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.
Thought this would interest you:
“Further, he (the Pope) seems to be cautioning those who have been claiming Church endorsement of the full-bodied, design-defeating version of Darwin's theory of evolution, which, after all, is often little more than philosophical materialism applied to science,” added Chapman.
Chapman noted that in his very first homily as Pope, Benedict XVI had rebuked the idea that human beings are mere products of evolution, and that, like his predecessor, John Paul II, the new Pope has a long record of opposition to scientific materialism.
excerpt from: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=3015&program=News&callingPage=discoMainPage
As a matter of principle, religious or otherwise, are you opposed to the idea of slavery?
The famous atheist Robert Ingersoll was an abolitionist.
Cite?
;->
Perhaps you have him mixed up with his father. His father, John Ingersoll, was a famous abolitionist. His Father was also a preacher, so I suspect that any abolitionist ideas he got came from his father's pulpit. I can't seem to find any abolitionist writings by Robert Ingersoll. Perhaps you have some?
God tells me that you're missing most of His message, and He wishes you'd cut it out.
The stone tablets are not in Exodus 20. Where does it say the stone tablets contain this text?
Didn't stop Cuozzo, Gish, Taylor, Dowden, et al.
another essay. Google gets a lot of hits
No, actually, it's right to the point. The point is that creationists/literalists/etc. actually pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to actually adhere to, and which they're going to handwave away or ignore entirely. Most of the "God said it, that settles it" folks get awfully evasive when some of the less savory portions of the Bible are brought up for discussion. And most of the ones who don't hold positions (e.g. on slavery) that most conservatives would rightly find abhorrent.
What was spoken in Exodus 20 was placed on the tablets by the finger of God in Deuteronomy 9.
And the LORD delivered unto me two tables of stone written with the finger of God; and on them was written according to all the words, which the LORD spake with you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly. (Deu 9:10 KJV)
Do you accept the words of the 10 commandments?
Or are they just a bunch of hokey?
No pork?
Bummer ...
You'll pardon me if I don't accept a word that Madeline Murray O'Hair wrote. Hopefully you have better sources than that.
It is neither - it is just the simple, plain truth.
I guess kind of like these?
Exd 21:16 And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.
I guess.
Maybe you should start a thread.
So God disapproves of stealing other people's slaves too. Excellent.
How can I trust someone who only behaves because he is frightened of a God that I don't believe in? What if you guys get a crisis of faith?
I note the usual marxism from the creationist side in the rest of your response.
Exodus 21:16 actually refers to kidnapping.
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