Sue Blackmore - Opening Minds ?

Sue blackmore reveals her ignorance in a Guardian article Opening Minds, (4th Sept 2008) that typifies the lack of understanding of some Darwinists who fail to even fully grasp the arguments relating to creation and evolution.

Ms Blackmore asserts that once natural selection is understood it will lead to acceptance of Darwinism. But all creationists accept natural selection; that isn't the problem. The problem is whether that is sufficient to account for all of life, and there are severe hurdles to overcome in the neo-Darwinian thesis because it requires a directional or progressive increase in complexity, without a director. The concept of undirected direction is an oxymoron. These hurdles are so large that many evolutionists are at a loss to explain it, they just keep the faith believing a non Darwinian explanation may one day come to their rescue - (it is called intelligent design, but they don't know it yet). Seth Bullock at a recent conference in Winchester commented that

"Evolution on its own doesn't look like it can make the creative leaps that have occurred in the history of life,...It's a great process for refining, tinkering, and so on. But self-organisation is the process that is needed alongside natural selection before you get the kind of creative power that we see around us....Understanding how those two processes combine is the biggest challenge in biology." Comments from Winchester Conference

The other problem Ms Blackmore fails to note is a foundational fallacy, the belief that scientific explanations are akin to absolute knowledge. This is scientism, long rejected by most philosophers of science because all scientific claims are based on untestable assumptions and scientism is self-refuting. Ms Blackmore needs to read up a little more on the philosophy of science before commenting further on education policy in the UK.

You can read her article here: Sue Blackmore - Opening Minds [or not]

Darwinism and Education Policy

A New York Times Editorial [1] falls back on empty rhetoric and provides a rather confused argument in seeking to defend Darwinism in the US education system. Stating in the headline for instance that ‘creationism’ is a ‘con,’ and commenting that ‘creationists tend to struggle with reality’ in the first sentence, but then they fail to present a positive case for Darwinism. This rather aggressive approach to defending evolutionary science is a staple of Darwinist propaganda; firstly taken up by Thomas Huxley who was described as ‘Darwin’s bulldog;’ then by people like Andrew Dixon White who helped develop a sense of conflict between science and faith, and later by Richard Dawkins, otherwise known as ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler,’ who often uses polemical argumentation to reinforce his point in favour of atheism.

The object of the NYT attack would seem to be the Texas State Board of Education that is seeking to maintain teaching standards in the school education system. The contested approach is one that insists that evidence must be presented to schoolchildren in terms of ‘strengths and weaknesses’ in scientific theories such as Darwinism. In arguing against this the NYT falls back on the tired old dogma that ‘science must be naturalistic’ and ‘Darwinism is proved’ by naturalistic science, which is kind of a circular argument. If naturalism is assumed true at the start of scientific investigation, a naturalistic explanation will be the result, whether naturalism is true or not. They also come out with the following ill-thought out statement that defies logic, suggesting that ‘the elegant truth of evolution...has…evolved.’

‘Every student who hopes to understand the scientific reality of life will sooner or later need to accept the elegant truth of evolution as it has itself evolved since it was first postulated by Darwin.’

What happens if we apply this same logic to mathematics? Suppose a school child puts on her exam paper that although she knows her answer does not follow the rule of arithmetic the ‘elegant truth of mathematics has evolved’ and therefore she should be awarded full marks. And the Darwinists want us to believe that they are the guardians of standards in education.

Are we to believe now that truth is a relative concept that can evolve? Of course science changes over time, but that isn’t about ‘truth evolving’ it is an admission that scientific explanations were wrong in the past or only partially correct and a new and better way of understanding science has developed. Science progresses in this way because scientists study the ‘strengths and weaknesses’ of theories through a process of falsification.

