Why intelligent design will change everything

Last year, the intelligent design movement burst onto the national scene, causing all manner of outrage from the guardians of science and right thinking. All the major media covered this upstart idea challenging Darwinian evolution's theory of the origin of life. Everybody has been piling on, even conservative pundits like George Will and Charles Krauthammer. The cultural elites were appalled when the yahoos on the Kansas Board of Education voted to "teach the controversy" to high-school students. In Dover, Pa., a judge outlawed the mere mention of I.D. theory in school science classes. Like a fierce game of whack-a-mole, wherever I.D.'s politically incorrect head pops up, its opponents rush to smack it back down.

I am enjoying all this tremendously. What makes it so much fun to watch is that so far not one of the critics understands it. Without exception, they simply dismiss I.D. theory as nothing more than stealth religion – creationism by another name. They say that all I.D. does is insert God to explain what science has not yet figured out. While they all lose their collective minds about it, warning darkly that the fundamentalists are coming, support for I.D. theory will continue to grow because it is good science. I want to explain why, so that when you hear the intelligentsia loudly denouncing it, you, too, can have a good laugh. Even better, you will understand why intelligent design theory is going to become a major force for good in the battle to rescue our collapsing culture – because the way we think about origins affects the way we think about nearly everything. (More on that later.)

Meanwhile, the debate rages on, all the while opponents keep insisting there is no debate.

Despite its pretensions to objectivity, science has always been political. That's why scientific revolutions have often met initially with resistance and ridicule, because the old order stands to lose if the new becomes accepted. But the great thing about science is that eventually the weight of evidence breaks through. Think Galileo (opposed not only by the church but by fellow academics), or Lister (ridiculed for disinfecting surgical rooms to prevent infection), or the Wright Brothers (man will never fly). So all this hand wringing about intelligent design is a good sign that the revolution is under way. The old order is being challenged, and they are freaking out.

First, what I.D. theory is not: It is not creationism. Full disclosure here: I am a creationist. As a Christian, I believe God is the author of life. But I.D. theory is a science-driven enterprise. It is not a deduction from Scripture but an inference from observation. It says that the intricate design found in living things and in the universe itself is best explained by an intelligent cause. Darwinism, on the other hand, says that undirected natural processes led life to arise spontaneously; then evolution by natural selection (survival of the fittest) resulted in living things that appear to be designed, but really aren't. The question boils down to this: When considered objectively, where does the evidence actually lead?

Drawing heavily on Nancy Pearcey's great apologetic book "Total Truth," I'm going to focus on two of the most powerful arguments for intelligent design. Her book contains many more. I wish every Christian (and every thinking person) would read her masterful defense of Christianity as total truth about all of reality. But just reading this column will make you far more knowledgeable about I.D. than nearly all of its opponents.

It's true that by far the dominant theory of origins is the evolutionary one. It goes something like this: It all began billions of years ago in some sort of chemical soup (a "warm little pond," as Darwin put it) which, when zapped with an energy source, led to the chance formation of amino acids. These acids somehow self-organized into proteins and then morphed into the first living cell. All living things descended from that first cell, evolving from simple into increasingly complex organisms, all the way up to man.

In Darwin's time this was easier to imagine, because it was thought that cells were mere blobs of protoplasm. It fit in nicely with his idea that life could have first appeared as a simple cell. There's just one problem. We now know that there is no such thing as a "simple" cell. Recent advances in microbiology have demonstrated that the cell is literally a miniature factory town, with its own chemical library containing blueprints that are copied and transported to molecular assembly lines that manufacture everything the cell needs. Nancy Pearcey compares it to "… a large and complex model train layout, with tracks crisscrossing everywhere, its switches and signals perfectly timed so that no trains collide and the cargo reaches its destination precisely when needed."

Just one cell is vastly more complex than anything ever created by human engineering. And your body contains 300 trillion of them, each one "knowing" exactly what it is supposed to do within itself and in relation to all the other cells.

