Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Let's Have No More Monkey Trials - To teach faith as science is to undermine both
Time Magazine ^ | Monday, Aug. 01, 2005 | CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Posted on 08/01/2005 10:58:13 AM PDT by wallcrawlr

The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.

But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."

Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.

In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Schönborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.

This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.

How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.

To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: acanthostega; charleskrauthammer; creation; crevolist; faith; ichthyostega; krauthammer; science; scienceeducation; scopes; smallpenismen
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 1,701-1,7201,721-1,7401,741-1,760 ... 1,781-1,792 next last
To: Dimensio
What is "astronomical evolution"....

Let me try:

Astronomers say that there are 'black holes' out in space, that have such intense gravity that what ever gets sucked into them will NEVER get out - even light - thus the term 'bh'.

They ALSO say that ALL matter in the Universe came from an extremely small source, 15(?) billion years ago (the ULTIMATE bh I would say). The question then becomes: how can BOTH of these assertions be true? Thus 'astronomical evolution', if you will.

1,721 posted on 08/05/2005 3:32:53 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1709 | View Replies]

To: b_sharp
When you post material from a web site you should always post the link to the site. Otherwise people reading the post may think it is an original work.

Oops! I did not do that on the three references on reply #1651.

(I don't think folks here would be confused and think tht I had done all that work though ;^)


I just Googled® "PI king" and found them.

1,722 posted on 08/05/2005 3:40:56 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1659 | View Replies]

To: Elsie
GOES insane?

Ok, goes MORE insane. But is that possible?

1,723 posted on 08/05/2005 3:53:24 AM PDT by Casloy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1618 | View Replies]

To: Rockingham
I don't know that there is such an intrinsic "human sense of God." I know I don't have it. Every time I think about the issue, I would have to consciously choose to believe that there is such a thing as God, or my natural inclination is to neutrality on the question.

But, I think that the religious sense some people profess is traceable to a biological basis in brain chemistry dealing with inquisitiveness, fear, caution, and familial love.

Of course none of this even approaches the question of whether God exists or not. As I've said, that's why I'm agnostic on the question.

1,724 posted on 08/05/2005 4:47:22 AM PDT by WildHorseCrash
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1707 | View Replies]

To: Elsie

The original singularity is hypothetical and not a black hole. Black Holes evaporate. You know that right?


1,725 posted on 08/05/2005 5:30:56 AM PDT by spunkets
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1721 | View Replies]

To: Doctor Stochastic
Are you claiming that Mustafa Akyol (of BAV/Harun Yahya fame) was not brought to Kansas by the Conservative Republican members of the board?

Oh, you mean conservative Republicans? I thought you meant Christians. Well, are you not also a conservative Republican? If so, that means he was invited by folks speaking on your behalf as well.

1,726 posted on 08/05/2005 5:50:17 AM PDT by MEGoody (Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1690 | View Replies]

XenuDidit place mark


1,727 posted on 08/05/2005 5:51:09 AM PDT by dread78645 (Sorry Mr. Franklin, We couldn't keep it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 115 | View Replies]

To: MEGoody

Non-answer.

Do you approve or not? Simple question.

For the record, I disapproved; I do not approve of Republicans using tax money to hire Islamic extremists whether those doing the hiring are Christians or not.


1,728 posted on 08/05/2005 6:28:21 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1726 | View Replies]

To: Doctor Stochastic
Do you approve or not?

Approve of what specifically? Having this guy as a 'witness' for allowing the teaching of issues with the theory of evolution? No.

But you attempted to claim he spoke for 'us' then claimed the 'us' is conservative Republicans. If you claim he speaks for me, then you'd also have to claim he speaks for you - unless you are not a conservative Republican.

I do not approve of Republicans using tax money to hire Islamic extremists

Hiring? I don't see where the article says this guy was paid by anyone.

1,729 posted on 08/05/2005 8:03:27 AM PDT by MEGoody (Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1728 | View Replies]

To: spunkets

They do??

HOW??


1,730 posted on 08/05/2005 8:13:48 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1725 | View Replies]

To: Elsie
Ok, I answered my own question.
 I googled this, from here: http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/BHfaq.html#q9
 
 

How do black holes evaporate?
-----------------------------

This is a tough one. Back in the 1970's, Stephen Hawking came up with theoretical arguments showing that black holes are not really entirely black: due to quantum-mechanical effects, they emit radiation. The energy that produces the radiation comes from the mass of the black hole. Consequently, the black hole gradually shrinks. It turns out that the rate of radiation increases as the mass decreases, so the black hole continues to radiate more and more intensely and to shrink more and more rapidly until it presumably vanishes entirely.

