Michael Shermer -- with whose views I often agree -- posts at Huffington Post about the evolutionism/creationism debates; and in the process he says two things that strike me as worth considering together:
The primary reason we are experiencing this peculiarly American phenomenon of evolution denial (the doppelganger of Holocaust denial), is that a small but vocal minority of religious fundamentalists misread the theory of evolution as a challenge to their deeply held religious convictions.
OK, sounds plausible on its own (though I’ll say some more about it later) -- the theory of evolution doesn’t speak to whether God exists or what he has done, but simply aims to explain how things likely happened, and if you believe that God made them happen that way, that’s something the theory just doesn’t discuss. But here’s another quote from earlier in the piece (emphasis added):
In March of 2001 the Gallup News Service reported the results of their survey that found 45 percent of Americans agree with the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so,” while 37 percent preferred a blended belief that “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,” and a paltry 12 percent accepted the standard scientific theory that “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.”(For more on this poll, see here.)
Well, if “the standard scientific theory” is that “God had no part” in the process of evolution -- not just that human beings developed in a particular way, but that God didn’t guide this -- then it seems to me that the theory of evolution is a challenge to many people’s deeply held religious convictions. And that’s so not just as to the young-earthers who believe the Earth was created several thousand years ago, but also to people who are willing to embrace the scientific evidence but see the guiding hand of God in the process.
What’s more, how exactly do scientists come to the conclusion that “God had no part in this process”? What’s their proof? That’s the sort of thing that can’t really be proved, it seems to me -- which makes it sound as if scientists, despite their protestations of requiring proof rather than faith, make assertions about God that they can’t prove.
And on top of that, if the standard scientific theory is that “God had no part in this process,” then the opponents of evolution are right -- the standard theory of evolution may not be taught in the schools. The Court has repeatedly said that the Establishment Clause bars both government endorsement and disapproval of religion. Teaching that God exists and teaching that God doesn’t exist are both unconstitutional in government-run schools. Likewise, if teaching that God created humans is unconstitutional, so is teaching that God had no part in creating humans.
Now here’s what I think Mr. Shermer is driving at by saying that “God had no part in this process” is the standard scientific theory: The standard theory tries to explain how humans might have evolved without calling on God as an explanation. This isn’t because scientists can prove that God doesn’t exist in any logical or even empirical sense of “prove.” Nor is it because assuming that God had no part in the process is more consistent with the facts than assuming that he did have a part in the process; the God assumption is perfecty consistent with the facts. Nor is it even because in some abstract sense omitting God yields the simplest explanation; “God did it” (3 words!) is a much simpler explanation than the theory of evolution.
Rather, looking for naturalistic causes is standard scientific operating procedure because it seems more likely to produce more useful results, and has in the past produced useful results. Science can’t prove to us that there are no angels pushing planets around the sky; maybe they do push the planets around, though in extremely regular patterns. But if you look for a naturalistic explanation, you’re more likely to come up with useful, predictive explanations of the world than “the angels are doing it.”
In that sense, the theory may be described as “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, and we can explain that without bringing in God’s intervention.” Many scientists conclude that this explanation makes it more plausible that God had no part in the process. Others may conclude that if there’s no evidence supporting the existence of some influence, it’s methodologically more useful to assume that the influence doesn’t exist until some supporting evidence is found. Still others may use “God had no part in this process” as shorthand for “God had no observable part in this process.”
Nonetheless, the phrasing that the poll used -- and the one that Mr. Shermer endorsed as the scientifically proper theory -- didn’t include these subtleties. It essentially asked people to decide whether, given that they thought that humans evolved from less advanced life forms, “God guided this process” (which could include the most indirect sort of guidance, perhaps guidance that yields results identical to the naturalistically predicted results, or guidance in the form of having created the world that yielded this process) or “God had no part” -- not an indirect part, but no part at all -- “in this process.” Small wonder that many religious Americans, even those who are quite happy to accept evolution, preferred the approach that’s consistent with the theory of evolution but that let them acknowledge their religious faith. And small reason, it seems to me, to complain. (The “created in the last 10,000 years” group, on the other hand, is definitely reason to complain.)
In fact, science is deeply subversive of religious belief in what one might call “descriptive religion” (religious claims that purport to describe what exists, what happened, what is happening, or what will happen, as opposed to purporting to make normative assertions about what’s morally right and morally wrong). This is not because science in some logical sense disproves such assertions. Rather, the scientific mindset, for better or worse, leads people to find descriptive religious claims less plausible.
The more science explains processes that were once thought to be divinely or supernaturally operated (the movement of the planets, the spread of disease), the more likely it is, I think, that people will be skeptical of other claims of divine or supernaturally operated processes; that’s not a logical mandate, but it is a psychological effect. The more science trains people to be skeptical about descriptive claims in the absence of evidence that leads us to endorse those claims, the more people will question things that they are asked to take on faith. There are certainly scientists who are religious (even in the “descriptive religion” sense); it is possible to have a scientific worldview but believe in descriptive religion. But the spread of scientific habits and principles makes it less likely that people will accept descriptive religion.
Yet scientific popularizers and educators have to deal with the fact that in our society, many people are still religious, and still accept descriptive religion (at least ostensibly). If the popularizers and educators describe science as taking no stand on the existence or influence of God, and as leaving such questions to others, I think they’ll have great success; and, whether they want to or not, they will indeed further undermine descriptive religion. But if they insist, in my view unnecessarily, that the standard scientific theory does take a stand that God is not influencing the world -- and that accepting evolution as the best scientific hypothesis while seeing God’s hand in its operation is an inferior conclusion that is worthy of scientific criticism -- then they will encounter much more resistance.
I have turned on comments; please, keep them polite, substantive, on-topic, and nonobvious.
The evidence seems to indicate that human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. There is no evidence of divine intervention.
There is an important distinction, I think, between this and the originally quoted form.
2) I don't think it's the case generally that religious people feel their faith is threatened by the theory of evolution. It seems to be only members of certain Protestant sects that feel that way. Members of other Christian faiths (Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox) and other monotheistic faiths (Judaism and Islam) do not seem to find any inconsistency between Darwin and faith. I have yet to read a convincing explanation for this fact.
Evolution is the best theory we have now, but what many religious people object to is the idea that the issue is settled forever. The fact remains that there are gaps in the theory of evolution (for example, survival of the fittest is a vacuous tautology -- fitnes is defined as surviving, so what is really being said is "those that survive will survive".)