In fact thinking through ‘strengths and weaknesses’ is an excellent strategy for science because it puts false science between a rock and a hard place, thus allowing truth to be seen. Dishonest science that goes through this process will be either exposed as false, or if it resists the need for scrutiny will be exposed as not science, but metaphysical dogma. That doesn’t mean that science cannot have religious or philosophical commitments, but that they must be honestly addressed. In fact it is impossible to do science without such commitments. Creationists are honest in noting that they cannot prove that design is the best explanation scientifically because of the foundational limits of science, but that design is the most logical explanation when the extreme complexity of life is fully considered. Christian faith, and belief in the creator ultimately come via revelation from God. But naturalists should at least be honest and also acknowledge that naturalism cannot be known to be true scientifically. The NYT Editorial comments that ‘All science is “naturalist” to the extent that it tries to understand the laws of nature and the character of the universe on their own terms, without reference to a divine creator.’ But science cannot fully know whether a divine creator exists or not. Such naturalistic science is exposed to the problem of searching for a solution that may not exist leaving many excellent scientists ‘barking up the wrong tree.’

The NYT article seeks to defend itself by commenting that ‘Scientists are always probing the strengths and weakness of their hypotheses. That is the very nature of the enterprise. But evolution is no longer a hypothesis. It is a theory rigorously supported by abundant evidence.’ But the NYT fails to give an example of this ‘abundant evidence’ preferring empty rhetoric instead. And the history of science shows that once well-established theories often come unstuck at a later date.

Education

The secular humanists and Darwinists want people to believe that they are the guardians of science standards in education, but they want to restrict education to learning given ‘facts’ and not allow students to think through issues for themselves, such as understanding the 'strengths and weaknesses' of Darwinism. This in effect leads to the ‘dumbing down’ of education that was incidentally a part of the pagan social order proposed in Plato’s Republic. On the other hand Christians believe that all students should be educated to the level of thinking human beings so they may find their potential in Christ, thus enabling them to consider the deeper meaning and purposes of life and not be reduced to the level of productive economic units serving the purpose of a neo-pagan or secular elite. Education is not simply about producing materialistic, economic human units, but about giving human beings the skills and ability to find their full God given humanity.

Sources

[1] Editorial, ‘The Cons of Creationism,’ New York Times, 7th June 2008http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/opinion/07sat3.html?ref=opinion

Malnutrition, not climate change, is main threat to world.

The Copenhagen Consensus initiative, which includes five Nobel laureates in its panel, has declared that tackling malnutrition should be the main priority in the world.

The Times-Online news website has reported that the provision of nutritional supplements, such as vitamin A and zinc to babies and children in the developing countries is most important in order to prevent totally avoidable deficiencies that are known to affect hundreds of millions of children. They comment that this is the 'most cost-effective way of making the world a better place.'

The aim of the report is to prioritise solutions to the world’s many problems according to their costs and benefits, and the most important priorities it concludes is to improve diet. On the other hand, efforts to reduce global warming through reductions in greenhouse gases, were rated at the bottom of the league table. The economists considered the costs of effectively tackling climate change too high with limited overall benefit, while research into renewable energy and new low-carbon technologies, such as solar and nuclear fusion power, was ranked 14th in important.

See: Peter Henderson, Forget Climate Change, we should spend on nutrition.' Date 30/05/08

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4033272.ece?token=null&offset=0

Science, ideology and idolatry

There is an interesting article in the Daily Mail today (21/05/08) by Geoffrey Lean where the modern dogma of secular science is described as 'institutionalised idolatry.'

There are further examples given of the persecution of scientists because they made discoveries that did not suit the hegemony of scientism. He argues that scientism is damaging public trust in science.

"Beware scientists who insist they always know best" by Geoffrey Lean (Last updated at 12:44 AM on 21st May 2008)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1020839/Beware-scientists-insist-know-best.html

I am currently reading Michael Polanyi's Science, Faith and Society, (OUP 1946). He argues that science must be free from authority in order to pursue the evidence as a truth seeking exercise. Scientism on the other hand sets up a sort of clerical authority that actually damages science. There is a need to cool passions so that science can progress within an ethical framework.

