Well hello fossil!
One reason science is epistemically incomatible with religion is the fact that in science it is not legitimate to form strong affirmative beliefs when the evidence is missing or thin. You see this over and over again reading Why Evolution is True – it’s full of ‘we don’t know the answer to this,’ ‘the evidence is not clear about that,’ ‘thirty years ago we had no idea but now the evidence is abundant’ – you get a sense of how cumulative it all is and how gaps remain gaps pending better evidence.
Religion is entirely unlike that – and that’s not a leap, not a worldview, not metaphysics; it’s epistemology. It’s ‘how do you know that?’
Some examples from WEIT –
But if feathers didn’t arise as adaptations for flying, what on earth were they for? Again, we don’t know. [two possibilities]…And what feathers evolved from is even more mysterious. The best guess is that they derive from the same cells that gave rise to reptilian scales, but not everyone agrees. [p 46]
We expect to find, in the genomes of many species, silence, or ‘dead’ genes: genes that were once useful but are no longer intact or expressed. In other words, there should be vestigial genes…Thirty years ago we couldn’t test this prediction because we had no way to read the DNA code. Now, however, it’s quite easy to sequence the complete genome of species…[p 67]
Now, we’re not absolutely sure why some species retain much of their evolutionary history during development. [p78]
One more, on page 44, goes like this:
All these nonflying feathered dinosaur fossils date between 135 and 110 million years ago — later than the 145-million-year old Archaeopteryx. That means that they could not be Archaeopteryx’s direct ancestors, but they could have been its cousins. Feathered dinosaurs probably continued to exist after one of their kin gave rise to birds. We should, then, be able to find even older feathered dinosaurs that were the ancestors of Archaeopteryx. The problem is that feathers are preserved only in special sediments — the fine-grained silt of quiet environments like lake beds or lagoons. And these conditions are very rare. But we can make another testable evolutionary prediction: someday we’ll find fossils of feathered dinosaurs that are older than Archaeopteryx.
Beats prophesy any day.
Aha — I was wondering what this recent kick of dino-feather bylines were about. (Not wondering so much that I actually clicked any of the links, mind. It seems that the internet sets higher standards for laziness than could ever previously have been imagined.)
As an aside, I talked with Mooney today after he gave a talk here at Waterloo. I wish I’d been able to ask a question about epistemic compatibility, but I couldn’t think of a nice clean tidy segue between his talk and epistemology. (If I had done it without any intelligible segue, then to other people I’m sure it would just sound like eavesdropping on technobabble.) At some point or other I should put up the audio on my blog.
Speaking of prophesy – I saw your comment over on Josh’s blog – he is utterly hopeless. He simply will not engage the criticism in any meaningful way. His only criterion is if you are religious and you accept evolution, then nothing else matters. You can believe whatever else you want.
Prophets are so-called mostly because they talk about what will happen at the end of the world. That’s an impressive track record.
(I realise there are passages in the Old Testament that are purported to foretell the coming of Christ.)
Tom Paine claims in “The Age of Reason” that the word comes from a mis-translation of poet or troubadour.
In the first book of Kings Ch.10 we find that Saul comes down the hill with a whole company of prophets, with a psaltery, a timbrel a pipe and a harp.
The footnote to this passage in the Douay-Rheims Bible even says that “Prophets … These were men whose office it was to sing hymns and praises to God; for such in holy writ are called prophets and their singing praises to God is called prophesying.”
So the central claim of Islam is that Mohammed was the last gospel singer!
The problem with prophesies is that if it is clear what they mean they normally turn out to be wrong and if they are not clear, as in: When the wheel turns the middle will rise*, they are impossible to falsify, people are merely looking for an event that would fit the prophesy. That is clearly not helpful, a prophesy should alert you before the event not after. The usual claim would be that it is impressive to predicted something in advance and this shows the greatness of the deity, but this claim has been made on behalf on all sorts of gods, and could only possibly have any merit in case of clear definite predictions that actually came true not in case of the woolly ones that might mean anything, and the requirement would have to be a large number of predictions all true not merely some of them.
*The made up prediction: “When the wheel turns the middle will rise” was merely a vague way of saying that as time goes by China(The Middle Kingdom) will become more dominant, unless that does not happen in which case it obviously meant something completely different.
Aha, Ben, I was wondering how your encounter with Mooney had gone. (I saw your promise at the Intersection last week!)
But as for dino-feathers – come on! That’s way exciting!
I’m just in the process of reading Jerry’s book, came to the point that you quote from WEIT, and then read his website post about the feathered dino older than Achaeoperyx. It’s amazing! Testable evolutionary prediction, and then, Hey! Presto! There it is, a couple months later. Now that’s a lot better than prophecy, much of which of which had nothing to do with the future at all (and if it did was in the nature of political puditry), but tried to explain in terms of God`s will the course of things to some disastrous moment in the present.
Prophecy, as understood later by the gospels was a matter of foretelling details of the future, so many details, in fact, that it is clearly a matter of historicising prophecy: writing the prophecy itself into a kind of pseudo-history. The gospel stories of the birth and the trial and death (and resurrection) of Jesus are obviously this kind of prophecy historicised, instead of history remembered (a distinction made by Dominic Crossan in a number of books).
Jerry’s story is really quite fascinating, and, as with Darwin’s Origin, one of the most noteworthy features of the book is the frequent acknowledgement of ignorance and guesses, but also predictions, because predictions are also possible falsifications. Darwin says it again and again. Here’s the evidence; here’s what you have to do to show me wrong.
After reading Jerry’s critique of Wright, exposing Wright’s vacillation, his ability to quote from his book claims that both support and undermine his main thesis, and then reading WEIT, the difference that science makes is wonderfully evident. I didn`t read Darwin until I was almost 60. What a loss! No English speaking person should go through life without reading Darwin (a literary experience as well as a glimpse into a great scientific mind), and then reading how since Darwin`s day evolution has been so massively supported. If, by that time, your mind has not been almost remade anew by the experience, then you haven`t been paying attention.
It was a good conversation. I riffed on something like the second and third questions in the top nine outstanding questions still unanswered.
I think Chris himself would be an excellent science communicator if he set himself to that task. i.e., unlike many speakers, he was willing to take comments, critiques, and questions for about an hour afterwards in a separate room. In other words, what he does in person is very different from what he does online, where there is little to no meaningful interaction. (Unlike, say, Josh Rosenau, who seems to be giving a rough equivalent of question nine a sporting shot.)
Though evidently Chris confided to a Waterloo official, “That guy hates me, but at least he’s polite”. Oh, internet arguments, must you always seem to be so dire?
Anyway. About this “e-vol-oo-shun” thingy. I got my copy of Greatest Show on Earth yesterday. Hopefully soon my brains will be so full of knowledge that I’ll have to carry extra brains around in a fanny pack to make do.
“what he does in person is very different from what he does online”
Yes I think that’s right. I heard his talk here on the radio later – and his tone of voice was very different from his tone both online and in the media blitz – and for that matter in the book. Especially when he was asked a skeptical question about the chapter 8 issue.
Another fine example of a testable evolutionary prediction is oulined in Neil Shubin’s excellent “Your Inner Fish”. Shubin works on the evolution of tetrapods and was able to predict, using geology and biogeographical data, where fossils of intermediate forms (in the transition from water to land) might be found in the Canadian arctic. After several rigorous field seasons he and his colleagues found them – Tiktaalik. The book also does a good job in explaining how fossils are integrated with genetic and developmental data.