Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Why the Narrative Trumps the Facts

What Evolution is All About

Greg Conterio, echoing Robert Bidinotto, makes the point that culture war differences often pit the facts versus the narrative. The facts can win every battle but the narrative wins the war. As Bidinotto puts it, “One of the most valuable insights I discovered in recent years is how Narratives trump everything else — including what most of us would call concern for ‘practical results.’” Conterio and Bidinotto are mainly concerned with political issues, but what lies behind their insight is our beliefs about origins.

A predetermined narrative is what influenced Darwin in concluding that the species must have arisen as a result of the blind actions of natural processes. As Darwin historian Janet Browne explained, Darwin, as well as evolution co-discoverer Alfred Wallace, came to believe in transmutation and so they then sought a suitable mechanism. The reason they came to believe in transmutation was the biological world was too gritty, too unseemly, and lacking in elegance. In a word, too evil.

Such rationalistic thinking (starting with preconceived ideas of what to expect, rather than exploring the data to see where it leads) about origins by no means began with Darwin and Wallace. They were handed these ideas from leading Christian thinkers from the previous centuries. Evolution was not a scientific finding, it was a religious conclusion.

From a scientific perspective, the spontaneous origin of the biological world makes little sense. Darwin and Wallace had no idea how such wonders actually could have sprung up all by themselves. Nor do evolutionists today. As Browne put it, they first believed—then they sought a scientific mechanism. That’s backwards, but this is precisely what they, and their followers today, are committed to.

The result is that evolution has introduced into science the art of story-telling. Evolution is a narrative, not an appeal to scientific principles and laws. Evolutionary events are “unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible” in the words of famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Or as Harvard’s Ernst Mayr wrote, “Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques” for explaining evolutionary events and processes.

Evolution is a narrative. And it is not just any narrative—it is the world’s creation story. The most important fundamental of a culture is its creation story. Tell me where you think you came from, and I’ll tell you everything else about you. At least everything that is important.

So what Conterio and Bidinotto are observing is the fruit of evolutionary thought. Evolution is not merely a scientific theory. It is the most influential theory in areas outside of science, in the history of science.

One now classic example of this is how evolutionary theory influenced historiography. In the nineteenth century evolutionists began constructing the history of ideas from their perspective. It became known as the Warfare Thesis, or Conflict Thesis, because it cast religious people as resisting, and in conflict with, science and its objective truths.

Even though historians agree that the Warfare Thesis is a strong dose of Whig history, it nonetheless often informs our culture’s views today. Anyone questioning evolution is cast as the fundamentalist, opposing the objective, truth-seeking scientists.

The poster child for this mythical retelling of history is Inherit the Wind, a play and movie that is a fictionalization of the famous 1925 Monkey Trial. Evolutionists today heavily promote this film as a cogent insight into our culture. It casts evolutionists as the white-hat good guys, and skeptics as ignorant, religious zealots.

Many evolutionists are unaware that Inherit the Wind is a fictionalization. And when told about this, they don’t really care. Because the narrative trumps the facts.

Judge John Jones explained, for example, he wanted to see Inherit the Wind a second time in preparation for the 2005 Dover case, over which he presided, because the film puts the origins debate into its proper “historical context.” Jones later reminisced about the trial, explaining that “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”

But a federal judge’s profound ignorance and prejudice over a case in which he presided does not bother anyone—he was exalted as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year. So what if Inherit the Wind takes a few liberties with the truth, it is the narrative that counts.

Unfortunately evolution’s influence didn’t stop with a silly screenplay. With evolution life has no divine spark, we weren’t made in the image of any Creator, and things like facts and laws, both scientific and otherwise, don’t really matter. In politics, as well as evolution, it’s all about the narrative, not following the law.

14 comments:

  1. I believe the Dover case was 2005, not 1995. Just a slight correction.

    The insight about how both Darwin and some Christians before him had views about nature should be which influenced them is an important one. I believe this is not just derived from the text of the early chapters of Genesis but assumptions read into the early chapters of Genesis that may not be there. Not a completely crazy assumption, but maybe a wrong one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Geoff. Typing too fast. Yes, I agree with you that the theological mandates for evolution go beyond scripture.

      Delete
  2. Yes, and how many of the horrors of history have come because the scientific narrative got ahead of the facts? More than a few.

    The eugenic narrative of the early twentieth century led to forced sterilization and immigration restrictions that fed European anti-Semitism and the rise of Nazism. The few critics of eugenics within science occasionally whined about the facts not being there, but they were overwhelmed by the 'menace of the feeblemindes' narrative. Eugenics only real opposition came from the religious right, who did have a counter-story and, as it turned out the facts, on their side.

    For those who are interested, I cover all that in my The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective, which gives the original-source background to Margaret Sanger's 1922 bestseller on birth control.

    A similar narrative about a population explosion dominated the debate about abortion legalization in the late 1960s. That narrative was actually the public face of a covert eugenic agenda that primarily targeted the black underclass.

