The Clever Badger One lab accident away from being a super villain

Illustrating a Point, Continued

A couple of weeks back, I wrote a post discussing (among other things) Russ Pulliam's Indianapolis Star opinion piece, Taking Darwin on Faith.

Mr. Pulliam has written another piece, Darwin debates, Part 2,  in which he attempts to address some of the concerns I expressed, as well as some of those pointed out by James McGrath.  (He didn't mention Rev. Ouabache's comments, for some reason.)

Before I get to his comments about my article, I want to touch on something that struck me as very intriguing.

In the introduction to his most recent opinion piece, Mr. Pulliam writes:

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species," I recently wrote an objection to the belief that Darwin's theory can be used an explanation for the origins of the universe.

I've read and re-read Mr. Pulliam's original piece, and quite frankly I do not think that this is true.  In his original opinion, Mr. Pulliam cited Richard Holdeman's (correct) comments that science does not answer questions about the meaning and purpose of the universe.  That's a fairly obvious and non-controversial statement.^1,2

When Mr. Pulliam mentions the universe, it's in an illustrative manner in what appears to be a broader context lamenting the lack of philosophical (i.e. theological) considerations in science.

Now, turning to his comments on my post, he writes:

If blogger Clever Badger were to open a school, I probably wouldn't gain admission. He lumps me in with the young Earth creationists and faults me for oversimplifying evolution as humans coming from amoebas. I plead guilty to oversimplification.

He misunderstood my comment about the definition of science as observation and experimentation. "So Pulliam wants us to redefine science?"

I never said that, but he caught my main point. "If you get too far away from that, you aren't doing science any more. You're doing some sort of philosophy."

To which I say "Amen."

I'll address these comments one by one.

1)If blogger Clever Badger were to open a school, I probably wouldn't gain admission.

Sure he would.  Were I to open a school, I wouldn't base my admissions on whether or not applicants agreed with everything I taught.  I would expect students to learn the material and understand it, but understanding doesn't automatically imply agreement.

2)He lumps me in with the young Earth creationists...

Given that Mr. Pulliam invokes several very common Young Earth Creationist concepts in his article, it's natural to lump him in that way.  He makes no effort in his follow-up piece to correct my assumption.  If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

3)...and faults me for oversimplifying evolution as humans coming from amoebas. I plead guilty to oversimplification.

Actually the term I used was "bullshit".  Such an "oversimplification" is nothing to brag about.  It strongly implies that Mr. Pulliam does not know what he's talking about when discussing evolution, and has no business trying to explain it to anyone.  It's one thing to omit details of a subject in order to get across an essential concept.  It's another thing entirely to omit so much detail that the subject matter becomes unrecognizable.

4)He misunderstood my comment about the definition of science as observation and experimentation. "So Pulliam wants us to redefine science?"

I won't deny that I might have misinterpreted Mr. Pulliam's comment.  It's entirely possible that he meant something completely different with the statement "(p)art of the problem is defining science, which is traditionally limited to observation and experimentation." If he did, he didn't bother to explain himself in his most recent article, nor (as of 24 October 2009) has he addressed the matter in the comments at the Indianapolis Star website.

5)I never said that, but he caught my main point. "If you get too far away from that, you aren't doing science any more. You're doing some sort of philosophy."  To which I say "Amen."

This statement seems to suggest that Mr. Pulliam wants more philosophical overtones in his science, which seems consistent with the overall tone of his first article.  An odd thing, though, is that towards the end of his first article, Mr. Pulliam states the following:

The debate has become as much about philosophy and politics than science. Followers of Darwin have won many of the arguments at a political level, cloaking their philosophy under the banner of science.

This statement leaves me scratching my head.  Is Pulliam indicating that philosophy and science should be separate? I suspect that what he's actually trying to do is implicitly assert as fact the (bogus) claim he made earlier in that first opinion piece - "(y)et there's a leap of faith involved in Darwinian theory" - and then imply that since scientists (by which I think he really wants to say biologists) are already working on faith, then there isn't a problem layering explicitly religious philosophies onto science.

The sad thing here is that Pulliam had an opportunity in his second article to correct what he thinks are misinterpretations made by James McGrath and me, but he would apparently rather use the space allocated to him to whine about the fact that we called him out on his poor understanding of science (in general) and evolution (in particular).

Maybe next time.

Jay

----------

¹In the original piece, there is an editorial mistake. As printed, the paragraph reads thus:

What troubles Holdeman is how some followers of Darwin have taken his work and turned it into a theological treatise about the origins and purpose of the universe. "Science by nature does not answer questions related to meaning and purpose in the universe." he said. "It is wrong to use science to justify what are essentially religious beliefs. The result is that many religious people are offended by and reject evolution because of its supposed religious implications rather than its scientific merits or lack thereof.

There is a missing end quote that should appear either after the word "beliefs" or at the very end of the paragraph. Without that quote, the reader can't distinguish whether "(t)he result is that many religious people are offended by and reject evolution because of its supposed religious implications rather than its scientific merits or lack thereof " is part of Holdeman's comment or Pulliam's gloss on Holdeman's comment.  I'm making the assumption that it's Holdeman's.

²The statement that Pulliam makes about some "followers of Darwin" (I really dislike that term) taking Darwin's work and using it to explain the origin of the universe is kind of tricky.  While it is true that there are probably some people who improperly extrapolate evolutionary theory into the realm of cosmology, nobody who really understands what they're talking about does that.  If Mr. Pulliam believes that the problem is widespread within the community of working biologists, he's simply incorrect.