When Ignorance and Arrogance Collide
| August 11, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
The Pandasthumb blog is instructive for understanding how our most virulent opponents think. Informed, coherent thought is not always in evidence there. Perhaps the most extreme counterexample I’ve encountered recently is the following set of remarks by someone named Ed Darrell. I leave it to commenters on this blog to have fun with it:
First, who says evolution IS losing the PR battle? Show me. The figures creep up slowly, but there are more people who understand smidgen about evolution at every contretemps. Yes, it would be good if the consciousness rose faster. But that’s not losing.
But second, to the extent that we could do it better, we need to have a few consistent messages and stick to them. That’s difficult to do. Even among textbooks, most of them don’t bother to list the five evolution facts (as Mayr tallies them) that make the foundation of Darwin’s insights plausible and nearly irrefutable. Evolution theory is left to the individual scientist to explain, and to the individual reader/citizen to figure out. Contrast this with Newton’s “Laws of Motion,†or the “Laws of Thermodynamics.â€Â
I recommend we pass out talking points with the five facts of evolution.
Then we need to concentrate on a few easily understood ideas. For example, to rebut “teach the controversy,†we should say “teach the facts first.†Who can argue with the need to have the facts first? Of course, we’ll need to specify what those facts are that need to be taught, but we can do it.
We also need to bring the issue home to people so they understand it. What do I mean?
In Texas, our economy depends on evolution, and intelligent design offers only ways to muck up the economy. What do I mean? One, I mean that the eradication of the cotton boll weevil is essential to our dwindling, but still significant, cotton industry. That eradication process, led the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is based on poisoning boll weevils to eradicate them from specific regions, in doses and ways carefully calculated to avoid forcing the bugs to mutate resistance  it takes a solid understanding of evolution to make the program work.
For a second example, Texas now loses $1.5 billion a year in crop and livestock destruction from the introduced pest, the Argentine fire ant. This pest has evolved several new defenses due to ill-thought-out eradication attempts. Now our only hope of recouping that significant loss is to understand the evolution of the beast, to delay evolved resistance to new eradication attempts. This pest now affects California, Arizona, New Mexico, and much of the southeast. National losses are probably in the $10 billion range. It would be not just folly, but sheer stupidity to abandon our efforts to control this insect  and ALL of those efforts depend on a thorough understanding of evolution theory. Is it wrong? Let ID find a better way to fight this beast that kills farm animals, we’ll let ID have a spot in the high school textbooks. But unless it can do that, quickly, ID just gets in the way and continues the losses.
Third, the Rio Grande Valley’s economy depends a lot on the success of grapefruit as a crop. Need I remind you that grapefruit is a news species that didn’t exist 125 years ago? But for evolution, this crop would not exist at all. Moreover, the current favorite is a variant of red grapefruit. Red grapefruit are the result of sport mutation in the late 1940s  exactly the sort of mutation that intelligent design advocates claim is impossible. In short, the existence of the crop at all is a refutation of intelligent design. According to ID, all Texans are crazy, especially Texas farmers. But the current most popular variety, Rio Reds, were bred by scientists at Texas A&M, using evolution theory, to be resistant to the occasional hard freezes that strike the Rio Grande Valley. So, every aspect of grapefruit agriculture denies the claims of intelligent design, and is dependent on application of the evolution theory intelligent design advocates (and the Dover school board) claim are “just theory.â€Â
Fourth, Texas has a very active medical research community. The disease researchers and healers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who work on heart disease, diabetes and other diseases, and the researchers and healers at Houston’s M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, among others, all use evolution theory to fight disease.
We’re talking billions of dollars at stake. These economic arguments need to be made more forcefully, more often, more clearly, and more locally. Kansas is dependent on wheat, for example  I have a list of publications on how modern wheat farming is dependent on evolution, too. Minnesota has its own crops. California has grapes, artichokes and dairy. Every state has an agricultural, livestock and medical stake in evolution. Every state is, therefore, threatened by intelligent design.
When was the last time you saw someone argue that?
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/one_reason_evol.html#c42256
43 Responses to When Ignorance and Arrogance Collide
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“Making comparisons to plate tectonics is a red herring.”
No, it isn’t. The underlying assumptions are methods are the same. It doesn’t matter if no-one’s pushing for an alternative theory – science is doing the same thing in both cases.