Microbiologist Michael Behe has coined the term "irreducible complexity" to describe this. That is, the cell consists of coordinated, interlocking parts that must all be in place simultaneously, or it won't function at all. You can't improve the cell through one random mutation at a time because if you change any one aspect, the whole thing will crash. For evolutionary change to occur, every single piece of its Rube Goldberg-like factory would have to mutate at exactly the same time, and each single mutation would have to be beneficial, or the cell would just die.

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

"An aggregate structure, like a pile of sand, can be built up gradually by simply adding a piece at a time. ... By contrast, an organized structure, like the inside of a computer, is built up according to a pre-existing blueprint."

Since living systems are organized wholes, they had to have been put together in the first place by a pre-existing design.

Darwinists cannot explain irreducible complexity. They keep saying that it poses no problem for evolution, as if repetition would make it so. They insist that just because we don't yet understand how evolution can work in light of this doesn't mean that we won't figure it out eventually. But they will never figure it out, because irreducible complexity makes evolutionary change at the cellular level logically impossible.

(Note: Natural selection clearly occurs within species as an adaptive mechanism. I.D. theory does not deny or even address this, nor does it address the question of whether natural selection could lead to the development of entirely new species. I.D. theory is concerned with the origin of life only.)

Even more powerful evidence comes from the genetic code. DNA is a kind of language consisting of four chemical "letters" that combine into an astonishing variety of sequences to spell out a message. It contains a mind-boggling amount of information. Where did it come from?

Darwinists say that DNA resulted from chance mutations operated on by natural selection. Really? As theologian Norm Geisler quipped:

"If you came into the kitchen and saw the alphabet cereal spilled out on the table, and it spelled out your name and address, would you think the cat knocked the cereal box over?"

In fact, chance events tend to scramble information, like typos in a page of text. Even if some kind of more complex molecule somehow did appear in the supposed chemical soup, the same random processes that produced it would continue to insert "typos," soon scrambling any coherent message that might have occurred. Again, it's not that we don't yet understand how chance could create complex information; it's that in principle this cannot happen.

If chance cannot do it, perhaps some yet-undiscovered physical law can. That's what scientists excited about complexity theory are hoping. They are studying self-organizing structures like snowflakes and crystals, searching for clues to how similar natural processes might also give rise to the complex information found in DNA. But they won't find any.

That prediction stems not from ignorance or hubris, but from the nature of physical laws, which by definition are regular and repeatable. Those properties enable the brilliant engineering students at MIT to enjoy shoving a piano off seven story high Baker House roof every year. They know that gravity makes things fall, every time.

But the information found in DNA is quite different. When you decode one section it tells you nothing about what comes next. The letters are free to combine into an unimaginably vast quantity of information. By contrast, the physical laws being explored in complexity theory are simple instructions, able to create complex patterns but not much information – certainly not enough to account for the fact that each cell in your body contains more information than the entire Encyclopedia Britannica.

This is not at all like saying man will never fly because God didn't give him wings. It's not that I.D. theorists can't imagine how a physical law could create information. It's because in principle, law-like processes cannot generate complex information. Some things really are impossible.

It turns out that life is not primarily about matter, but information. Commenting on the failed attempts to create life in the lab, astrophysicist Paul Davies writes:

"Trying to make life by mixing chemicals in a test tube is like soldering switches and wires in an attempt to produce Windows 98. It won't work because it addresses the problem at the wrong conceptual level."

Common sense tells us that information does not occur without an intelligence to organize it, any more than the hardware of a computer can create its own software. Even scientists know this. Otherwise, how could SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) researchers ever hope to distinguish between radio signals generated by some natural process and those sent from the hoped-for aliens? Again, we see that the most plausible explanation for the information in DNA is an Intelligent Designer put it there.

But for Christians, we knew that, didn't we? "In the beginning was the Word (Logos)." Behind everything is the Logic, the Wisdom, the Intelligence of God.

Currently, only a minority of scientists holds to intelligent design theory, but the number is growing. To date, over 400 scientists have signed a document entitled "Scientific Dissent from Darwinism." Many of these scientists are not Christian, and some are outright hostile to it, which is further evidence that I.D. is not religion. A scientific revolution is just beginning, but almost nobody recognizes it, least of all its opponents.

