The 2001 Principle, Revisited
Read the article this discussion is about
- SteveK
- chuckn
- FredericG
- chuckn
- SteveK
- FredericG
This archived discussion is "read only".
» SteveK - Anyone who visits <a href="http://www.jencom.com/2001/"><i>The 2
Anyone who visits The 2001 Principle should be prepared to meet a litany of bad science, invalid truth tests and psychological projection.The site argues that the famous Monolith seen in the movie 2001 is accepted by audiences as evidence (albeit fictional evidence) of intelligent design. (The Monolith, for those who haven't seen the movie, is a 15-foot rectangular slab with perfectly smoothed surfaces and perfectly cut right angles.) Mordechai Steinman, the author of the book on which the site is based, argues that because the audience accepted the Monolith as an obvious object of intelligent design, then even more complex objects like living organisms are even more obvious objects of intelligent design.
Steinman then argues that more people don't accept this obvious conclusion because they are emotionally incapable of doing so. While people don't mind the notion of alien races -- even those more intelligent than humans -- they are profoundly threatened by the idea of God, because he is omnipotent. Humans are relatively powerless before that kind of a God, and such powerlessness is scary. Therefore they rationalize away the obvious. (Here, Steinman evokes the theory of Cognitive Dissonance, wherein people rationalize away data that offends their biases.)
Steinman's text, however, is filled outright scientific and philosophical blunders. Since when is popular opinion a valid truth test? At one time, almost every human being alive believed the earth is flat, merely because it looked that way. Furthermore, the flat-earth belief was just as "gut level" and "obvious" as the popular acceptance Steinman evokes about the Monolith. Popular opinion is one of the worst tests for truth you could possibly devise -- yet here is Steinman, advancing this truth test with a straight face.
Even accepting this truth test, however, Steinman's argument fails. By his criteria, even quartz crystals could be accepted as objects of intelligent design. Quartz crystals are far more complex than Monolithic slabs, and are often clustered in beautiful swirls that can be described mathematically. Yet the public has no problem seeing this ordered complexity as the result of blind geo-chemical forces. Atoms obeying the laws of chemistry and physics produce quartz crystals -- no intelligent being is immediately necessary to say, "Okay, this crystal goes here... that crystal becomes only five centimeters wide... this crystal is blue..." Such direct intervention in nature was rejected in Newton's time. The laws of nature sufficiently explain these things.
Even more surprisingly, Steinman misdefines the Anthropic Principle. He writes: "The Anthropic Principle... contends that the universe was brought into existence intentionally for the sake of producing mankind." This is blatantly false. According to Stephen Hawking -- who wrote about the principle at length in his worldwide bestseller, A Brief History of Time -- the Anthropic Principle states that "we see the universe the way it is because we exist." In other words, when the conditions are perfect for life, it should not be surprising for the resulting life forms to look around and find perfect conditions for life.
An analogy best explains: the conditions for creating diamonds under the earth's surface are extremely rare. However, where those conditions exist, we find diamonds. And when miners discover these diamonds, they should not be surprised to look around and find that conditions are perfect for producing diamonds. This type of marvel is completely banal and unfounded.
Steinman also evokes Cognitive Dissonance theory to explain why more people don't see the obvious, but here he is engaging in another fine psychological trick: projection. It is actually Steinman who is too emotionally impaired to accept the overwhelming mountain of data proving evolution. He wants his God -- or, more accurately, all the personal benefits a God allegedly provides, like eternal life, divine guidance in one's personal life, divine power to solve one's problems, simple explanations for life and the universe, Fatherly love, etc. Steinman argues that people cannot accept intelligent design because they fear an omnipotent being, but in fact this is the very reason why humans created God -- to give themselves eternal life and happiness. There are no incentives for disbelieving in God that even remotely approach this incentive to believe in him. Steinman's argument fails on this point alone.
Steinman also repeats one of the most thoroughly disproven objections to evolution: that the odds are astronomical that a fully developed, fully functioning cell could just come together by chance. This demonstrates an ignorance of evolutionary theory so great that Steinman should be rejected as completely unqualified to write about these topics. All entities -- ranging from individual atoms to human beings -- are nothing more than survival systems. Unremarkably, survival systems with properties conducive to survival, do survive, and those with properties contrary to survival, don't. The first atoms in the early oceans combined, separated and recombined -- and those combinations that displayed survival properties went on to survive. The first forms of "life" were nothing more than hydrocarbon molecules. These evolved into simple combinations of hydrocarbon molecules, then strings of hydrocarbons like viruses, then crude cells. According to the fossil record, it took a billion years alone for these crude cells to even develop a nucleus. So when creationists evoke the image of a "fully developed, highly complex cell" just coming together by sheer chance, they are spouting complete and utter nonsense. If I hear one more strawman about monkeys banging on a typewriter and accidentally producing Shakespeare, I'm going to bang that figurative typewriter over the creationist's empty little head.
All the arguments raised by the 2001 website are already thoroughly debunked at the Talk.Origins FAQs. If Steinman is going to attack evolution, he at least needs to study the theory beforehand. If he tried these arguments in any Biology 101 class, he would flunk outright. And not just because his arguments are wrong, but because he has no idea what he is attacking.
Finally, a word to the editor, Frederic Giacobazzi: you claim that you present this website without advocacy. But surely intellectual honesty would at least compel you to present any extended presentation of crank science with the note that 99 percent of all biologists believe in the theory of evolution, and even provide some links to the mainstream sites, as I have done above. Without such internal balance, you are advocating a crank science, your disclaimers to the contrary.