See also: Dispatches, ‘In God’s Name’ and liberal bullying, CSM, (20th May 2008).

http://www.csm.org.uk/news.php?viewmessage=112/

Embryology Bill and the Moral Failure of Secular Humanism

There is some irony in the latest developments regarding the Fertilisation and Embryology Bill going through the United Kingdom Houses of Parliament.

The most controversial idea is to place human DNA within the female gamete of an animal, such as a cow, having removed the animal’s DNA, and create human-animal hybrid embryos for the sake of stem-cell experimentation. The reason this is considered necessary is to increase the number of embryos available for research, as human embryos are apparently in short supply for stem cell research. It is argued that it is important for medical research to find cures for various genetic diseases, although such claims ignore the fact that the ends cannot be used to justify the means. It totally ignores the evidence that human stem cells can be just as effective in research of this nature, and considers the ethical disgust felt by many as simply a ‘yuk’ factor that will be overcome when the process is underway. Leading science institutions such as the Royal Society, and well-known secularists such as Lord Robert Winston, Polly Toynbee and David Aaronovitch support the measures.

Those opposed include the Catholic leader in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who said the Bill was a ‘monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life,’[5] and the Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright who commented that ‘This secular utopianism is based on a belief in an unstoppable human ability to make a better world, while at the same time it believes that we have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people...’ Both Winston and Aaronovitch have accused the leading clerics of ‘lying’ for objecting to this Bill in their Easter messages.

It also reveals that the philosophy of secular humanism in fact suffers from a fatal paradox. The more humanists seek to remove limits to scientific research, so as for instance to experiment on human-animal hybrids, the less human 'humanism' becomes.

Read the full text here.
Embryology Bill and the Moral Failure of Secular Humanism

Why Pigs don't have wings

Philosopher of science Jerry Fodor (writing an article in the London Review of Books 18th October 2007 entitled 'Why Pigs don't have Wings') rejects natural selection as unworkable. He also claims that evolution has left us 'a little crazy' and asks why we are so good at making ourselves misrable, noting that the suffering of the last century was 'terrible,' but holds out little hope for the next. Our present science, he observes, offers little help with its Humean axiom that ought cannot be derived from is.

Fodor continues to believe in evolution, but he says that

"...the classical Darwinist account of evolution as primarily driven by natural selection is in trouble on both conceptual and empirical grounds."

"If it does turn out that natural selection isn’t what drives evolution, a lot of loose speculations will be stranded high, dry and looking a little foolish. Induction over the history of science suggests that the best theories we have today will prove more or less untrue at the latest by tomorrow afternoon. In science, as elsewhere, ‘hedge your bets’ is generally good advice."

Fodor notes that perhaps our minds have not evolved to suit our modern world, but then concludes that he doesn't feel like a hunter gatherer.

"I really would be surprised to find out that I was meant to be a hunter-gatherer since I don’t feel the slightest nostalgia for that sort of life. I loathe the very idea of hunting, and I’m not all that keen on gathering either. Nor can I believe that living like a hunter-gatherer would make me happier or better. In fact, it sounds to me like absolute hell. No opera. And no plumbing. "


Darwinists continue to struggle with the rationality of Darwinism, but believe it true despite the problems, perhaps hoping that one day someone will deal with them adequately. The overall problem is that if the Darwinists could account for everything in purely material terms, then where would non material things like truth and value fit in? Darwinism is ultimately a self refuting exercise.

Steve Jones in the Telegraph.

Paul Talyor of Answers in Genesis (29/02/08) takes issue with Steve Jones article in the UK Daily Telegraph. See: Magic, Information and Faith

Taylor comments "It is amusing that Professor Steve Jones refers to his latest effort ... in the Telegraph as “View from the lab,” when nothing he has to say owes anything to the sort of real science carried out in laboratories."

