Note: This is post is an edited version of an August 02, 2007 piece from my old blog. Back then, I’d have less direct experience of the new atheists and held back a few points. I have decided in the face of this controversy at Jason Rosenhouses blog to include some points about Dawkins’ other, proposed, evidence free “science” as well. I will point out, if anyone is as to any doubt about the intellectual bankruptcy of the new atheism, that Dawkins was the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and a Senior Editor of Free Inquiry when he wrote the bizarre article which first appeared there.
It was considered sound enough to be reposted at secularhumanism.org. Humanism clearly isn’t what it once was, either. Dawkins in a display of typical arrogance began his article “A cowardly flabbiness of the intellect afflicts otherwise rational people.... “ before attacking Stephen J. Gould. Irony is never far off when Richard Dawkins is speaking.
"Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question." Richard Dawkins
The first thing to notice about this odd passage is "Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide....". Why "whether"? Its an absolute fact that there is no physical evidence available. None. No medical records, not even skeletal fragments. No physical remains of the woman or son or a possible human father in question are available nor is their possibly surviving lineage known. It's unlikely in the extreme that those will ever be identified. Why try to obscure the fact that there is none of the evidence necessary to examine the question with science when it is indisputable that there isn't any? So, Dawkins proposes examining the question scientifically without any physical evidence. He proposes determining the paternity of a child without anything to go on, whatsoever.*
Perhaps somewhat more understandable, since it's Dawkins, he says that you can deal with the assertion of something that is claimed to have happened miraculously, outside the usual order of things and exactly once in the entire history of the world in the remote past, with science.
Dawkins, who has been one of the major figures in evolutionary psychology, which is based in making up creation myths and inventing allegedly beneficial adaptations, inventing scenarios amounting to fictional sociological and cultural anthropological field observations in the process, might be predisposed to figure you can do without that troublesome, and aggravatingly unavailable, physical evidence. So he’s never been one to be troubled by the kind of “science” you get when you fill in for those. He’s also the inventor of the bizarre idea of memes, which has been almost universally rejected by scientists and other people who think.
With the claims made by those who believe in the Virgin Birth, even argument by analogy can't address it. When an event is claimed to be unique, there is no possibility of making a comparison with another or even every other event proposed to be similar. Any scientific comparison with any other event would be irrelevant to the claims of a miracle unless you had physical evidence of it**
The total lack of evidence and the claim of uniqueness renders it clearly and most certainly NOT a question science can deal with. And this from the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Certainly among the first things to understand about science are when there isn't enough evidence to practice it and when there is. Not that that hasn’t stopped him in the past, however.
Much as it must frustrate those who would like to deal with some religious questions with science, much cannot be. They might not like that fact but that is just too bad. When the physical evidence necessary to study those is lost to history or non-existent, that is simply impossible. Pretending that you can proceed without the evidence it is dishonest and, beyond doubt, unscientific. You can believe or not believe the claims but using the prestige of the name science to back up your assertions can be done honestly only under specific conditions. It also carries a serious responsibility.
No one has to believe in the Virgin Birth, this short piece isn't about that. This is about how one of the most famous and arrogant personalities of science can get away with saying something so stunningly absurd. With his status in contemporary culture, it's just amazing that a person holding a position like Dawkins' conveniently ignores something so basic to science.
If biologists are content with having Dawkins being the face of their science, they are exchanging short term glamor for long term problems. It is growing clearer that in the political climate in democracies that science can't support the dead weight of extraneous ideologies unnecessary for it. I will make a prediction that you can check out later, if Dawkins truly becomes the face of evolution it will continue to face fierce opposition by many of those he insults gratuitously. Its research funding will not be secure. In the face of his arrogant condescension, a large percentage of the public will not understand the science or want to.
* While it might be fun to point out, going into the need to give God a paternity test only heightens the apparent absurdity of Dawkins claim that this is "a strictly scientific question. Science not only can't deal with these kinds of things, it makes a mockery of science to try it.
**. Your only hope to determine the accuracy of a claim of a miracle is to look at whatever evidence of the specific event is available and see if the claimed result happened. Modern claims of, for example, miraculous cures of physical diseases, could, very possibly, be investigated by science but only by examination of the physical evidence. Without that, science can't be used to investigate the claim.
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My fundamental problem with Dawkins' point is the assumption that a "purely scientific question" is the only possibls source of truth.
ReplyDeleteThere is, of course, no way to prove or disprove the proposition, from an empirical point of view. Which, as Hume pointed out almost 200 years ago, makes it an irrelevant question. Dawkins is setting up a straw man and, having pushed it over, declares the entire enterprise of religion destroyed.
Good grief.
Dawkins is correct: it is a question of biology. Since, as you've mentioned, there is no real evidence of any virgins giving birth, science dismisses it as a bald-faced, content-free claim. In other words, irrelevant. So yes, science does have ways of addressing groundless assertions.
ReplyDeleteThen you say, "The total lack of evidence and the claim of uniqueness renders it clearly and most certainly NOT a question science can deal with."
No. Science deals with "uniqueness" all the time. We even have names for it: outlier, statistical anomaly, background noise, artifact, ghost in the machine, blip., etc. When you can't repeat the results you discard them.
Btw., I hope you don't confuse what I said with Coyne's argument on intelligence.
Um,no, Dawkins is not correct. Science does not define reality, it describes it. One would have thought this argument, which gave rise to the agnostic/atheist distinction, would have been settled by now.
ReplyDeleteBy Dawkins argument, the platypus doesn't exist, nore the coelocanth (which I may well have missspelled). When I learned the Linnean system in elementary school, we were told viruses seemed to be alien to earth since they defied the animal/plant dichotomy of the original kingdoms of that system. Eventually, of course, we decided the problem was the system, not the virus.
