THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL
THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL
I’m not sure I really get this one. Something just isn’t adding up. Isn’t challenging a belief system and dogma, sometimes relentlessly, considered a perfectly legitimate activity by the purveyors of doubt based on scientific theory?
And so they can’t take a little challenge being sown in the arena they have so completely come to monopolize: the schools where we send our children. Children we have spent considerable time and love and hope on. Children in whom we have tried very hard to instill values that have everything to do with a Creator who cares about us and what we become and how we treat each other. That Creator who cares whether we work hard at something or cheat, who cares whether we destroy our body with drugs or not, a Creator who cares whether we learn to live by the rule of law or not. As compared to the theory of evolution which doesn’t.
I really don’t understand how the scientific method, or science in general, is threatened by having students introduced to the idea that evolution is just a theory and that there is a possibility that the present explanation favored by many scientists and taught in all biology classes may not be complete and does not hold all the answers in relation to the creation of life on this planet? The truth is science doesn’t have all the answers concerning creation. The truth is science has made a serious effort to explain the natural world without including the supernatural. I would think that would be a very healthy thing to point out to students. “Here’s a possibility that scientists find very convincing for explaining much of what they observe in the natural world. The theory of evolution does not include a supernatural influence. The theory of evolution does not have all the answers. There is the possibility of intelligent design.� See? Easy.
But wait, ah, now I get it. That is the point. That is the ideology: always using and always having explanations that do not include any whisper of the possibility of a Creator. And science has nothing to do with it. That ideology is as potent and fanatic as any religion on earth. In fact it has missionaries, and inquisitors, and the zeal of religious fervor. And it doesn’t like competition in the battle for the human heart. And in our schools that ideology has the upper hand. More later . . .
September 28th, 2005 at 12:06 am
I really don’t understand how the scientific method, or science in general, is threatened
It is threatened because it is not science. Science is not a set of facts, but a systematic way of trying to figure out how the world works. To call an idea “scientific” requires that it makes testable predictions about the world, and that it be capable of being disproven experimentally (the principle of falsifiability). Did man evolve from apes? Fossils and skeletons soon to be discovered may support or refute the idea. Is there a God? That is outside the realm of science. That says nothing about whether there is or is not a God, just that the question cannot be answered by scientific methods.
Intelligent Design makes no claims about the world that are scientifically testable. Therefore, it is not science, and does not belong in a science classroom.
threatened by having students introduced to the idea that evolution is just a theory
In science, “theory” is the highest status an idea can achieve. By way of comparison, gravity is also “just a theory.” Nothing in science can ever be proven absolutely; despite the fact that every baseball ever dropped has fallen to the ground, it’s still possible, in theory, that the next baseball dropped will just levitate in the air, or fly away to the moon. To call evolution “just a theory” is to severely distort
always using and always having explanations that do not include any whisper of the possibility of a Creator.
Because the very idea of a Creator is supernatural and not scientific. It is not that science denies the existence of a Creator, but that it cannot confirm or deny His existence by empirical methods.
One part of me hopes that the dressed up Creationists win in PA, as I would love to see science teachers explain to students about the The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – which is every bit as scientific as ID, and thus deserves equal time in science class.
September 28th, 2005 at 12:13 am
Regarding your first question, I’m not sure that challenging belief systems and dogma, relentless or not, is really what most scientists are aiming at. If you accept that general scientific practice (which is not quite the same thing as the principles of the scientific method, given human error) is, in the aggregate, what science really *is*, then I think what drives most scientists, and what they are trying to do every day, is the rewarding feeling that comes with finding out stuff. Figuring it out. That’s why I got into zoology; I was interested in animals that are rare or whose populations are declining, and I wanted to find out what we can do to keep them around longer.
It’s not really an attack on religion. For sure, there are a lot of agnostics and atheists in science, but there are lots of theists, too. My housemate has PhD in zoology, and she believes in God and goes to church every week.
I think the problem for a lot of scientists is not that they can’t take a challenge – many of them thrive on arguing over what hypotheses are supported or refuted by which data – but that the challenge to evolution presented by supporters of intelligent design is a lot like the challenge presented by creationists. It boils down to a so-called argument from incredulity: “evolution simply couldn’t have produced the variety of life forms we see” – why not? – “because I simply can’t believe it”. Which, to scientists, says more about what a person is capable of believing than about what the natural world is capable of accomplishing through natural processes. Likewise, the argument that we shouldn’t teach scientific principle X because it’s immoral, implying as it does a world without God or the possibility (or necessity) of moral behavior, really doesn’t prove that scientific principle X doesn’t work, that it fails to predict material phenomena properly. It may, though, signal that we need to look more deeply at how we practice our ethics and morality, and how we inculcate our children with those values, if we can’t, for example, rely on familiar aspects of the natural world to do our moral teaching (most animal species, in fact, are lousy moral instructors – they kill, they bite, they beat each other up, they sleep around – we do well to avoid looking to them for affirmation of which moral principles should work for humans).
