Re: paleonet A swipe at science from Ireland

From
Date
Reply-To
Thanks! Here's the response, I've just sent it. 

Breandán


A bhean uasal,
In the past, Kevin Myers has been controversial, however none of his comments to date are perhaps as dangerous as those made in yesterday's Times. In attacking science, Myers sets an alarming precendent. The means by which he seeks to undermine science are typical of those who do not understand it - a wild generalisation here, an unsupported statement there, topped with a generous helping of irrelevant nonsense. Myers' arguments can be summarised into (1) Science is wrong because we don't take God into account (2) We should ignore science because we don't know everything, and (3) Science is wrong because both his phones rang at the same time. The last of these is simply too bizarre to be worthy of a reply, and the second little better - science exists only to explain that which we don't understand, and there will always be more questions than answers; without science, Myers would of course not have his mobile or landline phones to ring at the same time. Similarly, computers, heart transplants, television - none of these would exist without science. Why Myers wishes us to return to the Dark Ages will continue to puzzle all of us. However, it is the first point which is most dangerous, and to which I must respond briefly. Science is, at it's simplest, observation of the natural world, and interpretations of what we see. We cannot observe God, and God therefore has no place in science. This does not mean that science is incompatible with religion, or that all scientists are atheists. However it is simply not the place of scientists to try and explain religion. We report observations of the natural world - it is for religious leaders and individuals to best explain how their own religion fits these observations of the natural world. 
I note also, with extreme dismay, the dig at evolution, favourite target of fundamentalist religions in the United States. Of course more evidence than "the curious deformities of a few finches' beaks and the occasional swimming lizard" is required - but such evidence exists. More than one hundred years of observations by palaeontologists, geologists, biologists, geneticists and others has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that evolution works. Ever since Darwin, evolution has been attacked, yet no reasonable alternatives have been proposed, and no evidence to contradict evolution has been found. And many key proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution, for example Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge University, are highly religious. Evolution, and the rest of science, neither proves nor disproves the existence of God. Conversely, religion cannot explain any part of science. But let's be absolutely clear about this - there is no scientific controversy whatsoever over evolution. In terms of science, it's as controversial as gravity. 
Science may not be able to answer all the questions which nature has prompted us to ask, but that does not mean we should not try. 

Is mise le meas,

Breandán Anraoi MacGabhann


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Williams" <tijawi@yahoo.com>
To: paleonet@nhm.ac.uk
Subject: Re: paleonet A swipe at science from Ireland
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:02:46 -0700 (PDT)

