The Buckle of the Bible Belt
Posted by
tgirsch
Last night, I watched a great NOVA episode, entitled Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial. It’s an excellent program chronicling the six week federal trial concerning the Dover, PA school board’s attempt to interject intelligent design into the science curriculum. I was prepared to blog about this, and to recommend it (which I still do), when I learned that I’d be a little late with this. You see, I live in Memphis, and our PBS station was one of two in the country (Louisville, KY being the other) to refuse to broadcast the program when it originally aired back in November of 2007. According to the local paper, WKNO (our PBS affiliate) was “concerned about the controversial nature of the program.”
It continues to boggle my mind that I live in a country so backward and ignorant that a large percentage of the population refuses to believe something as basic as evolution. And worse, I live in a part of that nation that’s apparently even more backward and ignorant, if our PBS station views a documentary about a well-known trial to be “too controversial.” Remind me again why this is supposed to be the greatest nation on earth.
“Remind me again why this is supposed to be the greatest nation on earth.”
Perhaps because we placed 17th out of 17 nations in a recent health care study. …no, that can’t be why..
Comment 1/23/2008
>It’s an excellent program chronicling the six week
>federal trial concerning the Dover, PA school board’s
>attempt to interject intelligent design into the science
>curriculum
In Pennsylvania’s defense, I would like to note that the following election the eight members of the school board who voted for intelligent design got voted out in favor of an explicitly pro-evolution slate of candidates.
Comment 1/23/2008
Stormy:
That’s true, and they pointed it out in the program. Although I don’t think there were 8 who voted in favor originally; when the statement was originally approved (by something like a 5-4 or 6-3 margin), three board members resigned in protest, and were replaced by ID proponents, after which all nine members supported the ID statement. In the following election, only 8 of the 9 seats were up for re-election, and all 8 of those seats went to those who ran against the inclusion of ID.
It’s also worth noting that although the pro-science board members won that election, they did so narrowly, and the town remains deeply divided to this day.
Comment 1/23/2008
*It continues to boggle my mind that I live in a country so backward and ignorant that a large percentage of the population refuses to believe something as basic as evolution*
As with any religion, it takes time to gain a solid following. Takes as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in anything else so it does not surprise me that there would be controversy. Not a fan of ID but I have no interest in accepting the idea of evolution as being the be all and end all when there are so many holes in the theory.
Comment 1/23/2008
Sigh. What holes, Mr. Big U?
Comment 1/23/2008
Big U:
Takes as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in anything else
That statement manages to demean faith far more than it could ever demean evolution.
But your insistence that there are “so many holes” in the theory only underscores your ignorance of the theory. Given that ignorance, you’d have to accept or deny it on faith, since familiarity with the theory doesn’t seem to have factored in much.
And for what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone suggests that evolution is the “be all and end all,” just by far the best empirical explanation we have for the history of life on this planet.
Comment 1/23/2008
Actually tgirsch, I have a fairly solid knowledge of the theory, hence the reason I classify it as requiring faith. Large scale evolution has not been able to be duplicated in any meaningful ways. Several of the supporters will say our lifetimes are too short to actually see true evolution. Hence, if it is something that can not be seen in one’s lifetime, then it is clearly something that must be accepted on faith. Any evidence that may show faults in the evolution theory are explained away with arguments that are often based in the idea of “well it just must be”. Every time something is proven to be in error (i.e. Brontosaurus, Coleacanth), the explanation is “well mistakes are made but as we get more knowledge we will be more certain”. Fine. I’m okay with that. Evolution is possible. I accept that. But it still requires a great deal of faith to say it is a done deal and absolute certainty. If gaps were a couple of years, fine, but with gaps of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years, that takes faith. Anyone who refuses to accept that is simply denying reality.
And it should be noted that I am fine with evolution being taught as a theory. But in schools today it is often taught as guaranteed fact. Period. And in my mind that is wrong.
Comment 1/24/2008
Ruth Etters > here is the biggest hole that bothers me with evolution. In the human body, there are millions of interconnected parts, all of which are necessary for life. Some simple examples are heart, kidneys and liver. A large number of these parts must work 100% completely together for a successfully long healthy life. The intricacies of how the human body works is still being discovered but the more research that is being done, the greater the intricacy and interreliance appears to be. Evolution states that we evolved from more primate animals but even in those animals, the same function exists.
