Over at An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution, psychologist Marlowe C. Embree has been posting some insightful blog entries. Consider, for example, The Origins Debate through the Lens of Piagetian Theory.

Readers of The Design Matrix will recognize central themes in this posting.

For example, Embree writes:

In the first of these, assimilation, pre-existing schemata are “imposed” upon the data of experience. In simple terms, we see what we expect to see, paying attention to relevant information (that which confirms or supports an existing schema) and discount (or fail even to notice) irrelevant or disconfirming evidence (particularly that which calls a prior schema into question).

This is a point I have been stressing for years. I have also added the topics of both confirmation and disconfirmation bias to the table. Why is this so important? First, most people who are part of the debate (from both sides) conflate evidence with data. That is, they treat evidence as if it is part of the objective world. Second, this confusion then becomes especially problematic if we are dealing with an ambiguous subject, where the ambiguity is artificially erased because people confuse “evidence” with the light of their schemata. In such cases, social considerations such as peer pressure and group think can propel people to downplay the ambiguity because they think it is the “evidence” telling them to do so. In other words, one theme to explore is the effect of pre-existing schemata in a social setting.

Embree also explains how a person is typically pushed out of assimilation mode:

As long as the data of experience (or other indirect forms of data, such as those drawn from the experience of others whom we have reason to trust) confirms our existing schemata, there is no reason to alter our schemata or to move out of “assimilation mode”. Sooner or later, however, all of us encounter anomalous information that cannot easily be assimilated to an existing schema. (Think of a person who believes, for whatever reason, that red-haired people are evil, but who then meets an altogether admirable and saintly redhead.) While anomalies in small numbers can be explained away with relative ease (maybe she is a skilled hypocrite, or maybe she has simply dyed her hair red and thus isn’t a “real” redhead), if the number and gravity of anomalies mount, the discrepancy between schemata and experience increase to the point that there is increasing pressure to come to terms with the storehouse of anomalous data.

And here we find the reason why so many people, on both sides of the origin debate, embrace “god-of-the-gaps.” A gap is anomalous information and both sides need the gap in order to force accommodation. This is easy to see in the case of many creationists and IDists, who insist phenomena exist which cannot be explained by evolution. But the critics likewise demand gaps. For example, over the years I have asked them what type of data might exist that would cause them to suspect life was designed. Almost all struggle with this question, but when pressed, most they say they need something that evolution cannot explain. They ridicule a search for gaps while at the same time demanding such gaps.

Or consider my hypothesis of front-loading evolution. Over the years, my critics have been able to find only one “counter-argument” against it – they argue that since FLE does not entail anything that cannot also be explained by mainstream evolutionary theory, FLE is superfluous and should be dismissed. But this is not an argument; this is a complaint. And it is complaint that boils down to this: “We should ignore FLE because you show no gaps in our way!”

That so many critics embrace “god-of-the-gaps” thinking as a valid way of detecting design all goes back to the influence of the Traditional Template that I discuss in chapter 2.