And note that the prevailing opinion when continental drift was first proposed (without a plausible mechanism, and at a time when a lot of the evidence wasn’t in) – people thought it was completely absurd. It took decades of work, advances in technology, discoveries and theoretical advances in half a dozen different fields before it became widely and wildly accepted. Take this how you wish, but note: it didn’t get where it is today by insisting that it be taught in high school before it had made any sort of case . . .
Putting aside the bit about how modern evolutionary theory is bigger than random mutation and natural selection, and that there’s no reason that new mechanisms won’t be discovered, and probably added to the theory (unless they knock it all over) – why do you think that those two aren’t defintely sufficient? Or to put it another way, you’ve never *seen* two continentss collide and make a mountain range, right?
The Mt. Rushmore/Venus de Milo analogies seem fundamentally flawed to me. In this whole wide world we’ve never seen anything like them that wasn’t made by people.* At the same time, we haven’t seen any living things that were made by people (yes, yes, babies, ha, ha). It assumes what it is trying to show. Additionally, the processes are different. Erosion stands in a different relationship to carving than small changes do to large changes – especially now that we’re understanding a little bit more about development, and how small changes can have big effects.
Also, rocks don’t reproduce (although this was not immediately obvious to generations of New England farmers . .. actually, there was a folk theory about how seed rocks grew bigger and bigger . . .)
* The Old Man of the Mountains in New Hampshire can be excluded, since it collapsed (and also since it clearly isn’t relevant. Was cool, though . . .
“The need for some kind of intelligence to explain complex structures is so obvious ”
That hasn’t been established yet. Scientists are working on how to explain complex structures. Current fruitful lines of inquiry do not involve intelligence (ha – maybe I should rephrase that?). We’re not talking about sacrificing intellects, we’re talking about doing science. Indeed, the complete failure of all of evolutionary theory to ever explain that would not establish that there was a need for some kind of intelligence – all it would mean was that evolutionary theory couldn’t do it, and that something else was needed. False dichotomy. Evidence that intelligence was involved in the formation of complex structures . . . . then we would be talking.
“The underlying assumptions are methods are the same…”
that should be “*and* methods . . .”
Also wrote too for to elsewhere. Brain turning to swiss cheese.
Dan,
My statement about the obvious need for intelligent causes was not intended to raise any hackles. I know it isn’t obvious to you. It was just part of my speculation about the future of evolutionary theory, based on its history and the history of other theories.
Scientists are still working on how to explain complex structures. I wish them luck. If you could go back in time and tell Darwin that, 90 years on from 1859, scientists would still be struggling to explain how natural selection can produce anything more than minor modifications of existing structures, and have no empirical evidence that it can actually do such a thing, I am sure he would be disappointed.
The question is, how long will scientists go on beating their heads against the wall, running the same experiments over and over showing that natural selection operates only within definite limits? Perhaps you are right and, one day, one of these experiments will somehow produce a novel structure or organism. If so, bully for the scientist who makes the breakthrough. Other scientists, I suspect, will tire of this repetition and will start exploring the question suggested by the data: Why does natural selection only operate within definite limits? These scientists, I expect, will be able to write papers that do more than simply reiterate what prior papers have stated (natural selection made some minor changes, and nothing else.) They will start to explain WHY natural selection is limited, not in terms that openly challenge evolution or endorse ID, but that undermine the Darwinian account nonetheless. Eventually everyone will have forgotten about Darwin, except historically.
But, then, this is all speculation…
My own brain is swiss cheese…. 2005 – 1859 = 146, not 90. Good thing I’m not balancing my checkbook.
Taciturnus
Keynote speaker Lynn Margulis at the 2005 World Conference on Evolution declared neoDarwinian theory dead. Earlier, Dembski likened the death of the neoDarwinian narrative to badger baiting. It looks like your hypothesis is more or less described by Dembski’s badger and Margulis is one of the first scientists to get a good bite in without being harmed in the process. Or at least so far she hasn’t been fired for her heresies.
Dan S.