Actually, nobody is really sure what happens at the last stages of black hole evaporation: some researchers think that a tiny, stable remnant is left behind. Our current theories simply aren't good enough to let us tell for sure one way or the other. As long as I'm disclaiming, let me add that the entire subject of black hole evaporation is extremely speculative. It involves figuring out how to perform quantum-mechanical (or rather quantum-field-theoretic) calculations in curved spacetime, which is a very difficult task, and which gives results that are essentially impossible to test with experiments. Physicists *think* that we have the correct theories to make predictions about black hole evaporation, but without experimental tests it's impossible to be sure.

Now why do black holes evaporate? Here's one way to look at it, which is only moderately inaccurate. (I don't think it's possible to do much better than this, unless you want to spend a few years learning about quantum field theory in curved space.) One of the consequences of the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics is that it's possible for the law of energy conservation to be violated, but only for very short durations. The Universe is able to produce mass and energy out of nowhere, but only if that mass and energy disappear again very quickly. One particular way in which this strange phenomenon manifests itself goes by the name of vacuum fluctuations. Pairs consisting of a particle and antiparticle can appear out of nowhere, exist for a very short time, and then annihilate each other. Energy conservation is violated when the particles are created, but all of that energy is restored when they annihilate again. As weird as all of this sounds, we have actually confirmed experimentally that these vacuum fluctuations are real.

 

Neat trick!


The Universe is a LOT trickier than we imagine; or CAN imagine.
1,731 posted on 08/05/2005 8:24:38 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1730 | View Replies]

To: backslacker
Special pleading.

Sure, the Bible isn't a geometry book, but why do you have the liberty of explaining away problems in the math with rims, etc., but the creation story has to be taken as literally true?

1,732 posted on 08/05/2005 8:33:08 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1713 | View Replies]

To: Elsie
"Oops! I did not do that on the three references on reply #1651.

I was talking to those that quote without references. You generally give references, especially when using the Bible.

1,733 posted on 08/05/2005 8:35:06 AM PDT by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1722 | View Replies]

To: spunkets; betty boop
Thank you for your post!

me: " "Methodological naturalism" is relatively new."

you: It's always been the way of science.

To the contrary, and as an example, consider the pre-Socrates philosopher/scientist Heraclitus (535 B.C.) whose view was that change is real and stability an illusion. Compare that philosophy to modern quantum field theory and the theories of Alfred Whitehead.

Here’s an outline of the ancient history of science

The term “methodological naturalism” has no history prior to the 1980’s when it was coined by the intelligent design theorists themselves. Since then, correspondents who mount a defense against intelligent design have attributed the concept back to the enlightment and even further, back to the Greek philosophers.

These historical revisions/interpretations are rather humorous to me since science was always a branch of philosophy and more correctly associated with episteme. As betty boop has pointed out several times, the German language itself preserves the meaning.

You might find the results of the NTSE conference at the University of Texas which involved some 120 scientists and philosophers to be informative:

Koonz: Final Report

Philosophers love to make distinctions, and I am no exception. One important distinction that emerged for me in the course of our discussions is that between dogmatic or apriori methodological naturalism (DMN) and empirically-based or conjectural methodological naturalism (EMN). DMN involves the claim that the very definition or inherent logic of science demands that it accord with the rule of making use only of naturalistic explanations (that is, explanations in terms of events and processes located within space and time). EMN, in contrast, is the claim that in the long run it will turn out that all successful scientific research programs are naturalistic ones, that science will converge upon methodological naturalism in the long run. EMN is based, not on the definition of science or on any supposed direct access to the essence of science, but upon the actual history of science. A defender of EMN has no objection to the practice of theistic science, nor to calling it "real science". He merely conjectures that such scientific enterprises will not in the end prove successful.

I hope that, as a result of our conference, the thesis of DMN will be seen, once and for all, as definitively refuted. It is to my mind significant that no one defended DMN, not even those, like Michael Ruse, who have endorsed it in the past. I think we can only conclude that the DMN thesis is now in full and hasty retreat, and will in the very near future have no serious defenders. DMN is to the theory of scientific methodology what young-earth creationism is to geochronology.

If I may, I would like to interject a few words of encouragement and advice to those who are considering whether to join one of the theistic paradigms of scientific research (here I am speaking only for myself, and not for the conference as a whole). I think that the primary reason why theistic research programs have not been undertaken in the recent past (i.e., the last 200 years or so) is not from lack of courage or lack of opportunity, but from lack of imagination. I would encourage scientists to think theistically, to adopt a theistic heuristic (if you'll pardon the alliteration). Christians of course have nothing to fear from scientific progress, but instead of merely contributing to the research programs launched and developed by our agnostic colleagues, we need to consider the possibility that as theists we can discover order and regularity, even natural laws of universal design, that our unbelieving colleagues do not see because they are not looking for them. We need to realize that theism is not only not a hindrance to good science, it may be a necessary condition for certain discoveries being possible at all.