Also, most of scientists I’ve met don’t think of themselves as completely monopolizing schools. Most schools put students through one science class a day. The way scientists see it, that science class should be about science, just like history class should be about history, math class about math, and so on. If people want to send their kids to religious schools, or to home school them, in such a way that religious viewpoints suffuse all aspects of all disciplines, OK, go for it, but in public schools, where taxpayer dollars are at work, and where there are a lot of different students coming from different households with (potentially) different religious backgrounds, creating a neutral zone in which the science class – the class that’s supposed to be about natural explanations for natural phenomena – is religiously value-neutral seems to be the most workable solution that people have settled on. If people want to revisit that settlement, it’s a free country, and that’s their right, but if people with different viewpoints resist it, that may not be because they want to embattle you or marginalize Christianity. It may be that they just want their kids to focus, in science class, on just the science, so they can compete with science nerd kids for entry into fancy-pants universities. It’s not that they want their kids to be amoral monsters. For that, there’s church. And parental love and instruction. But in science class, science.
The problem with admitting supernatural causal agents into mechanistic explanations of material phenomena is that it really undermines predictability. If you have a functioning car, and you take it apart, and you put it back together, and it doesn’t start anymore, you probably have a good hypothesis for why it doesn’t work that you can derive from your mental model of how a car should work. If it doesn’t start, it could be the battery, the starter, the ignition – just a few possibilities, all of which can be tested, and either ruled out, or supported as causal agents, on the basis of the material evidence at hand. If you start invoking God’s displeasure, or demons, or supernatural agents of other kinds, then it becomes much harder to figure out where to begin debugging that problem, and how to keep it from happening in the future. Similarly, if we want to figure out why a pesticide or herbicide or antibiotic that used to work just great gradually has gotten to where it doesn’t work so well any more, evolutionary theory encompasses some good tools to figure that out.
To call it “just a theory” does a disservice to biology, and to science generally. When physicists talk about the theory of gravitation, it’s not like they just have a hunch, a possibly-informed guess, about why things fall down. It means they have a set of mathematical equations, derived from lots of observations, that they have fitted to the observed data and can use to make predictions about things they otherwise couldn’t have tried to do, like vaulting satellites into stationary orbit around the earth, or lobbing instruments at a moving comet millions of miles away. Similarly, the set of biological principles and mathematical models we refer to by the shorthand term “evolution” is a lot more than just a hunch, and the supporting data come from a huge array of natural phenomena, including vestigial organs, maladaptive traits, the universality of DNA and RNA, a wide variety of networks of biochemical reactions common to organisms ranging from bacteria to people – check any good biology textbook and you’ll see: there’s a huge amount of biology that supports evolutionary theory very well.
Is there stuff going on that *isn’t* well-understood? Sure! Just as, a little over a hundred years ago, no one really knew whether airplanes could work, there’s lots of biological observations that are difficult to explain given the current state of biological theory. But that doesn’t mean they’re unexplainable, in natural terms. It doesn’t mean that the only alternative is that a supernatural agent made those things they way they are. And it wouldn’t be a good idea to pin one’s religious beliefs on those things anyway, because if theoretical developments do succeed in explaining them, and those developments lead to predictions that are also subsequently supported by natural observations, then we’re progressively backing God into a corner. We’re in effect deciding what God is capable of, and then left in a tough position when purely naturalistic explanations are hit upon that provide greater natural predictability than could be provided by a belief that a supernatural agent was directly responsble.
Kids should learn that science is a tentative process. It doesn’t have all the answers. But when it does find answers, and they stand up to scrutiny, they tend to be pretty reliable. Some things, living systems in particular, are really complex and hard to figure out. I see science as a way to figure out things, like disease, and how to keep the natural world healthy. I don’t see it as a battle for the human heart. Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t see the need to embattle people.
September 28th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
“Something just isn’t adding up. Isn’t challenging a belief system and dogma, sometimes relentlessly, considered a perfectly legitimate activity by the purveyors of doubt based on scientific theory?”
