We Need a Random Deity Generator
I posted a reply to a thread at Mike Rundle’s place about the decision in Kansas to redefine the term “science” as well as allow (if not mandate) Intelligent Design to be included in the curriculum as an alternate “theory” (thus implictly redefining what constitutes a theory) to natural selection. I invested enough into the comment, and am sufficiently lazy, that I figured I might as well post it here, with a few edits, for both of you.
Update: Look here and here for some slightly more frontline commentary.
If you consider the context of the terms “theory” and “fact”, as used by evolutionary biologists, and the scientific community at large, you’ll see that it is a much stronger statement to identify a collection of observations and the systematic attempt of their explanation as a theory than as a fact. It is quite difficult, in fact, to achieve a theory (no pun intended, as it’s pretty lame).
There is no specific proscription against a creator in the theory of natural selection. I haven’t seen anything in any of the presentations of evolutionary theory or natural selection that even bothers commenting on the issue of a creator. I imagine that that’s the result of a lack of evidence about a creator, either for or against.
And that is really at the core of this debate. Science—true science—doesn’t concern itself with proving or disproving the unobservable. You might build a case against string theory, in that its predicted effects are not currently directly observable; but there is mathematical implication, a hole (or series of them) the filling of which points to those proposed multidimentional structures, and that type of exercise has previously produced very sound scientific discovery, a la the Photoelectric Effect. So, science doesn’t concern itself with proving or disproving the existence of a creator any more than it concerns itself with proving or disproving magic. Natural selection and ID are not competing theories because they don’t intend to answer the same question.
The FSM site has it right: if you’re going to redefine what qualifies as a theory, and suggest alternate theories under this new definition, you’re going to have to make a good case as to why this one theory is substantial enough to teach and another isn’t. As the definition of “theory” becomes more arbitrary, so too will this determination become more arbitrary. Then, as the aegis of “science” becomes ever more bloated and indeterminate, you’re left with a strong likelihood of undermining science education as a whole.
Natural selection is a theory with modest origins which hundreds or thousands of people continue to develop to more completely bridge sometimes surprisingly disparate pieces of evidence into a whole which provides the most reasonable explanation. From its beginnings, it, like other theories, has been tested and contested, and has, through that foundry of scrutiny, been forged into something just that much stronger. It is not complete, but it stands as the most complete decoding of available evidence. The key: it attempts, and succeeds to varying degrees, to explain observed phenomena, and nothing more. Whatever bias any individual scientist brought to her or his lab, the community of scientists working toward understanding and codifying the way in which life has developed do not start with an answer but a question. [Note: A hypothesis is not an answer but a best guess which is tested; and discarding evidence which does not support your hypothesis is not a viable execution of the scientific method.]
Conversely, it appears that ID advocates have presumed, as their initial condition, a designer of all things, and simply hope to collect enough facts which support this initial condition. This is the most significant point of differentiation between these “theories”, and is so fundamental that they don’t belong in the same class.
There is every indication that the universe is more complex than we can currently fathom. All around us are examples of an elegant chaos, so elegant that it’s hard to conceive of a time in human history when some of us weren’t investigating exactly how all that stuff works. We go about it with different means, of course: where I see nonlinear dynamical processes, which have some kind of eerie pattern predictable to a low enough threshold of accuracy, you might see the hand of Allah. And, honestly, I can’t fault anyone for appealing to the simple idea of a consciousness that would build things so nicely—this serves both to attempt an explanation, and, maybe more importantly, to find comfort in what might otherwise seem infinite and cold. Again, each hopes to answer different questions, and are not, in fact, mutually exclusive in large part. This is why many of the scientists of our history have also believed in God or some other supreme conscious power. That should be the hint: if you can believe equally in the truth of two different ideas, they’re probably not competing ideas. As such, notwithstanding the notion that ID is not a theory, ID and natural selection are not competing theories, and, therefore, shouldn’t be taught as though they are.
I wouldn’t be too terribly opposed to a philosophy class in public schools. It could address the philosophy of science alongside the philosophy of religious belief, and might serve both to provide context for scientific thinking as well as introduce students to a variety of faiths. There really is no reason for a bicameral philosophy—there is in the world more than just “Christianity vs. science”. However,
- there are probably three times as many churches within a 5-mile radius of a public school as there are schools; and
- there doesn’t really seem to be too much of a funding problem for religious indoctrination, but there is a pronounced funding problem for public education.
So, for now, in the absence of a philosophy class in our school system, I say that you teach science in a science class, and then, if you’re so inclined, go to church to learn about alternate “theories”.
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