Geoff Boycott reporting on the England v South Africa test on Radio 4 Today Program this morning, made a telling comment … When the sports anchor man said of one bowler “his figures look good, but you say he didn’t play well”, Geoff responded with “ah yes, but you’re just looking at the numbers, I can see for myself what’s happening, what threat (or lack of it) he is really causing”.
Truth is more than numbers, but Einstein said it better.
And just yesterday on “Today”, they had a news item from some Intelligent Design Creationists. They had Steve Jones as the scientist to respond, but he had barely time for two sentences, roughly “This is poppycock. How come these guys even get air time ?”. This was of course exactly my response too. Today, Saturday, we have listener responses, which were mostly the same response, except for some pleas not to dismiss god entirely, but most supported that gaps in knowledge should be expected to exist, (I say knowledge is 99% gap) and we should not simply use God as an easy gap filler. However, one response illustrated my Catch-22 perfectly…
One respondent said “If all a scientist can do is be dismissive, not offer any rational evidence against intelligent design, and at best propose alternative explanations for the existence and wonderful variety of life, then of course “intelligent designers” are going to stick to their beliefs.
Proving a negative is never easy, some would say not actually possible, but whatever standard of proof, this is a lazy argument. Occam’s principle wins this one hands down – God seems a so much more simple answer to why, if the alternative answer involves complexity and huge quantities of events. This is a recurring debate on the MoQ Discussion board. At root, any single evolutionary event is the epitome of simplicity in fact, but people choose to see the massive emergent complexity.