In a recent post, Bill Dembski introduces what he calls a “Darwin Devotion Detector.” He describes it as “A tongue-in-cheek questionnaire that nonetheless provides real insight into the extent to which Darwinian ideas have captured our thinking.” From my perspective, it provides insight into Dembski’s misunderstanding of biological evolution.
It’s been a while since I last posted to this blog. This post may be longer than my usual posts, because the test has 40 questions. Each question suggests two possible anwers, and we are supposed to pick one. And it is supposed to be a forced choice — we are to pick an answer even if we don’t like either suggestion. The suggested answer marked with a “#” is the one that Dembski takes to indicate devotion to Darwin.
I’ll quote the questions and suggested answers. And then I comment. I won’t always go with a forced choice.
The questions
1.
•Evolution in the sense that all present-day organisms arose from one or a few ancestors (common descent) is now a proven fact.#
•Evolution in that sense is still an unproven hypothesis.
My comment is that scientific theories are never proven facts. There are scientific facts, such as measurements. But we don’t treat theories themselves as facts.
2.
•The theory of natural selection (i.e., retention of chance variations) adequately explains common descent.#
•Even assuming full-blown evolution to be a fact, the theory of natural selection does not adequately explain it.
I’m not a big fan of “natural selection.” This is partly because it is so easily misunderstood. And describing it as “retention of chance variations” is a misunderstanding. Properly understood, natural selection really amounts to a program of trial and error testing to find out what works. But, of course, natural selection by itself does not explain common descent. Rather, common descent is observed. The Christian folk like the story of Adam & Eve. But this story is based on what is observed with human reproduction. It presents the idea of the common descent of humans from early ancestors.
Similarly, the story of Noah’s ark supports the idea of the common descent of animals with a species. And they did not need “natural selection” to understand that, because they could observe this common descent.
What Darwin contributed to this idea, was that common descent was not restricted to a species line. That species could change over time. And the evidence does appear to strongly support this.
3.
•The theory of natural selection accounts for the phenomenon of adaptation—and thus the appearance of design—in organisms.#
•For an organism to be selected it must already be well adapted; therefore, the theory of natural selection begs the question of the origin of adaptations (or design).
I will go with the first suggested answer here.
Dembski appears to be assuming that whether an organism is well adapted is an absolute. But it isn’t. An organism can be well adapted to a particular environment. But environments can change over time. And as the environment changes, it is possible that some organisms are particularly well adapted to the changed environment. This might lead to a rapid expansion of such organisms into that changed environment.
4.
•The formula “survival of the fittest” amounts to “survival of the survivors,” suggesting that the theory of natural selection is empirically empty, or even a tautology.
•“Survival of the fittest” is a useful short-hand formula for characterizing the theory of natural selection.#
Dembski is making a foolish argument here. Would he suggest that Newton’s laws are empirically empty? And yet Newton’s laws are pretty much the definition of force, much as “survival of the fittest” is pretty much the definition of fitness.
5.
•Although Charles Darwin is an important figure in the history of science, the conceptual importance of natural selection has been significantly exaggerated.
•Natural selection is one of the greatest ideas ever, and conceiving of it put Darwin in the company of Newton and Einstein.#
I don’t much like either suggested answer here. Darwin was a very good observer of nature, and his theory is well thought out. But biology isn’t physics, so it seems wrong to try comparing Darwin to physicists such as Newton and Einstein.
6.
•Because Darwin’s birthday falls on the same day as Abraham Lincoln’s (February 12, 1809), if Americans were to celebrate one or the other, we should celebrate Darwin Day.#
•Lincoln’s impact on the U.S. and the world was far more positive than Darwin’s and we should continue to celebrate Lincoln’s Birthday as it is.
I’m not a fan of celebrating birthdays of famous people. And the attempted comparison of Darwin with Lincoln is absurd.
7.
•Darwinism, suitably updated, is good 21st-century science.#
•Darwinism is a relic of 19th-century science; Darwin’s work has now been largely superseded.
This seems to compare “Darwinism, suitably updated” with “Darwinism, not updated.” It makes no sense.
8.
•Darwin shared many of the conventional opinions of his day, including the superiority of the white race.
•Darwin embodies humanity at its best and deserves the status of a secular saint.#9.
•Darwin’s ideas and their unintended consequences have done great harm.
•The world would be a better place if everyone had to learn about Darwin’s ideas.#
I combined two questions here. Those questions appear to be an implied smear. I wish the critics of evolution would avoid those tactics.
