years Michael Behe has become the new poster boy for certain religious and political groups who are hostile to evolution and Darwinism. Meanwhile, Behe has refused to identify the ‘designer’ when confronted, even though he professes belief in the Judeo-Christian God, is more than willing to speak at religiously-sponsored events, and get his attacks on evolutionary biology published in conservative magazines. I feel he should not have it both ways.
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