Being a bit of a statistics person, I find it statistically impossible that at some point, this entire system evolved all at once, not just in one creature, but in one of each sex so that breeding could take place. Even given billions of years, the chance of all the critical body parts suddenly evolving all at the same time is so astronomically infinitesimal that it is deifies intelligent thinking to believe it happened.
Comment 1/24/2008
Hence the need for a strong faith to believe in evolution.
Comment 1/24/2008
Big U:
By that reasoning, geology, astrophysics and quantum mechanics also require “faith.”
Any evidence that may show faults in the evolution theory are explained away with arguments that are often based in the idea of “well it just must be”. Every time something is proven to be in error (i.e. Brontosaurus, Coleacanth), the explanation is “well mistakes are made but as we get more knowledge we will be more certain”.
Sorry, but that’s just flatly ignorant. There’s no other way to describe it.
What makes evolution a true science, and what differentiates it from “faith” as the term is generally used, is that the theory makes testable predictions, and that many of those predictions have been vindicated, often by disciplines that didn’t even exist at the time Darwin posited his theory.
But it still requires a great deal of faith to say it is a done deal and absolute certainty.
Again, this is ignorant of how science works. Science never declares anything with “absolute certainty.” Science always acknowledges the possibility that it is wrong, but it also always coalesces around the theories that best fit the available evidence. Evolution is by far and away the “best fit” for the evidence we have of the history of life on earth; there’s nothing else even remotely close. The day someone comes up with an empirical explanation that fits the facts more closely, then and only then does evolution fall.
And it should be noted that I am fine with evolution being taught as a theory.
Once again, you’re putting your ignorance on display. Perhaps you need to review the scientific definition of “theory” as opposed to its colloquial use.
As to the stuff about statistics and irreducible complexity (even though you don’t use that exact term), it’s all been addressed in great detail, if you care to learn about it. (For one thing, you say “statistics,” but it sounds like you mean “probability,” which isn’t the same thing.)
I strongly suggest that you follow the link up there at the top, and watch the show. Preferably with an open mind. I’ve been following this sort of debate for a very long time, and I learned quite a bit (both scientific and historical) that I didn’t previously know.
Comment 1/24/2008
By Big U’s logic, we don’t know who the first President of the United States was either, as we have know way of recreating the first election.
Comment 1/24/2008
Ahh… one of my favorite topics.
I’m going to have to agree with Big U here, probably to the surprise of many.
As far as religion goes, I’m basically the 99% fat free milk version of an atheist… one percent agnostic. So we can kill any noise any newbs may raise about an agenda.
I think a couple of points need to be stated. One, god creating man, and evolution being the origin of man are not mutually exclusive theories, per se. God creating man using evolution as his/her/its tool can satisfy both camps.
Two, a “religion” is, at its most basic level, a set of beliefs and values. Science is indeed a religion, and indeed requires faith. I’ve never seen sub-atomic particles; I can’t confirm the existence of antimatter…
Of course science holds up to scrutiny better than religion, the scrutiny applied is scientific by nature!
Quantum physics suggests that almost all our understandings of how things are related, how the basic units of behave break down at the sub atomic level, right? Have we learned just enough to reveal our ignorance?
Does evolution explain the manifestation of consciousness? At some point, consciousness evolved from that which did not have it. Does that mean that machine consciousness can evolve? How does science address these questions, how does evolution theory explain consciousness? By believing solely in evolution, must we also believe in the possibility of a toaster or a cactus developing consciousness?
Wasn’t it Heidegger who raised the idea that we may not be deriving understanding of what is, but simply scripting that which may or may not actually exist? That perhaps Newton didn’t explain the laws of physics, but that Newtonian theory simply defines the way we interpret the phenomena to which it refers, that objects didn’t behave as Newton theorized until he theorized it…
Science is a way in which we understand the world around us. It is man’s attempt to understand that which is far greater than he. It has core values and is, in many respects, blind to and dismissive of the devastation that can be (at least partially) attributed to it. It can be used for good or for evil. “Science” of its time often reflects the prejudices of that time. The similarities between science and religion are many once you deconstruct them.
“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are” – Anais Nin
Comment 1/24/2008
digg:
I think we’re getting into a problem of semantics here, both in terms of what we mean by “faith” and by “religion.” Religion, as the term is commonly understood, involves a deity or deities (or, at the very least, some sort of spiritual leader), and I fail to see how science fits that bill. As for “faith,” you appear to be using the term as little more than a synonym for “trust.” Or perhaps “assumptions.” But again, when religious people use those terms, that generally not what they’re talking about. And in particular, when Christians talk about faith, they’re not talking about the same type of belief as what’s required to believe this scientific principle or that; it’s much much deeper than that.
Your definition of religion “at its most basic level” is indistinguishable from the definition of philosophy, and when you dumb things down to that level, then yes, science also fits the bill.
The more important thing to note, however (and it’s commonly misunderstood), is that science isn’t a “thing,” or even a set of laws or conclusions or whatever. Science is a process. All kinds of bad things have been done in the name of science (just as they’ve been done in the name of religion), but that doesn’t mean that those things are “science” (or “religion”).
Otherwise, you’re essentially devolving into metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.
We really can’t ever know anything, therefore it’s impossible to ever say that X is right and Y is wrong, blah blah blah. Not a terribly useful way to view the world, even in the unlikely event that it’s true. 
Comment 1/24/2008
>Wasn’t it Heidegger who raised the idea that we may not
>be deriving understanding of what is, but simply
>scripting that which may or may not actually exist? That
>perhaps Newton didn’t explain the laws of physics, but
>that Newtonian theory simply defines the way we interpret
>the phenomena to which it refers, that objects didn’t
>behave as Newton theorized until he theorized it…
This arguement is obviously wrong since I’m refusing to accept it. =P
Comment 1/24/2008
It’s not mumbo jumbo, it’s the most important realization I think one can ever achieve - it is the key to defining the world for yourself, to removing the ideology-laden layers of language. It is the prerequisite to marking your opinions as your own! A while I may cheese it up, by speaking about it romantically, wax poetic, it will not accept that deconstruction is “mumbo-jumbo”
Anyway, what is “mumbo jumbo?” How do the cultural associations we make with the phonemes relate to the fact that the term is used to reference nonsense… I’m just playin’ - but, I’m not!
You ever read the Onion article “Grad School Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu?” It’s one of my favorites.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27794.
But to address your points, I really don’t think I’m just playing a game of semantics. This isn’t apples and oranges.
The way I used faith in my post is simple; it is the way faith is commonly used. For me to believe in Antimatter requires a Kierkegaardian leap of faith. It requires faith to embrace the concept dark matter, or even the idea infinity.
I don’t believe that religion requires a deity, in the sort of man in the sky form you seem to imply. Man can deify anything. Look at capitalism as a religion. Surely you can map that which plays the roles of holy documents, moral lessons, deified leaders.
We create gods all the time, and to extent that we behave as if concepts or processes are divine, we worship a religion. The values of the system dictate its direction. The physical form in which we imagine the “spiritual” leadership to come from is unimportant, IMO.
I think this is also an area where progressives often, unintentionally, come off as intellectually arrogant. I think many people that by admitting the types of things about science that I have, it weakens their position on how they understand the world. Somewhere along the line, partisanship develops and one becomes more attached to the idea of their argument winning than they are to the meanings behind the inquiry in the first place.
I’m not concerned with proving X right and Y wrong, I’m not advancing the idea that x and y are always equally valid because neither can be irrefutably proven. I’m interested whether the way we represent X and Y accurately reflects the essence of the respective entities. If not, why, and how does the effects of such inaccuracies manifest. Personally, I think that’s a very useful rubric - I think it has pretty good record of galvanizing thought.
Comment 1/24/2008
Sorry for the terrible grammar in the above post. I was trying to fire it off so I can leave work.
Comment 1/24/2008
if it is something that can not be seen in one’s lifetime, then it is clearly something that must be accepted on faith
Shorter U: “I’m stupid.”
This is one of the most annoying idiocies promulgated by the religious anti-science crowd. Weirdly, it seems to be one that, in many cases, they actually believe (as opposed to just make up as a rhetorical strategy), but, given that they are blinded by faith to begin with, that’s understandable. Even weirder, many who are not ideologically opposed to science seem to have swallowed it, apparently out of some badly misjudged effort to be fairminded. But it is badly wrong, and dangerous to boot.
