Wednesday, July 06, 2005

A recent essay in the NYT by Cornelia Dean titled, How Quantum Physics Can Teach Biologists About Evolution presents a useful discussion of the key difference between scientific theories, such as evolution evolution and quantum mechanics), and religiously inspired notions, such as creationism and intelligent design . The most significant difference between intelligent design and evolution is that the real strength of a scientific theory is not necessarily whether it is completely correct, but that it meets the definition of science, and is therefore testable. This allows a theory to be refined, improved, modified, and made useful in our daily lives. This is the reason scientists fight so hard to preserve the teaching of evolution in public schools. Not because they are enraptured by the theory, but because the scientific process is the thing. Science works; and it works mainly through the application of the scientific method, which is really just applied common sense. A scientist observes something in nature, proposes an idea to explain it, and then tests that idea to see if it works. They also encourage other scientists to test their ideas and try and prove them wrong. This process has produced millennium of human knowledge and technologies from the first stone tools to the space shuttle to vaccines for polio. Sometimes these ideas get rejected, even after hundreds of years of scientists being sure they are correct. Three of the most important ideas in all of science (the heliocentric solar system, quantum mechanics, and evolution by natural selection) overthrew longstanding ideas that held sway for hundreds of years. But that’s OK. In fact, that’s fantastic, and most scientists hope they are lucky enough to be alive when such scientific revolutions occur. Most of us go through our careers adding small bits to the body of scientific knowledge, and occasionally we are fortunate enough to cause very small revolutions in our area of specialty. As Dean notes, “This intellectual turmoil is not evidence of the weakness of the evolutionary thinking, as some critics have said. It is proof of the robustness of the scientific method.” Creationism doesn’t even pretend to be science. It’s just a particular religious way of looking at the world, like Urantia , Scientology, and Jews for Jesus. None of these religious faiths are testable, nor do they claim to be, they all rely on faith, or belief without proof. Faith is the corner stone of any religion, but it has no place in science. That doesn’t mean scientists can’t be religious, just that they shouldn’t try and prove their religion with scientific methods. Intelligent Design, although portrayed as a scientific alternative, is not a testable idea. It states that, OK, we don’t really have an explanation for how species arise and become extinct, but that’s just because, well, it couldn’t be a natural process anyway, and it’s all the result of an intelligent designer, who chooses to remain nameless. Again, this is not science, shouldn’t be part of any reasonable science curriculum, and just can’t be taught in science class. A comparative religion and philosophy course would be perfect for a discussion of Intelligent Design and Creationism. In addition, we all could use a higher level of understanding concerning the world’s various religions and religious philosophies, don’t you think? JG 2:59:51 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 John Giacobbe.