Evolution on Trial -- Richard Dawkins Comments on the Kansas Controversy

Richard Dawkins, one of the most extreme and celebrated exponents of the Darwinian synthesis, cuts loose in the Guardian on the current debate over teaching Intelligent Design in Kansas. He writes:

Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant

As the Religious Right tries to ban the teaching of evolution in Kansas, Richard Dawkins speaks up for scientific logic

Science feeds on mystery. As my colleague Matt Ridley has put it: “Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.” Science mines ignorance. Mystery — that which we don’t yet know; that which we don’t yet understand — is the mother lode that scientists seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do.

Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science. It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse, it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that creationism or “intelligent design theory” (ID) is having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well financed. ID, by the way, is not a new form of creationism. It simply is creationism disguised, for political reasons, under a new name.

It isn’t even safe for a scientist to express temporary doubt as a rhetorical device before going on to dispel it.

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” You will find this sentence of Charles Darwin quoted again and again by creationists. They never quote what follows. Darwin immediately went on to confound his initial incredulity. Others have built on his foundation, and the eye is today a showpiece of the gradual, cumulative evolution of an almost perfect illusion of design. The relevant chapter of my Climbing Mount Improbable is called “The fortyfold Path to Enlightenment” in honour of the fact that, far from being difficult to evolve, the eye has evolved at least 40 times independently around the animal kingdom.

The distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin is widely quoted as saying that organisms “appear to have been carefully and artfully designed”. Again, this was a rhetorical preliminary to explaining how the powerful illusion of design actually comes about by natural selection. The isolated quotation strips out the implied emphasis on “appear to”, leaving exactly what a simple-mindedly pious audience — in Kansas, for instance — wants to hear.

The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors. But such Telling Lies for God (the book title of the splendidly pugnacious Australian geologist Ian Plimer) is not the most serious problem. There is a more important point to be made, and it goes right to the philosophical heart of creationism.

The standard methodology of creationists is to find some phenomenon in nature which Darwinism cannot readily explain. Darwin said: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty in order to abuse his challenge. “Bet you can’t tell me how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?” If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: “Right, then, the alternative theory; ‘intelligent design’ wins by default.”

Notice the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! Notice, too, how the creationist ploy undermines the scientist’s rejoicing in uncertainty. Today’s scientist in America dare not say: “Hm, interesting point. I wonder how the weasel frog’s ancestors did evolve their elbow joint. I’ll have to go to the university library and take a look.” No, the moment a scientist said something like that the default conclusion would become a headline in a creationist pamphlet: “Weasel frog could only have been designed by God.”

I once introduced a chapter on the so-called Cambrian Explosion with the words: “It is as though the fossils were planted there without any evolutionary history.” Again, this was a rhetorical overture, intended to whet the reader’s appetite for the explanation. Inevitably, my remark was gleefully quoted out of context. Creationists adore “gaps” in the fossil record.

Many evolutionary transitions are elegantly documented by more or less continuous series of changing intermediate fossils. Some are not, and these are the famous “gaps”. Michael Shermer has wittily pointed out that if a new fossil discovery neatly bisects a “gap”, the creationist will declare that there are now two gaps! Note yet again the use of a default. If there are no fossils to document a postulated evolutionary transition, the assumption is that there was no evolutionary transition: God must have intervened.

The creationists’ fondness for “gaps” in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away.

Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas.

Read it here.

Dawkins, of course, scores some important points. All too often proponents of ID have either misunderstood or misrepresented the views of evolutionary biologists. And, the evidence supporting the operation of Darwinian evolutionary processes in nature is indisputable.

But, that is not what Darwinian extremists like Dawkins are arguing. They represent the once-fashionable "Darwinian synthesis" which assumes that every feature observed in living things must be explained through the operation of Darwinian selection -- that is, it must serve some evolutionary function. They recognize no other possible influences.

This position ultimately reduces to sheer determinism and was strongly opposed by Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould who argued for a massive amount of contingency in evolution. To Gould, evolution was not deterministic, and in his work on the Burgess Shale he made the argument quite eloquently. Gould's argument's, though, were denounced by Dawkins and other Darwinian determinists, not because they were wrong, but because they gave aid and comfort to ID proponents. You see, if chance plays a large role in evolutionary processes there is no grounds for excluding supernatural agency. God could be manipulating the throws of the dice.

Gould was disturbed by this attempt to exclude what he saw as reasonable arguments simply because they might be used by religious people. This was ideological warfare, not scientific inquiry. I note that in his current diatribe Professor Dawkins argues that it is not safe for scientists to express doubts about any aspect of evolutionary theory because the "creationists" might be able to use those expressions of doubt in their arguments. This is censorship that is altogether antagonistic to free scientific inquiry.

He further misrepresents the arguments of ID advocates, many of whom are quite comfortable with Darwinian processes. They simply argue, unlike Dawkins and his ilk, that Darwinian processes are not necessarily a total explanation for everything -- that the fact that they can be demonstrated to operate in nature does not exclude all other possibilities, including supernatural agency. Dawkins has famously stated that one cannot simultaneously believe in Darwin and in God. ID advocates are saying, "yes we can!" By no means are they trying to shut down scientific inquiry and debate, and to brand them "Creationists"is fundamentally dishonest.

I myself am not an advocate of Intelligent Design -- my critique of the apotheosis of "Science" rests on other grounds, but I do recognize intellectual tyranny when I see it.