From: tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu (trygve lode)
Subject: Re: Book: The Creationists
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 93 20:29:58 GMT

In article <1ik57s$m3q@agate.berkeley.edu> philjohn@garnet.berkeley.edu () writes:
>The final paragraphs of George Marsden's review of Ronald
>Numbers' book "The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific
>Creationism" are particularly interesting:

[...] 

>  Those who insist that
>nothing could ever be clarified by positing the existence of a
>higher intelligence are in a formal sense something like creation
>scientists.  They are so committed to a community that finds this
>secular faith immensely useful that they are convinced that they
>*must* be able to find an exclusively naturalistic explanation
>for everything.
>   "Unless we suppose that natural science of the past century
>has somehow settled all such issues, we might expect that in the
>future there would be wider acceptance of a variety of hypotheses
>about the possible relationships of natural phenomena to higher
>creative intelligence.  Those who insist on the extremes,
>however, may delay any such evolution of scientific thought."

Hypotheses involving the assumption of a "higher" sentient being
have several tremendous drawbacks.  First of all, in every case 
I've been acquainted with, the effect is merely to remove the 
original problem to a greater level of abstraction--to replace a
problem with a vastly more complex problem that is much harder to
approach by epistemologically valid means.  (e.g., we replace the
problem of how the chemicals that form the constituents of life 
as we know it, after forming spontaneously and spontaneously
assembling into structures that appear suspiciously like structures
that make up modern life, leaving us with the dilemma of choosing 
which of the many possible paths to the formation of life is the
most likely, with the problem of explaining a supernatural being
that follows no known physical or even logical laws, has no evidence
to support the assumption of its existence, and whose putative
existence utterly fails to increase our understanding of the universe
or our ability to explain and predict the interaction of elements 
within that universe.)

I think it's natural to expect that those whose lives are dedicated
to increasing the scope of human knowlege, with the results of their
labors ultimately being put to practical use in a manner that 
increases the level of human happiness and prosperity in the world,
would resist "explanations" that by their very nature preclude the
possibility of their use for the betterment of humanity or their use
in even learning more about the world.  Ultimately, our forays into
grand unified field theories, the origin of the universe, and the
understanding of genetics and the mechanisms of evolution have
unlimited potential for improving our lives--but looking at the results
of high-speed collisions with helium nuclei and realizing that, at
sufficiently high energies, they act like twelve pointlike particles
and then blaming the results on a giant, invisible, omnipotent carrot
(or whatever your deity du jour happens to be) instead of leaping off
into a mission of discovery of the inner workings of quantum 
chromodynamics doesn't increase human understanding or the ability
to predict and explain future particle interaction events a whit.

From a purely pragmatic standpoint, humanity has nothing to gain
from supernatural explanations for natural events; on the other hand
it has everything to gain from naturalistic explanations of those
events; therefore, it behooves us to continue seeking naturalistic
explanations, regardless of anyone's beliefs about omnipotent 
vegetables.

Trygve