Glen Davidson
Posts: 1100
Joined: May 2006
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I don't have the stomach for these afdave threads
Yeah, me either. I check them occasionally for funny lines, but 98% of it is
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AFDave: (some comment which makes basic errors)
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Argystokes, Ved, Occam, Chris Hyland, normdoering, etc: (whole bunch of data, links to papers, analysis explaining basic science)
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AFDave: nuh uh! |
Good summary. But after having not commented for quite some time on Dave threads, mainly I'm using your post as a jump-off to discuss what is going on with Dave, .
We like to point to multiple lines of evidence for the age of the earth, and for the several lines of evidence that converge to support evolution--you know, fossils, the overall hierarchical schemata of cladistics, and the direct comparison of genomes on the smaller scale. Obviously if independent lines of evidence give the same result(s), we have attained a high confidence level.
The thing with Dave is that he has the same thing going. Now I don't agree that any of his lines are in fact sound, but the important thing is that he seems to believe them, as do many. Early on he mentioned at least some, the historicity of the Bible (which he believes is great, even though Genesis 1-11 is quite obviously incorrect, even about human length of life), the "evidence for the flood", the supposed gulf between human and animal minds, and the appearance of design.
And the fact is that this is his worldview, that is, it is how he evaluates the various lines of evidence. He evaluates evolution based upon the notion that Genesis is history, and that the flood happened. Most of us know of huge amounts of evidence against these, but he didn't achieve his worldview by evaluating evidence as scientists and judges do, he achieved them through comparing his several lines of belief, to make them all compatible.
People who argue evolution with Dave cannot penetrate the interlinked lines of belief that Dave has. Nearly all of the beliefs he espouses have been, and/or are being, attacked, yet never once is any line of attack able to overthrow the entire set of interlinked beliefs. Hit him on evolution, and he's arguing "free will" and Pascal's wager. Hit him on the Bible, and he'll point out that life "looks designed" (yes, from the standpoint of those who think all correlated complexity has to be the result of design), that humans are different from animals, and the "fact" that the geological column shows evidence of flood activity. Not that all of the examples I've brought up are what I've seen him use, but I have read enough to know that whenever he's stumped on anything he's off to some other bolster of his worldview.
People can hit him from every angle, but it's not going to make any difference, because he's evaluating everything written through a fundamentalist worldview that connects salvation, the religious view of humanity, flood, creation, redemption, and anthropocentrism into one belief system that has no room for alternative viewpoints. No fundamentalist can integrate all of the criticisms into one synthetic alternative viewpoint on a contingent basis (in fact a well-based non-religious conception of the world is achieved by few enough, other than by trusting the expertise of specialists), thus they must resort to evaluating evolution by the Bible, the Bible by "apparent design", Bible history through the "truth" about creation and the flood, humanity by fundamentalist interpretation, and the impossibility of a thoroughgoing "naturalism" by these several lines that "require a designer", or more straightforwardly, "require God".
"Paradigm shift" is one hideous cliche by now. However, I think it's the appropriate word to use for fundamentalists in the area of origins. They need to effect a colossal paradigm shift involving just about everything they believe is important before they can even begin to evaluate evolution in a manner that is open to new ideas. It is really far too much for most people by the time that they have completed their worldview, say, by their 30s (supposing that they didn't remain skeptical about fundamentalism by that time).
All criticisms of their inadequate conceptions appear insufficient to overthrow the several "lines of evidence" that they have been convinced exist for their beliefs. If we write from an integrated "scientific" perspective, this nonetheless does not cohere within their own minds, which in fact have only one set of beliefs that seem to be consistent. The huge issues, that of human superiority to other organisms, the need for the spirit to survive death, accuracy of the Bible that promised human superiority and death survival, and the impossibility of "naturalism" to explain all life, loom much larger in their minds than do inconvenient facts that they do not understand, let alone understand in a consistent manner.
Of course my point is not Dave per se, rather it is the problem of teaching science throughout a nation as religious as ours. The evidence for evolution seems paltry compared with the concepts in their minds that demand a Creator, life after death, humans as the pinnacle of creation, etc., etc. The coherence that we have achieved through much study and, roughly, science, is neither appealing as a concept to them, nor is it coherent to them.
And if people here argue evidence, Dave, the current proxy for the rest, can always shift to some other issue that, if he is not completely sure of it, at least has meaning and coherence to his mind. So he does this. Of course he doesn't follow through with "evidence" for creation, design, the flood, or whatever else he has promised, since he does what people instinctively do when they lose in one area, he shifts to an area that he thinks bolsters his first claim by extension. We may argue evolution with him, but he's arguing a whole non-scientific viewpoint against us. And no scientific argumentation is going to budge most fundamentalists from their non-scientific viewpoints.
We have our legitimate converging lines of evidence. The problem is that the fundamentalists have psychologically powerful "converging lines of evidence", that make up in cognitive coherence what they lack in evidentiary coherence. Not to us, of course, but they're not thinking like us. And if this is hardly new, I thought it might be worthwhile to note once again, perhaps even in order to keep AF Dave himself from being misunderstood, since it's all too easy to think that fundamentalists are being deliberate where they are in fact incapable of deliberately overcoming their conceptual limitations (unless they somehow get a good education more or less accidentally).
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Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy
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