John Lennox, a mathematician from Cardiff at the conference, made a very paradoxical, but I think prescient, remark. He suggested that, just as it is possible to be an ontological theist but a methodological naturalist, so is it possible to be an ontological naturalist and a methodological theist. John and I agree that much of current biology (in so far as functional and teleological claims are still current) is in fact methodologically theistic (if only covertly). As the theistic paradigm develops, there is every reason to hope that it will be joined by scientists who are personally agnostic but who recognize good science when they see it. Indeed, historians of science like Duhem and Whitehead have argued that the development of modern physical theory in the 14th through 18th centuries would have been impossible without the Christ-engendered conviction that the physical universe might prove to be intelligible to us.

A number of design theorists have made an analogy to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and I think the analogy is an apt one. We are currently spending millions of dollars searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in the absence of any data that such exists. In contrast, we already have considerable evidence of the existence of extra-cosmic intelligence (for example, in the anthropic coincidences), so surely a scientific search for additional evidence is warranted.

You continued ...

All those nonphysical objects you talking about are supported by real objects, or the mechanics of science-methodological naturalism. The nonphysical, does not support the physical. It's always the other way around.

To the contrary, there are many credible non-physical theories. For instance, that all existents in space/time are mathematical structures existing beyond space/time (Max Tegmark, Parallel Universes), that strings arise from the underlying geometry, that matter of all kinds arise in 4 dimensional space/time from higher dimensional dynamics and may indeed be multiply imaged (Wesson et al).

As a metaphor: in the wave/particle duality, you are insisting only the particle exists and is a valid subject for science.

To the contrary, I affirm that both wave and particle exist and we see one or the other based on the observer's aspect. In my view, the wave is much easier to comprehend (Heraclitus, quantum field theory, etc.) – the particle is like a placemarker. That you are not comfortable with the wave doesn't make my approach incorrect.

1,734 posted on 08/05/2005 8:54:01 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1710 | View Replies]

To: MEGoody

OK, good enough.

His expenses were paid according to newspaper reports.

The BAV and Harun Yahya have been involved with creationists groups in the US for years.


1,735 posted on 08/05/2005 9:10:20 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1729 | View Replies]

To: malakhi
My apologies, malakhi. I should have pinged you to my above reply to spunkets at 1734. I do have more in response to your previous posts, but I have to do some things at the moment, so it'll have to wait.
1,736 posted on 08/05/2005 9:24:24 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1734 | View Replies]

To: Alamo-Girl

I'll await your later reply, and will respond to both that and your 1,734 at the same time.


1,737 posted on 08/05/2005 10:20:23 AM PDT by malakhi
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1736 | View Replies]

To: malakhi; betty boop
I’m back for a little while but will have to leave and help with construction again this afternoon. The philosophy and history of science questions are addressed in the above post to spunkets, but here’s my brief response to the remainder of your post:

Not quite. They must be testable at least in principle. Whether or not we have the capability of testing it with current technology is irrelevant.

The theorists do not stop just because the theory cannot be tested by any method known to man nor do they insist on having an application for their theories.

Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann didn’t have an application for his geometry when he developed it in 1851. Einstein however was able to pull it off the shelf to describe general relativity five decades later. Georg couldn’t have guessed that consequence.

String theorists, algorithmic information theorists – all seeking a unification theory – have curiosity, a desire for understanding that exceeds our ability to confirm by empirical tests. Likewise, Penrose suggests we need a new kind of physics to bridge between the quantum and the classical Newton levels. Application and testing may well be for someone else.

I strongly aver that the quest for knowledge cannot be held back by what is testable in principle – and it will not be as long as physics and mathematics retain their epistemological zeal.

We seem to be disagreeing on the basic definition of what "science" is. Can you please define what "science" means in your usage of the term?

I am essentially equating science with empiricism. Mathematical physics, geometric physics, et. al, are 'science' to the extent that they generate testable hypotheses. If they do not generate testable hypotheses, then they are not 'physics' at all, but rather 'metaphysics'.

To the contrary, science originally was part of philosophy, the search for knowledge. Episteme is “the body of ideas that determine intellectual certain knowledge at any particular time”.

There must be an epistemic cut which keeps science from “poaching” on theology/philosophy as we define the terms today. But that cut ought to be with regard to the meaning.

For instance, it is within the domain of science to determine whether intelligence is a causative factor in adaptation, mutation and variation (e.g. selecting a mate) – and whether intelligence can emerge as a property from self-organizing complexity or be a fractal distribution between infinite and finite (e.g. a Mandelbrot set).

But attributing “meaning” to such statements is the domain of theology/philosophy.

Likewise, science is well within its bounds to explore and propose alternative cosmologies. But questions as to why something should exist instead of nothing at all is the domain of theology/philosophy.

Please note, I am not disregarding mathematics. But mathematics qua mathematics is not science. It is a tool.

