The gaps in the evidence

Sigo leyendo The Greatest Show on Earth y ¡me está encantando! La discusión científica sobre la evidencia que tenemos sobre la teoría de la evolución es increíble y fascinante, pero eso será algo que me esperaré para comentar en el otro blog una ves que termine de leer el libro.

Pero Dawkins, Dawkins, tu promesa de que este no es un libro anti-religión ¡la vas rompiendo en cada capítulo! :P Y tampoco es que me queje, me encanta que lo haga, sobre todo cuando es en base a argumentos sólidos y bien fundamentados. Y pues también se lo tengo que reconocer, el libro más que anti-religión es anti-creacionista; y supongo que debe de ser difícil escribir un libro sobre evolución sin criticar al mismo tiempo los argumentos creacionistas.

Pero al punto, este post es para compartirles otro pequeño extracto del libro que me encantó, y la verdad que me dió mucha pero mucha risa. Para ponerlos en contexto, a lo largo del libro Dawkins explica el trabajo que hacen los biólogos en materia de evolución con la analogía de un crimen sin testigos, que por lo tanto nadie estuvo ahí para ‘verlo’, y un detective que trata de reconstruir los detalles de lo ocurrido basando en las pistas y evidencias dejadas en la escena del crimen.

Let's again make use of our analogy of the detective coming to the scene of a crime to which there were no eye witnesses. The baronet has been shot. Fingerprints, footprints, DNA from a sweat stain on the pistol, and a strong motive all points toward the butler. It's pretty much an open and shut case, and the jury and everybody in the court is convinced that the butler did it. But last-minute pice of evidence is discovered, in the nick of time before the jury retires to consider what had seemed to be their inevitable verdict of guilty: somebody remembers that the baronet had installed spy cameras against burglars. With bated breath, the court watches the films. One of them shows the butler in the act of opening the drawer in his pantry, taking out a pistol, loading it, and creeping stealthily out of the room with a malevolent gleam in his eye. You might think that this solidifies the case against the butler even further. Mark the sequel, however. The butler's defence lawyer astutely points out that there was no spy camera in the corridor leading from the butler's pantry. He wags his finger, in that compelling way that lawyers have made their own. ‘There's a gap in the video record! We don't know what happened after the butler left the pantry. There is clearly insufficient evidence to convict my client.’

In vain the prosecution lawyer points out that there was a second camera in the billiard room, and this shows, through the open door, the butler, gun at the ready, creeping on tiptoe along the passage towards the library. Surely this plugs the gap in the vide record? Surely the case against the butler is now unassailable? But no. Triumphantly the defence lawyer plays his ace. ‘We don't know what happened before or after the butler passed the door of the billiard room. There are now two gaps in the video record. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my case rests. There is now even less evidence against my client than there was before.‘

Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth.

Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay

Como regalo de cumpleaños (¡gracias amor!) acabo de recibir el libro The Greatest Show on Earth donde Richard Dawkins explica qué es y cuales son las evidencias que se tienen sobre la teoría de la evolución. Después de haber leído The Selfish Gene le tenía ganas a éste porque, como científico, Dawkins es genial y me fascina su forma de explicar lo que es nuestro actual estado de conocimiento sobre la vida, cómo se crea y cómo funciona.

Dawkins sin embargo, a pesar de que con muchas ganas lo intente, no puede contenerse las ganas de poner esta joya en el capítulo que abre al libro.

It is frequently, and rightly, said that senior clergy and theologians have no problem with evolution and, in many cases, actively support scientists in this respect. [...] The Archbishop of Canterbury has no problem with evolution, nor does the Pope (give or take the odd wobble over the precise palaeontological juncture when the human soul was injected), nor do educated priests and professors of theology. This is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. It is not intended as an anti-religious book. I've done that, it's another T-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again. [...]

What we must not do is complacently assume that, because bishops and educated clergy accept avolution, so do their congregations. [...]

To return to the enlightened bishops and theologians, it would be nice if they'd put a bit of effort into combating the anti-scientific nonsense that they deplore. All too many preachers, while agreeing that evolution is true and Adam and Eve never existed, will then blithely go into the pulpit and make some moral or theological point about Adam and Eve in their sermons without once mentioning that, of course, Adam and Eve never actually existed! If challenged, they will protest that they intended a purely ‘symbolic’ meaning, perhaps something to do with ‘original sin’, or the virtues of innocence. They may add witheringly that, obviously, nobody would be so foolish as to take their words literally. But do their congregations know that? How is the person in the pew, or on the prayer-mat, supposed to know which bits of scripture to take literally, which symbolically? [...]

Think about it, Bishop. Be careful, Vicar. You are playing with dynamite, fooling around with a misunderstanding that's waiting to happen — one might even say almost bound to happen if not forestalled. Shouldn't you take greater care, when speaking in public, to let your yea be yea and your nay be nay?

Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth

Eso me recordó mucho al, entonces abad de la Basílica de Guadalupe, Guillermo Schulenburg cuando dijo que Juan Diego no existió. ¡Y la que se le armó!