10.
•Hostility toward evolution is a major factor in the decline of American educational standards in relation to international standards.#
•Other factors (such as classroom disorder and the breakdown of the family) have contributed more to the decline of American educational standards than hostility toward evolution.
I’m more inclined to see politics as playing a role here. And yes, opposition to evolution has become very political.
11.
•Public school biology teachers in the U.S. should be free to teach what they can defend to be true based on evidence.
Public school biology teachers in the U.S. should be required to teach the received views of professional evolutionary biologists.#
Students should be taught the scientific consensus. Individual students are entitled to their own beliefs. But the scientific consensus is what they need in preparation to be adults.
12.
•In Kitzmiller v. Dover, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that it is illegal to “disparage or denigrate” Darwinism in the public schools; Judge Jones decided this case correctly.#
•By suppressing dissent and creating a state-imposed ideology in America, Judge Jones’s ruling parallels Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union.
I understood Judge Jones decision to be about the first amendment “non-establishment” clause of the constitution. The wording of this question appears to make it about something else.
13.
•Darwin’s theory of evolution is as well supported scientifically as Einstein’s theory of general relativity.#
•Putting Darwin’s theory of evolution in the same league as Einstein’s theory of general relativity is an affront to the exact sciences.
This question seems to be trying to compare apples with oranges.
14.
•The Darwin Awards, given to people who kill themselves due to their rash or foolish actions, reflect an unhealthy cynicism and low view of humanity.
•The Darwin Awards rightly recognize individuals for contributing to human evolution by weeding themselves out of the gene pool through their stupidity.#
I see the Darwin awards as something to be used by standup comedians. There’s no point in giving an answer.
15.
•The eugenics movement—which led to the mass sterilization of people deemed “defective” in the United States and to mass murder in Germany—was largely based on Darwin’s ideas.
•To lay the eugenics movement at Darwin’s feet is grossly unfair.#
I can agree with both suggested answers.
16.
•Living things are collections of ordinary chemical elements organized in particular ways; there is nothing physically distinctive about life.#
•The “living state of matter” is physically distinctive, implying the existence of special causal powers that inorganic systems do not possess.
In this case, I disagree with both answers. I see living organisms as processes, which cannot be adequately characterized by their constituent chemicals. But I see no need to bring in “special causal powers.”
17.
•Living things are basically just vehicles for their genes.#
•Genes play a necessary but not sufficient causal role in living things.
I prefer the second suggested answer here. I’m not a fan of the “selfish gene” metaphor.
18.
•Organisms, while highly complex, are fundamentally no different from humanly constructed machines.#
•Organisms are essentially different from humanly constructed machines.
I’ll go with the second suggested answer here. Human constructed machines mostly have a static design. Biological organisms are more dynamic, more able to adapt to their circumstances.
19.
•The concept of “junk DNA” was a major scientific blunder directly attributable to Darwinian thinking.
•Darwinian thinking advanced science by correctly characterizing non-coding DNA regions as “junk DNA.”#
I disagree with both suggested answers here.
I’m puzzled by that expression “attributable to Darwinian thinking.” Darwin did not know anything about DNA. What we know about junk DNA comes from biochemistry, not from Darwin.
I’m not a biochemist, so I’m not an expert on this.
Why does a Dembski suggested answer talk of correctly characterizing non-coding DNA regions as “junk DNA?” Surely Dembski has been corrected about this mistake many times. “Junk DNA” was never a synonym for “non-coding DNA.”
20.
•Darwin speculated that life began in a “warm little pond”; in this, as with so many of his ideas, he was remarkably prescient.#
•Nobody today has any real insight into how life began.
The second suggested answer seems the best here. We still do not know how life originated, although there is some interesting research into possibilities.
21.
•Human beings are fundamentally different from all other animals.
•Human beings are basically no different from other animals.#
Humans are different from other animals, just as the various animals are different from one another. But there is nothing fundamental about that difference.
22.
•The most important fact about human beings is our capacity for conscious reflection, reason, and language.
•Human mental capacities are a minor and superficial adaptation of an unexceptional primate.#
What’s important about humans, is the extent to which they are social. Language is part of this social adaptation. We really don’t know much about whether other animals engage in conscious reflection.
23.
•Human beings can freely choose what to do.
•Free will is an illusion.#
I agree that we have free will, though I go with the compatibilist account of that.
In my experience, people disagree a lot about what we even mean by “free will” and about whether we have it. And this disagreement does not seem related to views about evolution. So I’m a but puzzled was to why Dembski includes this in his test.