And not a moment too soon, since evolutionary theory did not stay in the scientific realm but oozed into all the sciences, the liberal arts and out into culture, with horribly destructive results. The biblical view of man as a spiritual being created in God's image has been replaced by the view that man is nothing more than a highly evolved animal struggling to survive in a meaningless universe. Scratch any social ill and you will find Darwinism underneath.

One of the worst consequences has been the devaluation of human life. It is no exaggeration to say that Darwinism has led to the killing of untold millions of human beings. To highlight just a few examples: eugenics (philosophical Darwinism) inspired Margaret Sanger to found Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion movement. Eugenics helped Hitler convince an entire country to follow him in his attempt to wipe out the "inferior" Jews, not to mention the toll in blood it took to stop him. These days Peter Singer, a Princeton professor of bioethics, advocates that parents be allowed to dispatch their imperfect infants up to 30 days after birth. The misguided "right to die" movement is rapidly becoming the "right to kill" movement, as last year we watched severely disabled (but not dying) Terri Schiavo starve to death by court order, while a large portion of the country approved of it. Meanwhile, more than a million babies continue to be aborted every year. None of these horrors could have occurred in a culture that understood each human life to be a unique creation of God, stamped with his image.

Darwinism is also behind the sexual revolution (just doing what comes naturally), radical feminism, family breakdown and normalization of homosexuality (gender roles are social constructs we can discard as we "evolve" as a society). Darwinism removed the foundation for a transcendent moral Truth that stands outside of our personal preference. Now we make it up as we go, "re-imagining" everything. Even many Christians consider their faith to be purely personal. It's "true for me, but maybe not for you." No wonder assertions that Jesus is the only way to God meet with such outrage. And why so-called progressives are deeply offended when Christians try to bring into the public square what they view as nothing more than our particular rabbit's foot. Rejection of God is the root cause of our cultural degradation, but Darwinism has been its indispensable support, giving intellectual cover for all the evil we want to do.

But intelligent design is on the move, and this is a great gift to everyone, especially Christians. It's only a matter of time before it becomes accepted as a legitimate competing theory of origins, and as it does it will unleash enormous changes for good, not only in science but all of culture – because if people understand that there is (or at least could be) a Designer, then we can once more ask, what is the purpose of that design? What are things for?

For example, conservatives and Christians are having a difficult time making the case against homosexual marriage. Thousands of years of exclusively heterosexual marriage mean nothing to those with a Darwinist worldview. Why, they are far more evolved than those benighted cultures in the misty past. To them, tradition is oppressive; destroying it is progress. Why shouldn't people be able to "love" whomever they want? How will it hurt your marriage?

The truth is that homosexual marriage is wrong because it violates God's design and purpose for us, with inevitably negative consequences. But for an exercise in frustration, just try to discuss design with someone steeped in the evolutionary mindset. Point out the functional biological differences between male and female, and they will dodge, deny or change the subject. Press the issue, and they will become angry at your attempt to "impose" your personal values. What they will never do is engage the substance of your argument. They can't. Their worldview will not allow them to admit the obvious.

Multiple research studies documenting the need that children have for a mom and a dad are probably the best defense we've got, but in a nation full of divorced or never married single parents, and with a media quick to promote "gay" families, it's a tough slog. So far, a majority of the public opposes homosexual marriage, but it's mostly instinctive and traditional. People say things like, "I wasn't raised that way." But younger generations, raised on books like "Heather Has Two Mommies" and subjected to Darwinist dogma throughout their schooling, have no tradition left to hold them. And any common-sense instinct they might have to resist faces an incessant cultural onslaught that brands such thoughts as hateful prejudice.

For the older generations, watching defenders of marriage viciously attacked in the press is very confusing. Having never reasoned out something so basic as marriage, they, too, will begin to doubt themselves. Unless something dramatic changes, public opposition will eventually crumble, and we will see the destruction of marriage as one more nail in the cultural coffin we are building for ourselves.

