From: riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Logic and God (and Steven Jay Gould)
Date: 9 Sep 92 02:21:36 GMT
Followup-To: sci.skeptic,talk.origins
Organization: LNK Corporation, Riverdale, MD

In article <87956@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1297@tecsun1.etl.army.mil>, riggs@descartes (Bill Riggs) writes:

>As it is, I wasn't aware that the Bible was at odds with evolution.  The
>Bible does not claim to be literal in the sense that some of its readers
>claim it is.

	Then consider these quotations from Steven Jay Gould's article, "Knight
Takes Bishop" in his book "Bully for Brontosaurus",

(page 388)

	"This debate (between Julian Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce of the
Anglican Church) focused the world's attention on the real and deep issue of
Darwin's century - science versus religion. Huxley's victory was a pivotal
moment in the battle for science and reason against superstition and dogma."

	"I knew from preliminary browsings that the official tale was a
reconstruction made by Darwin's champions some quarter century after the 
fact. Amazingly enough (for all its later fame), no one bothered to record
the event in any detail at the time itself. No stenographer was present. The
two men exchanged words to be sure, but no one knows what they actually
said, and the few sketchy reports of journalists and letter writers contain
important gaps and contradictions. Ironically, the official version has been
so widely accepted and unchallenged not because we know its truth by copious
documentation, but rather because so little data exist for a potential
challenge."

(page 390)

	"I was delighted to find that the falsity of the official version
is common knowledge among a small group of scholars. All the more puzzling,
then, that the standard, heroic account continues to hold sway."

(page 395)

	"We will never know for sure, but the memories of Canon Farrar seem so
firm and detailed, and ring so true to me, that I shall place my money on his
version. Farrar was a liberal clergyman who once organized a meeting for 
Huxley to explain Darwinism to fellow man of the cloth. His memories, written
in 1899 to Leonard Huxley, are admittedly forty years old, but his version
makes sense of many puzzles and should be weighted well on that account -
especially since he regarded Huxley as the victor and did not write to
reconstruct history in the bishop's cause. Farrar wrote, taking the official
version of Wilberforce's taunt to task:

	'His words are quite misquoted by you (which your father refuted). 
They did not appear vulgar, nor insolent nor personal, but flippant. He
had been talking of the perpetuity of species in birds...and then denying
a fortiori the derivation of the species Man from Ape, he rhetorically 
invoked the help of feeling: and said (I swear to the sense and form of
the setence, if not to the words) "If anyone were to be willing to trace 
his descent through an ape as his grandfather, would he be willing to
trace his descent similarly on the side of his grandmother" It was (you see)
the arousing of antipathy about degrading women to the (four footed apes).
It was not to the point, but it was the purpose. It did not sound insolent,
but unscientific and unworthy of the zoological argumetn which he had been
sustaining. It was a bathos. Your father's reply...showed that there was
a vulgarity as well as a folly in the Bishop's words; and the impression 
distinctly was, that the Bishop's party as they left the room, felt abashed; 
and recognized that the Bishop had forgotten to behave like a gentleman...
	The victory of your father, was not the ironical dexterity shown
by him, but by the fact that he had got a victory in respect of manners and
good breeding. You must remember that the whole audience was made up of
gentlefolk, who were not prepared to endorse anything vulgar...
...I should say that to fair minds, the intellectual impression left by the
discussion was that the Bishop had stated some facts about the perpetuity
of species, but that no one had really contributed any valuable point to
the opposite side except Hooker...but that your father had scored a
victory over Bishop Wilberforce in the question of good manners.'

(page 398)

	"Why then, and how, did the official version so color this event as
a primal victory for evolution ? The answer largely lies with Huxley himself,
who successfully promoted, in retrospect, a version that suited his purposes
(and had probably, by then, displaced the actual event in his memory). Huxley,
though not antireligious, was uncompromisingly and pugnaciously anticlerical.
Moreover, he despised Wilberforce and his mellifluous sophistries. When 
Wilberforce died, in 1873, from head injuries sustained in a fall from his
horse, Huxley remarked (as the story goes): 'For once, reality and his brains
came into contact and the result was fatal'

(page 399) 

	"All men have blind spots, however broad their vision. Thomas Henry
Huxley was the most eloquent spokesman that evolution has ever known. But his
extreme anticlericalism led him to an uncompromising view of organized religion
as the enemy of science. Huxley could envision no allies among the official
clergy. Conservatives like Wilberforce were enemies pure and simple; liberals
lacked the guts to renounce what fact and logic had falsified, as they 
struggled to marry the irreconcilable findings of science with their 
supernatural vision. He wrote in 1887 of those 'whose business seems to be
to mix the black of dogma and the white of science into the neutral tint of
what they call liberal theology.' Huxley did view his century as a battleground
between science and organized religion - and he took great pride in the
many notches on his gun."

