thinkevolution.net

Over on Hullabaloo, tristero writes that a candidate’s response to the evolution question is “a litmus test.” Governor Mike Huckabee was one of three Republican candidates to disavow evolution in a previous debate. In this clip he is asked whether he believes the story of creation. Huckabee retorts that it’s an unfair question because it “asks in a simplistic manner… whether there is a God or not.” So I guess the religious beliefs of presidential candidates… are not anything the voting public should care about?

Of course, Huckabee is very invested in our knowing that he believes in God. And to him, it’s straightforward: “A person either believes that God created this process, or that it was an accident.” He’s unequivocal: accepting evolution is rejecting God. Huckabee gets so much more wrong in this two minute response, beyond distorting the question into a test of faith. Conflating the theory of evolution with the origin of life is a blunder that confuses major scientific disciplines—but for Huckabee that’s not relevant, because to him research into the origin of life and evolutionary biology are wrongheaded and only within his sphere of interest as threats to Christian faith. His suggestion that evolution is a purely random (accidental) process is so misguided that it’s staggering that a presidential candidate would promote it with such confidence. Which leads us to the real problem. Huckabee says (not for the first time) that this question has no business harassing a presidential candidate—the question of evolution is for someone writing “an eighth grade science book.” Huckabee’s dismissal is alarming, and tristero’s right: if a candidate doesn’t recognize that a government must rely on basic science research to develop responsible and ethical policies, that candidate has no business in the White House.

Today’s cover story in Salon is an interview with biologist Lewis Wolpert, who argues that the propensity for religious belief is wired into our biology and is an evolutionary product of natural selection.

Wolpert is an atheist. He theorizes that the ability of early humans to understand causality—pounding this nut with this rock will break it open—enabled tool-making, which was an evolutionarily successful strategy. And thus the establishment of this causal worldview necessitated an explanation for everything:

Salon: So once you have an understanding of cause and effect, then ignorance is no longer tolerable? You want to explain everything.

Wolpert: Exactly. You know, we cannot tolerate not knowing the causes of things that affect our lives.

There’s a fairly logical flow of reason to this theory, and I’m all for thought experiments. But is this science? Perhaps Wolpert doesn’t claim any particular authority for this argument. But wait, right there in the title of his new book, Wolpert hauls in the “evolutionary explanation” juggernaut: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: the Evolutionary Origins of Belief. The problem here is that Wolpert’s ideas may be reasoned, but they are not evidenced. Science is an evidence-based discipline. The fact that Wolpert is an eminent (developmental) biologist may only exacerbate the problem, since so much authority is accorded to scientists. You know, because their discipline is so evidentiary.

Well, despite his training and esteemed contributions to science, perhaps Wolpert has relaxed his criteria for discerning facts. But what’s this about lack of evidence for qi, the energy manipulated by acupuncturists?

Salon: Maybe the scientific instruments that we have at our disposal just can’t detect anything about qi.

Wolpert: Sorry. When they invented qi, how in the hell did they know what an energy field was? They hardly had a concept of energy. I mean, if you go back and look at their evidence, I’m afraid it was a nice set of ideas, but I’m terribly sorry, evidence matters. And that’s what causal beliefs are really about. If we believe that something has a particular cause, we should be looking for the evidence.

So evidence does matter. But so, apparently, does hubris:

Wolpert: My argument is that causal understanding gave rise to toolmaking; that was the evolutionary advantage. It’s toolmaking that’s really driven human evolution. This is not widely accepted, I’m afraid, but there’s no question about it. It’s tools that really made us human. They may even have given rise to language.

No question about it? There must be a great deal of evidence for there to be no question about it… But if there were a great deal of evidence, it would be rather well-accepted, wouldn’t it? Let me be clear: intellectual discourse makes me happy. Let’s talk about the evolution of the psyche. But let’s not imply that it’s science. Evolution is such a fun explanation to invoke, but flinging around adaptive arguments willy-nilly just gets everyone into a lather and makes actual science that much more difficult to integrate into the popular consciousness.

On April 21, Dr. Ken Miller gave a lecture at the historic Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia. Turns out his talk was part of a lecture series that was established in 1912 by Richard Westbrook, a trustee of the Institute, with the deliberate purpose of encouraging open discourse on scientific subjects, especially evolutionary biology. So Miller’s material talk addressing current social and political issues surrounding evolution was made possible by the social and political issues surrounding evolution back in 1912. Or perhaps more optimistically, by the foresight and dedication of one evolutionist to the scientific education of the public about this important discipline.

Anyway, one of the best things about the talk was Miller’s use of various quotations regarding the interface of science and faith. Miller himself is a practicing Catholic, and has often argued that evolution does not threaten religious commitment. Not surprisingly, some of the most thoughtful ideas about the intersection of science and religion have come from some of the greatest scientific minds. These carefully considered, often gentle statements should be admired for their expansive perspective. So, inspired by Ken Miller’s recent lecture, here is a collection of quotations.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

–Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, First Edition, 1859

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

–Saint Augustine, 5th century

I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God’s, or Nature’s method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts… the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.

–Theodosius Dobzhansky, Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, 1973

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

–Galileo Galilei, Letters to Christina of Tuscany, 17th century

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed… A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.

–Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild, 1931