Humans are quite naturally uncomfortable with ignorance. We are curious animals, evolved with an ability to reason and to discover insight into the phenomena that we find ourselves perplexed and enveloped in. Nature does not willingly yield her secrets to us. And while science can penetrate into some of nature's deepest mysterious, the theories it provides – like evolution for instance, can rival our otherwise conventional (or religious) wisdom.

Not all explanations are equal. Explanations that can not be falsified do not have a reliable attachment to reality. Scientific theories are testable. At any time, a theory can be overturned in light of new evidence or understanding. Explanations that can not be tested, are not science, but wishful thinking that relies on the authority of its dogma. (For a quick review of the scientific method, click here.)

As always, the following analysis is not meant to be complete.

Defined
This fallacy is not about a one's ignorance per se, but is committed when the petitioner asserts that a substitute explanation is more reliable if there are no apparent alternative explanations. Just because an explanation fails, does not necessarily make a competing explanation more plausible.

The Skeptics Dictionary supplies us with an accurate definition:

"The argument to ignorance is a logical fallacy of irrelevance occurring when one claims that something is true only because it hasn't been proved false, or that something is false only because it has not been proved true. A claim's truth or falsity depends upon supporting or refuting evidence to the claim, not the lack of support for a contrary or contradictory claim."

Examples

1. Those unidentified lights are proof of extraterrestrial life, since no other explanation is apparent.
2. If evolution is false, then creationism is true. A truncated example from the blogs, states: "Evolution according to Charles Darwin simply cannot be the truth. The only remaining popular theory is Creationism, or Intelligent Design. There is no scientific proof that it didn't happen essentially as the Book of Genesis describes. Creationism thus remains standing as the only plausible explanation for the existence of life on earth. Consequently, it is completely scientific, simply because it is the only "truth" left standing."

Example 1: To presume that a light in the sky is substantial proof of alien life is not sufficient evidence.The lights in the sky could have been anything. An unnecessary assumption is being attributed without demonstrating that the lights are, in fact, extraterrestrial life.

Example 2: Evolution may one day demonstrated to be false, it does not necessarily make the Genesis account necessarily true. Also notice, that in this example the creationist  invokes a special plead. There are countless other creation stories from a multiple of other religious traditions, yet the writer automatically disqualifies these creation stories because of his prior commitment to Biblical creationism. Simply, the creationist is stating because he believes creationism to be true, it automagically is. This is nothing but wishful thinking.

Sound scientific theories propose how a theory can be falsified. In fact, a favorite tactic of creationists is to "quote mine" Darwin himself. Darwin proposes: "The case at present (problems presented by the fossil record) must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views (the Theory of Natural Selection) here entertained."  (Read full the context of the quote, here.) At the time, Darwin had to inductively reason from the evidence presently known which the Theory of Natural Selection is predicated on. Creationist like to falsely state that Darwin knew that evolution was false. Not so.

Scientific theories make predictions that can be tested. Darwin was supplying his critics with the conditions that could overturn the Theory of Natural Selection. That is sound science. Sound scientific theories rests not only a preponderance of evidence, but by independent verification.

Also, I should mention that Darwin was proposing a theory for the origin of species, not an origin of life. Creationist like to muddle the two. (Strawmen are easier to defeat after all.)

What the creationist fails to tell you that after a 150 years of collecting fossils that demonstrate benchmark evolutionary developments that species have undertaken (transitory fossils) and research into genetics, the evidence against evolution has ceased to be inexplicable. Darwin's theories have proven their accuracy. From geology to biology, to other independent fields, the Theory of Evolution is as much as a fact as anything you will find. (Read more about evolution, here.) In fact, Darwinian evolution is the meta-theory that governs modern, biological sciences.

The most damning of all, of course, is that the creationist argues that no evidence can falsify creationism. If no evidence can overturn creationism, what evidence can? The other curious aspect of the creationist's argument, is while he argues that there is not "scientific proof" (proof meaning evidence) in favor of Biblical Creationism, he simultaneously claims that creationism is " completely scientific"  by fiat. Which is it? Does science prove creationism or not? 

And that is weakness of creationism. Creationism can not provide criteria in how the "design theory" may be discredited. All design arguments invoke a much larger question which must be surmounted: "Since the designer is necessarily more complex than his creation – like the watchmaker to his watch, how was the designer designed?"

An argument from ignorance is not an answer to the design argument, nor does it provide satisfactory evidence of the claim.

In Conclusion

There is nothing wrong with the answer, "We do not know." Only by a sound methodology that remains open to new evidence and understanding, we can hope to resolve some of our natural ignorance.

 No, this is not a joke. Tom Willis explains what to do about the "evolution" problem in the United States. 

Thus, it is my theory that it will not, of course, be Christians who kill all the evolutionists, but Muslims who delight in killing both evolutionists and Christians.

Nevertheless, I find it instructive and entertaining to analyze what should be done with evolutionists before their end comes.

