RichardSRussell (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} richardsrussell) wrote,@ 2008-02-27 00:27:00 |
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The God of the Gaps
Yesterday I wrote about the odd habit that True Believers have of pointing out flaws or omissions in the findings of science and then leaping from there to the idea that their own unscientific beliefs are thereby (somehow or other) validated.
To oversimplify, this is akin to having me claim that a car is red, having them point to the grill and door handles (chrome-plated metal) and saying that, since those particular parts aren’t red, the car must be blue. They’ve made no affirmative case for their own blueness point of view, only pointed out that my redness claim isn’t 100% pure.
It turns out they’ve been using this trick for quite a long while — so long, in fact, that the practice has acquired a name. It’s known as
In his perverse understanding of evolution, Kurt Williamsen seems to be unable to distinguish between atheism and science.
Properly speaking, the political controversy between evolution and creationism has nothing to do with atheism. It's a dispute over what constitutes good science. On one side are creationists (including the latest flavor of them, the proponents of “intelligent design”, or “ID”), and on the other are real scientists who engage in real science and understand that the natural-selection process underlying the fact of evolution is unquestionably the best explanation ever propounded for the incredible diversity of life we find all around us. It's just that 100% of the ID people are driven by religious motivations, so, in their tiny little brains, they assume that everybody on the other side must be driven by atheism. Not at all. The pope, for example, tho not a scientist, has come out firmly on the side of evolution, and hardly anybody thinks he’s an atheist.
Nonetheless, since atheists get linked with evolution all the time (and since I don't know a single atheist who doesn’t favor evolution), we've kinda been forced to bone up on it so we're somewhat prepared to tackle the issue (tho for a real rebuttal, you'd have to ask an actual scientist).
You should be aware that the foundational argument of ID — "irreducible complexity" of certain life forms, seemingly too complex to have been arrived at incrementally, as evolution would have it — is simply the latest in a long, long line of arguments, going way back in history, that are collectively referred to as the "God of the Gaps" arguments. It started with things like "What makes fire?" "Dunno." "Must be the fire god, then.", followed by "Where do babies come from?" "Dunno." "Must be the mother goddess, then.", followed by "Why does the Sun run across the sky every day?" "Dunno." "Must be Apollo carrying it in his chariot, then.", and so on. Notice that the one thing these all have in common is the "Dunno" part. These people were all ignorant of how nature worked, so they made up a supernatural "explanation" — a story: fiction!
ID proponents are the modern-day practitioners of this same "God of the Gaps" approach. Whenever they run across something that science can't explain (or, more properly, has not yet explained) — a gap in our knowledge — they say "Aha! Then it must have been God who did it, because there's no other explanation.".
No, what there is is no explanation at all. Saying "God did it" isn't an explanation, it's an excuse for ignorance. It's an admission that you're too stupid, or lazy, or ignorant, or incompetent, or bewildered, or brainwashed, or uncaring to find out how things really work, and you're too arrogant to admit you don't know (and don't intend to find out), so you make something up and pretend it's real. That lets you off the hook for either (a) finding out what's really going on or (b) admitting you don't know.
Real scientists (and many atheists as well) have no trouble admitting they don't know something. It doesn't eat at their guts. Apparently Christians aren't anywhere near so emotionally secure. They keep insisting on certainty, even when certainty isn't justified, and flock to anyone who promises certainty, even if they're lying about it.
As a practical matter, virtually everything that Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box and the foremost proponent of the "inexplicable facts of biology" claims of ID) has come up with as being impossible to achieve via evolution has, in fact, been shown to be the specific product of a specific evolutionary process. He was simply wrong. He thot he'd found gaps in our knowledge (and, at the time he published his book, they were gaps in our knowledge), but the very fact that he'd called the attention of real scientists to these gaps caused them to be quickly filled. This has been the outcome of the "God of the Gaps" scenario every single time in all of recorded history.
Religion has never won a single one of these battles; science has never lost. Where ya gonna put your money on the next match?