If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying that when ID suggest it was done by "something unexplainable", they advocate that as an answer,

Pretty much, yes.

and do not advocate further research.

Well, not exactly. They "advocate further research" in the abstract, but haven't proposed any which would actually be able to help support their beliefs. At most they've advocated ID fans doing the same kinds of research that biologist already do and have done, but with an eye towards seeing how the results can be "re-interpreted" in an ID-friendly way.

Scientist do not accept the absence of explanation as proof of a designer. Is this correct?

Yes, exactly. Nor is the absence of an explanation "proof of a designer" in any way -- see the link in my last post to you for details. That's not just the view of "scientists", it's the only view that makes sense epistemologically. Here are some excerpts from prior posts of mine which explain that in more detail:

And no, various attempted attacks *against* evolution do not constitute one shred of evidence *for* "intelligent design" -- epistemology does not work that way. Even if they ever managed to "prove" evolution incorrect (and good luck on *that* one), it would in no way provide support *for* "intelligent design", since *both* explanations could be wrong. "ID" is not the "default theory" -- it doesn't "win" by making any other potential explanation "lose". ID can only be supported by producing evidence or tests which actually *support* ID directly, not by trying to poke holes in evolutionary biology.

And:

If additional facts are compiled they MAY either prove or disprove spontaneous generation, and if they prove spontaneous generation is not possible, then QED a Creator must exist.
WRONG!
The IDers keep making this fallacy over and over again, and never seem to grasp their error no matter how many times it has been explained to them.
They keep laboring under the mistaken impression that evidence *against* evolution -- or in this case against "spontaneous generation" -- is somehow evidence *for* a conscious designer.
False. Wrong. Negatory.
That's not how epistemology works.
The short explanation for why is that it's the fallacy of the false dichotomy to think that there are only two possible explanations: 1. spontaneous generation, 2. a designer, and that if either one is shown false, then the other one "must" be true by default. Nope.
They could *both* be wrong.
I can think of at least half a dozen alternative hypotheses for where life might have come from. It's hardly like "a designer" is the only possible explanation left if "spontaneous generation" were somehow to be ruled out.
"QED" my butt... Go back to whomever taught you how to construct a proof, and demand a refund.
Evidence *against* another hypothesis is not evidence *for* a creator. Period. The only thing that would count as evidence for a creator is, dumroll please, actual evidence *for* a creator. You know, results which are characteristically consistent with the predictions made by the creator hypothesis, and which distinguish it from the alternatives. Got any?
For further insights on this point, see Distinguishing rationalization from logic and associated links.

And:

You can't "support" ID through a process of elimination, nor by invoking the "appeal to ignorance" fallacy (which goes, "since *I* can't think of any other way this could have happened, it *must* have happened the one way I *can* think of...

And:

You certainly cannot test God scientifically. You can see His necessity in probability.
How in the heck do you figure *that*? Sorry, but epistemology doesn't work that way. See my earlier post and associated link. Furthermore, all you can demonstrate with probability is that your *current* model (note: probability calculations can only be performed on the basis of a *specified* model) does not adequately explain the phenomenon under examination. It can *not* be used to rule out *all* conceivable (much less inconceivable) alternative explanations of a natural or deterministic type, because there will always be possible mechanisms which you have not yet thought of. In short, the *only* way you could actually rule out all possible naturalistic methods via "probability" would be to be *omniscient* yourself. Good luck with that one. And barring that, you can *not* "see the necessity" of supernatural involvement "in probability".

And:

Furthermore, even if Behe *had* managed to prove something "unevolvable" by Darwinian evolution, that *still* wouldn't actually constitute "evidence of ID". All it would do is rule out Darwinian evolution as the origin of that structure. It would *not* provide positive evidence that the structure was therefore "designed", because any number of other natural processes (or non-Darwinian evolution), not yet discovered, which might have been responsible instead. Things in the real world don't work the way they do in Sherlock Holmes novels -- you can't find the truth by "eliminating all other possibilities", because there are an *infinite* number of other possibilities, including vast numbers you haven't thought of yet. The only way to actually have evidence *for* ID (as opposed to *against* evolution) is to find evidence which matches the characteristics that would be expected of designed things, specifically. For a trivial example, like a copyright notice embedded in DNA. Mere "complexity" or "functional complexity" isn't good enough, because various natural processes can and do produce this as well.

