I’ve allowed this to go on far too long without public commentary. Within the scope of this site (geekiness), I feel a need to write an opinion.
Today marked the opening arguments in a lawsuit that promises, for better or worse, to help shape America’s educational system for a long time to come. I refer, of course to Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District. I’ll spare you all the details here, as you can read it on the ACLU’s website here. What it boils down to is that several families and the ACLU are suing the Dover, Pennsylvania schoolboard for attempting to introduce theological doctrine into a science classroom. The schoolboard wants to say that evolution is just a theory, and therefore is no more valid than any other theory, including Intelligent Design (ID for short).
Now, some have said Intelligent Design is a thinly veiled attempt to pass Creationism along as valid scientific theory. Although I personally tend to agree, attempting to use that to deflate ID proponents is pointless. Instead, I would like to take a moment, a secular, unbiased moment, to examine a couple of points that both the Pennsylvania schoolboard (indeed, all ID proponents) and the ACLU have apparently overlooked.
Let’s start with the statement that “evolution is just a theory.” This statement is embraced by proponents of ID (and Creationism), who point out that there are holes in Darwin’s classic theory that have yet to be explained. This statement also infuriates those who endorse Darwin’s theory, who struggle to point out proof and evidence.
What both sides forget is this: It’s an accurate statement, but only inasmuch as scientific theory goes. You see- and this is the nasty little part that politicos and religious zealots don’t want to understand- scientific theory and mainstream theory are not the same thing. When you tell your child you have a theory on how the cookie jar got emptied out, you are not subject to the stringent experimentation and peer review that scientists are.
For a scientist to publish a theory is for him or her to have performed extensive research, decades worth in some cases. The scientist must perform constant and vigilant experimentation, and know that in the future, someone might offer further proof or complete refutation. A scientific theory is specifically defined as a conjecture which is borne out through experimentation.
Gravity is also a theory, as is relativity. And yet, these theories allow us to predict impact damage by an asteroid and prepare for disaster recovery, they let us create nuclear power plants and weapons. What this means is that while we may not have witnessed the birth of our planet, or the speciation of Homo sapiens, we can look at actual, physical evidence and connect dots.
This leads me to my second point. The Republican Right absolutely adores their buzzwords. The latest is good science. Good science, on the face of it, would simply seem to say we should have irrefutable evidence. A policy I normally endorse.
However, science only rarely ever allows for absolute certainty. In fact, I am unaware of any absolute certainties in science. What science does give us is a framework in which to attempt to understand the clearly observable phenomena around us. The people who endorse ‘good science’ as a political policy use it to pander, not to elevate science, and it insults my intelligence whenever I hear that we shouldn’t stop greenhouse emissions because ‘good science’ says we should wait for all the facts. By the time the certainty level on global warming reaches 99.5%, how many more cities will have been flooded out? How much larger will our deserts have become? And do we really have to teach philosophy alongside Darwinism simply for lack of absolute certainty?
Evolution is, admittedly, only a theory. However, it is a theory which has been reached through observation and experimentation. We can carbon date, we can analyze rock strata. We can look at things and draw a cogent conclusion.
Intelligent Design is not a theory. It never has been, it never can be. There can be no experimentation. You cannot say “life is too complex to have arisen in its current state by natural selection,” and then not offer an alternate verifiable explanation. And the poorly veiled attempt at Intelligent Design to cloak itself in the trappings of science by saying that it does not ponder the source of this design will herald its death knell, as soon as people wake up. Scientific study requires you to ponder every aspect, from beginning to end. Who created this creator, if ID is true? Where is this creator from? How did the creator get here, what was their purpose?
Wonderful philosophical musings, nothing more. There is no verifiable data to analyze. It is conjecture and vague philosophy, nothing more.
The school board in Pennsylvania is wrong. Absolutely wrong. Not because I think Intelligent Design is religion (although I think it is), but because it is not science. In fact, I think the ACLU should not have filed the lawsuit it did. The families who filed argue that religion has no place in school. It’s a tired argument, and unfortunately one subject to the whim of culture and politics.
What they should have done is argued that ID is not science. It would have been a slam dunk. All you would have to do is ask any proponent of ID to produce a single shred of evidence. Something any student of Darwin can do.
I am not sure this case is about the definition of the word theory, as many ID proponents do not refer to it as the Intelligent Design Theory. And, lets face it… not everything taught in science class in schools today is nor should it be a sound scientific theory. This would preclude the discussion of anything new and exciting that happens int the world of science. What a boring classroom that would be.
Now, I do have an issue with the wrapping of religion in a pseudoscientific package and trying to sell it to children. But, again, I have no problem with science that hasn’t been granted the status of “theory” being taught in the schools. It just needs to have an empirical foundation (imo).
Even so, ID has absolutely no empirical foundation. So whether you and I agree on the amount of experimentation necessary before something is taugh in a science classroom is secondary to the fact that we can both agree that at least some empirical evidence is necessary.
I am all for new things and cool explosions in science class. But even then, it is all based on well-founded fact. Easily observed, clearly explainable.
Another post that’s short on facts, and long on “opinion”. Which is totally fine, I guess, but your tired ranting doesn’t exactly make for an exciting read.
I do have one nit to pick, however. You wrote:
How about, F = ma (more generally known as Newton’s Second Law)? Or any of Newton’s Laws of Motion? Or Maxwell’s equations, which I can’t render here because of the limitations of HTML? How about conservation of mass and energy?