Science does not proceed by faith. Nothing in science is taken on “faith”, though much - possibly most - of science touches on phenomena not directly observed. The point and purpose of science is to give defensible explanations for things that are not immediately evident. For those whose most important beliefs rest entirely on ungrounded faith, and who are likely almost completely ignorant of, if not fearful and hostile toward, science, it may be that any belief not arising from their personal bodily senses has to be regarded as mystical or fictional. To such a mind, there may be no other way of figuring anything out. But scientific explanations are not grounded on faith - they are grounded on evidence and adduced by reason. That is what makes them scientific, as opposed to mystical.
Science has often been defined as “inference to the best explanation”. That’s as good a definition as any. Science seeks to infer (derive new knowledge from logical thought based on defensible premises) the best possible explanation for observations about the world. By this definition, science goes beyond direct observation - of course it does, that’s the whole point. And, implicitly in this definition, not all available explanations are guaranteed to be true (confounding evidence might later be discovered), and not all explanations that seem reasonable will turn out to be “best” (better explanations might later be inferred). But bad theories will be winnowed out (either because they do not explain the available evidence or they require implausible logical or physical processes), and existing theories will be incrementally improved (as they are refined to explain more and more evidence). And at every step, proffered explanations must follow defensible processes of logical inference - they must flow in reasonable ways, that conform to what we already know about how the world works, from what was previously known to what was previously unkown. That requirement makes them testable, and separates ungrounded claims accepted for no good reason (”faith”) from defensible claims accepted on facts and logic (”science”).
“Inference” is not the same as “deductive proof”, because real-world data does not come as a defined set of a few absolute axioms. We simply have to do the best we can, both in imagining possible explanations and testing them for logic and conformance to fact. But this is anything but “taking explanations on faith” - it is subjecting them to the most searching and rigorous tests we can devise.
This is why inane and childish creationist stories, like a worldwide flood that killed the dinosaurs because they couldn’t swim, are not science. It is not that they are wrong, but they are stupidly wrong - grossly at variance with observable facts, and defended by people who simply suspend logic and invent claims or processes that themselves clash with other obvious facts with no attempt at rigor or self-criticism. In constrast, scientific explanations for events of millions of years ago are not merely almost certainly right in their main details, they are right for a good reason. They exist as reasonable inferences from observable facts.
We know that every species studied today is linked genetically to every other species studied, and shows close relations in morphology to those species it is most closely related to genetically; that changes in genetics produce changes in morphology; that differences in morphology affect reproductive success and population size; that fossil specimens show similar networks of morphological relations among themselves and continuity with living species, so therefore it is a reasonable inference, based on a vast amount of evidence of this kind in vastly greater detail, that cumulative changes in genetics among species over time led to changes in morphology and behavior great enough to affect the long-term reproductive and population-size success of individual groups with various characteristics, leading eventually to the set of linkages and historical transitions we see among species leading from the deep past to today. This is not a story, and it is not an exercise of faith. It is an amalgam of hard factual evidence linked by causal theories derived logically as the best possible explanations for that evidence and the relations between different bits of it.
We do not take science on faith any more than we take any other inferential conclusion on faith. We take it on facts and logic. When a detective states that a person was found holding a gun, which produces markings on bullets identical to those found on a bullet in a murder victim, and has gunpowder residue on their hands similar to the way it is found on many people who have fired guns, and is covered with blood which is found to be identical to the blood of the murder victim, and then claims that that person is the murderer, they are making an inference on the basis of the available evidence. We can ask logically whether that is the best explanation for that evidence, and we can compare other relevant facts to test the strength or weakness of the explanation, but if we finally agree with the given conclusion - or reject it, either - it is sheerest idiocy to call that “acting on faith”. It is acting on evidence and logic. Whether or not the detective actually saw that person fire the gun, we can attempt to determine whether the person did so - we can attempt to determine it logically and based on evidence. Direct observation is only one form of evidence - it is not proof (or even very strong evidence, necessarily), and the absence of direct observation is not disproof, and not an absence of (all) evidence.
The bizarre assumption that anything that is not witnessed by eye is therefore a question of faith is boggling. It’s so obviously false, but so pervasive in the religious objections to evolution theory - and nowhere else. Even creationists are not dumb enough to pretend we can’t know anything we can’t see in any other field - they don’t deny the existence of atoms, or electricity, or historical events that took place only a few thousand years ago. But they will blindly assert - and get away with claiming - that science cannot operate on what is not seen, in the particular areas of science they have a religious dispute with.
