USA Today is running an article this morning entitled How to Honor Science and Religion, by Henry G. Brinton, and the basic idea of his article is a tired and old one: non-overlapping magesteria. Science answers the "how" question and religion answers the "why" question.
The problem with this idea, usually put forth by members on the religious side of the discussion, is that science answers one set of questions, the mechanics of the problem, while religion attempts to discern the "meaning behind existence," as if we could possibly know it. This idea is incoherent because it presumes there is absolutely no overlap. But there's a third questions both religion and science ask, and no one ever wants to look at that one too closely because it destroys the non-overlapping argument. That question is "did."
In science, a theory is a well-reasoned statement describing a collection of phenomena in such a way that it embraces all the known phenomena; we call such a theory robust. A theory that also suggests future lines of investigation, and when those investigations continue to affirm the theory, the theory is said to be "reliable." Newton's theory was robust, but not reliable; Einstein's theory, which replaced it, is robust and reliable. Darwin's theory of descent with modification by variation and natural selection has proven both robust and reliable, but his theory of vertical lineage has been tossed out in favor of a theory that embraces horizontal gene transfer and evironmental factors and a whole host of other purely naturalistic tricks evolution has crafted out of the chemistry and physics available.
A theory can find itself completely discarded by one well-described counter-example. It rarely happens that one is enough to discard a well-established theory, but it happens all the time at the level of individual experiments. A scientist crafts an experiment or field observation to demonstrate some principle he wishes to affirm. He collects mounds of data. And then one day someone just as bright-eyed looks at his data, comes up with an equally plausible explanation or, worse, finds a subset of data that shows that his explanation is even more plausible overall, and that theory is thrown out. The steady-state universe, plate techtonics, even medical hygiene, are historical examples of this at work. It doesn't happen overnight; Thomas Khun documented the idea of the "paradigm shift," and how it can sometimes take a generation for the previous body of knowledge to be revised in the face of evidence only the young are willing to examine closely.
At its bedrock, however, all science investigation requires that the universe itself be robust and reliable. Cosmologists usually use the terms "mundane" and "regular," but they mean the same thing: a mundane universe is one where the laws of physics as we understand them are the exact same everywhere and everywhen for everyone; a regular universe is one where those laws don't change, ever, for anyone, for any reason or no reason. The universe must be this way: otherwise, any observation is suspect, and can be challenged, and we have no reason to trust our senses, our observations, and our conclusions.
Intelligent Design is a threat to science not merely because it encouraged deception and despair in the face of hard problems; it is a threat to science because its adoption in one science, biology, would taint all of science with the suspicion that the world is truly contingent upon the whims of the tinkering designer, and at any moment our expectations of a robust and reliable universe could be betrayed. It is not just that we have no reason to believe that Darwinian evolution is true; we would have no reason to believe the Earth orbits the Sun or that airplanes aren't held in the sky by fairies.
Brinton's "religion" is probably the abstract, parallel-universe religion of high-end theology, where "God" is so far removed from daily life he may as well not exist, except as the guideposts to a better life of some kind. Most people seem to want an interventionist God, one that does stuff. They want a God that sends people wandering in the desert for 40 years, rains fire from the skies, and created an unwed teenage mother in Galilee. The problem is that a God that does stuff violates the regularity of the universe. When someone says, "did it?" science has to say no, and without reservation. Anything else is incoherent. There can be no counter-example accepted as fact, because one counter-example destroys all knowledge forver.
Scientists have already told states that adopt ID teaching that they're taking their convention dollars and going home. Louisiana has lost two contracts with science groups this year looking to book convention space in New Orleans. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if it isn't the mercy and humanity of scientists that keeps them all from giving up.
Someone (not me) ought to re-write an Atlas Shrugged but with the religious impulse as its source of evil. Screw John, Hank, and Dagny. A truly interesting book would feature Yochiru Nambu, Yves Chauvin, and Günter Blobel.
The problem with this idea, usually put forth by members on the religious side of the discussion, is that science answers one set of questions, the mechanics of the problem, while religion attempts to discern the "meaning behind existence," as if we could possibly know it. This idea is incoherent because it presumes there is absolutely no overlap. But there's a third questions both religion and science ask, and no one ever wants to look at that one too closely because it destroys the non-overlapping argument. That question is "did."
In science, a theory is a well-reasoned statement describing a collection of phenomena in such a way that it embraces all the known phenomena; we call such a theory robust. A theory that also suggests future lines of investigation, and when those investigations continue to affirm the theory, the theory is said to be "reliable." Newton's theory was robust, but not reliable; Einstein's theory, which replaced it, is robust and reliable. Darwin's theory of descent with modification by variation and natural selection has proven both robust and reliable, but his theory of vertical lineage has been tossed out in favor of a theory that embraces horizontal gene transfer and evironmental factors and a whole host of other purely naturalistic tricks evolution has crafted out of the chemistry and physics available.
A theory can find itself completely discarded by one well-described counter-example. It rarely happens that one is enough to discard a well-established theory, but it happens all the time at the level of individual experiments. A scientist crafts an experiment or field observation to demonstrate some principle he wishes to affirm. He collects mounds of data. And then one day someone just as bright-eyed looks at his data, comes up with an equally plausible explanation or, worse, finds a subset of data that shows that his explanation is even more plausible overall, and that theory is thrown out. The steady-state universe, plate techtonics, even medical hygiene, are historical examples of this at work. It doesn't happen overnight; Thomas Khun documented the idea of the "paradigm shift," and how it can sometimes take a generation for the previous body of knowledge to be revised in the face of evidence only the young are willing to examine closely.
At its bedrock, however, all science investigation requires that the universe itself be robust and reliable. Cosmologists usually use the terms "mundane" and "regular," but they mean the same thing: a mundane universe is one where the laws of physics as we understand them are the exact same everywhere and everywhen for everyone; a regular universe is one where those laws don't change, ever, for anyone, for any reason or no reason. The universe must be this way: otherwise, any observation is suspect, and can be challenged, and we have no reason to trust our senses, our observations, and our conclusions.
Intelligent Design is a threat to science not merely because it encouraged deception and despair in the face of hard problems; it is a threat to science because its adoption in one science, biology, would taint all of science with the suspicion that the world is truly contingent upon the whims of the tinkering designer, and at any moment our expectations of a robust and reliable universe could be betrayed. It is not just that we have no reason to believe that Darwinian evolution is true; we would have no reason to believe the Earth orbits the Sun or that airplanes aren't held in the sky by fairies.
Brinton's "religion" is probably the abstract, parallel-universe religion of high-end theology, where "God" is so far removed from daily life he may as well not exist, except as the guideposts to a better life of some kind. Most people seem to want an interventionist God, one that does stuff. They want a God that sends people wandering in the desert for 40 years, rains fire from the skies, and created an unwed teenage mother in Galilee. The problem is that a God that does stuff violates the regularity of the universe. When someone says, "did it?" science has to say no, and without reservation. Anything else is incoherent. There can be no counter-example accepted as fact, because one counter-example destroys all knowledge forver.
Scientists have already told states that adopt ID teaching that they're taking their convention dollars and going home. Louisiana has lost two contracts with science groups this year looking to book convention space in New Orleans. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if it isn't the mercy and humanity of scientists that keeps them all from giving up.
Someone (not me) ought to re-write an Atlas Shrugged but with the religious impulse as its source of evil. Screw John, Hank, and Dagny. A truly interesting book would feature Yochiru Nambu, Yves Chauvin, and Günter Blobel.
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