If that were really what was happening, then yes. In fact, if you read scientific journals, you’ll find little but challenges, arguements, disagreements, and scathing critiques.
But the ID movement is not a movement within science over disputes about the evidence. It’s a movement to basically overturn the idea of science: to take a process that is designed to demand a relentless focus on evidence and turn it into an arena of relativistic philosophical musing where its proponents feel their religious beliefs would be more easily presented. But this desire is not onyl misguided in a scientific sense. It’s also even more deeply misguided in a religious sense, because it puts religious truth in the crosshairs of disconfirming evidence. It’s one thing to learn about evolution in class: it’s something we can talk about entirely divorced from a religious context. But start putting religious belief into the discussion, and suddenly we have a situation in which religious beliefs are often to question based on the evidence. THAT is something I don’t think our public schools should be doing: can you imagine an argument in science class where dueling religious ideas (say, Mormon vs. Catholic) are compared on the evidence, and one is found superior? That wouldn’t just be lousy, politicized science: it would be poisonous to religion as well.
Creationists are trying to force teachers to read a statement which is just factually and semantically false. That’s wrong. And no one, Christian or otherwise, should support it.
September 28th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
Here’s Ken Miller, a highly respected biologist and a Catholic.
“The statement of the Dover School Board falsely undermines the theory of evolution. It does a great disservice to Dover and the students of Dover. By holding this up as an alternative, the students will get the message in a flash. The message is, ‘Over here you have a theory based on God, and over here is evolution, which is based in atheism’.”
And frankly, that’s not a place religious people should want to go. It’s deeply insulting to people like Dr. Miller, who are both religious AND biologists to basically force public schools to say what’s tantamount to calling them hypocrites and atheists.
September 28th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
Whatever happened to the fact that Darwinism/evolution was first taught in schools as an alternative to Creationism? When did this change? And why can’t it change back…
Science is a study of…you fill in the blank, depending on the branch. Biology–a study of life/the world in general. Why can’t this be an alternative to evolution? It once was. Science tests things, yes, and comes up with theories/hypothsis, etc. to try to explain it away. Why is this simply not an option for an explanation? What proof is there that makes it invalid?
As a part of the Christian society, which, by the way, is not just an inferior few, but from what I understand a majority still in this country, I continually hear news of scientists directly trying to disprove the theory of Intelligent Design, and failing. If scientists recognize this as something to disprove, why can schools not teach it as an alternative and let the children being taught try to decide and think for themselves for once. Let their generation see the sides and what they want to prove/disprove. Isn’t that what science is all about? Learning, finding, figuring out, proving and disproving theories that have been introduced into society and generally working towards answers of all questions, not narrowing down the field and saying “You can only concentrate on this as truth or a possibility”.
From what I understood, until disproved, anything is a possibility with scientists, and that’s the fun of the game. Why are we taking away this element from our children? Isn’t that worse than what Christians are accused of–teaching one way and only one way–even with Christians there’s still free choice. Yes, there are consequences, but the choice is up to you.
Evolutionists don’t even seem to want to allow a choice, yet they’re the first to cry that they’re being discriminated against for their thoughts. Let the other side have a chance. We let you have yours, and now you’ve taken our rights away from us.
September 28th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
I’m sorry Iziwazi, but I just don’t think that’s an honest presentation of the issues at hand.
Actual science is not itself a speculative philosophical debate: it’s a very particular method employed to learn what we can about things for which we have _evidence_. And when science lends its imprintur to something as a scientific fact, it is only after countless testings and retestings of the evidence (and then, of course, it’s only ever tenative: subject to factual disproof). When we teach children science, we generally only teach them the basics: that which has been shown to be extremely well established by the scientific process. There are any number of ideas out there with no evidence for them: if you think we should give “fair hearing” to ID, then why not to Satanic rituals too? After all: it’s free choice, right?
But that doesn’t even capture the way in which ID is simply not honest science: it’s political and it’s deeply dishonest, misleading children about actual well-established science at ever turn. Giving them a place in schools would be like giving Marxist revisionists a place in history class so they could tell children that the failure of the Soviet Union was all a Western conspriacy. Again: why not present all sides, like you say?
The reality is that scientists DO consider all sides: based on evidence. But that doesn’t mean that teachers should present fringe ideas as if they were scientific fact. And THAT is what the Dover case is all about.
The statement that the Dover school systems would have teachers read is simply false: worse, it misuses scientific terminology in an embarrassing way. It’s as bas as if an English teacher was forced to read the statement “Some sey you no need to reed good.”