Faith, it is said in the Bible, involves “hope for things not seen”. But logical inference of factually-grounded explanations for things not seen is not faith - it is science.
Digglahhh:
You make some reasonable - and familiar - criticisms of science, but I don’t think they are related to what U was saying. There are certainly many questions unanswered by evolution theory, and by every major scientific theory; that’s a trivial point (and not a criticism). That has little to do with the difference between science and faith. Whether or not science admits of different, equally-comprehensive theories for given phenomena (and in fact, it rarely does so for long, at least without going to bizarre extremes), and whether or not “science” (really, scientists) responds to social context and received beliefs, there remains a distinct difference between science and faith. Science is often wrong, and scientists have often been pigheaded or prejudiced, but both are subject to the tests of fact and logic, which faith denies. And even when individual scientists prove unresponsive, science itself progresses - but never by faith. None of science’s weaknesses or failures are as empty and backward as faith, and nothing in faith can ever - or has ever, even once, at any time in history - produce defensible knowledge of the world, or even a decent reason for believing whatever it is the faithful believe. Just as saying that science uses logic to extend knowledge beyond direct observation is not a criticism of science, saying that it displays human failures and weaknesses is not a defense of faith.
Comment 1/24/2008
KTK, that is perhaps the most compelling writing I have read on any blog. I am in awe.
Comment 1/24/2008
digg:
I did not accuse you of “playing semantic games.” I said we have “a problem of semantics,” and I stand by that. It is true that the working definitions of both faith and science that you appear to be using are valid definitions; they’re simply not the commonly-understood definitions of those terms.
As to why I call it “mumbo-jumbo,” it’s because too often I’ve heard people use logic like yours to justify believing whatever the hell they want, facts, evidence, and reality be damned. It’s one thing to concede that every worldview makes certain core assumptions, and that the possibility always exists that those core assumptions are incorrect; it’s quite another to pretend that as a result of this, all such core assumptions are equal in merit, and that therefore thing A is “just like” thing B because they both somewhere rely on some core assumption. (Although, to your credit, you explicitly disavow that particular position.)
Basically, when your position is taken to its logical extreme, knowledge and learning become impossible, and all of these arguments are irrelevant anyway. But then, if you’re right about all that, why should you care?
You’re right that science contains a certain amount of uncertainty (which I still argue is different in kind from religious faith, as that term is commonly understood), but I don’t know anyone who seriously argues to the contrary. Nobody says that science is perfect; they (and I) only argue that it’s by far and away the best tool we have for learning about the natural world. As I said to Big U way upthread, to equate the uncertainty of science with the faith of religion is truly demeaning to both concepts.
Comment 1/24/2008
So let me get this straight. I’m stupid and I’m ignorant because I refuse to blindly accept evolution as a guaranteed fact. And yet at the same time, I am the close-minded one.
That seems somewhat hypocritical.
KTK - good comment, well laid out and explained. But it still completely avoids my comment that I do not have the faith to believe that the complexity of the human body happened by chance. Or that intelligent thought came from nowhere. There is NO evidence anywhere to show that it would be possible. Thus the need for faith. Because scientifically, it is not possible to test or prove.
And the idea that since there is a genetic link between all species does not prove the idea of something creating those species or the idea of those species evolving from one point.
Also, you clear hatred of anything to do with faith or religion clearly colors any of your views regarding such. Being someone who has seen things happen that defy scientific explanation, I tend to be willing to explore the possibility that there is much more than we know or are able to explain scientifically.
Comment 1/24/2008
Big U:
So let me get this straight. I’m stupid and I’m ignorant because I refuse to blindly accept evolution as a guaranteed fact.
I won’t go as far as KTK and call you “stupid,” but you’re ignorant because you continue to conflate “well-established and well-vetted scientific theory” with “guaranteed fact,” and because you continue to classify evolution as something that requires “blind faith” to believe in, and because you continue to argue that there’s “NO evidence anywhere” to show that complexity happening by chance is possible. (As I said, watch the show!)
In other words, your repeated protestations as to why belief in evolution requires “faith” show a complete lack of understanding of what science is and how it works.