You are still trying to peddle a slippery slope argument to say nothing of false analogy. The movement of continental plates does not result in self-replication of complex molecular machinery. I’d say you’re comparing apples to oranges but that’s not right. You’re comparing apples to rocks.
a novel structure or organ is not necessarily expected as the result of a lab experiment. You guys seem to have the wrong idea about what predictions the theory of evolution makes – not a cat turning into a dog (I know my cat wouldn’t stand for it – and yes, no one here suggested that, it’s from a whole ‘nother discussion elsewhere a while back) but quite possibly slow gradual change. You’re gone and read all that stuff over at http://www.talkorigins.org, right, and at least a couple of popular-ish works, right? I keep hearing good things about “Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo” . . .
Sorry about raised hackles, though. The issue’s pretty important to me, both in terms of education and ultimately how our country will deal with the 21st century; of course, it’s also pretty important to a lot of folks in the other side, who see it as an issue of stemming atheism and immorality. I wish they’d realize that they’re two different things here that don’t need to overlap . . .
Interesting speculation. There’s the plate tectonics model – where after enough evidence shows up the entire field just goes – oh wow, that’s so right – and the more gradual kind you’re discussing.
Margulis isn’t destroying evolution, she’s adding to it – and very niftily too (whether or not *everything* she proposes turns out right – she’s made a major contribution to our understanding of life). Right now we have an Old-New Synthesis – eventually we’ll probably getting a new one.
” Or at least so far she hasn’t been fired for her heresies.”
You misunderstand how it works. She’s in the textbooks – I think at least AP, dunno general – for the light she shed on where mitochondia, etc. come from.
“I’d say you’re comparing apples to oranges but that’s not right. You’re comparing apples to rocks.”
: ) That’s pretty good. That’s not what I meant though – I’m not comparing process, I’m comparing methodology. We find out about plate tectonics the same way we find out about evolution. Pennock has a much, much better example in “Tower of Babel” – we’ve never seen one language “turn into” another, never seen linguistic change produce a new language, but it’s not seriously doubted that more or less, many fine details missing, more study needed, that’s how it happened. (Although some people regard the Babel account as literally accurate . . .)
What would Darwin think? Who knows? I like to think he’d be happy we solved his problem about the inheritence issue, although he’d probably be annoyed to learn that the answer had been found in his own day, even if the few people who heard about it failed to appreciate its importance . . . I think he would be happy to see that a lot of the big fossil gaps he worried about had been closed – one or two major finds in my own state, yay – although there are many remaining, unsurprisingly. He’d probably be very interested in all we’ve learned about . . . ah, just go read “Darwin’s Ghost . . .”
Dan,
I’m actually not all that worried about this debate. The truth will out. It is what it is, and will eventually come to the surface one way or the other. If evolution is the true story of our history, it will eventually triumph even if the wacky creationists have their way on public education. Galileo truimphed without ever getting the official support of the Church (until recently, that is). Einstein was initially mocked but later vindicated, not because he got official protection, but because his theories were dramatically confirmed by experiment. My comment about “sacrificing intellects” was a comment about people in general including IDers. If evolution is the truth and the evidence clearly points to its truth, reasonable IDers like Dembski and Behe will not forever sacrifice their intellects to deny it. The truth will triumph in the end no matter what it is.
Obviously I believe Darwinism is false and will eventually be recognized as bankrupt. The penalty for believing Darwinism is not atheism and immorality, but the penalty for believing anything that is false: Sterility. What is false is not practical or fruitful. And I DO think that scientists have been hoping to produce new organs or structures in the lab. That’s why they have been inducing genetic mutations in thousands upon thousands of generations of fruit flies, hoping that one of them will eventually result in a new structure or significant variation. But they never do. They either get variations that never get beyond the trivial or hopeless monsters that quickly expire. And even if they do change (trivially), they go back to being the old fruit flies in a couple of generations. I know, I know, it is always possible to say that evolution goes so slowly that no can ever really observe it. As one scientific wag put it, evolution is always happening somewhere else. The only thing we can observe is trivial results and speculate that the same process can produce novel structures and organisms. But this is really an excuse rather than evidence, isn’t it? How long will Darwinism be supported by excuses?
My own view, which I can’t prove, is that trying to get natural selection to produce a novel structure is like trying to produce a perpetual motion machine. It’s an exercise in futility that wastes resources that might better be spent elsewhere. People will keep proposing things that look like perpetual motion machines, but examination of the details always proves that it isn’t what it is cracked up to be. Darwinists are forever inventing new arguments and experiments to demonstrate the power of natural selection, but they never prove what they seem to prove. The example of linguistic evolution, for example, has as its subject *intelligent* human beings who understand language itself and use it self-consciously for a purpose, so it can hardly serve as proof for a theory whose very point is to dispense with intelligence as a causal agent.