“I continually hear news of scientists directly trying to disprove the theory of Intelligent Design, and failing.”
I’m not sure what this means or to what this reffers. ID proponents have advanced very few actual affirmative arguments for ID. Of those that are popular amongst ID proponents, like Irreducible Complexity and CSI, most scientists would consider them to have been pretty roundly disproven as arguments. That ID proponents would pass themselves off as victors in these disputes, trying to play to a Christian audience, does not surprise me anymore than a used car salesman trying to convince new car buyers to purchase a lemon.
September 28th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
If “Satanic Rituals” had in any way to do with the way life came about, then I could easily see how that would go over easier as curriculum in the public schools that anything that in anyway might be labeled “Christian”. And since when has evolution actually been proved? Have you personally watched a creature evolve into another? Yes, creatures adapt–humans do too–that doesn’t mean that in another few thousand years we will no longer be human. I see no way that humans have changed in the times since things have been recorded. That’s thousands of years with no change. And you’re supporting it being taught as the only fact, with no other option. If that’s not dishonest and misleading, I’m not sure I know what is. When anyone supporting evolution has true, undisputable evidence, anymore that ID does, maybe then I’d reconsider, however, no one has been able to prove either more than the other. There are signs in this world that some people take to point towards evolution, and that some say point to Intelligent Design. Why not let both sides have their turn.
As far as history goes, I’m sure the same history isn’t taught exactly the same across the board. They have their view of exactly what happened, and we have ours. Conspiracy theories abound and I know that in my high school that, no, they weren’t taught as fact, but if a student wanted to discuss it, it could be discussed without someone sueing the school system for it and making such a big deal for the sake of 8 families in an entire community.
September 28th, 2005 at 8:20 pm
“If “Satanic Ritualsâ€? had in any way to do with the way life came about, then I could easily see how that would go over easier as curriculum in the public schools that anything that in anyway might be labeled “Christianâ€?.”
Ok, so do you agree that it would be fair to include a Satanic theory of the origin of life in a science class? Or Satanic history in history class? After all, shouldn’t children hear all sides?
Don’t you see why that logic is lousy?
“And since when has evolution actually been proved?”
Pretty much since over the last 60 or so years.
“Have you personally watched a creature evolve into another?”
No, and proving common descent doesn’t require me physically observing it. It requires observing the physical evidence of life on earth. This evidence paints a network of evidential chains that are simply unavoidable.
Regardless, creatures don’t “evolve into another.” They are all related to each other.
“Yes, creatures adapt–humans do too–that doesn’t mean that in another few thousand years we will no longer be human.”
A thousand years is generally far too short a time to see major changes. However, there are plenty of minor changes occuring in human populations right now that will likely accumulate over time.
“I see no way that humans have changed in the times since things have been recorded.”
You… see? What, you were around 4000 years ago to observe this? Let me ask you: have you ever actually sat down and studied the data on human beings and their physical characteristics? If you have, bravo, but I’m betting that you have never ever done this. And so, in short, you are telling me something is so when in fact you’ve NEVER bothered to check and see if it was so. In fact, human beings have changed in terms of average features in many many different ways just within human history, from height to jaw structure, and so on. Of course, again, a few thousand years is generally far too small a period of time to see much that would jump out. to a layperson.
Of course, go back to fossil records of human beings and there are plenty of pretty obvious differences.
” When anyone supporting evolution has true, undisputable evidence, anymore that ID does, maybe then I’d reconsider,”
There already is plenty of undisputable evidence which is, in fact, why scientists, religious and non-religious, agree on evolution as being sound. You can keep insisting that there is not, but then again anyone can do what you do, just like I said. Do you think that Satanists could not insist that there was no Jesus Christ and keep claiming, all evidence to the contrary, that there is no evidence? Of course they could. Claiming it doesn’t make it so: the proof is in the pudding.
“if a student wanted to discuss it, it could be discussed without someone sueing the school system for it and making such a big deal for the sake of 8 families in an entire community.”
You seem as misinformed about this lawsuit as you are about evolution. The lawsuit isn’t about children asking questions. It’s about teachers being required to read a statement as science when that statement is NOT science, and is, in fact, nonsense.
September 30th, 2005 at 10:31 am
Intelligent Design Roundup Friday
The debate on Intelligent Design vs Evolution has been flooding through the blogsphere like some cleverly conceived primeval super-goo this week….
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