Steve Kangas
-- posted by SteveK
» chuckn - Steve, quoting or paraphrasing Mr. Steinman, says, "Humans are r
Steve, quoting or paraphrasing Mr. Steinman, says, "Humans are relatively powerless before that kind of a God, and such powerlessness is scary."I always thought people who believed in God (especially that avuncular one with the white beard) were too frightened to accept a universe without one. Kinda' scary out here at the mercy of the elements, society, etc. -- travelling around as a miniscule organism on a particle of cosmic dust. Someone's gotta be watchin' out for us!
As I said in the beginning of the other 2001 thread, this fellow bases his whole argument on a work of fiction, and from there starts supposin' all sorts of silly things. It's a fairy tale. I have no problem reading Alice in Wonderland - but after I put it down I don't go around talking to rabbits and caterpillars - or if I do, I don't expect them to talk back. For Mr. Steinman, they certainly do talk back -- and if you don't believe him, it's your own 'Cognitive Dissonance'.
Science fiction seems to have a hold on a certain segment of society nowadays, prompting all sorts of wacky theories and religious beliefs. Now that's scary!
But, to be fair, they're no more outrageous than main stream religious beliefs.
Billy Graham, on the mass suicide in San Diego: "Obviously the work of the Devil."
.... Did you have something to do with that, Steve? Or was it Al Pacino?
-- posted by chuckn
» FredericG - Mr. Kangas, My purpose here is not to comment at length on yo
Mr. Kangas,My purpose here is not to comment at length on your rebuttal of some of Mr. Steinman's arguments (I find several of your points cogent and compelling, others less so). Nor will I respond to your imputations against my intellectual honesty.
However, I am sufficiently amused by your assertion that my article somehow lacks what you term a requisite "internal balance" by failing to point out that many disagree with Mr. Steinman, or to provide links to "mainstream" sites (by which you mean sites which present views counter to Mr. Steinman's and, of course, supportive of your own). Such was not the purpose of a descriptive article intended to acquaint visitors with an interesting Web site which presents a point of view on a traditional philosophical issue; nor does intellectual honesty compel such an approach.
Were I to write an article featuring, say, a Web site devoted to presenting the views of pre-Socratic monists (hey, it could happen!), would intellectual honesty require me to assure "internal balance" by providing links to sites presenting the views of their antagonists, the pre-Socratic pluralists? Would an article on a site devoted to advancing the "catharsis" theory of Aristotle's Poetics compel me to supply links to appreciative sites about Plato's Republic, which advances a contrary theory? Certainly not. More importantly, would descriptive articles about such sites amount to advocacy? I think not, despite your misguided assertions. A suitable test for your claims might be to look closer to home.
I have read several of your own articles advocating your left-liberal political views. Do I notice any marked inclination on your part always to provide "internal balance" by directing your readers to conservative sites such as: Townhall.com, the Washington Times, the Media Research Center, the American Enterprise Instutute, the Republican National Committee, the Hoover Institution, the Federalist Society, Accuracy in Academia, the American Conservative Union, the Cato Institute, Empower America, the Heritage Foundation, the National Review, the American Spectator, the Weekly Standard, Reason Magazine, The Right Side of the Web, the columns of George Will, Robert Novak, Wesley Pruden, William Safire, Partick Buchanan, Thomas Sowell, Joseph Sobran, Camille Paglia, Arianna Huffington, R. Emmett Tyrrell, William F. Buckley, and numerous other "mainstream" organizations, publications, and writers often antagonistic to your views to whom you could easily provide links for your readers in the interest of "internal balance"? No, I do not, nor do I believe that either the occasion of your articles or your intellectual honesty somehow require it, despite the fact that these sites are readily available and, clearly, present mainstream views which run counter to your own. You are an advocate, and you are free to advocate with as much balance or bias as you choose, whether or not there exist cogent--even devastating--refutations of your opinions. Yet, your mere suspicion about advocacy in the intent of my article produces pious pronouncements about the need for internal balance and intellectual honesty!
I repeat: the purpose of my article was not to advocate, whether or not the lens through which you choose to view it refuses to see anything but advocacy.
Fred Giacobazzi
P.S. Now, I think I'll go check to make sure that article Chuck wrote last summer about the Hemp Nation site presented links to the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
-- posted by FredericG
» SteveK - Dear Prof. Giacobazzi: Suite 101 has already balanced things
Dear Prof. Giacobazzi:Suite 101 has already balanced things for me, with a "Politics -- Conservatism" page. Furthermore I balance my articles internally by reciting conservative arguments and then arguing against them.
I'm not suggesting that you give equal time to all viewpoints -- that's impossible. It's also completely unnecessary to give equal time when you are discussing a major school of thought that enjoys widespread academic acceptance -- like Scientific Positivism, for example. But to promote a crank science that that the lay public nonetheless finds highly plausible without at least noting its status as a crank science smacks of slippery advocacy. In a single sentence, you could have conveyed that 99 percent of all biologists are evolutionists and provided a link to the Talk.Origins FAQs. But you did not. No editorial sin here, exactly, but an informed reader has to ask: what were you trying to accomplish with this article? Conveying the true state of the debate, or one-sided propaganda?
Steve Kangas
-- posted by SteveK
Please follow the guidelines set forth in the Suite101 Posting Etiquette when adding to the discussion.