In any case, I have enjoyed the discussion, and if anyone ever does establish that natural selection has the power Darwinism claims for it, I’ll be sure to come back to this blog and eat crow…
“Sterility. What is false is not practical or fruitful. ”
Exactly. (Well, at least it is not practical or fruitful for its claimed goals, although it may serve other purposes). Most likely, evolutionary theory will continue to provide us information about the world.
” And I DO think that scientists have been hoping to produce new organs or structures in the lab. That’s why they have been inducing genetic mutations in thousands upon thousands of generations of fruit flies”
Umm – understanding how genes work has been, I think, somewhat of a reason . . .
“The example of linguistic evolution, for example, has as its subject *intelligent* human beings who understand language itself and use it self-consciously for a purpose,”
Very good – you caught that (although some kinds of linguistic change do not appear to be fully conscious at all). But it’s like the plate tectonics argument – that’s not the point of the analogy. Even if people carefully plan to shift vowels because . . . well, I’m not sure we know why . . . or knowingly adapt tones to distinguish words rendered nearly indentical by linguistic erosion, it doesn’t matter. The point is that small subtle changes add up to whole new languages – something never observed or ever recreated in the laboratory.*)
” whose very point is to dispense with intelligence as a causal agent.”
Or to explain the natural world by reference to natural causes.
” If evolution is the true story of our history, it will eventually triumph even if the wacky creationists have their way on public education.”
Quite possibly. Look to the long view – for most things – and one can find comfort. I worry about the here and now; what happens to the kids who go off to college and are behind because they came from a state that downgraded science education? What happens if the attitudes encouraged by ID rhetoric – science is just a matter of faith, this stuff isn’t important, confusion about how science functions – begin to have a effect on American progress and competitiveness?
And frankly, I do suspect that unimaginable eons from now, as our final bizarre descendants drag themselves towards the last few remaining puddles of water evaporating under a grossly swollen sun, the conversation, carried out by some strange combination of tentacle-waving and color-patch-flushing, will involve whether or not evolution was right . . .
“If evolution is the truth and the evidence clearly points to its truth, reasonable IDers like Dembski and Behe will not forever sacrifice their intellects to deny it.”
I don’t think it’s about intellects for them. I’m sure they believe that this is what the evidence says, but if it came to it, I don’t doubt they would sacrifice their intellects, and perhaps more beside, for a higher (should we say highest? or perhaps First?) Cause. The problem is, if that surely completely discarded and wholely irrelevent wedge strategy ever actually manages to “reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions,” we’ll all be sacrificing. A lot.
“In any case, I have enjoyed the discussion, and if anyone ever does establish that natural selection has the power Darwinism claims for it, I’ll be sure to come back to this blog and eat crow…”
I’m glad you enjoyed it; has been quite interesting. No need for crow-eating, just appreciate how cool the world is, whether as a result of just material forces, or of something else science can’t touch. (And don’t forget modern evolutionary theory has gone beyond Darwin’s almost 15-decade old discovery.) If you really want to hone your debating skills on this issue, I recommend reading as much mainstream science-writing about evolution as time, money, and life allows (ulterior motive? who, me? darn, you caught me – I’m hoping you’ll see how weak the case for ID is so far, and how strong it is for evolution . . . but if not, you’ll be prepared for anything, right?)
And now for your reading pleasure, let me leave you with “Ten Questions to Ask Your History Teacher”, courtesy of Some are Boojums:
So  kids, the next time your history teacher starts trying to force-feed you Revolutionary “theory†as if it were “factâ€Â, you know what to do!
Ten Questions to Ask Your History Teacher
Q: ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENTS: Why do history textbooks claim that the modern British monarchy originated with the “Norman conquestâ€Â, in “1066″, when nobody has ever seen a calendar for that year, and there hasnever been an English king named “Normanâ€Â?
Q: WASHINGTON’S BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT: Why don’t textbooks discuss the “Civil War,†or the fact that all US governmental bodies appear together at that time, instead of branching from a Constitution  thus contradicting revolutionary theory?
