A bunch of people are mad at me for my “wasted life” comment, and I confess to an injudicious choice of words. Of course I don’t believe that Ken Miller’s, or anyone else’s life is a total waste just because one’s professional career might be invested in something that turns out to be wrong. But I do think there is a valid point concerning one’s professional life investment and objectivity in evaluating evidence, and I think that Darwinism has caused countless people to invest their careers in a pursuit that will turn out to have been a waste of time and effort.
What paleontologist would want to admit that he invested his life’s work in looking for transitional intermediates that never existed? If it turns out that life is not the product of selfish genes, or that the blind-watchmaker really didn’t do all that marvelous creating, or that Mount Improbable really doesn’t have a gradual slope up the back side, then Dawkins’ effort in writing books with these titles was an exercise in futility and storytelling about stuff that never happened.
The notion that one might be spending, or might have already spent, his professional life chasing a rainbow is a powerful incentive to make the evidence fit the theory, and to lose all objectivity in evaluating the challenges of skeptics.