发信人: oldgaia (飘浮中~~空), 信区: Biology
标 题: 正好这期Science有个书评Re: 进化论：一个错误的信仰(1)
发信站: The unknown SPACE (Fri Mar 29 14:40:26 2002) WWW-POST

注意这一段。对于鼓吹”Creationism"的文章，可以看看它是不是采取了一下三种策略之
一。
The wedge strategy comprises three general approaches: scientific research and
publication, publicity and opinion-making, and "cultural confrontation and
renewal." As Forrest and many other contributors to the volume plainly show,
the ID proponents have not made even a token effort at scientific research.
They prefer instead the "creation-science" approach of distorting and
attacking evolution and related fields. These advocates carry out their
business in popular books and the proceedings of their own conferences; no
article demonstrating ID has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal. But, as
Johnson admits, his goal is not about science at all, but about religion and
philosophy. ID proponents have no intention of playing the game of science.
Why bother, when you can simply walk away from the field, call a news
conference, and declare that you've already won and that the game is invalid
anyway?




EVOLUTION AND CREATIONISM:
Waiting for the Watchmaker
A review by Kevin Padian*


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Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics Philosophical, Theological, and
Scientific Perspectives
Robert T. Pennock, Ed.
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001. 825 pp. $110, £75.95. ISBN
0-262-16204-0. Paper, $45, £30.95. ISBN 0-262-66124-1.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--


Intelligent Design (ID) is the cryptoscientific arm of a sociopolitical
movement of conservative Christians who are upset about the displacement of
their concept of God from institutional life in the United States and are
determined to do something about it. Intelligent Design Creationism and Its
Critics presents the arguments of ID advocates in their own words and provides
closely argued critiques of the science, philosophy, and theology that
underlie their positions. Robert Pennock, the editor, is a philosopher at
Michigan State University whose previous book, Tower of Babel: The Evidence
Against the New Creationism (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999), exposed the
problems and pitfalls of ID, particularly in its logic and rhetoric. In the
present volume, he has assembled two broad, well-qualified teams for what
amounts to a wrestling-style "smackdown" that lays the current controversies
bare.
The vanguard of the ID movement has been the Center for the Renewal of Science
and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank in Seattle.
ID Creationism is more or less the brainchild of Phillip E. Johnson, a
now-retired criminal law professor from the University of California, who in
the early 1990s set out a "wedge strategy" for destroying materialism and
reinstating Christian values in education and society. Johnson found
like-minded friends and financial supporters, and today the Institute is
better funded than many federal and nongovernmental organization programs in
science education.

The strategy Johnson developed seeks to undermine evolution and science
education while rallying support for ID Creationism. In an excellent overview
that begins the book, Barbara Forrest details the history and motives behind
ID Creationism as well as its political and cultural underpinnings. ID itself
recapitulates the late 18th-century middlebrow theology of William Paley, who
famously argued that, just as the intricate design of a watch implies the
existence of a watchmaker, the intricate design of nature forces us to accept
the existence of a Creator who made and maintains it. Decades earlier, Hume
had shown (not without sympathy) that this argument violated both logic and
theology. But it persisted--even Darwin as a Cambridge undergraduate admired
its rhetoric, if not its substance. It currently appears in the insistence of
ID proponents that some biological structures are too complex and intricate to
have any possible evolutionary intermediates. They conclude that these
structures must have been "intelligently designed" by some supernatural force
that they prefer not to name, obviously for fear of violating the U.S.
Constitution's establishment clause.

Yet on less secular stages the advocates of ID are frank about their fervent
Christian beliefs and the crusade to restore Jesus as the center of all
education and culture, including science. To do this, the wedge strategists
have to demonize science and show that its naturalism excludes consideration
of God philosophically as well as methodologically. Johnson continues to
conflate these two forms of naturalism even after being called on the issue
many times, but he has no choice. If he gives up the conflation, he has lost,
because he cannot call naturalism a state-supported, established religion
unless it explicitly denies the existence of God.

The wedge strategy comprises three general approaches: scientific research and
publication, publicity and opinion-making, and "cultural confrontation and
renewal." As Forrest and many other contributors to the volume plainly show,
the ID proponents have not made even a token effort at scientific research.
They prefer instead the "creation-science" approach of distorting and
attacking evolution and related fields. These advocates carry out their
business in popular books and the proceedings of their own conferences; no
article demonstrating ID has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal. But, as
Johnson admits, his goal is not about science at all, but about religion and
philosophy. ID proponents have no intention of playing the game of science.
Why bother, when you can simply walk away from the field, call a news
conference, and declare that you've already won and that the game is invalid
anyway? Forrest's exposé of the wedge strategy should be required reading for
all scientists as well as for government officials and bureaucrats, who seem
particularly gullible when terms like "viewpoint discrimination" and the
"parental right" not to educate children are introduced.