Q: THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: Why do history textbooks claim that the “Revolutionary War†started with a “Declaration of Independence†and quote its words, then claim that a suspiciously old-looking document in Washington D.C is the same document because it contains the same words,  a circular argument masquerading as historical evidence?
Q: GEORGE WASHINGTON. It is well known that the infamous “cherry tree†story was faked, and that “George Washington†never said “I cannot tell a lie† that is, if he ever existed. Why do textbooks use drawings or “artist’s conceptions†of “George Washington†as evidence that he existed? Why does no single history textbook anywhere point out that there are nophotographs – zero! – of “George Washington†in existence?
Q: ALEXANDER HAMILTON. Why do some history textbooks give Alexander Hamilton’s year of birth as 1755, and others as 1757? Why do historians refuse to discuss, or even acknowledge, the controversy? Why do many textbooks even claim that this (probably imaginary) figure was killed in a duel with “Aaron Burr� Take out a $10 bill and see whose picture is on it. Do you think this duel actually occurred, and that the US then decided to put the loser’s picture on its currency?
Q: WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE. Why do history textbooks all use the same picture of “Washington Crossing the Delaware† when historians have been aware for years that the picture was staged? Any idiot knows that you can’t get ten guys in a canoe without capsizing, and “Washington†is standing up? Get real.
Q: SILLY HATS. Why do textbooks claim that Revolutionary Fashion can explain the use of Tricorner Hats by the colonists  even though these hats were not used in the French Revolution, and there are no such silly hats anywhere else in history?
Q: REVOLUTIONARY WAR. Why do textbooks represent the Revolutionary War as having been won through a series of “small victories†when, every time you look at an actual battle the colonists fought against the British, as likely as not they got their asses handed to them? Do you think a nation as magnificently complex as the United States could come about through a random, undirected sequence of military engagements?
Q: GOVERNMENTAL ORIGINS. Why are artists’ drawings of a bunch of middle-aged guys in poofy wigs used to justify Revolutionary claims that we are all descended from a parcel of ninnies who didn’t have the sense to be at the beach in July  when historians cannot even agree on who they were or what their actual hair looked like?
Q: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION A FACT? Why are we told that the American Revolution is an historical fact  even though many Revolutionary claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?
And remember  when some liberal revolutionist starts spouting off about imaginary events supposed to have taken place in 1776, all you have to do is look him in the eye and ask “Were you there?â€Â
“a novel structure or organ is not necessarily expected as the result of a lab experiment”
ROFL! And a damn good thing it isn’t expected because it ain’t gonna happen. That’s because RM+NS ability to create novel cell types, tissue types, organs, and body plans is a huge atheist fantasy peddled to naive young minds as something that’s as true and tested as gravity. To paraphrase Simon from “American Idol” – that’s possibly the biggest scientific hoax in recorded history.
“>“a novel structure or organ is not necessarily expected as the result of a lab experiment’
ROFL! And a damn good thing it isn’t expected because it ain’t gonna happen”
But you don’t understand why, do you : (
“a huge atheist fantasy peddled to naive young minds”
The Huge Atheist Conspiracy would like to thank you for your help in providing more evidence that ID is really about fear of atheism and irreligiousity. Except they can’t, because they’re imaginary.
“But you don’t understand why, do you : (”
Yes, in fact I do.
Not even unnatural selection and induced mutation has ever created a novel cell type, tissue type, organ, or body plan in the lab. Are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me that what nature can do by accident is denied the bench scientist by any means at his disposal? Preposterous.
You simply refuse to accept the obvious. All laboratory attempts to show that RM+NS has the ability to create novel cell types, tissue types, organs, and body plans has failed time after time because it CAN’T DO IT. Got it? Probably not. You are convinced that RM+NS has this ability although it’s never been observed. That’s called faith. I suggest you start a church for your faith and stop polluting science and young minds with it.
By the way, Dan. I’m an agnostic. Atheism is just another religion as far as I’m concerned. I want the “Church of Origin by Chance” the hell out of non-elective public school science classes. That’s the bottom line. There’s more than enough really good expermental biology to teach in HS biology without needing to waste time on theoretical biology. Teach the facts first and keep the theoretical science apart for university level courses.
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