Richard Dawkins Says Evolution is a Fact Part III

Let's take time out and clear the air; again. In this series of articles the term "evolution" is defined as evolution without the existence of God; henceforth it will be known as ED or "evolution derived" while ID shall be "intelligent designed."

No one denies that a certain type of evolution is a fact. The major debate is between ED, no God and ID, God. Is that clear?

In Chapter One page one of his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins says, "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Then on page three he says "Were we designed on a drawing board too [like an aircraft] and were our parts assembled by a skilled engineer? The answer is no."

Richard Dawkins is clearly of the ED camp.

The subject of these articles is Dawkins's book The Greatest Show on Earth. Before completing chapter one we're going to jump ahead for a moment to chapter three-which by the way is an excellent chapter and very informative.

In chapter three Dawkins gives a detailed explanation (and one of the best I've ever read) of radioactive clocks; carbon-14 dating and so forth. Dawkins explains that no (zero) mammalian fossils have ever been found in the Cambrian era rock formations. Dawkins says that if someone did happen to dig up a mammal fossil in a Cambrian rock that the theory of evolution would be "instantly blown apart." Why? It's because the Cambrian Period is the oldest of all geological stratum. Mammals didn't exist that far back in time.

So, Dawkins points out that if an authentic mammalian fossil were found in the Cambrian strata, evolution as known today would be proven false. He says, "Evolution, in other words, is a falsifiable, and therefore scientific, theory." Anyone have any problem with that? Dawkins gives only one condition for the theory of evolution to be a scientific theory- it must be falsifiable. No problem with that-do you have a problem with it? No? Good.

Now, read carefully. Intelligent Design is also "a falsifiable, and therefore scientific, theory" at least the Christian form of ID. How can that be? You say. Here's how.

All of Christianity hinges on one thing- the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That one event validates the Bible and every major Christian tenet. The resurrection (death first of course) of Christ is the very foundation of Christian intelligent design. If Christ didn't rise from the dead; all of Christendom crumbles, including ID.

So, what is required to falsify Christian ID? It'd require finding the bones of Jesus Christ in a tomb near Jerusalem. Therefore, Christian ID is a scientific theory because it's falsifiable. Just as producing mammalian fossils from Cambrian strata would falsify evolution so would producing Christ's (fossilized?) bones falsify Christian intelligent design. The reasoning is flawless. Only reasoning-deniers will say it's not.

In chapter one of The Greatest Show On Earth, Dawkins says that "'actual observation or authentic testimony' can be horrible fallible, and is over-rated in courts of law."

To support his statement he uses a now famous study conducted by Daniel J. Simons and Christopher Chablis; the Gorilla Study. No, not actual gorillas as you'll soon learn. Here's how it goes.

Six young people were filmed while they weaved in and out inside a circle and at the same time pass and bounce two basketballs. Somewhere around nine seconds into the filming, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit strolls into the circle, turns and faces the camera, beats her gorilla chest and then turns and strolls out of the scene. That was the set-up to the study.

Human subjects are then instructed to watch the film and to count the number of times basketballs are passed from person to person. In some variations I think subjects are also told to identify the type of pass and the number of times the balls are bounced. At any rate, the subjects watch the film and count the passes. Now, here comes the meat of the study.

At the conclusion of the film the counts are tallied and then the subjects are asked a question something like "How many of you saw the gorilla?" Most of the subjects are "baffled." They didn't see a gorilla and they continue to insist there was no gorilla- until they're shown the film again. Now, most of the subjects are dumb-founded; they can hardly believe their eyes. A gorilla has "suddenly" appeared in the film.

Simons and Chablis call the phenomenon "Unintentional Blindness." They said "Taken together, these findings suggest that we perceive and remember only those objects and details that receive focused attention." Read it again, "we perceive and remember only those objects and details that receive focused attention."

It's true, perhaps many people don't stop to think about it but it's true. Have you ever ridden as a passenger in a car that was moving along a familiar route and you all of a sudden notice a business, a home, a strange tree that you never noticed before? You ask, "How long's that been there?" The reply is something like, "30 years." Why haven't you noticed it before? It's because you were, (hopefully) focused on driving, not on gazing at the scenery.

World War II pilots were well aware of the concept of Unintentional Blindness; they called it "target fixation." Pilots described a tendency to want to fly straight into a target during a strafing run. They were so fixated on the target that they forgot about all other dangers; such as crashing.

Wikipedia defines target fixation as "a process by which the brain is focused so intently on an observed object that awareness of other obstacles or hazards can diminish." Motorcycle riders are also aware of it; they note that if a rider focuses on a pothole in the road ahead, the rider will often steer right for the pothole instead of away from it. (American Motorcyclist‎ - Page 22

- Jun 2007)

So, what does all that have to do with Dawkins?

Dawkins states that eye-witness testimony "can be horribly fallible" "eye witness testimony, 'actual observation', 'a datum of experience'- all are, or at least can be, hopelessly unreliable" and finally "I shall never again be tempted to give eyewitness testimony an automatic preference over indirect scientific inference."

To his credit, Dawkins does say "can be..." "or at least can be" "never again be tempted...automatic." Nevertheless, what point is he trying to make? There seem to be at least two- one explicit and one implicit.

The explicit point is that Dawkins takes "inference seriously-not mere inference but proper scientific inference."

Dawkins is correct; observations are meaningless without inferences and conclusions-as long as the inferences reasonably follow from the observations.

For example; it's a meaningless fact that the Cambrian stratum is the lowest of all stratums.

Now add some fossils along with rocks that can be dated and an inference or conclusion is made that the Cambrian is the oldest of all stratums.

Now add the fact that no mammalian fossils have ever been found in the Cambrian stratum and we have an inference that mammals didn't exist during the Cambrian period. From the information given in the example; the inferences are sound.

The implicit point of Dawkins's statements seem to be this; think; relative to the debate of ED and. ID where does eye witness testimony play any sort of role? It seems that it's only in the Bible- the gospel accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Remember that ID depends on the fact of the resurrection story? Biblical scholars have long shown the authenticity and reliability of the New Testament writers. Dawkins seems to be attempting to call that into question by means of the gorilla study and his comments about "'actual observation or authentic testimony.'" It doesn't work.

The gorilla study doesn't show that eyewitness testimony is unreliable it only shows that eye witness testimony might be incomplete. The people counting the passes had no trouble counting the passes and were probably not far off in their counts. They were so focuses on the task, they didn't notice the gorilla. Note that the gorilla was irrelevant to their task- it didn't interfere with the passes. It didn't matter if they noticed the gorilla or not.

Yes, too much reliance on eye-witness testimony has sentenced many an innocent man to the prison and the electric chair. In many cases however it wasn't so much or only faulty eye-witness testimony as it was corrupt and coercive police officers and district attorneys not to mention prejudicial jurors. To single out eye-witness testimonies as the sole causes of unjust rulings is faulty reasoning.

Furthermore, there's a substantial difference between someone witnessing a sudden murder and someone sitting and listening to someone speak. The former case involves a host of emotions including the fight or flight response in the witness while in the later case the listener is calm and more cognitive of what's happening.

Part IV will be a brief examination of Chapter Two of The Greatest Show On Earth

Sources:

Michael S. Gazzaniga: Human-The Science Behind What Makes US Unique
Richard Dawkins: The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution
The Blind Watchmaker: Why The Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek: I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist
Merriam-Webster
American Motorcyclist‎ Magazine - Jun 2007
The American naturalist, Volume 21 By Essex Institute, American Society of Naturalists
Daniel Simmons & Christopher Chabris Gorilla Study