I would argue however, that increases in science lead to a decrease of only a certain type of hyper literal discriptive religions. The basic theology of historic Christianity is the historicity of Christ's atonement -- very discriptive and not at all falsifiable by science. I for one welcome scientfic inquiry into the way the world works, it informs my faith, but it cannot replace it. As Jay Kestler once said, "I'm not afraid of anything jumping out from under a rock and eating God."
What I am curious about is the legal threshold for what should be taught in schools. How accepted does a theory need to be before it is taught? Exactly how much leaway does a local government have in deteriming what is or isn't included in texts?
Matt
Scientists do often make assertions about the existence of God, and they often refer to the findings of science to justify those positions. But a distinction must be made between scientific explanations and the philosophical or theological inferences one might draw from those explanations. Shermer's comments, the Gallup poll question, and often the claims made by both evangelical atheists like Richard Dawkins and the creationists on the other end of the spectrum, are all guilty of blurring that distinction.
But it should also be made clear that the question of constitutionality would not be judged on the basis of statements found somewhere other than in the science textbooks themselves. And no science textbook that I know of in any public school makes any claims about God whatsoever. The mere fact that what is taught in the textbook may conflict with someone's religious beliefs does not mean it's not constitutional to teach it. If that was so, then we would be able to teach virtually nothing. There are still some Christian groups who believe that the bible teaches geocentrism, and even some who believe that the bible teaches that the earth is flat. No one would seriously suggest that therefore teaching heliocentricity is unconstitutional.
The thinking would go like this: God created Adam and Eve as full grown adults, why could he not create a universe with age as well, in the process of evolving? This would also explain fossils, etc. Wouldn't God want us to have the joy of discovering his creation, figuring out how it all works? A planet with evolution is more interesting than one without.
Say what you will about the merits of this philosophy, and yes, maybe it is some distant cousin of solipsism. But, as devil's advocate, I thought I should point out that believing God created the world 10k years ago is not necessarily inconsistent with studying evolution, and teaching evolution is not necessarily a threat to that sort of belief in God either, unless you specifically believe that God somewhere said evolution does not take place.
Anyway, great piece of writing as usual, Prof. Volokh.
One of the problems that scientists and non-scientists alike have trouble grasping is that all scientific theories are models of reality, not reliable metaphysical devices nor truly ontological descriptions/pictures of reality itself. Part of the problem is that many terms used in scientific models have become so widely adopted that few, if any, who use them realize how contingent and indeed magico-religious" they are.
When Newton introduced the terms mass, momentum, force, energy, etc. and developed equations relating them in various ways these concepts were as strange as the most esoteric string theories are today. Anyone who really starts seriously thinking about them -- especially physicists -- quickly realizes that it is hard or impossible for human thought to envision these human creations as truly describing the underlying reality of the universe.
I hope a couple of simple questions may clarify the point I'm trying to make: Does the earth solve a large set of second-order linear differential equations and then position itself in time and space as the solution dictates? Does this positioning -- the earth's orbit around the sun -- exist concretely? Do electrons in atoms solve some form of the Schroedinger equation to determine the probability that they will be within a given volume of space at a given time and then arrange things so that the proportion of time they are in a given volume is proportional to the calculated probability?
The answers to these questions are obviously "no" or alternatively one can argue that the questions are absurd and meaningless. Yet physicists in their everyday work and non-physicists discussing physical phenomena usually talk as if they would answer these questions in the affirmative.
Now back on track:
The key words in the penultimate sentence are "as if". All scientific descriptions should be preceded by these two words. Example: "Most of the material evidence we have available is best explained AS IF forces of natural and sexual selection led to the evolution of species." Very few of even the most extreme irredentist, KJV anti-Darwinists would disagree with this statement, although they might well not choose to go any further down the speculative paths to which it leads.
My point is that current scientists and many of their fellow human beings have implicitly, explicitly, and unjustifiably granted science and the scientific method a metaphysical and ontological supremacy to which science is not entitled.
If this is recognized by science and its supporters, I think that many current "enemies" of science might be far more accepting of scientific theories.
In astrophysics, universities teach the theories and formulas that are testable and proven to a degree of certainty. In biology, our schools are (or are trying to) teaching/teach theories that have not been subjected to testable conditions. Regardless of which theory any chooses to explain the creation of man, the point of PUBLIC SCHOOL should be education, and not indoctrination. Instead of teaching testable theories that can be proven to a degree of certainty, these schools choose to teach theories which are based in empircism. Empirical studies and theories exist about everything and teach nothing. No logic, no true reasoning skills, just a link between the observed and a statement of opinion.
Rather, I think that PUBLIC SCHOOLS should not teach evolutionary/intelligent design biology, but should instead focus on teaching the processes of cell division, the basics of DNA/RNA, the fundamental parts of a cell that allow that cell to function. This type of education will create the scientists and engineers that are needed to expand our ability to create new medicines and processes. Empirical education creates pundits, tin-foils, and monday morning quarterbacks.
In the case Matt mentions, for example, "survival of the fittest" is an aphorism, a popularization of the underlying theory, rather than a definitional part of the scientific theory itself. (Elliot Sober's classic work The Nature of Selection has a much better discussion of this than I can reproduce here, for those interested). In the underlying theory, fitness is a mathematical measure of the relative or absolute (depending upon the precise measure being used) rate of increase of traits within a population. The rate of increase of a trait (under selection) is caused by some combination of real-world "performance" advantages, relative to alternative traits. In other words, fitness can sound tautological when we use the cute aphorism "survival of the fittest" in casual conversation, but it isn't defined that way in the underlying scientific theory.
And this is all that is really being claimed and demonstrated by evolutionary biologists, when you're talking about the theory of evolution by natural selection itself. The mathematics contains no reference to God, one way or the other. It is people, interpreting what they believe the rigorous version of the scientific theory implies, that create the conflict we perceive between religion and evolution. As others have commented, scientists often do make assertions about the existence of God or the relationship between religion and evolution, but in order to create a better, more civil public debate, we need to be able to distinguish between (a) statements where a scientist is describing their personal beliefs about how the science relates to religious belief, and (b) statements where a scientist (often the same person!) is describing the details of how a scientific theory works, or what results are empirically justified, or where the existing theory requires more research in order to resolve issues or determine which of competing hypotheses is better supported and thus deserving of being called a "scientific result."
I believe that better attention to this kind of distinction -- between the science itself, and the personal beliefs of scientists -- would help us defuse some of the acrimony that surrounds today's public debate, and possibly help more people understand that we need not attack the scientific enterprise itself simply in order to gain respect in the public forum for the full spectrum of individual beliefs on this subject.