After a pretty ridiculous attempt to debunk evolution, Willis then goes on to lie on several accounts. Blaming the theory of evolution for every social ill in the past 50 years, while ignoring important facts that Hitler was a Christian. Anti-antisemitism existed for in Europe for centuries and was promulgated by the Catholic Church as late as 1914. He also conveniently omits that Christians looked to the Bible as a justification for slavery in the United States.

He poses the following question, therefore:

Clearly then, “evolutionists should not be allowed to roam free in the land."

Willis answers:

1. Labor camps. Their fellow believers were high on these. But, my position would be that most of them have lived their lives at, or near the public trough. So, after their own beliefs, their life should continue only as long as they can support themselves in the camps.
2. Require them to wear placards around their neck, or perhapsvlarge medallions which prominently announce "Warning: Evolutionist! Mentally Incompetent - Potentially Dangerous." I consider this option too dangerous.
3. Since evolutionists are liars and most do not really believe evolution we could employ truth serum or water-boarding to obtain confessions of evolution rejection. But, this should, at most, result in parole, because, like Muslims, evolutionist religion permits them to lie if there is any benefit to them.
4. An Evolutionist Colony in Antarctica could be a promising option. Of course inspections would be required to prevent too much progress. They might invent gunpowder.
5. A colony on Mars would prevent gunpowder from harming anyone but their own kind, in the unlikely event they turned out to be intelligent enough to invent it.
6. All options should include 24-hour sound system playing Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris reading Darwin's Origin of Species, or the preservation of Favored Races by Means of Natural Selection. Of course some will consider this cruel & unusual, especially since they will undoubtedly have that treatment for eternity.

No this is not Poe's Law in action. Willis does not see the irony of his "speculation." Nazi's used camps and badges. Communists put evolutionists into camps in subservience of their political religion. There really is so many things to ridicule in this pile of..., I don't think there really is enough bandwidth to go into it all.

It's not evolution Willis gives a damn about, but Biblical literalism.  A man like this would become his worst enemy and burn the earth to cinders in defense of a worldview which is grounded in iron age ignorance and bronze age brutality.

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I am off for mini-moon (that is, a short honeymoon) with my wife over the holiday, but there's been some news revolving around my pet issues that I wanted to comment on before heading on out of here for a weekend in Sturgeon Bay.

That Old Time Religion // God against the Gods

Neo-paganism is on the rise.

Apparently, my last post which I argued reductio and in the spirit of Julian the Apostate that monotheists should become polytheists does have some merit. (Although not for the same reasons.) The Denver post reports that pagans "...numbers roughly double about every 18 months in the United States, Canada and Europe, according to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance," and "is now among the country's fastest-growing religions." Accordingly, many leave monotheism as a rejection to the authoritarianism of those monotheistic religions and in pursuit of their own religious experiences. To me, this is very much like the American value of "rugged individualism." This individualism can be found with founders like Jefferson, Madison, and John Adams. The Enlightenment Rationalist (probably Christian) Adams, stated

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy."

Adams was very much a religious iconoclast and it was his view that religious dogmatism was a barrier to rational thought. While it is nearly always true that religion is a barrier to the free inquiry of science, so to is it true with the varieties of religious experience.

Anyway, this study seems to confirm the trend as reported by the the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 35,000 Americans have "... 'stunning' lack of alignment between people's beliefs or practices and their professed faiths."

My incidental experience seems to confirm this. In my debates with Christians and other supernaturalists over the past decade, the tendency that I've noticed that when one leaves a monotheistic faith like Christianity (other than professing a belief in a "higher power" ) it is quite not uncommon to become a pagan. These religions are highly individualistic and allow for a greater sense of experience of the divine. Also some of these pagans that I know do not literally believe that these gods are real beings, but participate in paganism in some metaphorical sense. This is not uncommon even for an atheist. One of my favorite authors, Dr. Robert Price (Books: The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, Deconstructing Jesus and Beyond Born Again) and former editor of The Journal of Higher Criticism still attends church and enjoys the metaphorical aspects that the religion provides.

The irony, oddly enough, as classical society around the first century of the common era turned away from the conservatism of polytheism and to the radical monotheism of the Christian state, it removed more spirituality from the public sphere by its narrowed prohibitions on what religious experience could be in its pursuit of certainty about the mysteries of its own unprovable beliefs.

I think we might be on the precipice of another turning of the tide.

Evolution // Paradigms and Consciousness Raising

Yesterday, July 1st, one-hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin and Russell Wallace, presented their papers on evolution by natural selection.

Richard Dawkins observers evolution as a consciousness raiser

That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out that evolution counters on of the oldest ideas we have the 'idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. You'll ever see a spear making a spear maker. You'll never see a horse shoe making a black smith. You'll never a pot making making a potter.' Darwin's discovery of a workable process that does that very counter-intuitive thing is what makes his contribution to human thought so revolutionary, an so loaded with the power to raise consciousness. (The God Delusion)

The Wired article points out that because of this simple, yet powerful discovery that

It involved not a simple invention or discovery but a paradigm shift, inventing the reigning paradigm that organizes modern biology -- and in some sense all modern science.