"Dissenting scientist then claim that due to statistical probabilities it is not." This had to do with the genetic code, if I remember. It could have been Behe's theory. I've read a lot, oh and thanks for the link. What I read was that the probabilities of the genetic code emerging as it has without aid indicated it could not be. I found differing opinions on both sides.

The only opinion that makes sense is this one: It is *way* premature to try to attempt any "probability calculation" of such an event -- not if you're interested in getting anything that is even remotely likely to resemble reality. In order to do a reliable probability calculation, you have to know all processes which could in any way contribute to the event. And that just isn't known to a sufficient degree right now.

As a sidebar, it's interesting to point out that science can often establish that something *has* occurred, far sooner and more easily than it can reach the point when it is capable of accurately calculating the *probability* of occurring. The latter requires a far more complete amount of knowledge thant he former. For example, it's easy to determine if a rockslide has occurred on a mountainside (just find the rockpile, and the spot up the hill where fresh rock is exposed from where the fallen rocks broke off) -- but's nearly impossible to rigorously calculate the odds of those particular rocks falling off at that particular moment, unless you know the position and condition of almost every grain of rock within fifty feet of the site of the rockslide, *and* the exact weather and temperature conditions over the past several days, *and* a huge amount of precise knowledge about the behavior of nonhomogenous rock materials under a wide range of conditions, etc. etc. etc.

Here I am referring to something I am testing. There are those who believe in a designer, and evolution and are willing to speculate that the designer is the one who arranged our universe, with all of it's laws and elements, and allowed these things to work in the way the the designer designed. When expressing this as only a "possibility" I have encountered great resistance.

Hmm, that hasn't been my experience. Could you provide some specific examples?

At some point we all wonder how did it begin, to which no one has the answer.

No one has a complete answer, certainly.

The reason I have asked this question is because of this, supposedly evolution does not address the origin of life.

Right to a first approximation, although it might be more complicated than that.

I put up a post yesterday that stated "If you are of the opinion that evolution does not address the origins of life then this post is not directed at you." I immediately had some who suggested that it did because evolution is linked to abiogenesus.

I don't see the post which you are referring to. The only two posts of yours which fit that description are #255 and #269, and I don't see replies to either one which say that "evolution is linked to abiogenesis", either explicitly or implicitly.

Then it was carried one step further with hypothesis about how favorable conditions emerged on Earth, all the way back to what set it all in motion, which "we don't know".

I don't see that post either, so I can't really comment on it.

Thus, leaving me to ask, "Could it have been by a designer?" No, there may not be evidence, but I was surprised at the great resistance there was to the smallest, tiny weenie, suggestion that there could be.

Various people with have resistance to various ideas for any number of reasons. You shouldn't be surprised. If you want to know their reasons for resistance in a specific case, you should ask them about it.

This was the reason I asked (and I worded this wrong, as science does not object, I meant scientist,) if scientist are reluctant to even hit at the possibility because they feel that it will be used to look at other areas of evolution for reevaluation.

No, they're not. I suppose there may be a few individual scientists somewhere who might feel that way, but on the whole scientists as a group have a driving curiosity to learn how things really work, how they really *are*, and are open to following any promising lead wherever it may go. If positive evidence is found indicating tweaking by some non-human intelligence -- or even just the *existence* of a non-human intelligence -- the great majority of all the scientists I know would be thrilled to death at the new discoveries and the new possibilities. Likewise, if anything (not just an "ID" discovery, but *any* kind) occurs which raises questions about the reliability of any part of evolutionary biology, scientists will be the *first* to go back over everything with a fine-toothed comb to see what needs to be reworked.

Does science continue to test a theory indefinitely even if it is never disproved.