24.
•The capacity for mature love is one of the noblest aspects of human nature.
•Humans experience “love” as the result of oxytocin and other hormones coursing through the body—just as for other mammals.#
I do not have any comments on this question.
25.
•Referring to “kin selection,” J.B.S. Haldane remarked: “I would gladly lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins”; this principle helps us to understand the nature of human altruism.#
•Mother Teresa (who ministered to dying homeless people in Kolkata) and holocaust rescuers (who risked their lives to help Jews escape Nazi death camps) have more to teach us about human altruism than kin selection.
This question is a puzzle. The literature on “kin selection” has to do with how social behaviors such as altruism evolved. The mention of Mother Teresa seems unrelated to this.
Personally, I am not convinced of the “kin selection” explanation.
26.
•Some things (like killing innocents) are absolutely wrong.
•Nothing is right or wrong except in relation to its consequences, especially for one’s genes.#27.
•Rape is morally wrong because it treats an autonomous human person as an object.
•Rape is properly viewed as an adaptation in early hominid males to help them spread their genes.#28.
•If scientists could crossbreed a human and chimpanzee to form a hybrid “humanzee,” it would be a triumph and cause for celebration.#
•Hybridizing a human being with a chimpanzee or any other animal is likely to be biologically impossible and, in any case, would be a moral outrage.29.
•Goodness, truth, and beauty are illusions that helped our hominid ancestors to survive.#
•Goodness, truth, and beauty are objectively real norms that guide human belief and action.
I have combined several questions together here. These are questions about morality and values. How we see these seems to be partly cultural and partly subjective. I do not agree that they are objectively real.
30.
•The motivations of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice cannot be understood at the deepest level without a knowledge of evolutionary theory.#
•Jane Austen had no need of evolutionary theory to understand human motivations at the deepest level relevant to literature.
I’ll skip this question. It’s too long since I last read “Pride and Prejudice.”
31.
•Memes are the units of selection of human culture, much as genes are the units of selection of organismic traits.#
•Meme theory is a crude caricature of the way human beings come up with new ideas and share them with one another.
I’m a tad skeptical of memetics as a theory.
32.
•Richard Dawkins is a distinguished scientist who deserves a Nobel Prize.#
•Richard Dawkins is a brilliant popularizer who has not done any original scientific work in decades.
I tend to see Dawkins more as a popularizer than as an active scientist.
33.
•Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.#
•The atheist worldview still contains major conceptual gaps.
There were intellectually fulfilled atheists before Darwin’s time. And there’s no such thing as “The atheist worldview.”
34.
•Religion is a legitimate activity in which humans try to understand and make contact with what is ultimately real.
•Religion is an irrational response to unknown causes operating in nature; as we understand nature better, religion will disappear.#35.
•Due to our uncontrolled population growth, human beings have become a scourge upon the earth not unlike cancer.#
•Human beings are the crown of creation.
I’m again combining two questions. I really don’t have a comment on these, except to disagree that there is any such thing as “the crown of creation.”
36.
•Third-world economic development to relieve poverty is more important than preserving biological diversity at all costs.
•Preserving biological diversity is more important than third-world economic development.#
Our ideas of economic development seem to depend on continuous growth. But continuous growth is unsustainable on a planet with finite resources. We need to change our thinking about economics.
37.
•Purpose, value, and meaning are “folk-psychology” categories that do not correspond to anything in reality.#
•Purpose, value, and meaning are objectively real.
Purpose, value and meaning are important human categories, but they are unavoidably subjective.
38.
•Darwinian evolutionary theory has weaknesses and those who point them out should be tolerated, if not applauded.
•Darwinian evolutionary theory has no weaknesses and those who say it does are usually religiously motivated.#
No science is perfect, and scientists welcome improvements. However, most of the objections to evolutionary theory do seem to have a religious basis.
39.
•Intelligent design, as a voice of dissent, does useful work in keeping the evolutionary biology community honest.
•Intelligent design has no intellectual merits and deserves no public hearing.#
Most of what we see under the name “intelligent design” appears to be dishonest attempts to insert religion into science.
40.
•The theory of natural selection is a “universal acid” that dissolves every problem in the biological and social sciences; Darwinian theory explains virtually everything.#
•A theory that explains everything explains nothing; for all practical purposes, Darwinian theory is unfalsifiable and so is essentially unscientific.
I have never liked Dennett’s “universal acid” metaphor.
The Heretical Philosopher 