None of which, of course, "proves" a virgin birth. One wonders, in fact, how what would ever be possible. What physical evidence would prove a woman with no sexual partner was pregnant and have given birth? I can't imagine it, honestly. So among other things, it's a silly argument for Dawkins to raise.
But back to monotremes and virii and fish: Science, as we established about a century ago, describes, it does not define. We cannot define virii and platypi out of existence by saying they are impossible. We can, at best, only say we've never seen one, and have no evidence for one; yet.
Which isn't to say unicorns could exist, either; it is to say the entire discussion violates the very principles of science. Which, as I say, I thought we'd settled in the 19th century.
So it goes.
I like how your devestating anecdotes refer back to elementary school science. You must have missed the irony when you said science doesn't define things then go on to mention binomial nomenclature. You are a satirist of the first order, sir!
ReplyDeleteAlso, what foolish argument did Dawkin's make where if you applied a known-to-exist organism to it would prove that that organism doesn't exist? Something in quotes is what I'm interesting in.
"One wonders, in fact, how what (sic) would ever be possible. What physical evidence would prove a woman with no sexual partner was pregnant and have given birth? I can't imagine it, honestly."
You should have learned in elementary school the difference between sexual and asexual reproduction. That would be a good start, to determine whether or not a mammal at some point in time suddenly budded an offspring. How would you look for evidence? And remember, "science describes reality," so without evidence there is no reality to describe and hence, we must dismiss it like we do all sorts of wild claims.
And even if we found evidence, it wouldn't support the idea that a human was inseminated by the divine shaft of god. What genetic information did god contribute? You don't know and I don't know, but we both know the probability that anything like a virgin birth involving laying down with gods could have happened in the history of the humans species is so low that scientists will tentatively discount it as implausible due to complete lack of evidence and any theory to support it.
Well, since we're going to descend to ad hominem attack rather than rely solely on sweet reason, let me respond first that you need to go back to Freshman English and relearn the lessons about classification and definition. Go ahead. I'll wait.
ReplyDeleteSecond:
You should have learned in elementary school the difference between sexual and asexual reproduction. That would be a good start, to determine whether or not a mammal at some point in time suddenly budded an offspring. How would you look for evidence? And remember, "science describes reality," so without evidence there is no reality to describe and hence, we must dismiss it like we do all sorts of wild claims. So the claim of a "virgin birth" depends upon asexual reproduction by humans? Huh? And you would prove that anomaly how, exactly? By establishing the woman in question was anomalous? Or a mutation? A new classification of creature, like the monotreme? And still, pray, how do you establish the evidence of virginity prior to conception anyway? The same way you would prove a virgin birth, which you say can't be real and so can't be proven? Which goes back to my point about definition (though you can't seem to see it).
You do understand the atheist/agnostic distinction, don't you? From the 19th century? Or do you need to learn about that, too?
My point about proving the "virgin birth" was a simple one: how can it be proven? I don't know of a way. Does that mean it is impossible? Well, it certainly can't be established. Yet, can it be believed?
Well, prove to me that a husband and wife love each other. That relationship can be described in all manner of ways, some of them absolutely reductio ad absurdum (you do know what that means, right?). Do any of those ways "prove" the love they claim? No. Do they disprove it? No. Does it matter to anyone but them whether or not they "truly" love each other? Well, maybe to the family, or their community of friends and neighbors. But to the world? Not hardly.
Likewise, the claim of a "virgin birth" is a confessional, a faith claim. Does it matter to you that I might profess it? Why? What difference does it make to you? Does my confession on that issue matter more, or less, to you than my confession of love for my wife? Again: why? Does that make the virgin birth, or my love for my wife, absurd? This is, IOW, a classic example of a language game, as Wittgenstein proposed them. Is it impossible to prove empirically? Yes. Does that matter to those who hold it? No.
And even if we found evidence, it wouldn't support the idea that a human was inseminated by the divine shaft of god. What genetic information did god contribute? You don't know and I don't know, but we both know the probability that anything like a virgin birth involving laying down with gods could have happened in the history of the humans species is so low that scientists will tentatively discount it as implausible due to complete lack of evidence and any theory to support it.
Yes, they will. Which settles the scientific question; but not the confessional one. As I said, it's a stupid thing to argue about, because you are arguing apples against oranges (to use an overly-simplifying cliche). Scientifically, indeed, empirically, I agree: there is no way to prove a virgin birth. But, as William James pointed out almost a century ago now, the confessional issue is still a "live option" (his term) for many people, and the effect of discrediting the "biological" question, is really no effect at all.
Which was, and remains, my only point in the matter.
"My point about proving the "virgin birth" was a simple one: how can it be proven? I don't know of a way. Does that mean it is impossible? Well, it certainly can't be established. Yet, can it be believed?"
ReplyDeleteYou can believe in whatever you want, but if you want your beliefs taken seriously by others, they need to be grounded in something other than your personal bias. I suggest evidence :)
"Well, prove to me that a husband and wife love each other."
*sigh* Such a tired canard. No, the answer isn't faith or the warm fuzzy feeling that's better left to bad poetry. I recommend boning up on reciprocal altruism instead of name-dropping dead philosophers. Replace Wittgenstein with Frans de Waal or something.
The supernatural is a nonsense classification. What's outside of nature is a meaningless statement, and a cop-out when defending the basis of one's beliefs.
Perhaps it comes down you desiring truth claims free of the accuracy afforded by empirical evidence, and me saying bullocks, without that accuracy such truth claims have no objective metric for verification. And so I fail to see any meaningful difference substituting bigfoot in place of virgin birth. How can you argue this an unfair comparison without resorting to personal bias?