Pretty much, yes. Keep in mind that many things will "test" a theory without having to actually set out to do a "Test Theory X Today" experiment. Every new finding, every new piece of evidence, every new experiment, has the potential to cause problems for or contradict a theory you weren't even setting out to test. An experiment on, say, communication by laser modulation might unexpected produce an energy profile which raises questions about the laws of thermodynamics. One of the things which gives well-established theories the high degree of confidence which they have earned is the way in which they consistently fit hundreds of thousands of future observations which *could* in concept have not fallen within the boundaries of the theory, but did. Every time an electronics engineer builds a new circuit and it works, it "tests" the theories of electrical behavior, and yet again finds them reliable. And yet, tomorrow someone may build a circuit which, by its particular configuration, doesn't work as expected and reveals an unknown quirk or gap in existing theories.

At what point would a theory be considered accepted science if this is the case?

At the point where it has been found to be reliable and consistently accurate through many trials of repeated testing and repeated potential falsifications. That doesn't mean we ever stop checking that it continues to properly match new findings, however, and it doesn't mean that we might not find special conditions under which it needs to be adjusted (such as how Newton's laws of motion have been adjusted to deal with how things behave differently at relativistic velocities).

"Even if these conditions can be found in nature, who is to say that scientist are not merely reproducing a smaller version of a previously performed experiment, and verifying it's results?" This can't be answered. It's just something to ponder. My thought was that the entire science behind evolution has reproduced an experiment(us) set in place by an intelligent design.

Well, anything's possible, perhaps.

["But even if you had chosen a better example, the point is that no, people are not ridiculed for "suggesting" various things (unless those suggestions are clearly already contradicted by the available evidence -- try "suggesting" that the Earth is flat and see how much respect you get). They do, however, get ridiculed for making *false* claims about things that are already known (e.g. IDers making false accusations about evolutionary biology), or for *falsely* claiming that their "suggestions" are on par with established science or that their "suggestions" *are* themselves a science. This too the IDers frequently do, and frequently (and rightfully) get snickered at for it"]

I disagree here. People are ridiculed all the time for suggesting beliefs, disproved or not, that are different than what is accepted by their peers. That is part of this study.

Well, that's human nature -- people are often derisive about ideas other than the ones they and their peers have accepted as "beyond question" for a long time. Here's one of my favorite quotes on that:

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910)

But in my comments above I wasn't speaking of mankind in general, but about scientists in particular (since the majority of your questions concerned their views). And while scientists can certainly be as "human" as anyone, for the most part they're pretty open -- more than most people -- to "suggestions of possibility" as you say. After all, pondering new possibilities, even far-out ones, is what they do for a living, and the whole hypothesis part of the scientific method involves coming up with as many variant possibilities and suggestions as can be imagined, in the hopes that one of them will hit gold and be the real explanation, or at least close enough to it to get research onto the right track.

However, there's a flip side to that, as I alluded to above -- scientists are *also* by training ruthless in trashcanning "suggestions" which don't fit the available evidence, thus my comment about how "false claims about things which are already known" will garner ridicule. And scientists, at least within their own fields, know a great amount of the available evidence, and thus there's a good chance that a "suggestion" from a layman will already have been ruled out by the evidence, and get a dismissive reception instead of a friendly, "well, gosh, that *might* be true, who are we to say?"

You would call it science if it were discovered that we were the product of Intelligence from elsewhere, but would you say we were the product of intelligent design?

I wouldn't have any problem with that phrasing in that case, unless it turned out that we were "the product of intelligence" by some *non*design process, which is at least in concept possible. For example, we could have been an unintentional byproduct of some other product which itself might have been designed.

I suspect that Lewis was being facetious in this analogy.

Unfortunately, I suspect he wasn't. He just didn't see how any "accidental" process could have been significantly different and more productive than any other, such as the dropping of a milk jug.

It seems his point was to demonstrate that if we all are the result of a bunch of twists and turns by nature then are we special and unique, or do we just think we are.

That seems to be quite a different question than the one he actually asked. And I would answer that even the results of a "bunch of twists and turns by nature" are special and unique.