> 
> Says Kevin Myers:
> 
> "The real truth is that mankind does not have the intelligence to 
> know what happens and why it
> happens. We are surrounded by mystery."
> 
> Oh well.  Not much point trying to cure cancer, is there?  It's all 
> too hard, and we're never going to get there!  Let's give up on 
> trying to cure cancer, and instead devote ourselves to more 
> productive pursuits - like writing vitriolic columns in Irish 
> newspapers.
> 
> (Good luck with your response, Breandán.)
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Tim
> 
> BreandÃ¡n MacGabhann <breandan@campus.ie> wrote:
> A bad development this. A columnist in one of the biggest Irish 
> newspapers, the Irish Times, used his article today to take a swipe 
> at science, with a subtle dig at evolution in the middle of the 
> article.
> 
> I'm going to write a response which I'll post here once I've finished it
> 
> I'm absolutely apalled that this is seeping into our culture as 
> well. I didn't think it would take hold here anytime soon.
> 
> Breandán
> 
> 
> 
> 
> An Irishman's Diary - Kevin Myers
> 
> Every week, year in and year out, the magazines Science Today and 
> Nature unfailingly report on new breakthroughs which are about to 
> reveal the origins of existence, the inner secrets of the atom or 
> the real size of the universe, notes Kevin Myers.
> 
> God does not intrude upon these grand theories, of course, for an 
> ab initio intellectual dismissal of the possible role of a divine 
> creator in any discussion of scientific matters is an ideological 
> dogma for modern science.
> 
> No evidence for this is required: atheistic faith is the bedrock of 
> the entire thesis. Science is Marxism with a Bunsen burner and the 
> periodic tables.
> 
> The really curious aspect of this is that the people who spend 
> their time studying the birth of the universe, or the origins of 
> life, or the boundless infinity of subatomic particles, are in the 
> forefront of discovering not how much we know, but how little we 
> can ever know. Every door they open reveals another thousand doors 
> of ignorance. Yet, far from this teaching them intellectual 
> modesty, it does the opposite - it inculcates in them an almost 
> insuperable atheistic intellectual arrogance.
> 
> The simplest truths about our universe dwarf our real ability to 
> understand anything. The vastness of the universe, the empirically 
> impossible relationship between time and space, the endless 
> discovery of sub-sub-sub-particles even smaller than the 
> earth-shattering, headline-making discovery of the 
> sub-sub-particles which had preceded them should by this time have 
> put us on the alert that we cannot really understand what is going 
> on. No one can. No one. Ever.
> 
> Take the recent revelation - as reported, of course, in Science - 
> that this world contains one hundred times more bacterial 
> life-forms than science had previously thought. Instead of a 
> thimbleful of soil containing 10,000 organisms called prokaryotes, 
> it contains at least a million. In a garden-sized ton of soil, 
> there are thus 10,000 trillion single-celled bacteria. So, science 
> today declares that the universe contains around 100 billion stars. 
> But using the prokaryotes precedent, by this time next week we 
> might well find ourselves in the company of 10,000 billion stars.
> 
> These are not human figures, and the scientific mind has not been 
> created that can cope with them. Paradoxically, however, the 
> religious mind has, most especially the Hindu mind, which invented 
> and embraced the two extraordinarily complex and abstract 
> mathematical concepts of zero and of a possibly infinite number, 
> lakh. For Hindus, numerology and theology are kindred branches of 
> human thought, which, far from being in conflict, actually 
> complement each other.
> 
> Yet in the West, religion is the one intellectual tool that most 
> scientists rule out as a method of intellectual exploration, merely 
> because they cannot measure or weigh its propositions. However, 
> this is also true of the theory of natural selection. It is an 
> abstract, with very little firm and irrefutable evidence to support 
> its main arguments.
> 
> Religion could argue that it depends on far more substantial proof 
> than the curious deformities of a few finches' beaks and the 
> occasional swimming lizard. For science is sustained by a binding 
> and blinding faith that its methods are right, just as the religion 
> which tried to repress it once was; and modesty has been the 
> characteristic of neither creed when in the ascendant.
> 
> The real truth is that mankind does not have the intelligence to 
> know what happens and why it happens. We are surrounded by mystery. 
> Take, for example, what the existence of the mobile phone now makes 
> possible. I cannot count the number of hitherto call-free days when 
> my land line and my mobile phone have rung almost simultaneously, 
> with no common logic or shared stimulus connecting the calls.
> 
> My most recent double-act of telephonic simultaneity, on a day 
> which until then was unblessed with any phone calls, consisted of 
> one call from a friend in the British army, and another from an 
> anonymous Provo lunatic who regularly pesters me with his ranting, 
> half-baked imbecilities. Having told the latter that his impotence 
> was likely to be permanent, as were his bad breath, his delirium 
> tremens and his wife's dependence on appliances from Anne Summers, 
> I had a chat with my army chum - and telephonically speaking, that 
> was that for the day. No calls followed. (I'm a man, remember, and 
> we chaps don't phone one another very much.)
> 
> Two phones calls from different countries, from different ends of 
> the political spectrum, and not remotely provoked by the same 
> obvious stimulus: moreover, this kind of thing happens too 
> regularly to me to call it mere "coincidence". Some scientists 
> attribute such phenomena of synchronicity to events in "beige" or 
> "dark" matter. This is the universal, invisible substance which is 
> believed to fill the gaps between atomic particles, the study of 
> which they address with what used to be called the "chaos theory" 
> and is now termed the "complexity theory".
> 
> Dream on you scientific boys and girls. You will no more uncover 
> the secrets of "dark matter" with your damn-fool "complexity 
> theory", or whatever succeeds it, than you will finally understand 
> what is going on at the outskirts of the universe or in the heart 
> of the atom.
> 
> As the tale of the prokaryotes shows, all human knowledge is merely 
> interim and provisional. And only the atheistic ayatollahs of 
> science, who steadfastly ignore the accumulated religious wisdom of 
> the ages, pretend to intellectual certainty. But there is none; 
> only fresh forms of mystery.
> 
> And in three weeks' time, new-born swallows, with brains the size 
> of a match-head, will navigate their way unaccompanied to Africa. 
> Explain that, scientists. Go on. Explain it.
> 
> --
> _______________________________________________
> For the largest FREE email in Ireland (25MB) and 20MB of online 
> file storage space - Visit http://www.campus.ie
> 
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com


-- 
_______________________________________________
For the largest FREE email in Ireland (25MB) and 20MB of online file storage space - Visit http://www.campus.ie