I’m not sure what you meant when you wrote “absolute certainties”, but science is full of things that are known to be true. That’s the whole point of science: to arrive at the objective truth, regardless of the subjective viewpoints of the observers involved.
Also, you wrote that “I would like … to examine a couple of points that both the … ACLU [has] apparently overlooked”. Even though I read the entire post, I’m still not sure what those points were.
Do you simply think that they’ve overlooked the fact that Intelligent Design is bad science? Because I very much doubt that they have; I’m sure that the plaintiffs, at least, believe that to be true. But last time I checked, it was a school board that decided the curricula for its students, not the local district court. If you don’t like the decisions made by the school board, well, elect a new school board. The fact that ID is bad science doesn’t make it illegal to include it on a syllabus.
So the “tired argument … subject to the whim of culture and politics” is very much the only argument that the plaintiffs can make, in court, AFAICT.
To address your first comment, J, I’d like to point out that truth and fact are not the same thing. Subjective truth is exactly that, a subjective truth. Prone to revision, I might add. Newton’s theories, for example, on the motion of the planets has in fact been proven to be incorrect. It is, however, adequate for most everyday calculations.
Theories are subject to revision. Hence, they are not certain. A great deal of things, as you say, are ‘known’ to be correct. However, these things are never 100% certain. Greater minds than ours in the scientific community have already said as much.
However, I am at a loss as to what your point even was, as my entire post was merely written to illustrate that ID is not science. Which leads me to your second comment.
I completely and utterly dismiss the assertion that Intelligent Design is ‘bad science’. It IS NOT SCIENCE AT ALL. Period. Science is observation, calculation, and conclusion which may be subject to revision. Intelligent Design isn’t even science on the level of the ancient alchemists, who at least attempted genuine experimentation.
Intelligent Design is the worst kind of laziness. It is akin to walking into a locked room and finding a corpse, and concluding without any experimentation or forensic examination that a ghost must have done it.
Whether the ACLU considered this valid, cogent, concrete argument is irrelevant, as it is not the argument they made before the court. You might have a point in that this was the only argument they could have made, as Colin points out it wouldn’t be the first time a schoolboard changed curriculum to include poorly vetted subject matter. Maybe they thought, as Colin suggests, that shining the spotlight on the religious aspect of this supposed ‘theory’ was the only way to keep it out of the classroom. I don’t know, although it makes sense. However, Intelligent Design is in no way, shape, or form, ANY kind of science, good or bad.
There is no such thing as “subjective truth”. If something is true, then is true in an objective manner, or it is false.
You claim that “Newton’s theories, for example, on the motion of the planets has in fact been proven to be incorrect”. This is simply not true. Newton’s Laws of Motion are perfectly correct; they simply turned out, at very high velocities or over very small scales, to be approximations of a more complex equation. This does not change the fact that, over the domain where they apply, the equations yield the correct results. In that respect, they are “100% certain”.
If “Greater minds … in the scientific community have already said as much”, then feel free to cite a source that supports your claim, if you can.
And my point was that your statement, “I am unaware of any absolute certainties in science”, is correct, but only because of the limits of your awareness.
You say that, “Whether the ACLU considered this valid, cogent, concrete argument is irrelevant”; well, thank you. That is exactly what I said in my comment. The argument is irrelevant, because it could not be presented on behalf on the plaintiffs.
Since your original claim that you “would like to take a moment … to examine a couple of points that … the ACLU [has] apparently overlooked” is, by your own admission, utter speculation, what’s the point of your post again? Even if they considered your argument, it wouldn’t advance their case one iota. And if the school board involved considered your “argument”, which seems to boil down to the fact that ID proponents don’t do any experiments, they seem to have been unconvinced. For better or for worse, I can’t say.
To play Devil’s Advocate for a second, what’s the difference between an Evolutionary Biologist and a ID supporter, exactly? I don’t see many of the former performing any experiments, and the latter base their arguments upon exactly the same evidence as the former.
Evolutionary Biologist: “Here is evidence, physical similarities, a somehwat similar genetic code, certain portions of the genome which seem to have no function in this species but are remarkably similar to a completely different species…” you get the point. They can produce basic amino acids in a laboratory with chemicals. This much has been clearly and demonstrably proven.
ID Proponent: “Here is a complex life form. Too complex to be explained away by natural selection because, as we all know, speciation has never been demonstrably proven in a laboratory. I therefore surmise that there must have been a guiding hand in the origin of life and the discreet speciation of said life.”
Biologists rely on empirical data to draw a logical conclusion, ID supporters draw on data to put forth specious conclusions with no actual value. We don’t know enough about the species currently existing on our planet (in fact we have not discovered them all) in order to make baseless conclusions on a ‘higher intelligence.’
Not only that, but an evolutionary biologist puts forth a beginning to life that fits within the framework of known scientific principles, including organic chemistry, physics, and cosmology. Intelligent Design supporters indicate a higher power must be responsible, but do not put forth the next logical step. Who created the creator? Who is the creator? For what purpose, then, did this so-called creator create a particular species?
Irresponsible argument is not science.
And here’s a link to what some distinguished scientists and theologians have to say.
http://www.aclu.org/evolution/profiles.html
Please note that each one says what I said in my article last week: ID is NOT science. The definitions of scientific study are twisted by ID proponents, and it is fundamentally irresponsible to introduce untested and untestable beliefs into a classroom supposedly dedicated to experiment and logical conclusion.