In the Telegraph Jones comments: "The idea that life began by magic a few thousand years ago is entirely absurd..." For 'magic', read 'God,' but Jones believes nature can supply its own 'magic' if given enough time. For Jones then 'no causal reason' and 'no purpose' can lead to life as we know it. Now that really is pulling rabbits out of hats.

Read: 'View from the lab: creationism' by Steve Jones

Darwinian Hagiography

Denis Alexander of the Faraday Institute has a letter in the New Scientist praising the Clergy Letter Project and calling for Christians to be better educated with knowledge of evolution. Darwinists seem under the illusion that more education can make up for the failure of Darwinism to be accepted in the minds of the majority of Christians. By way of review here is the letter published 23rd February 2008.

"Celebrating Darwin There seems little doubt that religious communities are more likely to listen when people from within their own communities have something important to say, as with the Clergy Letter project (2 February, p 16). Though creationism is thankfully less of a problem in Europe, Michael Zimmerman may be interested to know that there have long been vigorous efforts within UK churches to educate Christians about science in general, and evolution in particular. For example, later this year Christians in Science http://www.cis.org.uk/ are holding a conference entitled Celebrating Darwin. Biologists who have a faith need to be active in explaining their science within their religious communities."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726440.400-celebrating-darwin.html

Interestingly according to the CiS Newsletter PreCiS No. 42 Autumn 2007 Precis42.pdf the conference in question is "Celebrating Darwin ? Creation, Evolution and Theological Challenges." That is with a question mark. As a student member of CiS I wonder why Denis would chose to turn a question into a statement in this way? Perhaps the conference has indeed changed its name, or perhaps the statement expresses the real purpose of the conference, but Denis seems to be engaging in a form of hagiography that is not shared by at least some members of CiS. The CiS apparently does not take an official line on Darwinism in its Statement of Faith and members hold different views on macro-evolution. But his letter suggests that CiS is seeking to educate the church in the ways of Darwin.

Undoubtedly Darwin raised an important theological question in terms of suffering in light of a widely held belief in design, but his own wider claims for macro-evolution have not been substantiated, and nor can they be. The solution to the problem of theodicy will not be answered by merely caving into Darwin's negative conclusions. And Christians should indeed engage in the education of Christians (and non-Christians) to warn of the fallacy known as scientism. That is; the 'belief' that 'science' can explain all reality. It is a self refuting claim.

Darwinism has failed to capure the minds of a majority of the population because of very obvious causal gaps in the theory. But in response people are asked to 'believe' in much the same way as they accept religious belief. Evolution is doubted because it is not established as science, but is really seen as a belief system where nature is said to supply the 'power of generation.'

Instead of dividing Christians along Darwinian lines it would be good to see Denis call for respectful dialogue between Christians who hold differing views, and organise a conference along such lines. But praising Darwin in church seems more important to some Christian naturalists than Christian unity.

Gatekeepers of knowledge - Peer Review and the Royal Society

The author of a new book 'Sex, Science and Profits,' Terence Kealey, has written an article in the Daily Telegraph 'Peer review: the myth of the noble scientist' explaining some of the issues surrounding problems with the peer review process [1] [2]. He notes that peer review often fails to prevent fraud in science and hinders the development of new discoveries. This has some bearing on those who are sceptical of evolutionary claims, as creationists are often accused of not publishing in peer-reviewed journals. The fact is though that access is denied to such journals for creation articles because the work does not fit the prevailing paradigm required by the publication, not because of a lack of quality.

Kealey for instance notes that scientists are often in disagreement over food science issues, such as the effect of coffee consumption and sweetener use on people’s health. He quotes a figure of 15 percent of scientists at the National Institute of Health in America who admit to ‘bending data to fit their theories.’ Thus he notes that it is a myth to claim that science is a noble search for truth. Instead scientists are driven by the emotion of selfishness, and this has gone on through history. For instance Hooke published his work on elasticity in coded form in 1676 with the anagram ‘ceiiinosssttuu’ so that no one else could claim credit for his work. In Latin it is ‘ut tension sic vis,’ or stress is proportional to strain.