And here we have a huge difference in world view. The most certain statements we can make concern physical reality are mathematical and yet we cannot say what mathematics “is”.

Mathematics is unreasonably effective. The physical world reveals the math, the math the physical world (dualities, mirror symmetry, etc.) - there is no materialistic excuse for mathematics.

And for whatever reason, geometry is all the more so unreasonably effective. At the root, geometry is the alternative explanation to the Higgs.

The theory of relativity is not non-physical…. It occurs to me that you are perhaps using "non-physical" in a Platonic sense. Sure, the Idea of the theory of relativity is 'non-physical', in the same way that the Idea of the number '1' is non-physical. Unfortunately, there are an infinite number of Ideas which do not conform to actual reality. Empiricism is the method we use to bridge the gap between Idea and Reality.

Indeed. All theories are non-physical. As betty boop would say, if anyone can point us to “the theory of relavity” or “the theory of evolution” wandering around on earth on four legs please do so.

Actually, the difference is nominalism v realism. Nominalism would say that universals do not exist. Realism says that they do.

You are making the assumption that 'methodological naturalism', in order to be consistent, must deny the existence of thought. I see no reason why this must be the case. The limitation of science to that which is testable is a 'game rule' of the scientific method. And we need not have a complete understanding of the nature of consciousness in order to do science.

The distinction is laid out rather neatly in the article by Koonz excerpted above. There is one type of “methodological naturalism” which is a presupposition – what he calls a dogma (DMN) which must be rejected because it biases the conclusions.

Again this comes back to your definition of 'science'. You want to broaden the definition to somehow encompass the non-physical and the supernatural. The problem is, the non-physical ("physical", here, encompassing everything within the physical universe: matter+energy+spacetime) and the supernatural cannot be tested.

I actually did not ask for the supernatural to be within the boundary of scientific inquiry. But no matter, I don’t want any unnecessary presuppositions going into any investigation in the sciences. Period.

me: No surprise, it's the only place they looked

you: If they looked elsewhere, what sort of answers might they find? And how could the accuracy of those answers be verified?

It would look like – and be subject to testing like - physics. Thus we have made the full circle in our side bar.

1,738 posted on 08/05/2005 10:25:31 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1712 | View Replies]

To: Elsie
I have more than once heard atheists insist that if Genesis or some other part of the Bible is wrong as narrative history or as science, then Christianity is fatally wrong and, by extension, God does not exist. The fundamentalist doctrine of Biblical inerracy invites such a position. On examination, the formative religious experience of many scientific atheists is their personal rejection of Biblical inerrancy and the narrow religious and cultural values of their family.

As a Catholic of the old school, the evolution debate often seems to me to be a fight not so much between faith and science as between fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist former Christians who became fundamentalist scientific materialists. "Take that, Mom and Dad! I threw over the traces when I went to college! I've drunk alcohol, danced, read Playboy, and dated loose wimmen! There were no lightning bolts from the sky to punish me and I've learned about e-vo-lu-tion!"
1,739 posted on 08/05/2005 10:35:11 AM PDT by Rockingham
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1719 | View Replies]

To: Alamo-Girl; spunkets; marron
DMN involves the claim that the very definition or inherent logic of science demands that it accord with the rule of making use only of naturalistic explanations (that is, explanations in terms of events and processes located within space and time).

Well, garbage-in, garbage-out. The premise is itself based on a premise: That we already know all there is to know about matter, causation, space, and time. Thus we know that the natural world of cause and effect is strictly confined to a band of three dimensions of space, which are evolving in time. Time is linear, moving from past to future. Matter just "does its thing," in accordance with the physical laws -- and we sure do know all of those by now, now don't we?

I strongly agree with you, Alamo-Girl, that this is not the understanding that science had of itself before about a 100 years ago. And so I disagree with spunkets, who wrote that methodological naturalism has "always been the way of science."

I really liked your excerpt from Koonz, and especially admired this remark:

"We need to consider the possibility that as theists we can discover order and regularity, even natural laws of universal design, that our unbelieving colleagues do not see because they are not looking for them. We need to realize that theism is not only not a hindrance to good science, it may be a necessary condition for certain discoveries being possible at all."

You cannot find anything you're not looking for. But What if? everything in the Universe does not reduce to material causes? If this were so, then because all science is looking for is material explanations, science would routinely fail to make accurate descriptions of the Universe. Koonz points to a failure of imagination in his critique of DMN; and I think he's right.

spunkets wrote: "The nonphysical, does not support the physical. It's always the other way around."

Is it? On what evidence does spunkett's confident claim rest?

Thank you so much, Alamo-Girl, for the great essay/post!

1,740 posted on 08/05/2005 11:00:06 AM PDT by betty boop (Nature loves to hide. -- Heraclitus)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1734 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 1,701-1,7201,721-1,7401,741-1,760 ... 1,781-1,792 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson