on the religion of Evolution (and its bells & whistles)
From Fred Reed at LewRockwell.com...
People seem to need an overarching explanation of things – of origins, meaning, purpose, and destiny. Christianity provided these things for a long time but, at the close of the Enlightenment, was losing its luster among the educated...The sciences were more compelling, and a better fit for the changing mood of the times.
When the Origin of Species appeared in 1859, it offered a plausible and rational alternative to God Did It....That this might have occurred by natural selection made sense....The notion of abiogenesis – that life began by accident in remote primal seas – was tacked on to Darwin....exceedingly thin evidence, but it pointed in the desired direction, and was accepted. Finally, in 1964, the 3K background radiation pervading the universe was discovered, and described as the result of a postulated Big Bang....
To people thinking logically, as scientists not infrequently do, the three elements of this narrative were separable....In the minds of many, however, all three merged into a seamless creation story, and then acquired the emotional importance accruing to ideological dogma or religious faith....
Scientific inquiry is separated from ideological rigidity by a willingness to entertain questions and admit doubt. The giveaway of ideology is emotional hostility to skeptics. Evolutionists today have it in spades....An example: In a column I once wrote regarding the alleged accidental formation of life, asked: “(1) Do we actually know, as distinct from hope, suspect, speculate, or pray, of what the primeval seas consisted? (2) Do we actually know what sort of sea or seas would be necessary to engender life in the time believed available? (3) Has the accidental creation of life been repeated in the laboratory? (4) Can it mathematically be shown possible without making highly questionable assumptions? And (5) If the answers to the foregoing are “no,” would it not be reasonable to regard the idea of chance abiogenesis as pure speculation?”
The response was violent. I found myself accused of “trying to tear down science”...The evolutionarily correct take apostasy seriously....reaction was less that of a scientist to questions than of an archbishop to heresy. Why the savagery? He or any other of my circling assailants could simply have answered my questions....
Richard Feynman said that "science is the culture of doubt."
Not (nearly) always...
posted by Eric Schansberg @ 5:27 PM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
Well, I'd like to suggest ...
That people are somewhat wimpy. Yes, science is the culture of doubt. I can tell you as a successful reformer of sorts in my own Christian circles that "violent" is an exaggeration. Was he really beaten?
I doubt it. If you want to make changes, you have to have thick skin. People are people, and it is "science," not people that is a culture of doubt.
People will come around, even if they're reaction is verbally "violent." That's the price reformers pay. If you don't want to pay it, don't be a reformer.
Good point-- and I agree.
One thing I would add: The impression I get from my friends who are proponents of science-- and proponents of the reigning paradigms in Evolution and Global Warming-- is that it is a more refined process than that.
In "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", I don't remember Thomas Kuhn discussing the style of scientific debate between an orthodoxy and a challenger as "violent", but it's certainly implied by the title.
What makes all this more difficult is that these questions are all totally appropriate ... until the last one. The last one makes it clear that the asker is convinced that the answer to the previous 4 is no, so the suggestion that this is all "speculation" is a little insulting.
Hence, you get a reaction. Like I said earlier, though, if you think you're right, you have to be able to handle the reaction. The reaction won't stop truth from triumphing in the end.
As for those 1st 4 questions, I don't believe the answers are no. I don't know the answer to the first one, but to the second, it seems obvious that with what little we know about abiogenesis, almost any sort of sea could have engendered life. We need more research.
To 3, obviously, we haven't made life in the laboratory. we have, however, found processes that may produce amino acids, and even amino acids that are all left-handed.
As to the 4th question, the answer is clearly yes. It is mathematically possible if there is self-replication involved, which allows for selection, which is possible among crystals even before life evolved. Those are assumptions, but they are not "highly questionable." Instead, they are worth looking into.
So is abiogenesis all speculation? At the moment, because we don't have clear answers. However, we do have educated speculation, which is the first stage of the scientific method, and we've even done a significant amount of experiments to get a small amount of the way down the road of testing the truth of various hypotheses.
If it's science, then you have to allow time to keep testing those speculations.
Again, I agree with you that messing with the status quo is likely to result in a bloodied nose and truth/Truth will win out in the end.
One could argue that there are additional questions to be asked after #4.
But the fifth/final question brings completion to the line of questioning. I would have preferred something like "At what point would we say that this is speculative?" But that's quibbling vs. the usefulness of asking a concluding question.
It would be a failure-- not to ask a question like that. And a defensiveness in answering that sort of question takes us back to the overarching point of the post.
By the way, thanks for adding some info on the four questions asked!
I was away, and I didn't have time to get back to you.
But all I would have said was thank you for your very reasonable responses. I enjoyed reading your original post as well.
Thank you as well. Grace and peace to you...eric
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