Kealey argues that with the development of the Royal Society, science was supposed to have formed a level playing field. But he asserts that this is not true, as the Royal Society subsequently enabled a closed shop for discovery where peer review in effect has acted as a ‘gatekeeper’ to knowledge.

It is also true that reviewers are not able to test the experiments directly, and so papers are often published on the basis of the reputation of the author. Sometimes fraud gets through and important work is rejected. Barbara McClintock’s work on gene jumping in DNA later won her the Nobel Prize in 1983, but her work was published informally because her peers rejected it.

Unscrupulous reviewers may also steal ideas and prevent a new author from getting recognition. Kealey further comments that the Internet will mean that the peer review process will inevitably change, and that ‘peer review was always an illusion, providing a deceptive imprimatur of objective truth.’

Summary

Evolution is also held in society by the gatekeepers of the scientific establishment, not through reasoned and carefully thought out arguments. The Royal Society was established along the lines of Bacon’s scientific judiciary to carefully weigh knowledge claims in the place of God and King, but it has only served to act as a gatekeeper of knowledge where a council of ‘philosopher kings’ have been able to control science and dictate to society what people should believe. The Internet is indeed serving to democratise science where new ideas can be heard where once voices were blocked.

See also:

http://www.csm.org.uk/news.php?viewmessage=101

Royal Society and Steve Jones muddy the waters
Is the Natural History Museum misrepresenting Darwin and evolution?

Sources

[1] Terence Kealey, (2008), 'Sex, Science and Profits,' Heinemann. The Author is Vice Chancellor of the University of Buckingham.
[2] Kealey, T., Peer review: the myth of the noble scientist, Daily Telegraph, 19/02/2008 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/19/scipeers119.xml

Darwinism and Cargo Cult Science

Cargo Cult Science is a term coined by Richard Feynman in a 1974 Caltech address to describe the way science is often done. Cargo Cult’s sometimes developed in tribal societies where non-natives bring advanced technologies for a time through ships or aircraft. The Cargo Cult’s sometimes started worshipping the people or technology as divine, not realising the human origin of such artefacts. Feynman argued that scientists can fall into the same trap through a desire to be right. (In terms of Darwinism, the theory itself has become so sacred that questioning of its central tenets must be rebuffed with a sort of religious zeal). Feynman felt the need to avoid this common risk of self-delusion in science through a process of questioning, with the need for scientists to doubt their own theories and results together with full investigations of possible flaws in their own work.

Recent editorials in Nature and New Scientist call for evolution to be promoted as ‘scientific fact’ with renewed vigour by every academy and society in the run up to the Darwin Day celebrations in 2009. Along with this is the typical misrepresentation of creationist arguments that could be described as a form of ‘Cargo Cult Science.’

Why the desperation and lack of candour you might ask with such editorials? [1] [2] Because there is continued widespread scepticism of evolutionary claims in society with over half in both Britain and America rejecting the wider beliefs of Darwinism and the naturalistic science establishment wants to hold onto its position of power.

Richard Feynman called this type of approach, where important information is ignored or misrepresented, ‘Cargo-Cult Science.’ Cargo-Cult Science has all the appearance of good science, but it is based on fallacies. Instead Feynman called for scientists to work within a framework of ‘utter honesty,' commenting.

‘It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it.'

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.’[3]

Read More: http://www.csm.org.uk/news.php?viewmessage=95

[1] Nature Editorial ‘Spread the Word’ Vol. 451, p. 108, 10th Jan 2008
[2] New Scientist Editorial, ‘It’s evolution, stupid,’ 2638, 12th Jan 2008
[3] Feynman, R (1974) ‘Cargo Cult Science,’ Engineering and Science, Vol. 37:7, June