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.
Fine.
The first step is that you truly from your heart confess Him as your Lord and Savior, and you will be born again. Upon your repentance and baptism into His body of believers He will begin the process of revealing Himself to you.
You might also consider the historical fact that all of history is now idexed and measured from the birth of Jesus Christ.
Obviously, there was something very special about Jesus if even secular historians uniformly use his birth as the reference point of all of history.
Can any reasonable person realy believe there was nothing special about such a person? It's not like he was the the first person to be crucified.
If the resurrection of Christ is not true, why would his disciples hide in fear after his crucifiction and then speak boldly and then suffer horrible deaths. Would anyone do that for a lie? No reasonable man could possibly think so; especially when it was all of them.
The question in play is whether one can make a general statement about the impossibility of proving a negative. The answer to that claim is "no." (Because one can produce examples where a negative statement can in fact be proved, as in math, the general claim is demonstrably untrue.)
This is not to say that one can always prove a negative -- I'm perfectly happy to accept that there are cases where one cannot do so. The problem comes when one tries to make a general claim.
That being the case, then any particular statement must be addressed on its own terms. The question of proving the non-existence of God ... I have no idea what the form of such a proof might take. (Actually, I rather doubt it is possible to find one, having decided based on my own experience and obvservation that He does exist.)
Is it "thick" to point out that it is unnecessary to attempt to prove statements that are already refuted? Gosh ... I must be thick, then.
That's what I thought you'd say - emotional evidence is the only kind you can offer.
I'm sure that the followes of Mohammed have the same certainty within themselves that Allah is the One True God.
I didn't believe it possible, but it is. You are that thick.
The White Crow Fallacy is not about the existence of White Crows.
Gasp!!! I actually understood that before you so kindly elucidated. Golly. I must not be that thick after all!
Of course, the name itself is suggestive -- it banks on the supposed scarcity of White Crows, and the related difficulty of proving that the statement of non-existence is true.
I posted the picture to make an ancillary point; namely, that there is no need to continue trying to prove the truth of a statement that has already been shown to be false.
I'm guessing that you're not too thick to understand that.
I wish you luck. I personally think moral thinking evolves.
I also think evolution is not the same as progress. So it is possible for moral thinking to improve at times and regress at time. The current thinking about slavery is, I think, and example of improvement over time.
Buuuump!
You're absolutely right - there is this misconception that evolution means "always getting better."
We see the opposite in action in Asia right now with a certain elephant population. Elephants born without tusks have a harder time foraging for food, but as hunters kill elephants for their tusks the tuskless ones live and pass on their genes in greater numbers. In this case, the elephant population is evolving into a "lesser" version due to predation.
My spelling seems to be evolving. I note that this post passes right through the spell checker.
Only in marketing brochures and creationist myths about evolution.
Well, smiling is a good first step. ;-)
It's not emotional.
It's objective.
Those are the steps He gave. Follow them.
Think about it. We are saying that a dead man rose again and stayed that way. That means He's alive according to us, doesn't it?
It is as if I told you that treasure is buried in a local field. How would you prove that I'm telling the truth?
Lot's of circumstantial things might point to the truth. Perhaps I'm known as an honest man. Perhaps I've been seen spending more than I should really have. Maybe those who are my friends have all been sporting fancy garments and big cars.
But, for you, the ultimate proof is digging up the field, isn't it?
Some would "sell everything that they have and buy that field."
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