Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Intelligent Design

  • Differences of Opinion, Lies, and Seeing the Other Side

    I got started this morning on this topic by reading this post at Quintessence of Dust. Dr. Matheson is looking for a good model to use in referring to creationists and their arguments. The temptation is to regard all false statements as lies. But at the same time we have to ask why people who are otherwise honest, and doubtless wouldn’t cheat on tests or steal from their neighbors nonetheless would say so many things that are simply not so.

    Matheson is looks at the model of folk science. I left a comment on his blog in which I question just how well this works. But I’m working on this one myself. I have to ask myself how a microbiologist, for example, could manage to believe in creationism. There is always Kurt Wise (paleontologist), who admits the strong evidence for evolution, but believes that the Bible must be true, and thus no matter what the evidence looks like, eventually he’ll find the proper evidence for young age arguments. Now I can at least understand the mental process in Dr. Wise’s case, though it still astounds me that one could look at the strength of the evidence and study it as a paleontologist and still come out not just a creationist, but a young earth creationist.

    I had already bookmarked his post for a link, if not a substantial response, when I came across this article (HT: It seems to me ….) In a weird sort of way, this article is making a point similar to what Dr. Matheson is making, though perhaps with greater humor and less finesse–there are some beliefs and viewpoints that are comforting to us, and we cling to any means by which we can avoid losing those beliefs.

    I think it’s quite possible that many creationists simply cannot imagine a world in which man is not a separate creation, especially put here by God with a unique and special relationship. It is quite possible that their lives would lose meaning–or at least they feel viscerally that they would–should any element of this prove wrong. If one’s identity is at stake, just how much might one be able to rationalize?

    Just as I was preparing to write this post, I found this post on Pharyngula, in which the Discovery Institute is shown to have taken e-mails out of context (gasp!) regarding the Gonzalez case as ISU. Here, of course, we have a greater level of interpretation involved, but it still is hard to see how the DI got what they did from their source. Liars? Good PR men? Different point of view?

    And immediately after that one, my RSS reader turned up another one, titled Gene Duplication and the GENE project’s … Duplicity?. Again, the author, generally a very polite man and one I respect after reading quite a number of his substantial blog entries, is having trouble finding out just what you call it. ICR is gathering scientists to study the genome, and their going to conclude–you guessed it–that humanity is not related to the other animals. And they haven’t even started yet!

    Now I know that it is very easy to regard a difference of opinion as good evidence of skullduggery on the part of one’s opponent. Sometimes opinions are simply so different that it’s hard for us to imagine that the other guy can possibly have good motivations or can be honest. After all, we know that we are careful with the facts, and our brains are all highly logical. So if we come to conclusion A, and they come to conclusion Z, it can’t be a legitimate difference of opinion–it has to result from questionable morals.

    Of course, sometimes things are what they appear to be on the surface. Not always, perhaps not even frequently, but sometimes. There are people who hold a particular position to keep their power, or because they just can’t admit to having been wrong. But I think there are relatively few people who consciously say, “I know that X is true, but I’m going to say I believe Y instead.” Whatever the motivation, one is going to think of it in some very different way. Which leads us to this question: Is it a lie if the person telling it deceived himself first, and believes he’s telling the truth? I do know one thing–if a person believes he’s telling the truth, it will be hard to influence him by telling him he’s actually a liar. “Truthful” is part of his self-image.

    I would say something to creationists, however. I once was one of you. I made it about half way through college. When I was a child, I started collecting creationist books and reading them. I was totally convinced that evolution was not only evil but stupid, so stupid, in fact, that only evil people could possibly believe it. To me, as is still the case for many creationists, evolutionists were great liars and conspirators, since the truth that God created the earth in a literal week 6,000 years ago was so plain.

    Now I first encountered the problems with the facts when I looked at Biblical genealogies. In doing so, I spent enough time with ancient chronology to see that the hardline young earth position, about 6,000 years (not 10,000!) was in conflict not only with geology, but with archeology, and even with written history. Civilizations would have drowned in the flood, civilizations that had clearly done no such thing.

    But then I was faced with the science side. Now I spend a great deal of time reading popular level science. But I’m a high school dropout, so I never had high school science. I took a GED test and took as little science in college as I could get by with, which turned out to be one year of chemistry. My college allowed one to make it up with math, which I did. So when I first started, the vast majority of the “science” I knew came from those young earth creationist books. How was I to judge the material?