Tomoro: Humans As Machines
Yesterday I wrote about the odd habit that True Believers have of pointing out flaws or omissions in the findings of science and then leaping from there to the idea that their own unscientific beliefs are thereby (somehow or other) validated.
To oversimplify, this is akin to having me claim that a car is red, having them point to the grill and door handles (chrome-plated metal) and saying that, since those particular parts aren’t red, the car must be blue. They’ve made no affirmative case for their own blueness point of view, only pointed out that my redness claim isn’t 100% pure.
It turns out they’ve been using this trick for quite a long while — so long, in fact, that the practice has acquired a name. It’s known as
In his perverse understanding of evolution, Kurt Williamsen seems to be unable to distinguish between atheism and science.
Properly speaking, the political controversy between evolution and creationism has nothing to do with atheism. It's a dispute over what constitutes good science. On one side are creationists (including the latest flavor of them, the proponents of “intelligent design”, or “ID”), and on the other are real scientists who engage in real science and understand that the natural-selection process underlying the fact of evolution is unquestionably the best explanation ever propounded for the incredible diversity of life we find all around us. It's just that 100% of the ID people are driven by religious motivations, so, in their tiny little brains, they assume that everybody on the other side must be driven by atheism. Not at all. The pope, for example, tho not a scientist, has come out firmly on the side of evolution, and hardly anybody thinks he’s an atheist.
Nonetheless, since atheists get linked with evolution all the time (and since I don't know a single atheist who doesn’t favor evolution), we've kinda been forced to bone up on it so we're somewhat prepared to tackle the issue (tho for a real rebuttal, you'd have to ask an actual scientist).
You should be aware that the foundational argument of ID — "irreducible complexity" of certain life forms, seemingly too complex to have been arrived at incrementally, as evolution would have it — is simply the latest in a long, long line of arguments, going way back in history, that are collectively referred to as the "God of the Gaps" arguments. It started with things like "What makes fire?" "Dunno." "Must be the fire god, then.", followed by "Where do babies come from?" "Dunno." "Must be the mother goddess, then.", followed by "Why does the Sun run across the sky every day?" "Dunno." "Must be Apollo carrying it in his chariot, then.", and so on. Notice that the one thing these all have in common is the "Dunno" part. These people were all ignorant of how nature worked, so they made up a supernatural "explanation" — a story: fiction!
ID proponents are the modern-day practitioners of this same "God of the Gaps" approach. Whenever they run across something that science can't explain (or, more properly, has not yet explained) — a gap in our knowledge — they say "Aha! Then it must have been God who did it, because there's no other explanation.".
No, what there is is no explanation at all. Saying "God did it" isn't an explanation, it's an excuse for ignorance. It's an admission that you're too stupid, or lazy, or ignorant, or incompetent, or bewildered, or brainwashed, or uncaring to find out how things really work, and you're too arrogant to admit you don't know (and don't intend to find out), so you make something up and pretend it's real. That lets you off the hook for either (a) finding out what's really going on or (b) admitting you don't know.
Real scientists (and many atheists as well) have no trouble admitting they don't know something. It doesn't eat at their guts. Apparently Christians aren't anywhere near so emotionally secure. They keep insisting on certainty, even when certainty isn't justified, and flock to anyone who promises certainty, even if they're lying about it.
As a practical matter, virtually everything that Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box and the foremost proponent of the "inexplicable facts of biology" claims of ID) has come up with as being impossible to achieve via evolution has, in fact, been shown to be the specific product of a specific evolutionary process. He was simply wrong. He thot he'd found gaps in our knowledge (and, at the time he published his book, they were gaps in our knowledge), but the very fact that he'd called the attention of real scientists to these gaps caused them to be quickly filled. This has been the outcome of the "God of the Gaps" scenario every single time in all of recorded history.
Religion has never won a single one of these battles; science has never lost. Where ya gonna put your money on the next match?
Tomoro: Humans As Machines
