Posted on 11/10/2005 4:43:24 AM PST by Nicholas Conradin
In an election in Pennsylvania this week, voters tossed out eight members of the Pittsburgh school board who wanted Intelligent Design theory to be taught alongside evolution in school. But should Intelligent Design -- the theory that living organisms were created at least in part by an intelligent designer, not by a blind process of evolution by natural selection -- be taught in public schools? In one way, the answer to this question is simple: if it's a scientific theory, it should; if it's not, it shouldn't (on pain of flaunting the Establishment Clause). The question, however, is whether Intelligent Design (ID) is a scientific theory.
Opponents dismiss ID's scientific credentials, claiming that the theory is too implausible to qualify as scientific. But this reasoning is fallacious: a bad scientific theory is still a scientific theory, just as a bad car is still a car. There may be pedagogical reasons to avoid teaching bad scientific theories in our public schools, but there are no legal ones. The Constitution contains no interdiction on teaching bad theories, or for that matter demonstrably false ones. As long as theory is science and not religion, there is no legal barrier to teaching it.
To make their case, opponents of teaching ID must show not just that the theory is bad, but that it's not science. This raises a much more complicated question: What is science? What distinguishes genuinely scientific theories from non-scientific ones?
In one form or another, the question has bothered scientists and philosophers for centuries. But it was given an explicit formulation only in the 1920s, by Karl Popper, the most important 20th century philosopher of science. Popper called it "the problem of demarcation," because it asked how to demarcate scientific research and distinguish it from other modes of thought (respectable though they may be in their own right).
One thing Popper emphasized was that a theory's status as scientific doesn't depend on its plausibility. The great majority of scientific theories turn out to be false, including such works of genius as Newton's mechanics. Conversely, the story of Adam and Eve may well be pure truth, but if it is, it's not scientific truth, but some other kind of truth.
So what is the mark of genuine science? To attack this question, Popper examined several theories he thought were inherently unscientific but had a vague allure of science about them. His favorites were Marx's theory of history and Freud's theory of human behavior. Both attempted to describe the world without appeal to super-natural phenomena, but yet seem fundamentally different from, say, the theory of relativity or the gene theory.
What Popper noticed was that, in both cases, there was no way to prove to proponents of the theory that they were wrong. Suppose Jim's parents moved around a lot when Jim was a child. If Jim also moves around a lot as an adult, the Freudian explains that this was predictable given the patterns of behavior Jim grew up with. If Jim never moves, the Freudian explains -- with equal confidence -- that this was predictable as a reaction to Jim's unpleasant experiences of a rootless childhood. Either way the Freudian has a ready-made answer and cannot be refuted. Likewise, however much history seemed to diverge from Marx's model, Marxists would always introduce new modifications and roundabout excuses for their theory, never allowing it to be proven false.
Popper concluded that the mark of true science was falsifiability: a theory is genuinely scientific only if it's possible in principle to refute it. This may sound paradoxical, since science is about seeking truth, not falsehood. But Popper showed that it was precisely the willingness to be proven false, the critical mindset of being open to the possibility that you're wrong, that makes for progress toward truth.
What scientists do in designing experiments that test their theories is create conditions under which their theory might be proven false. When a theory passes a sufficient number of such tests, the scientific community starts taking it seriously, and ultimately as plausible.
When Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, the first thing he did was to make a concrete prediction: he predicted that a certain planet must exist in such-and-such a place even though it had never been observed before. If it turned out that the planet did not exist, his theory would be refuted. In 1919, 14 years after the advent of Special Relativity, the planet was discovered exactly where he said. The theory survived the test. But the possibility of failing a test -- the willingness to put the theory up for refutation -- was what made it a scientific theory in the first place.
To win in the game of science, a theory must be submitted to many tests and survive all of them without being falsified. But to be even allowed into the game, the theory must be falsifiable in principle: there must be a conceivable experiment that would prove it false.
If we examine ID in this light, it becomes pretty clear that the theory isn't scientific. It is impossible to refute ID, because if an animal shows one characteristic, IDers can explain that the intelligent designer made it this way, and if the animal shows the opposite characteristic, IDers can explain with equal confidence that the designer made it that way. For that matter, it is fully consistent with ID that the supreme intelligence designed the world to evolve according to Darwin's laws of natural selection. Given this, there is no conceivable experiment that can prove ID false.
It is sometimes complained that IDers resemble the Marxist historians who always found a way to modify and reframe their theory so it evades any possible falsification, never offering an experimental procedure by which ID could in principle be falsified. To my mind, this complaint is warranted indeed. But the primary problem is not with the intellectual honesty of IDers, but with the nature of their theory. The theory simply cannot be fashioned to make any potentially falsified predictions, and therefore cannot earn entry into the game of science.
None of this suggests that ID is in fact false. For all I've said, it may well be pure truth. But if it is, it wouldn't be scientific truth, because it isn't scientific at all. As such, we shouldn't allow it into our science classrooms. At least that's what the Constitution says.