Gregor Johann Mendel, a Christian monk, had presented his paper on experiments on genetics with pea plants around the same time. His observations and experiments with pea plants had no explanatory power in itself, other than human selection could affect inheritance. Darwin's and Wallace's work was able to provide a mechanism for genetic selection without a god of the gaps.

Which is the beauty of evolution. That something so simple can do so much.

Church and State // Let's do away with the Constitution Already

Pandering once again, Obama announced that he would expand faith based initiatives to the tune of some half a billion dollars per year. Don't we already give these particular institutions who do not have to pay taxes, enough? Yes, I know the money is supposed to be used for humanitarian causes, but the religious can't help bringing their particular brand of religion into the mix. Of course, last year the Supreme Court ruled that citizens do not have the right to sue over executive mandates like the Office of Faith Based Initiatives. (Read about the Freedom from Religions lawsuit over this program, here.)

I'm sure this will play well in mobilizing the progressive religious left to vote for Obama, probably better than McCain will get the regressive religious-right to vote for him. But I have to confess, all these appeals to religious groups on both sides of our political spectrum makes me rather queasy. I think I prefer outright religious warfare, than this cool war of votes.

Well, not really, I just tire of it. I wonder when can we leave our religious differences at home and vote and decide on the merits of an issue, rather than what we think that God says with his invisible mouth? McCain has said in the past said some smart things about the religious-right (in the style of a Goldwater conservative), but his overtures to religious-right at the Farwell's Liberty University completely turned me away from the "maverick" McCain. Sorry McCain, but we know what type of Supreme court justices you will now appoint.

Unfortunate as this is, as both conservatives and liberals are expanding government by co-opting religion.

I am not sure now if I want to vote for Obama. He may have lost my vote.

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Happy Woden's Day to you. See you in a week!

In the never ending battle to bring religiosity into the public school, the NYT reports:

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are "creationism" or "intelligent design" or even "creator."

The words are "strengths and weaknesses."

PZ Meyers, on his blog Phraryngula rebutts with:

....and when they talk about "strengths and weaknesses", they intend to overlook the strengths of modern biology and focus on imaginary weaknesses invented by ignorant creationists."

The problem is, even if evolution proves to be false, the answer is not necessarily intelligent design. There could be other, natural forces at work, so the basic tactic that a creationist uses is to bifurcate between two limited choices. People like easy answers. People don't, by and large, like to think over choices and suspend judgement where it's okay that natural ignorance presides.

Adherence to Biblical literalism, or religious dogmatism damages peoples abiltity to reason, even if they do have a science degree. Take the new rangling over the teaching of evolution and biology standards in Texas School and the statements from Ken Mercer:

“There are issues in the evolutionary process that have been proven wrong,” he said. “Evolution is not fact. Evolution is a theory and, as such, cannot be proven. Students need to be able to jump to their own conclusions.”

Of course, the conclusion that Mercer wants a student to make is God.

Again, this is a lie. There is plenty of evidence that substantiates evolution and we have plenty of transitional fossils, and of fossil DNA which is decidedly conclusive. The only valid refutation of evolution must be made from science which shows some other natural mechanism. Supernatural explanations have no testable merit, and even if there was some super space alien that designed us, that alien would have evolved from primitive lifeforms too. Again, all ID can do is argue from ignorance.

Besides, we went through all of this in the Dover trial. Mercer's positioning of "theory" effectively makes any pseudo-science a scientific theory.

Behe, of the Discovery Institute, under questioning in the Dover trial revealed:

Question: Under that same definition astrology is a scientific theory under your definition, correct?

Behe: Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences. There are many things throughout the history of science which we now think to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that -- which would fit that definition. Yes, astrology is in fact one, and so is the ether theory of the propagation of light, and many other -- many other theories as well.

Question: The ether theory of light has been discarded, correct?

Behe: That is correct.

Question: But you are clear, under your definition, the definition that sweeps in intelligent design, astrology is also a scientific theory, correct?

Behe: Yes, that's correct. And let me explain under my definition of the word "theory," it is -- a sense of the word "theory" does not include the theory being true, it means a proposition based on physical evidence to explain some facts by logical inferences. There have been many theories throughout the history of science which looked good at the time which further progress has shown to be incorrect. Nonetheless, we can't go back and say that because they were incorrect they were not theories. So many many things that we now realized to be incorrect, incorrect theories, are nonetheless theories.

Behe makes one long special plead and can not argue against astrology as in turn that would be an argument against ID. Furthermore, evolution is not a theory of life. It is a theory on origins of species.

The only thing Mercer will accomplish is another lawsuit which will end up costing the school board money.