Where you talk about "descriptive religion", I assume you are talking about myth, dogma, and/or magic. Much of the content of a given religious system falls into these categories and therefore runs afoul of science. In fact, I'm prepared to make a much stronger claim than you: science leads us to reject myth in much the same way as it led us to reject the Phlogiston "theory" of combustion.
Fundamental precepts of most religions are incompatible with essentially the entire corpus of modern science. Consider Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which tells us that it is not possible to simultaneously know the position and momentum of an elementary particle. This means that no being, including a Deity, can be omniscient. A super being/race of the kind envisioned by Arthur Clarke (in several novels/stories) or Carl Sagan in CONTACT could well exist - our universe could even be the product of deliberate creation - but the God/Creator's understanding of the universe or his/her creations is necessarily limited.
Incidentally, in a follow-up piece, ID, take 2: A scourge for the Jews?, I discuss how Darwinian Theory might be compatible with the idea that Jews are God's Chosen People. How to tweak natural selection to produce Jews I'll leave as an exercise for aspirants to godhood.
Similarly, epidemiologists and biologists who study infectious diseases are increasingly called upon to understand the microevolutionary processes that operate within bacterial populations, in order to deal with antibiotic resistance, changes in disease virulence, and to explain why diseases affect populations in variable ways. I'd strongly recommend Paul Ewald's book The Evolution of Infectious Disease for a perspective on this.
In summary, it's really no longer tenable to separate the "functional" aspects of biology out from "evolutionary" aspects, and simply teach the former to students. To do so would be to insist that we not teach the real state of our biological knowledge. Given the increasing criticality of biology to health care, industry, and economic growth, to under-educate our children in this area of knowledge would be to short-change their -- and our -- future. Instead of stifling the exchange of knowledge and ideas, I would strongly argue for other methods of creating a more respectful, and less acrimonious, public discussion of these issues.
You cannot disprove something if there is no evidence that that thing exists. The real question is whether there is any proof, whatsoever, of God? To believe in God is a matter of faith. To believe that God has a guiding hand is a matter of faith. To believe that the aliens created the planet and will return next week is a matter of faith. To not believe these statements has nothing to do with faith - the proponents simply cannot provide any evidence.
As for science vs descriptive theology, note that many descriptive faiths have access to a particular species of evidence that is used every day in courts of law to "loose and bind": testimonial evidence.
"Science as a process" is based on the assumptions that there are some irreducible "laws of nature" (an anthropocentric term probably better expressed as "fundamental patterns and relationships" or something like that) which operate uniformly throughout the observable world, and that it is possible to identify and formulate these laws/patterns in terms which can be accurately communicated from one human being to another. These formulations are hypotheses which can be tested by controlled experimentation, or where experimentation is not possible because conditions are beyond control (e.g. hypotheses about long-term evolutionary patterns - we don't have the ability to run experiments over millions of years), by careful analysis of that which can be observed. Hypotheses which prove to predict observed results reliably can become theories. But in all cases, hypotheses and theories must be formulated so that they can be *falsified:* they are the best formulations we are able to develop about the fundamental patterns and relationships which give rise to events in the observable world.
This is not the same as an ideological position that "God has no part" in evolution or any other process. It is, however, a process that cannot work on any untestable hypothesis - which is what any hypothesis about the nature and works of God must be, as far as I can understand it. A hypothesis that life began because God created it, is not testable. A hypothesis that human beings evolved from other types of primates because God intervened in a miraculous fashion is not testable - any more than a theory that intelligence evolved because aliens dropped a weird monolith on East Africa is testable (unless, of course, you can find the monolith . . .). A theory that human evolution occurred because of changes to (observable) genetic material which caused somatic changes which are identifiable in the (observable) fossil record, and are consistent with adaptations to the (observable) evidence of changes in the environment of those primates, may or may not be correct, but does support testable hypotheses, which may or may not be supported by experiments and analysis.
Saying, instead, that "God did it" stops this process - unless by "God" you mean something like "an invisible being who can be manipulated by human action into causing observable events." This is a hypothesis you can test, as in the studies of the efficacy of prayer in healing (assuming you can control for other possible causes), or the ability of charismatic televangelists to persuade God to change the course of hurricanes - assuming they would be willing to repeat the test under controllable conditions.
Science does tend to be subversive of authority - it is an inherently skeptical project, and to the extent that it provides explanations of events and phenomena which people find more persuasive than those which have previously or otherwise been provided by religious, political and/or cultural institutions, it inevitably erodes their authority. It is likely to be especially erosive of institutions and explanations which depend upon miracles and other non-testable fact statements.
This is certainly likely to be a bad thing from the point of view of those vested in the success of such institutions. It might also be a bad thing from the standpoint of social and political management or stability, if the authority and explanations provided by such institutions are necessary conditions for the achievement of social or political stability, or other potentially or theoretically desirable social or political objectives.
So there may well be political, cultural and social arguments for the limitation or even elimination of science, as an excessively disruptive influence. These are not necessarily illegitimate, if the harms which are shown to be flow from science outweigh the benefits. Now, that would probably mean giving up any further progress in fields like medicine and engineering as well as giving up less evidently useful "pure science," but that might be a trade-off worth making. I doubt it, myself, but would be very interested to see the counter-argument made honestly and in good faith.
As to religion? I tend to think that the universe is not only more mysterious than we know, but that it is more mysterious than we can know - and I mean that quite seriously, as a matter of logic and mathematics (cf. Godel's theorem) as well as epistemology. It doesn't make any sense to me that any entity subject to the same limitations I suffer from can know the universe so completely as to know God's mind and intentions, inerrantly. Those who do make such claims either must be superior beings themselves - a hypothesis not generally supported by the observed evidence - or making unjustified claims in error or bad faith.
Science is not the enemy of faith, but it is the enemy of error and dishonesty in explaining natural events. Popularizers of science do it no service - and do make a fundamental error - when framing it as an ideology which makes claims one way or another about God. This error only serves opponents of science, perhaps in some cases ideologues themselves whose positions and authority are threatened by skeptical inquiries and scientific explanations, by helping them frame the complex, difficult, optimistic and very promising process which is scientific inquiry as just another partisan ideology struggling for power.
The logic of natural selection is clear and well established: Matthew's tautology does not exist. Summarizing brutally, the current generation is defined by those who were most fit[*] in the prior generation. Likewise, those most fit fn the current generation determine what the next generation looks like.
Natural selection is not circular but rather is a spiral boring ever into the future.
Mathew's tuatology arises because two different groups (the currrent and prior generation) have been conflated into the same concept ("those") and thus reflects the understandable logical error of confusing the recursive for the circular.
Hope that helps.
[*] where "fit" means "those most successful at creating similar members in the next generation"
I don't think it's fair to say that the theory of evolution has not been "subjected to testable conditions". There are many aspects of the theory which are testable. Unfortunately, some of the predictions are impossible to test on time scales we can deal with. Because of this limitation, we are forced to call the mountains of evidence in favor of evolution examples of "microevolution". Of course, this makes the theory easier for opponents to attack, because they miss the larger point.
When drugs are invented and therapies designed, they are done so by scientists that have a good understanding of evolutionary theory. It is hard for a non-scientist to understand how the "model" of evolution aids in such things. Simply put, evolution is a clean and elegant framework that helps us to understand many of the complexities of our biology. It is a predictive model.
It serves no purpose to challenge evolution on non-scientific grounds. It is a good model - the best we have given the observations we can make and the experiments we can perform - and it has helped us to understand our world in a way which allows us to be productive and innovative. One can not teach about processes such as cell division, DNA/RNA, etc. without teaching about evolution. It is the difference between teaching a fractured discipline or a science that attempts to paint a complete picture of the mechanism of life.
Now my non-specific comments:
Why attack and call into question the theory of evolution simply because of a fear that it will disrupt religion? Isn't religion about faith? I wonder if it occurs to people that those deeply troubled by evolutionary theory typically don't find themselves moved by the science of biology enough to follow up on it anyway, so it's not like evolution is breaking the fabric of religion at the seams or anything. There really is no good argument against teaching evolution as-is, unless you want to call into question the entire scientific process, or nitpick a few words here or there that pop up in surveys directed at a general audience.
Note that this theory of history also explains the demographics of current opponents of evolution -- although they have switched political parties, they are still concentrated in the rural, Southern and Midwestern, and poorer communities that were once the backbone of the Democratic Party.
The real mystery is in how the opponents of Darwinism switched parties, coming to see the Washington bureaucrats as a greater threat to their interests than the New York financial elites that worried their ancestors.
disclaimer: I am an Episcopalian happy to accept both evolution and God, and happy to live in a free market society, so I am not writing this as a fan WJ Bryan's policies, except of his opposition to eugenics.
Simply put: it's not. Either this is shoddy polling or shoddy reporting or both.
Science doesn't make any claims about God. In some sense, it's true that God has no part in scientific explanations of evolution, but only in the same sense that God has no part in the observation that bats are nocturnal, or the proof that the sum of the angles in a triangle in Euclidean geometry is 180 degrees, or, for that matter, the statement that the First Amendment protects pamphleteering about Tibet. God just doesn't get mentioned; it's not about Him. Maybe He set everything up to work this way; maybe He invented the ground rules; maybe He is She or They; maybe He is fiction. Absent a testable hypothesis about the existence of God, that's for religion and philosophy, not science.
The sad thing is that polls like this, and reports like this, only serve to cement the misinformation that underlies animosity towards evolution. Science isn't incompatible with God--but the ignorant public understanding of it may be.
Physicists say things like, "String Theory is a crock of s***," all the time and are still considered scientists. But try questioning the notion that evolution explains all of the biological diversity out there, and you will be instantly attacked with a shrillness that only comes from True Belief. To be fair, perhaps the defensiveness and shrillness is a reaction to the whole history of evolutionary biology being under attack since day one. But on the other hand, it doesn't really help your credibility as a sober scientist when you react like a soothsayer who has just been told that the entrails of sacrificial goats don't predict the future.
Hey, I have no problem reconciling evolutionary biology with my faith in God. I do, however, have problems reconciling it with my belief in the laws of probability. And the frothing-at-the-mouth defenders of evolution look to me to be nuts. Maybe not as nuts as the frothy fundamentalists, but nuts for sure.
(And then God said, "e^(i * pi) = -1" and he chuckled softly to Himself as he saw that it was very good indeed.)
cathy :-)
Evolution is a testable hypothesis.
Darwin's natural selection triumphed over Lamarckian adaptation precisely because Darwin's theories tested better than the alternatives. Natural selection is continuously subjected to testable conditions and refined: that's why the current set of ideas is called "the modern theory of evolution" and differs in some vital details from what Darwin and Wallace published. Evolution even leads to testable predictions. My personal favorite example was the revelation of the naked mole rat as a mammal with the behaviours and breeding patterns of a social insect. A evolutiationary theorist realized that, under certain conditions, natural selection would favor the rise of a "social insect" mammal. Others noticed that the naked mole rat seemed to meet those conditions, so careful field studies were undertaken that revealed the prediction to be (largely) correct.
Evolution is one of the great organizing principles of modern biology. You can no more have a biology curriculum without evolution than you can have a physics curriculum without gravity or chemistry curriculum without the periodic table.
My point is that current scientists and many of their fellow human beings have implicitly, explicitly, and unjustifiably granted science and the scientific method a metaphysical and ontological supremacy to which science is not entitled.
If this is recognized by science and its supporters, I think that many current "enemies" of science might be far more accepting of scientific theories.>
I really wish you'd explain this a bit more. If I understand you correctly, you seem to be saying that science is just "another worldview" or some such nonsense. I apologize if I misunderstand.
In any case, science deserves its ontological status because at a fundamental level science works. To take an example, theories are only viable in science if they fit observed phenomana. However, many scientific theories go well beyond merely descriptive power; they make predicitions as to as-yet unseen phenomana. For instance, E=MC squared is a fact of the universe, or at least our little local coordinates in it. If E=MC were to be wrong, there'd be no atomic bomb or atomic power. Try getting that kind of result out of philosophy or the humanities.
To put it bluntly I'd take the scientific method over "womyn's ways of knowing" anyday, and have very good reason for doing so. I don't think you are any different.
Scientific results are pieces of theory and empirical evidence which are arrived at via the methods we call science, and which are shown to "work," even though a given set of results may have areas which are poorly understood, underdeveloped, and occasionally even wrong.
The beliefs or worldview of an individual, on the other hand, is *not* the same as science or scientific results. One's worldview may be informed by scientific results, and one's worldview may include the belief that the natural world is best understood using the methods of science, but this is a very different proposition than making the claim that the "scientific worldview" which is superior ontologically to other worldviews. And this is, IMHO, the source of much of the rancor in the public debate over evolution.
As an individual, my particular beliefs are that the methods of science are the best way we have to generate workable, testable knowledge about the natural world (including the history and development of life). I also believe that in the public realm, we need to ensure that our policy decisions and the education of our children makes use of the methods of science and the best current results of that inquiry. Nevertheless, these are opinions about how to use scientific methods and results, not a claim that my opinions are right and the opinions of others wrong.
In the political realm, what I would advocate is that we keep two things separate: first, the methods of science and their results, and second, how society chooses to use those results to influence policy.
Democratic decision-making is inherently aimed at the second, not the first category. Voting, representation, and deliberation are terrific ways of solving issues arising under the second category, but are unworkable as a way to arrive at workable, testable knowledge about the world. We can't legislate the results of science, but at the same time, scientific inquiry isn't capable of telling us the best way to use our knowledge to organize our lives.
The latter can only be done by free citizens engaged in a dialogue about the choices we face. And dialogue is only possible if we separate clearly our personal opinions from claims we're making about the results of scientific inquiry.
For anyone actually interested in the truth on the issue of evolution, please read the following (at least for starters):
The Deniable Darwin
Articles by Phillip E. Johnson, who by the way, I would love to see guest-blog here
Articles by Michael J. Behe
Revolution Against Evolution
1) Whether true or not, the perception seems to be that most scientists have an antagonistic and sometimes condescending attitude towards religion and religious people, and that they are pushing evolution as a means towards wiping out religion. I know I used to feel that way when I was younger (of course, maybe this attitude partly stems from the Catholic Church's treatment of scientific-minded folks like Galileo, but it's kinda silly to get into a "Who started it?" argument).
2) Evolution raises some uncomfortable questions for some religions. For example, why would God work through evolution without saying so in the Bible? Why did he put dinosaur bones in the ground? This raises the possibility of God being intentionally deceitful, and some religious people avoid this issue and/or prefer that their kids not be exposed to ideas like this at an impressionable age. This is probably compounded by the fact that many non-believers will often mock this avoidance (although I admit I did find that funny).
This is an overstatement of Heisenberg's theory. Heisenberg's theory more precisely says that we can't measure one of the properties without creating a related degree of uncertainity in the other. It does not directly speak to whether it is literally possible to "know" both the position and momentum. The way that Paul interpreted the uncertainity principle is another example of creating a false conflict between "hard sciences" and religion. It is also an example of the dangers of non-scientists teaching science since these errors will invariably be made.
So would I. But to what "science" are you referring? The "science" of Global Warming? The "science" of on the one hand, the assertion that government doesn't spend enough on medical research for women, and universities don't spend enough on women's studies, but not the science of Larry Summers, who takes those two notions to their obvious conclusion and obvserves, to his everlasting discredit, that there may actually be real differences between men and women which are both scientifically observable and would justify specific research to understand and the need for women's studies departments and seperate medical research budgets?
Where is this parallel universe in which "scientists" don't hijack research to support their "research grant addiction" (if I propose as study supporting global warming I get paid for another year or two, if I propose one to develope alternative explanations I don't, lemme see if I have this straight, get paid, don't get paid, get paid, don't get paid....) and make their personal political and social viewpoints less apparently assailable by cloaking them in the force field of "science." I want to move to that parallel universe.
So obviously evolution is not anti-Christian.
Galileo evidently taught that church a lesson they do not want repeated.
Please see the commentary in Scrappleface on "Marines to Shield Air Force Cadets from Evangelicals" especially Godfrey's remarks on May 14, 2005 at 02:38 AM:
In an interview in Plain Truth Ministries magazine, BC cartoonist Johnny Hart discusses the Christian messages that appear in his strip from time to time.
These "gags" don't strike me as funny, just as jabs. I've been intending to blog on the Sunday, May 1, 2005 strip (can't find a no-cost link, but a subscription to MyComics allows archival searches), which contains this bit of poetry by character Wiley:
= )
Many thanks for dedicating your attention to this discussion.
"As to religion? I tend to think that the universe is not only more mysterious than we know, but that it is more mysterious than we can know - and I mean that quite seriously, as a matter of logic and mathematics (cf. Godel's theorem) as well as epistemology."
If there were only some way to make the preceding some sort of mandatory Surgeon General's warning for discussions such as these...
"It doesn't make any sense to me that any entity subject to the same limitations I suffer from can know the universe so completely as to know God's mind and intentions, inerrantly."
I may be mistaken, but I suspect your impeccably well-dressed man here is made of straw. Those who argue for inerrancy, and I am unaware of any who argue the case better than B.B. Warfield a century ago, would be the last to claim anything at all like inerrancy regarding their own knowledge. Lacking the evidence of the twentieth century, it is to his credit the extent to which he comprehended the imperfection, indeed the imperfectibility of human beings, of which you yourself speak so well.
Inerrancy in this case pertains to the Word of God, not our hearing of it, or lack thereof, which will be inevitably imperfect. And yet this imperfect world is the one in which we currently live, so we make the best of it. This includes the commitments we make, including commitments to ways of living that inform our behavior and the way we understand the world. The character of those who sought to understand God's Word spoke to Warfield as it speaks to many today, as does the utility of the scientific method.
The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although those who now accept the scientific method on what can accurately be called faith, and rightly so, originally moved to do so by its evident utility, would do well to see those who seek the Word of God, who were originally moved to do so by the character of witnesses to that Word, as having made a similar commitment, and that this commitment itself is not necessarily deleterious, but may on the contrary be necessary for our common survival as a species.
That hypothesis will be tested too.
"Time is the only critic without ambition."
- Steinbeck
It is just anti some Christian sects. Not the same thing at all.
So then to be anti-evolutionist re: teaching of the theory is an obvious attempt to establish religion.
BTW all evolution says is that evolution is an interplay of DNA with the current local environment through reproductive success. Variations in DNA will produce individuals more or less fitted to reproduce in the local environment.
Warning, stereotype to follow:
The reason so many people believe the creationist philosophy is that they don't understand how complex biology is, but they seem to understand/comprehend that the sun is a part of a larger system and that the earth revolves around the sun which is hurtling predictibly in a solar system that is rotating predictibly. They get that, but what they don't get is fundamental biology. If they taught the fundamentals, I am sure that the rest will fall into place.
I agree with Prof. Velleman that the comparison is apt, insofar as it goes to intellectual praxis. As I commented in that very lengthy thread:
Science and evolutionary theory specifically are not incompatible with religious belief per se, but it is undoubtedly true that they are at least in part incompatible with fundamentalism. One should not be suprised if one accepts one, they feel they must reject the other. It is true, however, that "creationism" is something of a misnomer. Even evolution is creation, albeit creation via a process. But what is meant by creationism (as opposed to "intelligent design" or "ID") is belief in the creation myth contained in Genesis. Creationism is the defense of the the fundamentalist perspective, and evolutionary theory conflicts with that perspective.