    Well, I concluded I wasn’t very qualified to do so. What I was qualified to do was to see how well creationists represented evolution. What I found out there was that the presentation of evolution in creationist books bore no resemblance to the presentation in books favoring evolution. They were, in fact, talking about two things. Further, when creationists quoted scientists, they generally got the quotation wrong. For me, that was pretty substantial evidence that there was a problem in the creationist camp.

    Since then, I’ve found nothing to suggest to me any differently. One of the best arguments against creationism for the layman (in scientific terms) is that the creationists can’t get their facts straight about evolution. I personally think Dr. Matheson is right, and they don’t do so because they’re congenital liars, but rather because they’re engaging in some form of “folk science.” Or perhaps it’s Santaism as defined in the Ship of Fools article.

    Bottom line: differences of opinion, lies, and failure to see the other side? It’s damn hard to tell the difference!

  • Links for 12/7/07

    Here a just a few things I think my readers might find interesting, but that I won’t get much time to comment on:

    • Human events has an article on intelligent design by a conservative who doesn’t think much of it. In fact, he thinks the main stream media cover it because it’s embarrassing to conservatives. “The Left believes, correctly, that Intelligent Design is a political loser, and so they gleefully attempt to hang it around the neck of every right-of-center movement from libertarian neo-conservatism to isolationist populism — shouting all the while ‘See, the American Taliban has come for your children! Elect a Democrat before it’s too late!’” — It’s an interesting perspective! (HT: Panda’s Thumb)
    • It’s not really about evolution, but Carl Zimmer has his 100th picture of a science tattoo
    • Steve Martin has the fourth in his series of articles on Polkinghorne quotes, in which we find this quote (from Martin, not Polkinghorne): “Many Christians, I think, put too much stock in the implications of scientific discoveries.” Hmmm! It leads one to think!
    • I’m just getting all my RSS subscriptions updated on my new computer or I would have gotten this one earlier, but this post by Dr. Steve Matheson is too good to miss. He looks at a Discovery Institute showcase piece by Jonathan Wells, and shows it’s serious problems. The answer seems to be that there was a testable hypothesis in the article, but it proved wrong, and didn’t have anything to do with ID in the first place. In addition, any article that calls Jonathan wells “a former developmental biologist” can’t be all bad!
    • And in the obligatory link to something I wrote, my fictional God-Talk Club gets into ID while discussing homeschooling in my latest post. Remember that those posts are for fun and practice, though I do welcome responses either to presentation or to content.

    There are very few things that haven’t been moved to the new computer, imported, or otherwise sorted out. For those who my have missed the post I switched not only to a new CPU but to a new operating system. I’m now using Ubuntu Linux, after trying it on a separate machine for a few months. I’m thus far very happy with the results. Having the old machine on the same network has made moving stuff pretty easy.

  • The Continued Saga of Science Education

    The state’s director of science curriculum has resigned after being accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching intelligent design. (Source: Austin-American Statesman

    A number of other bloggers have commented on this already (Pharyngula here and here, Wesley Elsberry, and The Panda’s Thumb), and you can review the story there. I’m generally a “late adopter” on these issues. I tend to wait for the rest of the story. But in this case it’s going to require a lot of convincing for me to believe that Chris Comer was not fired because of her support for teaching evolution.

    My major problem with this case is this: Opposing the teaching of ID in public schools is the right thing for a science curriculum director to do. One of the most dangerous things coming out of this controversy between ID and evolution is a confusion between treating things appropriately and treating them equally, whether they are equal or not. We would not expect our science curriculum staff to be neutral about the teaching of astrology, geocentrism, flat earth, or any of a number of other non-scientific ideas in science class.

    How do we know that those things are not valid science? Well, real working scientists have checked them out and found them to be invalid. There are still people out there who believe each one, but we don’t have to “teach the controversy” about them, because scientifically there is no controversy. The same is true of ID. Scientifically there is no controversy. A few guys with graduate degrees, largely outside of the appropriate fields do not create a scientific controversy. To have that, you require science being done on both sides, and you don’t. On one side we have PR and politics. On the other we have science. For a science curriculum director to remain neutral would, in my view, require a lack of integrity.

    One indicator of trouble on this topic is the number of times one has to remind boards of education and other officials of the rulings of the courts on this issue. Why is it that such large numbers of people can only be persuaded to learn and teach (or allow the teaching of) well-established science because the courts say so? Here in Florida a school board is considering the teaching of ID. One major argument against it is, of course, the cost of a major lawsuit. But there is one argument that should rule the day, but doesn’t: We’re talking about science class. Let’s teach science.

    Being neutral about ignorance is not an option.