Comment 1/24/2008
I would assert that the leap of faith, religious type faith, necessary to buy into science as an entity is belief in the notion that man is even capable of uderstanding that which is beyond man. Can earthly instruments and the work of man accomplish the feat of explaining its own origin? How often do we even ask that question? Often, we take leaps of faith without even acknowledging that we are taking them.
Are our attempts to answer such inquiries just evidence of our intellectual hubris, our (destructive) habit of trying to separate ourselves from nature?
My other questions raise similarities between religion and science in a different sense, I’ll admit that. I’ll drop those tangents for the time being, though I think that is the more interesting discussion.
Comment 1/25/2008
I would assert that the leap of faith, religious type faith, necessary to buy into science as an entity is belief in the notion that man is even capable of uderstanding [sic] that which is beyond man.
But that criticism is so broad as to be useless. Again, it gets down to the underlying question of whether knowledge of any kind is possible. In any case, I dispute your claim that this requires “religious type faith,” because even that assumption doesn’t require us to devalue internal consistency, which I argue religious faith does.
Comment 1/25/2008
Okay, is anybody going to pose an explicit set of criteria a leap of faith must fulfill to be considered religious-like faith?
Or is that it? That the faith must be religious by nature, to be, well… religious by nature. In that case, it would make the whole idea of faith meaningless, as it is just an extension of the idea of religion.
It doesn’t make sense for me to keep throwing out leaps of faith that I compare to those required in traditional religion, if we don’t establish discreet characteristics of that type of faith.
I wouldn’t totally discount your criticism that claims by point is a derivative of is knowledge even possible?. But that’s not the meat of my concerns. That point is perhaps just an omnipresent footnote to all my thoughts.
Yes, I’m inclined to believe that all thought is just an exercise, all language is impure and obfuscates as much as it clarifies, that we don’t “discover” anything - that our greatest endeavors are really nothing more than complicated systems of value-laden nomenclature.
But that doesn’t mean I reject the idea that there can be value in building such systems, in establishing such “knowledge.” I just don’t hold any of it as pure, but more of a simulacra. The beauty of the Mona Lisa can be seen in a postcard, right; or is it just replicated? (but under a high-enough powered microscope, they’re indistinguishable) And that’s the question, is science building an understanding of the world, or just a convincing simulacrum?
But as I said, that’s the background. I have an operational, a practical sense of the subjects being discussed too. So let’s focus on that, what is an example, even a hypothetical one, of a religious-type faith outside the umbrella of religion?
Sorry, if I’m indulging heavily in what you call broad to the point of being meaningless-ness. Maybe cuz it’s Friday afternoon - though I haven’t started drinking yet…
Comment 1/25/2008
The cynical view?
Regular faith = belief in the absence of evidence.
Religious faith = belief in spite of the evidence.
:) Yeah, it’s more than a little snarky, but I think it’s pretty close to the mark.
Seriously, though, I can’t speak to more generic religious faith, but at least as contrasted against Christian (or even Jewish) faith, they’re not at all alike. You want to know what that kind of faith looks like? Re-read the book of Job.
More generically, religious faith strikes me as much more rigid: X must be true, no matter what the evidence may suggest, such that if the evidence seems to contradict X, then the evidence must be flawed, not X. Whereas science, properly conducted, is compelled to go wherever the evidence leads.
The only real underlying assumptions necessary for science are that our senses are useful tools for observing the world around us (more a philosophical assumption than a religious one, I’d argue), and, of course, the Uniformity of Nature Principle. These assumptions strike me as different in kind than assuming that there’s an Old Man in the Sky with a long gray beard who’s in control of everything, and knows everything, etc.
I haven’t started drinking yet
I’m not too far behind you on that. That, at least, we can agree on.
Comment 1/25/2008
I’m stupid and I’m ignorant because I refuse to blindly accept evolution as a guaranteed fact. And yet at the same time, I am the close-minded one.
My point is that, in saying “something that can not be seen . . . must be accepted on faith” you explicitly moved from a cognitive position (asking for evidence) to an embrace of groundless belief (accepting things on faith) - and stated that there were no other alternatives. That’s very, very bad thinking - it is literally a rejection of thinking, accepted as soon as your first, most primitive attempt to understand something rationally (demanding to see eons-long historical events with your own eyes in your own lifetime) didn’t pan out.
