From: bvickers@valentine.ics.uci.edu (Brett J. Vickers)
Subject: Johnson uses Argument from Personal Incredulity
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Organization: Univ. of Calif., Irvine, Info. & Computer Sci. Dept.
Date: 25 Jan 93 09:05:14 GMT

Consistently, Phillip Johnson has talked about how he is
unsatisfied by Darwinism as an explanation for origins, or
how he does not think it is close to being sufficient.  This
reminded me of a passage in _The Blind Watchmaker_ where
Richard Dawkins describes Bishop Montefiore's similar
incredulity:

	   He [Bishop Montefiore] makes heavy use of what may be
	called the Argument from Personal Incredulity.  In the
	course of one chapter we find the following phrases, in
	this order:

		...there seems no explanation on Darwinian
		grounds ... It is no easier to explain ...
		It is hard to understand ... It is not easy
		to understand ... It is equally difficult to
		explain ... I do not find it easy to comprehend
		... I do not find it easy to see ... I find it
		hard to understand ... it does not seem feasible
		to explain ... I cannot see how ... neo-Darwinism
		seems inadequate to explain many of the
		complexities of animal behaviour ... it is not
		easy to comprehend how such behaviour could
		have evolved solely through natural selection ...
		It is impossible ... How could an organ so
		complex evolve? ... It is not easy to see ...
		It is difficult to see ...

	   The Argument from Personal Incredulity is an extremely weak
	argument, as Darwin himself noted.  In some cases it is based
	upon simple ignorance.  For instance, one of the facts that the
	Bishop finds it difficult to understand is the white colour of
	polar bears.

		As for camouflage, this is not always easily
		explicable on neo-Darwinian premises.  If polar
		bears are dominant in the Arctic, then there
		would seem to have been no need for them to evolve
		a white-coloured form of camouflage.

	This should be translated:

		I personally, off the top of my head sitting in
		my study, never having visited the Arctic, never
		having seen a polar bear in the wild, and having
		been educated in classical literature and theology,
		have not so far managed to think of a reason why
		polar bears might benefit from being white.

	In this particular case, the assumption being made is that
	only animals that are preyed upon need camouflage.  What is
	overlooked is that predators also benefit from being
	concealed from the prey.  Polar bears stalk seals resting
	on the ice.  If the seal sees the bear coming from far
	enough away, it can escape.  I suspect that, if he imagins
	a dark grizzly bear trying to stalk seals over the snow, the
	Bishop will immediately see the answer to his problem.
	   The polar bear argument turned out to be almost too easy
	to demolish but, in an important sense, this is not the
	point.  Even if the foremost authority in the world can't
	explain some remarkable biological phenomenon, this doesn't
	mean that it is inexplicable.  Plenty of mysteries have
	lasted for centuries and finally yielded to explanation.
	For what it is worth, most modern biologists would't find
	it difficult to explain every one of the Bishop's 35 examples
	in terms of the theory of natural selection, although not
	all of them are quite as easy as the polar bears.  But we
	aren't testing human ingenuity.  Even if we found one
	example that we *couldn't* explain, we should hesitate to
	draw any grandiose conclusions from the fact of our own
	inability.  Darwin himself was very clear on this point.

--
Brett J. Vickers
bvickers@ics.uci.edu
Newsgroups: talk.origins