>
>Why do you say his answers are more relevant?  He was answering by ultra-
>conservative criterion that are not generally obligatory in the world of
>science fact.  For example, do you consider the fact that Earth is round
>was only established in the 60s?  Do you consider the fact that matter is
>atomic was only established by the first photographs (40s?).  Do you
>consider the fact that Sun is predominately made of hydrogen and helium
>to be in serious limbo until we land a probe on the surface?
>

	Well, here is what Gould has to say on the subject (from "Bully
for Brontosaurus", 'An Essay on a Pig Roast', page 437):

	"When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of
science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than
the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are
more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of
'popular' writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light,
our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode,
although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into
a methodology that the celebrated philosopher of science Karl Popper once
labeled as 'conjecture and refutation.'
>
>>	If you start veering much more in this direction, you might
>>end up putting biology into the same deconstructionist vise that
>>bedevils historical research.
>
>Deconstruction does not have a vise on historical research.  There may
>be pockets of noise, but meanwhile, the rest of us continue to call the
>basics of the life of Julius Caesar, like the basics of evolution, facts.
>
>>			       If that happens, your opponents *will*
>>get the better of you, because at that time, there *will* be nothing
>>but two competing, but unprovable theories.
>
>This, of course, is the classic deconstructionist failure.  Words slip,
>break, crack under the burden, yes, but mere words will not damage the
>fact of evolution, nor conjure into existence this often mentioned but
>never written out competing theory.

(Inconclusive discourse on Julius Caesar deleted)

>>	Facticities ? Is this another commonly used English word that I've
>>yet to encounter.
>
>So why do you bother to talk deconstruction if you're going to have basic
>reading trouble on this level?  I mean, the words `factious', `factitive',
>`factitious' are already taken.
>
>>	Hmmph. Back to the subject. "Evolution" is neither historical
>>(being primarily located temporally in prehistory),
>
>Word games.
>
>>						     nor a "fact". 
>
>Word games.
>
>>Nonetheless, "Julius Caesar" is not a "fact", either.
>
>Word games.
>
>>						       He was a human
>>being,
>
>Are you asserting a "fact"?
>
>>       and while we can use the noun form to make statements about him
>>(i.e. Julius Caesar existed), such statements are based factuallly on
>>other statements, which have to either to be proven or disproven.
>
>No, such statements like "Julius Caesar existed" are not based on other
>statements.  They are based on evidence: textual, archaelogical, linguistic,
>and so on.  Similarly, while you may want to score silly word games points,
>and make serious issues over the detail that "evolution" is merely a noun
>referring to a general process, as opposed to the particular historical
>process that is referred to by the word via the standard rhetorical tech-
>nique of synecdoche, as is the case with using "Julius Caesar" as an
>identifiable substitute for the man and various statements that centered
>around him, you still completely fail to address anything substantive.
>
>I speak and write in English, with all the rhetorical conventions that
>it encompasses.  I will continue to do so.  Only a moron thinks this is
>cause for disagreement.

	I ran into these lines from Hesiod over the weekend, which I hope
will help you out, Matt (quoted from Daniel Boorstin, "The Creators", page
34):

	"The Greeks replaced cosmology with genealogy, leaving us an ample 
and explicit account of the births and families of the gods. It was Hesiod
(c750-675 B.C.), another epic bard, whose Theogony (Birth of the Gods) 
became the canon...Less shadowy than Homer, Hesiod was a mostg un-Homeric
gloomy figure. His father emigrated from Asia Minor to Boeotia in central
Greece. One day, he recalled, there appeared to him the Helikonian Muses:

	'Listen, you country bumpkins, you swag-bellied yahoos,
	we know how to tell many lies that pass for truth,
	and we know, when we wish, to tell the truth itself.'
	so spoke Zeus' daughters, masters of word-craft,
	and from a laurel in full bloom they picked a branch
	and gave it to me as a staff, then breathed into me
	divine song, that I might spread the fame of past and future,
	and commanded me to hymn the race of the deathless gods,
	but always begin and end my song with them.

>Care to answer the question?  Is there some insignificant data point
>regarding "the existence of Julius Caesar" that doesn't fit, is not
>irrelevant, nor incorrect.  *When* does the data become so overwhelming
>that his existence becomes an established fact?
>
>>       Not knowing the specific answer you're looking for, I suppose
>>some of this applies to Caesar.
>
>Translation: Golly, it really was stupid of me to treat the question of
>evolution as a simple binary fact, but I'll never admit it, noway nohow.

	Yes, Matt, it is stupid (or at least disingenuous) of you to treat 
this question as a simple binary fact. The distinction is between the
statement of whether or not something/someone exists and the meaning
that we read into it. Somewhere along the line evolutionary theory
crosses over from being a statement of fact to something much more
dramatic and meaningful. Now, if you would like all the interpretation
of the meaning of evolution to be done by the religious side of the
house, I don't think you will get much argument from this corner...but
I find it hard to believe that this is what you had in mind.


	Bill R.

	"My opinions do not represent those of my employer or any
government agency."
-- 
Bill R.
Newsgroups: talk.origins