The writer teaches philosophy at the University of Arizona.
Ergo the concept of God should not be removed as a possible variable in the discussion.
String theory _is_ falsifiable. It makes certain statements about the Universe which are disprovable -- in particular about Calabi-Yau shapes. There's a great account in Brian Greene's book on string theory about one such early test.
Saying it's not falsifiable means that either:
a) You don't know what you're talking about, in which case you shouldn't be blathering about this, or
b) You're deliberately lying to us, in which case God will boil you in magma for a billion years.
Don't have to. I know what I know. If it doesn't square with your beliefs, oh well. C'est la guerre.
"Ergo the concept of God should not be removed as a possible variable in the discussion."
Ergo the concept of God should not be introduced into a scientific discussion.
My beliefs are irrelevant. Yours do not square with the bible.
Okay, so when your ideas pass the rigors of peer review we'll include them in science class. Ya gots ta take your lumps same as everyone else.
Next time you get a message in the ether from Oprah, tell her I said hi to tom Criuse
The Kaiser, if I remember correctly, was a proper Evangelische. Hitler, on the other hand,
According to a press release from Catholic League President, William A. Donohue (2/4/99): "Hitler was a neo-pagan terrorist whose conscience was not informed by Christianity, but by pseudo-scientific racist philosophies. Hitler hated the Catholic Church, made plans to kill the Pope, authorized the murder of thousands of priests and nuns, and did everything he could to suppress the influence of the Church. In 1933, Hitler said, 'It is through the peasantry that we shall really be able to destroy Christianity because there is in them a true religion rooted in nature and blood.'" The Catholic League also quoted Hitler, in a 4/23/99 Op-Ed ad in the New York Times, as saying, "Antiquity was better than modern times, because it didn't know Christianity and syphilis." Ouch!http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhitlerchristian.html
In that time and in those places, slavery was a fact of life. It is a fact of life today. Who, other than christians, speak out against it?
Exodus 20 says God created the universe in 6 days and Exodus 21 says slavery is OK with God. So why are 'christians' speaking out against slavery but whole heartedly supporting 6 day creation?
And, as I said earlier, I do not consider the Bible the inerrant Word of God, so not squaring with the Bible has no effect on my arguments.
Certainly, though it might be a while as I don't chat with Oprah.
What is your operational definition of "kindness"? Are housecats and lions the same kind? Are tigers and lions?
Peer review is just that. It is not acceptance by those who oppose the theory. It is a review that establishes the theory is soundly based.
Do you really discount the hard work performed by those looking for another possible answer to this riddle have done? Do I need to name them and their positions?
Come on, it is a well developed theory that has been soundly fleshed out and explained. If you disagree with it, that's one thing. But you oughtn't try to discount it. I may not have faith in the view of God of other religions, but I'm not about to say that those who believe them do not have a reason to believe, or that their faith is somehow inferior to what I believe.
God never says slavery is ok. It exists, as sin exists, as a fact of life. To equate an evil in society with creation by a holy God is ludicrous.
I agree that the statistics have (on average) infidelity running from about 30% to 70%. That leaves plenty of room for some NOT to have committed that particular sin.
However, there are 10 (at least) commandments. That leaves 9 to stumble on.
I think the numbers on theft are far higher.
Coveting is probably universal, BUT, it, too, is one of the commandments.
Very revealing, yet you consider "chattings" that you perceive when driving, as the true word. My zeebra head is spinning, round and round
It is.
What IDers and creationists don't seem to understand, possibly because they don't spend much time looking at other areas of science, is that MOST competing scientific hypothese are put through a wringer by the scientific community before they are discarded, or in some cases accepted.
It's part of the scientific process. Those ideas that can survive rigorous scientific review move onwards ... those that don't do not deserve to. Sometimes the process can take a long time.
NO scientific opinion, no matter how much you want it to, should skip the whole process of scientific testing, review, and study, and be taught directly in the science classroom on an equal footing with currently accepted scientific theory.
If IDers are so certain their ideas are correct, they need to go through the prcoess. This doesn't include just showing evolution is wrong ... as that does not mean, necessarily, that ID is right.
Plenty of scientists in other fields than evolution have presented concepts and been considered crackpots until testing and evidence backed them up ... sometimes even after they died. Of course, many more scientists have been justifiably shown to be crackpots.
There are plenty of BAD ideas out there in science, that haven't been weeded out yet, and why should we allow ID in the door before it's proven it's not one of these bad ideas if we aren;t going to allow ANY hypothese any politically/financially/spiritually motivated group has before it's gone through the necessary steps?
God never says slavery is ok.
Once again...
Exodus 21:20-21: "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property"
Since this is the literal word of God and God says 'the slave is his property' it's follows that God thinks slavery is OK. There is no condemnation of slavery here.
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