I do care about accuracy in the public dialogue, and occasionally I will speak up to counter some bit of outrageous misinformation like "Darwin's deathbed conversion" on the principle of protecting the innocent bystander. For the most part, however, I have stopped trying to educate everyone who says "evolution is just a theory and Intelligent Design is an equally valid theory."
I stopped trying when I realized that Creationists have, literally, a different standard of truth than I do. And I am not being sarcastic.
One person rejects scientifically tested findings because they contradict religious "revealed truth," another rejects a religious "revealed truth" because it fails scientific testing. The first submits their judgment to authority; the second submits their judgment only to the test of reality itself.
The first regards authority as the most dependable source of truth, the surest method to correct for individual human flaws in perception and judgment. Therefore if one accepts even the slightest flaw in the acknowledged authority, one is left with no truth to depend on at all. Rejection of authority is a moral outrage. The refusal to submit personal judgment to the claims of authority is a moral failure. It's a plain lack of self-discipline.
The second regards truth as the only authority, and multiple independent tests by observation and experiment as the surest method of correcting for individual human flaws in perception and judgment. Because all humans are flawed, no source can be accepted as THE authority, and all must be checked. If the rules of logic and evidence are not followed, one is left with no truth to depend on at all. Any violation of the rules of logic and evidence is a moral outrage. The failure of an individual to independently check sources and test claims is a moral failure. It's a plain lack of responsibility.
Any debate between people with such fundamental differences is like a competition between someone with a tennis racket and someone with a golf club over who can get the baseball into the basket first. It may have some entertainment value, but not much else.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 36
Making observations, THEN forming a hypothesis to explain them, THEN making predictions based on that hypothesis, THEN looking for evidence that your prediction is FALSE, is an alien way of thinking to them.
Unfortunately, it's not a universal pattern for any of us. Our species is misnamed: we are not Homo Sapiens Sapiens, we are Homo Wannabe Sapiens. We all need to test our assumptions more often than we're inclined to do so. :)
For this reason, and others, I think "How do we live and work together with people who think much differently than we do?" is a much more important question than, "How do we get everyone to think correctly?" We are not going to all agree on what is "correct" any time before the heat death of the universe.
The problem is, the other guys are getting the same pleasure reward.
I myself think that protecting freedom of thought and freedom of speech requires me to defend the same rights for people I think are total loons as for people I totally agree with. That is the "big circle" I draw, to include us all. Everyone has a right to openly disagree with me, as long as I have the right to openly disagree with them, too.
Refusing to get into an argument with creationists does not mean that I keep silent about my own opinions. I will acknowledge the other person's opinion, and state my own -- along with the reasons I have for it. I will only get into a *discussion* about it with someone who is honestly willing to step away from his/her own assumptions and look from another viewpoint; to understand what is being said *before* arguing about it.
You can't honestly argue with anyone until you understand what they are saying. In that, many skeptics are as guilty of dishonesty in argument as the creationists are. Understanding such a totally different worldview was a serious stretch of neurons, that occasionally gave me vertigo; but when I finally got it, a lot of my frustration over why they could not understand *me* went away.
We have to learn to live with people who see the world in fundamentally different ways than we do, or we all die. Part of learning to live with each other is recognizing that we DO have fundamentally different viewpoints, and some arguments between the two are as meaningless as trying to explain why apples have to be Tuesday because oranges are west.
That's what this article was about.
If we all walk through a room, then stand around outside and compare descriptions of what we saw, we will all describe the room differently. You will see some things I missed; I will see some things you missed; and we'll both be wrong about some things entirely.
If we all went into the room together, and stood around pointing at objects and describing them to each other, we would slowly converge on one group description that was more comprehensive than any of the individual descriptions; as long as we are each doing our own independent observation AND listening to each other.
That process breaks down when we insist that we and we alone are right; it also breaks down if we say "everybody's right, we'll just all see it our own way."
Some pictures work better than other pictures. The scientific model of the world works better for science, for technology, for society, than the creationist model. We are justified in rejecting the creationist model, and using the scientific one, for public education and public policy.
If individuals use the creationist model in personal life, because it works for them personally, I think it is a positive good for society, in the long run, to let them do so.
So we may come down to the same opinion, in practice. :)
Are you saying that there is no evidence for organic evolution through natural selection?
As you may see from Joseph's reply, your "neither theory can be proven" option is as unlikely to calm the science camp than Olga's "I can accept it as a metaphor" is to calm the creationist camp.
If someone were to say that you worship a Cosmic Thug and celebrate the notion that everybody who disagrees with your viewpoint will one day burn in Hell, you may be mature enough not to respond with open anger and escalate the conflict. You will not call it an accurate description of your thinking, and I seriously doubt that you will feel a ton of warm respect for the person who uttered it.
These comments are just as offensive: "Both theories have adherents who can demonstrate scientific evidence for their theory. Both can be based completely on science or both can be based completely on faith. Yet both require faith. The result, then, is to settle on what presuppositions you choose to take into your experimentation (i.e, your worldview)."
Until you understand *why* that is offensive, can you just respect that it is? If I felt deep pain whenever you used the word "candle," would you insist on using it in my presence, or would you be kind to me even though you did not understand?
It is more honest to say, "I do not understand what you mean by 'science'" than it is to say, "We're both doing science, just in different ways." Just as it many be less frustrating for Joseph to recognize that when you say, "Neither theory can be scientifically proven," you are speaking a foreign language that he does not understand; not only do the words 'theory' and 'scientifically' and 'proven' mean something different to you than they do to us, the difference in your fundamental assumptions means we will never be able to explain to you what we mean by them.
It would only be possible if you were willing to step away from your fundamental assumptions for awhile, and you aren't. But you are willing to let other people have different fundamental assumptions, and I think that's a good enough basis for peace.
As long as you do not pretend that you DO understand.
Science can describe what happens when a thrown rock hits a human head. None of us have any "choice" about what to believe about that; it is what it is.
Science cannot tell us if we ought to throw the rock. That IS the realm where we can only choose our foundation, our starting values. Science can tell us what the effects of acting on one set of values or another will be; science cannot call one set of effects "good" and the other "bad."
From what I have seen, we can share values, even when we do not share science.
I think the people who originally wrote the stories had a lot better sense.
But if somebody wants to insist that Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox plowed out the Grand Canyon, I'm not going to get myself in a twist over it, as long as he doesn't insist that unless I teach that to schoolchildren in history class AS HISTORICAL FACT, I am no true American.
Everybody started working on the formulas. I thought about all the heebee jeebee I'd learned years earlier in the church. So, I got two straight pins and a piece of string. My hypothesis was that God permits good and evil to have equal pull on the human soul, leaving it to our free will to choose. Therefore there were two sources of power in the universe good; pin A and evil; pin B. Affixing the string to each pin, I made a loop at the center of the string, inserted my pencil and began to draw a circle, keeping the tension on the string. I ended up with an elliptical orbit.
Not scientific, but I dare say I would not have gone to the dungeons.
But I got a D.
Anitra, apparently the birth of the creation story happened while the Israelites were in Babylonian captivity and discovered that everyone (the Babylonians) had a creation myth but *them.* :( They hadda get themselves a creation story, too. :( Ta-da! I think it's a pretty nice one.
Anyway, it fits with what I don't remember being taught...I never thought that our explanation and science were mutually exclusive and figured out on my own that it was yet another parable, of sorts. After all: Atom and Adam? Think that's a coincidence?
BTW, Paul and Babe are responsible for the Thousand Islands, too. As I recall, Paul did some digging up on the St. Lawrence and then was refused his pay, so he began to fill it back in. About a thousand shovelfuls.
If Wes could figure that out at four years old, how come so many adults can't?
To Joseph's question above, yes. There is no evidence of organic evolution (sometimes called macroevolution) through natural selection. Finches do vary within their kind but a there is no evidence that a line of finches ever evolved into a whale (as an example; you can pick your own line of evolutionary succession). Dogs and horses can be bred within their kinds, for example, but I challenge you to make a horse from a dog.
To Linda's comment, my perspective is outside of a religious system and certainly outside Roman Catholicism. These systems are largely man's mechanisms for a framework of beliefs. In short, I think that any ruling from a human religious leader, living or dead, is irrelevent.
If we want to take a scientific approach, let's do so. If we want to take a faith-based approach, let's do so. I sincerely do want to understand how anyone can be offended by the suggestion that both creationists and evolutionsts are basing their views on faith in a theory.
According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." The theory of evolution, the theory of gravity, the theory of relativity, are all based on observations of the natural world that can be independently verified regardless of prior belief; they describe predictable regularities of phenomena, and testable predictions can be made from them; they open up further avenues of scientific investigation. That is what is meant by "theory" within the scientific worldview.
Creationism is not a theory in any comparable sense, nor is "Intelligent Design." It does not provide testable predictions. It is not based on naturalism, the search for patterns in natural phenomena; it is based on supernaturalism, the premise that there are forces that act on the natural world without being acted on, and defy pattern and prediction. It is, by definition, *impossible* to have a "scientific theory" based on a supernatural premise.
It is possible to have a worldview that works for you that is based on supernaturalism and not on naturalism. I am not at all offended by that. I can cheerfully accept referring to "creationists and evolutionists" as having two different systems of thought, each based on different founding assumptions, like Euclidean geometry and noneuclidean geometry are based on different first axioms and each *works* (on different sets of problems). I cannot go as far as allowing the use of scientific terminology by a system that rejects science.
I am just asking you to be honest. If scientists want to play religion, they should play by the rules of religion -- not of science. If religionists want to play science, they should play by the rules of science -- not of religion.
You can play baseball all you want, but you can't get your baseball team included in the NFL. If you call your baseball team part of the NFL, you will get a lot of people upset.
Im glad you let me pick my own line of evolutionary succesion since I think your the first human on the planet to propose that finches evolved into whales.
I pick tictaalik.Tictaalic lived among a population of creatures that clearly bridges a gap between fish and tetrapods(creatures with four limbs and walked on land). Tictaalic was discovered only because a hypothesis(prediction) was proposed based on the theory of organic evolution through natural selection. Its in my articles section if you want the details.
There are bodies of scientific literature supporting creation and design (often called "intelligent design" in the popular press). The publications are scientific in nature and reviewed by peers. There is an annual conference for scientific presentations, debates, and exchange of ideas. These activities do not fall under the category of "science falsely so called".
Evolution, gravity, and relativity are all scientific theories and can all be treated in the same way. Creation is not a scientific theory, and cannot be treated in the same way as evolution, gravity, and relativity.
It is not intellectually honest to say that evolution has not been demonstrated as a theory with predictable regularities of phenomena, and testable predictions made from them. There are a number of what are called "historical sciences" -- astronomy, geology and archeology, as well as evolutionary biology -- in which hypotheses are tested by whether further physical evidence contradicts them, and whether predictions about future discoveries bear out. The theory of evolution predicts that a series of hominids with features progressively more like ours will be found in the fossil record over the last five million years; this is what the fossil record shows. The theory of evolution predicts that no modern human fossils will be found in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago), and they have not been found. If they were, that would be a legitimate challenge to existing theory. At the least, the theories that predict time travel to be impossible would have to be revisited. :)
There are many other ways in which the theory of evolution can be tested. There is no way to test the proposition that all existing species (including humans) were created as distinct and separate species which have never divided further ever since, and this creation was done by the deliberate design of a complex intelligence, and that the complex intelligence doing the creation preceded all other intelligence and did not develop out of any previous form of life.
You can call a bird a dog, and nobody can stop you from doing so. They can, however, stop you from registering it with the American Kennel Club. It doesn't qualify under the rules.
Creationists can call what they do "science," and publish their own journals and hold their own conferences. They are not going to be published in an *actual* journal of science, or heard at an *actual* scientific conference, unless they do actual science. I would predict that to be impossible to do, and this prediction has been so far borne out, because no creationist has so far even submitted a paper in which creationism is tested by prediction, to any real scientific journal or conference.
It's not science.
You equate gravity and evolution as equally proven, also false. Gravity works, thankfully, and can be readily observed; experiments can support its principles. Evolution cannot be observed and no experiments can prove the theory (there isn't, conveniently, enough time for any one experimenter to do so).
Your statement that creation scientists can "publish their own journals and hold their own conferences" strikes me as a form of racism (or at least apartheid). What is a "real scientific journal or conference"? Why is it "them" and "us" in this discussion of science? Now I think I understand why you don't want to debate creationists (the title of this article).
"It's not science." Evolution is also no more or less science than creation, using the definition of science as "systemitized knowledge derived from observation, study, and experimentation carried on in irder to determine the nature or principles of what is being studied."
thats not what you said. You didnt say "proof"you said..
"There is no evidence of organic evolution (sometimes called macroevolution) through natural selection."
say what you want about proof but since everyone keeps throwing the word "honest" around I think you are in the extreme minority if you dont consider tiktaalic evidence for organic evolution throug natural selection
your obviously dug in roy. Im curious,short of god tapping you on the shoulder,what would you consider evidence of organic evolution through natural selection.
Just to be fair, ill tellyou some things that would cause me to reconsider evolution. And I would, tattoo or no tattoo. (ive already had one covered up)Human fossils found in the belly of dinosaur fossils. Human fossils that date(radiomerically) to be older than 10mya or older than dinosaurs. The appearance of mammal fossils before the earliest amphibian fossils.Bird fossils before the earliest reptile fossils. Human dna that was more similiar to mice than to other primates(easily measurable). oh yeah, god tapping me on the shoulder. Theres six.Those of you at home can ask youself that question too. Remember "honesty" is now the official word for this thread.
Btw, I LOVE that you called the fact that creation scientists are not respected by 99.9% of other scientists "racism" or "or at least apartheid". I dont know what you mean by not wanting to debate creationists anitra,how else could you hear stuff like that?
That's the way it is, Roy. It is not racism or apartheid that makes a baseball team ineligible for membership in the National Football League. Football is a different game than baseball. The way scientists do science and the way creationists do science are two entirely different games.
The way your worldview is organized, the rules that science operates by do not EXIST, therefore you cannot see any difference between the science game and the creationist game. The way the science worldview is organized, the rules of science definitely do exist, and are highly valued. When they are violated, as you and creationists constantly violate them, that is a moral outrage.
I would protest if a scientist were to march into your church, dump sewage on the altar, and pee in the communion wine, on the grounds that none of those things had any "real world" validity. I am asking for the same respect from you. Although you think that the scientific standards of people like Joseph and I are a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, please respect them. Do not pee in our cup and call it wine.
And don't call us bigots when we don't let your baseball team into the football league.
I spent the better part of a month "debating" a colleague about this topic (as well as if the resurrection actually could have occurred) and it was a similar situation. We went round and round on the validity of "proof" (I asked her to bring me substantiated proof of the resurrection and she quoted the bible). It was a very interesting but crazy debate. All I realized at the end was that the kind of proof I needed to validate my points were so different than her faith-based proof, the debate itself was moot.
Thanks for bringing this to light.