I do not agree with the supposed "apt" analogy to Holocaust deniers. Though there are similarities, I do not think they have similar origins, nor do I think they are equally corrosive to society. Contrary to the prior post, I do not think most believers in creationism are being "intellectually dishonest." Leave that to the sophists and legal scholars. I believe there are two reasons for the belief in creationism. First, there is simply ignorance. I have debated creationists extensively in online forums and they are often (though not always!) ignorant of the science. Second, due to the long time periods involved, one cannot observe or confirm (the usual scientific method) macro evolution.
I must say that many of the "enlightened," those who believe in evolution, are probably accepting the theory based more on the scientific consensus than in their own understanding of the theory. The consensus is due more to the fact that evolution is the ONLY theory which explains the diversity of life. And as far as scientific theories go, I have to say that the theory of evolution is weak (which is not to say it is false).
I get your idea re: chance. It is the tornado in a junk yard theory.
The alternative is the tornado in a magnet factory.
i.e. it is not totally random. There are prefered outcomes.
In fact chemistry tells us some reactions are prefered over others.
Which tells me you have to recalculate your probabilities.
Ashkenazi Jews are about 12 IQ points higher than average.
There is an evolutionary explanation.
Google it.
Automobiles are not.
Evolution is a theory.
Changing bacteria by contolling their environment is not.
The value of a theory is its ability to tell us what to do to get results we want.
By that measure evolution is a rousing success.
Perhaps the reason that laypeople often summarize evolution as a God-free process is that the anti-evolution fundamentalists have successfully framed the debate that way? Being wrong but noisy is not a bad way to infiltrate your position into your opponents' own beliefs. The notion of "evolution v. god" has been firmly implanted in our thoughts, and it's hard to break out of an "either/or" into a "both/and."
It's been "firmly implanted," sure, but most recently not, I think, by "fundamentalists"; rather by writers of popular books on evolutionary theory, particularly Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. (Stephen Jay Gould, to his great credit, never did this. He was an atheist, but he never sneered at religious belief so far as I know, though he certainly took patiently to pieces a lot of arguments in its support.)
I forget whether it was Dawkins or Dennett who said that Darwin had "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist," but the tone of both is explicitly mechanistic from the get-go.
(Why no one who argues like this ever realizes that he's only saying what the laws of physics command him to say I've never understood. If all you are is a pile of subatomic particles, then obviously you're governed by law and by chance, but never by yourself. You'd think this would make people go a little easier on the poor fundamentalists, who are only obeying the laws of physics. You'd think that, that is to say, only until a half-second later, when you've twigged that the critics are doing the same. A half-second after that, you discover that so are you, so what's the bloody point anyway?)
Anyway, the weak point of "Evolution As She Is Taught" in my experience is that they still try to introduce some theory of the origin of life as opposed to the evolution of it, and that's something we really don't (and probably can't) know anything about in a scientific sense. When I was in high school, a couple decades back, the theory in our textbook was that various simple organic compounds got washed up together on a rock, got struck by lightning, and then formed more complex molecules (amino acids in particular), that in turn somehow combined into a whole self-replicating system. Without the help of self-replication, which is Darwin's mechanism for everything that comes after. I've never understood how anyone could think this plausible. Once you have self-replication, go for it; but you've got to have it first. Before that we're talking incredibly complex machines randomly assembling themselves by accident.
Bezuhov, I can't claim meaningful acquaintance with religious thought; my reference to "inerrancy" was not informed by any knowledge of previous work around that concept, though I'm not surprised that there's been some substantial work around it. I was really responding to the sort of crude literalism which necessarily/implicitly claims that (a) "these words, as written down here, are a true and complete description of [whatever]," and (b) "we [or at least I, the speaker] know exactly and completely what they mean." This discursive strategy tends to be attributed to fundamentalist Christians - and is sometimes quite openly and honestly adopted and accepted by some of them - but is and I suspect in human history always has been a strategy used to appeal to naive "common sense." I'd call it a political strategy, in a broad sense. This kind of "inerrancy," which is what I meant, is necessarily threatened by science - and that's just fine by me.
On the other hand a concept of inerrancy which postulates that there is a transcendent "text" (if that's not an inappropriate metaphor for the Word of God) which is inerrant, but which we can only struggle to understand, is not at all inconsistent with science. In fact I think the are quite consistent, as scientists struggle to "read" and understand the reasons why the world is the way it is. If the Word of God created the natural world - and therefore the rules which it obeys - isn't science (ultimately) another way for inevitably flawed, partial perception to try to understand that Word?
These Founders weren't Darwnists because they existed before Darwin, but they were Men of Reason and Science, who accepted what was the best science. Therefore I think they'd be Darwinist. But, if it's possible to be both a Darwinist and a theist (and I think Volokh's post gives a good argument that you can), they'd be both.
Here's a taste:
-- ...According to our Founders' beliefs, yes God intervened, but He didn't perform "miracles," if by "miracles" we mean acting in a way that breaks the laws of science and nature. He didn't part the Red Sea, turn Lot's wife to Salt, Walk on Water, or Turn Water into Wine, etc.
-- So when God did intervene, it must have occurred in a way consistent with the laws of science. Hence that would make God into a cosmic "dice-thrower" who could intervene by manipulating probabilities. For instance, remember in "Pulp Fiction" when Jules and Vincent were shot multiple times at point blank range and all of the bullets missed. What are the chances of that occurring? Jules thought it to be divine providence, while Vincent thought it to be a freak occurrence. (An aside: D. James Kennedy relays a similar story that supposedly happened to Washington while fighting the war where his coat revealed multiple bullet holes but, *miraculously* none hit Washington's body. Given Kennedy's track record of pushing phony history, I'll need more evidence before I believe in that one.) --
The problem with Intelligent Design is that it is not a theory that can be tested and proved or disproved.
The key here, as in so many other matters, is "government-run schools". When parents with strongly-held and diametrically-opposed viewpoints on such fundamental issues are impelled to place their children in public schools, there will inevitably be conflicts over what should be taught there. This problem does not exist if parents are effectively able to select private schools which accurately reflected their preferences. In the latter case, Constitutional questions disappear.
To a limited extent this already happens, since the public school monopoly is not all-encompassing. Private and parochial schools and homeschooling provide alternatives for a few million students, but the lack of vouchers or tuition tax credits gives government schools an enormous economic advantage. With hundreds of billions of dollars annually at stake, the battle is going to be intense over who will control those dollars and how that money will be employed in teaching impressionable young people.
I suspect that a privatized educational system would exhibit evolutionary behavior on a societal level. For example, children who were taught evolution theories would tend to develop into better scientists and biologists and doctors than children who were taught creationism. Over time this selective advantage would favor schools which taught the more accurate curriculum.
That was exactly Gould's argument whenever someone alleged evolutionary theory to be non-falsifiable: show me mammalian fossils in pre-Cambrian strata and I'll be the first to call evolution a lot of hooey. But obviously you know your Gould. (Though I didn't think "punctuated equilibrium" was about "rapidly changing environments" so much as small populations isolated from most of their species by geological accident.)
You're right, though, that you could in principle falsify evolution, but not ID, and that's the real asymmetry here. Behe &co. can continue pointing to things that evolutionary theorists can't explain (and personally I hope they keep at it, if nothing else because I'd like to see better answers to a lot of these questions than we've got yet), but the bottom line is that a Designer might design anything, including but not limited to the world we now have, and it's the "not limited to" that takes us out of science altogether.
Indeed. You said it better than I, but this is exactly what I was suggesting.
I bring up B.B. Warfield because he is the best example I've found of confronting my own limitations of understanding, and it is a limitation widely shared. Cogent contemporary intellectual discourse, where one can find it, is exceptionally adept at the epistemological humility, the importance of which you duly noted, that one learns naturally from the practice of the scientific method. This discourse itself, however, is not exempt from (Godelian?) blind spots, where self-criticism is avoided for various reasons, and more often irreasons, that have little to do with science.
The question of inerrancy, and the issues associated with it, including how well evolution theory fits in with religious belief, appears to be one of these blind spots, most likely given the threat to science itself posed by some who held to this doctrine in the past (see The Syllabus of Errors, et. al.). As long as practioners of science have present-day fundamentalists to kick around, the kicking can at times preclude the very self-critical work that makes the method itself so fruitful.
J. Rowe writes:
-- ...According to our Founders' beliefs, yes God intervened, but He didn't perform "miracles," if by "miracles" we mean acting in a way that breaks the laws of science and nature. He didn't part the Red Sea, turn Lot's wife to Salt, Walk on Water, or Turn Water into Wine, etc.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill."
Mt 5:17
But do you not make the mistake of thinking of these laws of science and nature as static things of which we have perfect understanding? To a Newtonian, relativistic phenomena would seem miraculous in a sense. Our understandings of the laws of science and nature are broken every day, whether by God or not: that's how we "discover" new ones.
We really have no way of knowing at this late date whether God, or anyone else for that matter, parted the Red Sea or not, whether that means the section of the Red Sea the Israelites passed was a swampy area that turned to quicksand under the feet of the pursuing Egyptians (due to, say, a well-timed cloudburst), or whether beings in a parallel universe determined that the survival of the Israelites was the key element in averting a future disaster and made use of their unimaginably advanced technology to intervene in our universe. These are only two possibilities among many. The first may well have broken the laws of nature as understood by the Israelites. The second certainly breaks our own.
It is true that the founders tended to discount the role of miracles, but I would assert that this was only because the miraculous had been so much abused by those they were fighting against. Unlike them, we are the products of at least a century where the miraculous has been dismissed out of hand by the great majority of the intellectually serious. If we are to follow in the contrarian footsteps of the founders, a less reductionist consideration of the possible relation between science and religion seems in order.
God is sitting in heaven when a scientist beckons to Him;
"God, we don't need you anymore. Science has finally
figured out a way to create life out of nothing. In other
words, we can now do what You did in the "beginning."
"Oh, is that so? Tell Me..." replies God.
"Well," says the scientist, "we can take dirt and form
it into the likeness of you and breathe life into it, thus
creating man."
"Well, that's interesting... Show Me."
So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to
mold the soil.
"No, no, no..." interrupts God, "Get your own dirt."
Brings up the idea of random assemblage of a self replicator again.
What if it is not (as I said before) totally random.
Suppose the energetics of the universe have a prefered outcome. Suppose once you have CTAG in an environment there is a significant enough probability that by random chance a minimum self replicator will self assemble given enough time.
The tornado in a magnet factory idea again.
We are endeavoring to do this with our research in nano-self replicators. With the speed up of trying to find what conditions will encourage self replications rather than witing on the universe to produce such conditions.
Now random chance may be able to do in billions of years what we are able to do in decades. Because given the right environment auto assemblage of self replication is possible.
The more we learn the easier it is to see how such a result might come about.
"The primary reason we are experiencing this peculiarly American phenomenon of evolution denial (the doppelganger of Holocaust denial), is that a small but vocal minority of religious fundamentalists misread the theory of evolution as a challenge to their deeply held religious convictions."
Shermer isn't comparing every scientifically illiterate American (and darn if there aren't a ton of those folks around thanks to our cruddy public school system) to Holocaust-denying anti-Semites.
Rather, he's pointing out how some fairly loud-mouthed cranks (e.g., the charlatans at the Discovery Institute) have trained themselves into an adept science-attacking machine in order to achieve an ulterior motive (in a nutshell, that motive is to inject Jesus Christ back into every aspect of American life, where many Christian extremists believe he belongs, First Amendment be damned).
In my experience, those who deny the similarities between Holocaust deniers and our country's well-documented loud-mouthed anti-science evolution-denying charlatans are either ignorant of the tactics used by those charlatans or they belong to some sort of post-modernist crowd where the mere mention of the term "scientific fact" is akin to insulting one's mother.
That life on earth has evolved from what it was 4 billion years ago to what it is today is a fact that is precisely as incontrovertible as the fact that Nazis killed a whole a hell of a Jews. We can quibble about the precise order of events and the degree to which various proposed processes were involved, but anything else (mysterious alien beings????) is just a waste of our short human lives (not to mention the even shorter time we have to educate public schoolchildren).
Nevertheless, we do not need to look terribly far to find ignorant deluded people who believe that neither evolution nor the Holocaust occurred. Nor do we need to look very far to see people, some with transparent motives, calling themselves "experts," whining about being "persecuted" by the "establishment," and writing books that purport to "show once and for all" why "all those scientists (or historians)" are wrong.
And therein lies the problem especially in today's strange climate where our media is only to happy to put the worst sort of cranks and charlatans on TV and in the newspaper so they can express their self-promoting "alternate viewpoint."
The danger of ignoring the similarity between Holocaust deniers and "intelligent design" peddlers is that once the latter group of charlatans is let into the building, it becomes much more difficult to keep the other cranks out.
Bill Dembski says that life is too remarkable to have evolved so we need to consider that mysterious aliens might have been involved? Okay, well Jill Dumbski says the Holocaust was so remarkable those mysterious alien beings must have been invovled there too.
From the purpose of trying to understand life on earth, the hypotheses of Bill and Jill are equally useless.
Is Jill's idiotic claim more shocking? Sure.
But that fact doesn't make it less worthless to scientists than "intelligent design theory", nor does it make it any less useful to Holocaust deniers.
My last comment would be some advice to those who find these comparisons distasteful: instead of directing your anger at scientists who are justifiably pissed off by the inroads into public discourse achieved by Christian extremists, direct your anger at the lying and reality-denying Christians who are turning our country into a frightening joke.
I see only a few evolution disprovers here. You have been indexed. Here is an example of using the index. One person brought up the 'it's a tautology' argument. This was nicely explained soon after. In case anyone is still not sure: natural selection is a process. This makes it ineligible to be a tautology since only a sentence can be one. I saw one comment to the effect that it is not possible to get anywhere on the question of the origin of life. Is this a version of 'scientific inferences can't be made about the past'? In any case OOL research is progressing.
Let us note: it makes little sense to believe in the creator and then turn around and disbelieve the creation. And: those who push for creationism (by whatever clever name) in science class are asking teachers to lie, unless creationism is presented only to debunk it.
To make any statements about the unobserved past scientist must assume that the same natural laws we describe in the current era also existed in previous unobserved times. This has been called the "Grand Assumption" of science and it is wholly untestable. In principle, any event that occurred in the past that did result from a natural process observable today would be invisible to science. Divine intervention on any scale would defiantly violate the grand assumption and so would always be undetectable by scientific method. So, in order to create a completely naturalistic description of the past one must assume a priori that all the events of the past resulted from naturalistic forces. Hence the tautology.
People like myself who believe that there was no divine intervention in past are making just as much a leap of faith as those who believe the that there was divine intervention. There is never going to be a scientific way to tell.
"We were taught evolution (does that surprise you?) but it was presented as a "theory," (which it is) and not as "fact." I think this simple approach is the best one because you are presented with both sides and then it is up to you to choose what you want to believe."
Presenting evolution as a "theory" instead of a "fact" is a confused mangle of nonsense. In science, theories are not adolescent facts: theories EXPLAIN and are based on facts. Evolution (as a gaggle of mechanisms including natural selection, genetic drift, and so forth) is a theory that explains the fact of common descent and the diversification of species. But make no mistake: things like the ancestry of man from ancient apes is a fact, not a theory: as much as fact as that George Bush is President (deal with it!). The theory of evolution is what explains how and why that happened. Facts are, of course, always open to challenge and question: that's how science works. But you cannot run around calling historical facts facts without also admitting that the biological history of common descent is just as much fact as well.
Er, no. The grand assumption is simply that the universe is observable and consistent and thus potentially open to observation and inquiry. But without that openly unprovable assumption, there is NO point to discussing the truth or falsity of anything anyway (including everything we take for granted in ordinary life and experience). It has nothing to do with some special bias for "naturalism." If there was divine intervention, then there should be evidence of it. If there is no evidence, then there is simply no empirical point in discussing whether there was or not. It has nothing to do with ruling out god, and everything to do with ruling out claims that there is no possible way to prove OR disprove (like last Thursdayism, the idea that the universe came into being fully formed last Thursday)
"People like myself who believe that there was no divine intervention in past are making just as much a leap of faith as those who believe the that there was divine intervention."
That is true if your belief is not based on evidence. If your belief that there was no divine intervention is based on your observation that no evidence for such intervention (or such divinity) exists, then you are not making a leap of faith. Rather, you are thinking about the earth's distant past just as rationally as you think about the earth's recent past.
Interestingly, your comment echoes a very common and very weak creationist argument that "science is religion."
Don't buy into it. If you have bought it, please return the item to your grocer. It's defective.
"But it does seem psychologically likely that most people who deny the Holocaust in the face of very powerful contrary evidence are indeed pro-Nazi or anti-Jewish."
Indeed. And it similarly seems likely that most of the people who are most vocally and publicly opposed to teaching children that life on earth evolved without invoking mysterious alien beings (for which no evidence exists) are indeed pro-Christian, anti-atheist and anti-gay.
And it similarly seems likely that most HIV-deniers would be anti-gay. Lo and behold, the major architect of the "ID strategy", Phil Johnson, is an AIDS denier as well!!
Coincidence?
Surely not.
Even the most strident ID apologists will only attempt to argue that Johnson's reality-denial in other venues is irrelevent to the "truth" about ID.
Who, after all, provided the seed money for the Discovery Institute? And what is the stated purpose of the "ID movement" according to "Wedge document"?
Is it possible to have a discussion about "intelligent design" without these incontrovertible facts on the table?
Sure.
Is it honest to do so?
That's debateable.
This entry has been discussed (vivisected?) at http://www.pharyngula.org . The author, Volokh, is a bit limited in his presentation of factual information. Most of the creationist types are. Asking for proof of god indicates they are seriously lacking in faith as well. I wonder why?
As to the Protestants/Catholic question, this is not an issue outside the US. We might be particularly stupid here, as a people, but I think it is best explained by a distinct fear/distrust of intellectuals and intellectual behavior, as well as a misapplication of 'fairness'. All points of view are not equal. I really hope all the IDC believing Christians convert to Raelianism - aliens are the designer there!
Well, it might have something to do with a) Catholicism having a leader that can declare things like "evolution is good science and not at odds with our faith as long as one also accepts some basic extras (like souls and so forth: things that are outside of science rather than contradicting it)" and b) Catholicism and Judiasm not generally caring as much about litteralism, favoring the poetic and symbolic when it comes to texts more than the coldly and bitterly analytical.
"Hey, I have no problem reconciling evolutionary biology with my faith in God. I do, however, have problems reconciling it with my belief in the laws of probability."
Now, this worries me because, as pointed out above (the tornado in a junkyard meme), there is a standard creationist argument along these lines, one that rests entirely upon a poor understanding of what the theory of evolution says. Could you explain what you mean?
Ecologists and botanists are shrill, strident anti-religious zealots? That's just strange. [shakes head]
Rholtmeyer, I think public schools should not teach the theory of plate tectonics, and instead focus in teaching about different kinds of minerals, the rock cycle, etc. . . What? That's a silly idea? No!
And *in this specific conflict* there is no "debate of biology." There's biology (with continued research, questioning and debate over the exact details of evolution, but without any indication that there's another serious contender at this point in time), there's religion, and then there's and a strange offshoot of religi