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.
Yes, the impossibility of keeping the entirety of the law (though some people got close in human terms) was intended to show the need of a Savior.
My memory of history classes (near ancient by now) says that anti-trust legislation first came about to control John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.
That's the memory I'm operating on, but if it is wrong or not entirely right, then I'm willing to listen.
There is no reason to think that the stories were not written down immediately near the events. After all, these were literate people. The archeology of the regions reveals all kinds of writings, methods, transcriptions, scribes, etc.
The canonization took place a LEEEEETLE further back than the KJV translation. Lol.
Thank you. We agree.
And since prophecy was guided by a prophetically active God, He made sure that what did get written down was right. So even if the story had lived on to that time only orally and had gotten cockeyed, the biblical inspiration would not be wrong. That would be like hearing a rumor than having someone who was in on the original event tell you exactly what happened.
From that statement I would have to conclude that you believe either:
1) God is impotent
2) God is Evil or
3) God does not exist.
Which is it?
On the conrtrary - PC is the perfect description of ID.
ID ignores all evidence, because it's entirely outcome-based. It's not interested in the truth, only about promoting its political agenda.
At its heart, ID is about emotion over reason, and about not hurting anyone's feelings. That's PC.
ID is nothing more than the Religious Right's version of Political Correctness, and is every bit as silly and as dangerous as the original.
On the conrtrary - PC is the perfect description of ID.
ID ignores all evidence, because it's entirely outcome-based. It's not interested in the truth, only about promoting its political agenda.
At its heart, ID is about emotion over reason, and about not hurting anyone's feelings. That's PC.
ID is nothing more than the Religious Right's version of Political Correctness, and is every bit as silly and as dangerous as the original.
I mean, then having
I said designer. My understanding is that ID is not a religious concept.
I would couclude, assuming that all of life is deliberately and consciously designed, that the space alien designers are evil.
Excellent point. It's not like God was unaware of what had transpired.
It is clear from scripture that Moses was an educated man, and it is clear that writing was used in Egypt. The bible pictures him as literate.
It isn't when it is going to be taught in science class, but it is when it isn't going to be taught in science class.
If ID is taught in schools, I think that obvious conclusion will simply jump out of any discussion of predation, parasites and disease. Any sane person would conclude that the designer of such a system must be psychopathic.
Do you accept as truth the first 10 words of the Bible?
Or does the Bible start out by telling lies?
God made a way for beings to choose either to evil or good. He can certainly do whatever He pleases, but He has chosen not to be a puppeteer or a manufacturer of robots. The creation is in a tension between the goodness of God and the evil chosen first by some of the angels, then later by mankind. Satan has a say for a little while, but the creation is redeemed in the end.
So which is it? 1, 2 or 3?
This would be a good topic for a philosophy class. The concepts aren't that difficult.
Is God evil, impotent or non-existent?
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