Now, I presume you’re not actually stupid. It sounds like you’re not. But you both accept stupidity - endorsing mindless irrationalism as an explanation for ordinary, worldly events - and exhibit stupidity - abandoning logic and evidence as soon as it proves not to be simplistic and obvious. (All of which is, by the way, a manifestation of closed-mindedness.) In doing this you join in both the conclusions and the methods of people who, as near as anyone can tell, really are stupid - as well as ideologically hostile to rationality.
Don’t be them.
Comment 1/26/2008
I did not see the civil war, but others did. Enough people reported it as fact, it has been verified, therefore it is believable.
No one has ever seen evolution from one species into another. It is a process that according to evolutionary science takes many lifetimes to accomplish. Therefore, it can not be seen and has not been recorded conclusively by anyone. Thus the need for faith to believe it.
I have seen people healed who medical science said there was no hope for. They spent a great deal of time praying to their god and a miracle occurred. (i.e. something that science was unable to explain in any way, shape or form, and in fact something that went directly in contrast to known scientific fact).
Now, these things have been documented to have occurred, the pre-health tests as well as the post-health tests were verified as accurate. And yet there is absolutely no scientific evidence as to why. Using the ideas pushed by evolution, the doctors treating said patients should be publishing papers with these people as evidence that the human body heals itself. That would be unwise, no?
Comment 1/26/2008
Big U:
First, watch the bloody show!
Anyway, you’re a person of faith, and that’s fine, as far as it goes. But don’t pretend that religious faith and forensic science are anywhere close to the same thing.
No one has ever seen evolution from one species into another. It is a process that according to evolutionary science takes many lifetimes to accomplish. Therefore, it can not be seen and has not been recorded conclusively by anyone. Thus the need for faith to believe it.
Again, you could say the same thing about geology. After all, nobody saw the Colorado river carve a mile-deep canyon, therefore we have to accept on blind faith that this is how it happened! Do you have any idea how intellectually lazy that point of view is?
Comment 1/26/2008
Since this is still going on, I’ll throw in a few thoughts.
Faith has been called “the evidence of things not seen.” By definition, it does not involve proof; indeed, it has been argued that proof invalidates faith. (”If you have proof, what need of faith?”) That clearly separates it from science. Faith relies on conviction, science relies on evidence. To put it another way, faith believes what it will, science believes what it must.
Evolution - genetic change over time in response to environment - is science. It is based on evidence. It’s not a guess, not “just an idea,” not a hypothesis. It’s a scientific theory, an explanation that unites different phenomena and has confirmed predictive power. It’s not one easily tested in a laboratory, obviously, any more than those of astrophysics, but one whose agreement with an enormous number of observations from biology, geology, and paleontology is overwhelming.
Yes, there are arguments about the details, about the exact nature of the process, was it incremental change or punctuated equilibrium for example, or how much of a feedback loop is involved - there is good healthy debate about all that and more. But the basic principle of evolution remains and has withstood every scientific assault on it. And the more we learn about self-organizing systems - the tendency of any sufficiently complex system to spontaneously organize itself into patterns - and therefore the less evolution involves the “random change” on which its critics (including statisticians ignorant of biology and, it would seem, complexity) charge it depends, the stronger it becomes. Bluntly, while the details are still argued, evolution itself simply is no longer a matter of scientific debate and hasn’t been for some time.
Questioning evolution on the basis that no one has directly observed the emergence of an entirely new species is a preposterous argument not only because it makes the nonsensical assertion that such direct observation of an event is the only valid source of evidence (in which case there are a hell of a lot of convicted criminals who should be released on the grounds that there is no valid evidence against them) but because it denies the evidence that does exist, evidence which, again, spans disciplines.
And that evidence keeps growing. Even not being an evolutionary biologist, I know of three new transitional fossils discovered in the past few years: one an early fish with eyes, scales and even the livers of fish but with neither bones nor teeth; the second a dinosaur that mixed characteristics of earlier faster, smaller, predators and later bulkier, larger, plant-eaters; the third an ancient salamander with a fin that could be used as a prototype arm and had a bone structure like a shoulder.
Faith, believing what it will despite evidence, may deny evolution. Science, believing what it must because of evidence, embraces it.
Comment 1/26/2008
LarryE:
Exceptionally well put. Thank you.
Comment 1/27/2008
T -
Thanks. Anytime.
Comment 1/27/2008