    The chief champion of abortion legalization was the President of Planned Parenthood-World Population, Dr. Alan Guttmacher, who was, not accidentally, a former VP of the American Eugenics Association. Roe v. Wade recognized that in its first paragraph when it mentioned both "eugenics" and the "racial overtones" behind the decision.

    Both illustrate that science, particularly science as closely linked to evolution as eugenics, is all too easily seduced into nasty agendas by well-funded but false narratives. Even worse, this real-world science never takes responsibility for its errors nor does it thank its religious opponents from prevented even greater horrors. If the scientific community had any integrity, every organized body within it would have issued public statement praising Catholics and fundamentalist for blocking their support for eugenics.

    In the end, science--narrative-driven, facts-be-damned, and big-money-influenced--will lose its credibility.

    That's already happening with the global warming/climate change/climate disruption hysteria. Quite a few people disbelieve it not because they know the facts that well, but because they've learned, from contrived crisis after contrived crisis, that scientific narratives are not to be trusted.

    --Michael W. Perry, also the editor of Eugenics and Other Evils.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "The reason they came to believe in transmutation was the biological world was too gritty, too unseemly, and lacking in elegance. In a word, too evil."

    This is, basically, crap. If anything, it was biogeographical observation that led Darwin to evolution:

    =========
    The Galápagos Islands were formed by volcanic eruptions in the recent geological past (the oldest of the islands emerged from the ocean just three million years ago), and Darwin realized that the remote setting must have presented life with a new beginning. “Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period, geologically recent, the unbroken ocean was here spread out,” he wrote in his Journal of Researches. “Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth.”

    How, Darwin asked himself, had life first come to these islands? “The natural history of these islands,” he later pointed out, “is eminently curious, and well deserves attention. Most of the organic productions are aboriginal creations, found nowhere else.” Yet all of the creatures showed a marked relationship with those from the American continent. The novel Galápagos species, Darwin reasoned, must have started out as accidental colonists from Central and South America and then diverged from their ancestral stocks after arriving in the Galápagos. As he traveled from island to island, Darwin also encountered tantalizing evidence suggesting that evolution was proceeding independently on each island, producing what appeared to be new species.
    =========

    The Evolution of Charles Darwin

    A creationist when he visited the Galápagos Islands, Darwin grasped the significance of the unique wildlife he found there only after he returned to London

    By Frank J. Sulloway
    Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe
    December 2005

    Google it to find it, I'm not sure if links work.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is, basically, crap. If anything, it was biogeographical observation that led Darwin to evolution:

      Would you stop already. Now I have to clean my cappuccino off my screen again.

      Delete
    2. Nick
      Darwins motives are mysterious. Everybody says this and that.
      The thing i note about him is his simplistic conclusion that because nature is not like what a god would or could do then there must be no God control.
      Darwin did not see the flood as real and also predicting creatures must move to islands. not created there by god as he accused the former ideas.
      he could see differences in people anf no need for turtles on isles to prove this happens.
      yes there must be mechanisms but it isn't hinting all biology came from a common origin because some biology changed.
      Darwin was superficial in his investigations.
      its easy to say selection can do everything.
      its a line of reasoning difficult to say otherwise.
      however its absurd in its claims for complexity and diversity of bio glory.
      where is the evidence for evolutions claims?
      indeed they can't repeat it in a lab. it never happened or could.

      Delete
    3. Robert:

      Darwins motives are mysterious.

      Actually Darwin spells out his arguments quite clearly.

      Delete
    4. ==========================
      The Evolution of Charles Darwin

      A creationist when he visited the Galápagos Islands, Darwin grasped the significance of the unique wildlife he found there only after he returned to London

      By Frank J. Sulloway
      Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe
      December 2005
      =================
      This is the controlling narrative.
      That's what we have here--a battle of the narratives.

      The Smithsonian is a keeper--with a heavy hand--of the prevailing narrative. See http://www.richardsternberg.com/smithsonian.php

      This is the alternative narrative:
      ===========================
      A predetermined narrative is what influenced Darwin in concluding that the species must have arisen as a result of the blind actions of natural processes.
      As Darwin historian Janet Browne explained, Darwin, as well as evolution co-discoverer Alfred Wallace, came to believe in transmutation and so they then sought a suitable mechanism. The reason they came to believe in transmutation was the biological world was too gritty, too unseemly, and lacking in elegance. In a word, too evil.
      ===========================

      Delete
  4. "I'm not sure I want popular opinion on my side -- I've noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts. "
    ---Bethania McKenstry

    ReplyDelete
  5. Implicitly, the debate about Evolution evidently involves the question of the validity of a rival definition of science to the modern paradigm of empirical testing - to which Evolution, of course, is wholly alien.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes, the narrative is the key. That is why the biblical narrative is the key to responding to the evolutionary one. Intelligent design deals with some facts, but the biblical narrative explains all facts in the universe and allows them to be interpreted.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In this case, the biblical narrative is: "Don't misrepresent the science."

      Delete