# Quote — Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science

> So we encounter the strategy exemplified by Morris: Talk generally about design, pattern, purpose, and beauty in nature. There are many examples of adaptations that can be used—the wings of bats or “the amazing circulatory system,” for example. But what happens if we press some more difficult cases? Well, if there seems to be no design or purpose to a feature (and if its presence cannot be understood as a modification of ancestral characters), one can always point out that some parts of the Creator’s plan may be too vast for human understanding. We do not see what the design is, but there is design, nonetheless.
>
> Since no plan of design has been specified, Creationists have available another all-purpose escape clause. But it is precisely this feature of Creation “science” that impugns its scientific credentials. To mumble that “the ways of the creator are many and mysterious” may excuse one from identifying design in unlikely places. It is not to do science.

- Author: [Philip Kitcher](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher.md)
- Book: [Abusing Science](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science.md)
- Page: 138
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_Kitcher#Abusing_Science:_The_Case_Against_Creationism_(1982)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science/so-we-encounter

## More from this book

> Barnes and Morris both choose processes that we know to operate at different rates at different times, and then use the observed rates to estimate the time at which the process began. Dating the past is a complicated and technical business, and one cannot ignore the technical details simply to generate the ages one wants. Without a thorough understanding of which rates are constant overtime and which rates fluctuate wildly, Creationist dates are bound to be stabs in the dark. However, Creationists know what they want the age of the earth to be. So just as in the case of the second law of thermodynamics, important parts of science are abused. By carefully picking a process on the basis of its ability to give the desired result, without attending to the question whether it is reasonable to think that it happened at a constant rate, Creationists attempt to convince the uninitiated that their blind dates have scientific references. Nobody should be taken in.

p. 163 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science/barnes-and-morris.md)

> Ironically, philosophers of science owe the Creationists a debt. For the “scientific” Creationists have constructed a glorious fake, which we can use to illustrate the differences between science and pseudoscience. By examining their scientific pretensions, I have tried to convey a sense of the nature and methods of science.

p. 5 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science/ironically-philosophers-of-science.md)

> This response gets high marks for low cunning.

p. 99 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science/this-response-gets.md)