One more question, as you have been more civil than most, (although I do sense a bit of irritation, I'm not certain that sensing would qualify as a means of research. I am not certain I can disprove your jolliness)

LOL!

Okay the question. What do scientist think of other fields of study, such as philosophy, art, history and religion and how they relate to our observation of things. I had one say that science was the only meaningful method in which to observe, and religion provided nothing useful to the universe. Is this your opinion as well?

That's a pretty broad question, I'm not sure what corner of it to start on. "Philosophy, art, history and religion" certainly have meaning to us, and as such are hardly "nothing useful". But when it comes to the question of methods which have produced useful and productive and reliable knowledge about how reality operates, I think it's safe to say that nothing comes anywhere close to science. Mankind had "philosophy, art, history and religion" for tens of thousands of years, but progress was mostly hit or miss, and many civilizations managed to lose whatever they had managed to gain in the way of accumulated knowledge. It's only since science became a way of doing things around the mid 1600's that human knowledge about how things work has exploded and grown exponentialy. As I wrote in a prior post on another thread:

This realization first because widespread around 1650, and the people who began working out the methods which produced reliable knowledge were at first known as "natural philosophers", and later as "scientists". And their methods of deriving knowledge, testing it for reliability, weeding out subjective bias, and seeking out new directions in which to search became known as "the scientific method".
And it has worked fantastically well. It has produced more successful, useful knowledge about the Universe in a few hundred years than philosophy, religion, magical incantations, and all other attempted methods of controlling the Universe had managed to achieve in a hundred thousand years. It has enabled mankind to do things which not long ago were considered sheer fantasy, in the realm of pure magic: We can fly through the air, we can speak instantly to people on the other side of the planet. We can have discussions with people we've never met, in places we don't know (hi!). We can watch the Earth from the sky and watch hurricanes crawl across the oceans. We can peer inside the human body as it operates without cutting into it. We can walk on the Moon. We can store and replay sights and sounds for all time. We can control the lightning and make it do our bidding. We can cure diseases, mend limbs, restore sight, extend lifetimes. All this and much, much more that would have been pure sorcery, complete impossibilities, only a few lifetimes ago.
You say, "If you have solved [the 'problem' of being 'sure' that our knowledge 'corresponds to objective reality'], then please enlighten us all because all of the great thinkers in history have failed." No, they haven't failed at all. The "great thinkers in history" have developed science. And it has succeeded beyond any of their wildest dreams.
Can we "be sure", can we *prove* that the knowledge learned via science is perfectly in accord with "objective reality"? No, but then we've found that there's no need to. Science does not deal in "proofs". It doesn't need them. Only fools insist upon certainty, upon absolutes, for there are none to be found in this world -- not even in religion, because there are no guarantees that your chosen religion, or your chosen interpretation of your religion, is a right one, or a misguided mistake. The only "certainties" to be had, for those who can't live without a complete lack of doubt, are the false "certainties" of adopting a belief without "proof" and then just utterly refusing to entertain any notions that it could possibly be in error. We've all certainly seen our share of that kind of mindset in action.
But if it's *real* knowledge you want -- the kind that, if perhaps not 100% correct (and there'd be no way to be sure even if it was), is at least within close enough proximity to "the" truth to *work* as if it's "the real deal", then science is the way to acquire such knowledge. It's a collection of tried-and-true methods, and the resulting body of reliably-obtained knowledge, which have been tested, validated, checked, rechecked, and cross-checked against that *objective reality*, and uses the reality -- the real world -- as the final arbiter of which methods and which knowledge *fits* when measured against the yardstick of reality itself.
Atomic Theory may not be "objectively true" -- in reality matter may not "really" be made of atoms. But it *behaves* as if it is, and it responds to our manipulations as if it were, and that *itself* is real. It's real, useful, practical knowledge about reality.

T hanks so much for answering all this!!!!!!!

You're welcome!

I really do appreciate it!!!!!!!

And I appreciate honest questions, asked with a genuine desire to learn from the answers. That's unfortunately rare.

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