The ID supporters' other two approaches (opinion-making and cultural renewal)
are squarely aimed at a public that is poorly educated in science and tolerant
of their neighbors' religious beliefs. Their theological claims and the
absence of scientific support for their positions would merit no scholarly
attention if the movement were not achieving social and political successes.
But because it is, all scientists should pay close attention to the arguments
presented in this comprehensive anthology.

In the volume's no-holds-barred matches, those who favor ID are hopelessly
underpowered. Pennock nicely disposes of Johnson's critique of naturalism,
removing every foundation and showing that Johnson's arguments depend entirely
on misrepresentation. Johnson considers naturalism anathematic in any form
because, as a creationist, he knows that "a supernatural Creator not only
initiated this process [life] but in some meaningful sense controls it in
furtherance of a purpose" and that "the world (and especially mankind) was
designed, and exists for a purpose." What that purpose is, why it would be
revealed most clearly to one Christian sect instead of more broadly, and why
everyone should believe this purposefulness (instead of, say, some other
people's belief that their God lives on a mountain and cares little for the
ways of humans) are questions that turn the tables on ID proponents' charges
of "viewpoint discrimination" against them. Pennock deftly demonstrates that
Johnson's pleadings are rooted in religious intolerance, not religious
freedom.

As philosopher of science Philip Kitcher notes, some ID supporters are foxes
(they know many things) and some are hedgehogs (they know only one thing, but
it's important). If Johnson is a fox, then Michael Behe (a biochemist at
Lehigh University) is a hedgehog, because he has made much of the notion that
some biological structures are "irreducibly complex" and no intermediates from
simpler functional forms are possible. As Kitcher shows, Behe is saying that
because science has yet to solve (or, in some cases, even study) some
problems, they are insoluble--even though many problems previously considered
insoluble and gaps previously considered unbridgeable have been solved and
bridged. Moreover, evidence of scientific ignorance is not evidence for
creation, which Behe is unable to test in any empirical sense. Kitcher is
equally good at showing how Behe's and Johnson's books are full of sophistries
and cover-ups that deny the truly impressive evidence of evolution, specific
claims of which are explained and vindicated in the chapter by Matthew Brauer
and Daniel Brumbaugh.

Another ID "hedgehog" is William Dembski, who claims to have invented a
probabilistic "explanatory filter" that can distinguish among the increasingly
improbable effects he interprets as caused by regularity, chance, and design.
Dembski seems not to understand that in any attempt to explain the
distribution of a set of phenomena, chance is the simplest (null) hypothesis,
but this is the least of his problems. Even allowing Dembski most of his
questionable propositions, Peter Godfrey-Smith still easily shows that
Dembski's explanatory filter is merely a restatement of the fact that some
events are highly unlikely to have arisen by chance, and evolution is clearly
not driven by chance. Dembski's smoke-and-mirrors approach to causality (which
he never effectively separates from statistical probability) is exacerbated by
the confusion he generates with the meanings of "information." In information
theory, the term can imply increasing predictability or increasing entropy,
depending on the context. Godfrey-Smith also demonstrates that Dembski does
not realize the concepts of "chance and necessity" that François Monod
discussed are merely metaphors and they do not adequately describe evolution
(or any other life process).

Pennock's book is an invaluable compilation for anyone who wants to learn
about the scientific and philosophical failures of intelligent design and the
long-term political and social strategies of its advocates. The book's
principal shortcoming is that one-fifth of its length is spent on the
arguments of and responses to Alvin Plantinga, a philosopher of religion at
the University of Notre Dame. He seems neither fox nor hedgehog, and he has
little to offer except assertions of "what Christians know"--as if other
religious groups know nothing, and as if he could speak for all Christians.
Plantinga's specious logic and his general ignorance of even basic scientific
concepts reveal that he doesn't take science seriously enough to be considered
seriously himself. People like Plantinga and Johnson claim the high ground
without earning it, and so they seldom hold it long. Johnson believes that the
more people learn about the philosophy behind evolution, the less they'll like
it. Wait until they learn what's behind intelligent design.







【 在 karni (快乐的小天使) 的大作中提到: 】
: 估计是对进化论绝望，才去练轮子的。也不知道他把轮子练的怎么样
: 了，还能不能举起车轮子
:
: 【 在 denovo (新新瓜类) 的大作中提到: 】
: : 是啊。还向我传过功。
: : flg出事以后他因为不悔改被抓起来关进去了
: : 那时我已经不在发育所了，
: : 是从这个bbs看来的
: : 【 在 karni (快乐的小天使) 的大作中提到: 】
: : : 真的？他投奔轮子了？
:
:


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