  • A Taste of Teaching the Controversy

    “Teach the controversy” is one of the well-worn slogans of the creationist movement, and has been well used in the controversy about intelligent design (ID). It’s power is in an appeal to fairness. There’s a dispute? Teach both sides. What could be fairer than that?

    As with most slogans the problems occur in practically every word. What is “the” controversy? What are the “weaknesses” of evolutionary theory that one should teach? And even more importantly, what does it mean to teach a controversy?

    I would suggest that in order to actually teach something, the instructor needs to take the students through a process of evaluation, of weighing and testing the evidence provided. If that controversy is ID vs the theory of evolution, such a weighing and testing will result in a negative evaluation of ID–unless, of course, one tries to privilege certain ideas over others.

    This is not the type of “teaching the controversy” that is desired by ID proponents. In general, they are asking that their views, though representing those of a very small minority of the scientific community, should be taught alongside evolution as having equal validity. The attempt to get these materials into public schools is simply an end-run around the process of science, and indeed of scholarship in general. What ID advocates are asking is that ideas that have been rejected by the vast majority of the scientific community should be presented instead to high school students for their evaluation.

    I can understand this desire. It’s always fun to take your material to an audience that will not be qualified to challenge you seriously on facts or logic. But it’s not the proper place to get ideas evaluated.

    We have just seen an example of “teaching the controversy”, and doing it well, on NOVA, and the ID folks don’t particularly like it. (The complaints about “Inherit the Wind” footage are particularly humorous.)

    Well, I’m not surprised. They didn’t actually want the whole controversy taught. They didn’t want all their claims evaluated. They just hoped they would be presented side by side to unsuspecting high school students who do not yet have the knowledge to evaluate what they are hearing.

    There are reasons why ID is presented to popular audiences rather than scientific ones. 1) Doing the actual science is too hard, or perhaps 2) The advocates know that no matter how hard they work, the evidence just isn’t there, or 3) They don’t actually care about science at all, and they’re just trying to make points in the culture wars. Come to think of it, it could be all of the above.

    But this argument does not only apply to ID. In the public school science program, we need to teach science, and we need to have some basis on which to decide what is and is not science. Any minority viewpoint can hire PR firms and try to get itself treated as science through the political process, but that is not a good way to determine what really is science. I suggest one standard: Consensus science. There is plenty of that to fill the science curriculum. Other ideas may apply, but the process goes through the scientific community for publication, testing, and verification.

    I would add one more note on this. I have commented before on the NCBCPS Bible curriculum which is aimed at public schools. Many Christians see this as a wonderful opportunity to restore Biblical literacy. But they need to think again. Just how is it that the Bible can properly be taught in public schools? It will have to be taught as an academic subject, which means that the historicity of certain stories, such as the exodus, the destruction of Jericho, or similar things, should be evaluated in a scholarly fashion, as objectively as possible.

    That requires, amongst other things, qualified instructors, and good curriculum (NCBCPS isn’t good curriculum). This will be Bible as a secular topic. Now I wouldn’t mind such a class. The reason I still oppose putting this in public schools is that I believe it inappropriately privileges my own sacred book over that of others and that it is extremely unlikely that we will find appropriately qualified teachers for a sound, academic course on the Bible at the High School level.

    I know, for example, that if I were to teach such a course, many fundamentalist and conservative evangelical students and parents would be shocked at what I would say, though I would be able to point to a great deal of scholarship in all of it. You see, I would “teach the controversy” about many of these subjects, evaluating the evidence, and some people would not be happy with the results.

    Perhaps in High School classes we should teach the most important elements of a subject (and make no mistake, evolution is one of these), and leave the myriad of controversies that people can cook up to be settled through examination by qualified persons.

  • Theological Arguments Against Evolution: Sin and Death

    Yesterday I wrote about the senses in which the phrase “bad theology” is used in the creation-evolution debate and in particular on the question of ID. To call something “bad theology” generally requires either a challenge to the internal logic of the statement, or a reference to a particular faith community, because there is no single “good theology” against which theological statements can be tested.

    I’d like to follow up by looking at a theological argument against evolution, and how it relates to the some faith groups. While there has been considerable argument against intelligent design on theological grounds, the theological objections to evolution have been addressed less frequently.

    In fact, I am frequently told that a belief in evolution really doesn’t have any theological consequences. The Bible tells us that God created the world, science tells us how. The only folks who have a problem with this are a few who incomprehensibly treat the Bible as a science textbook. There are two problems with that. First, there are quite a considerable number of folks who believe that the Bible is true in a sufficiently literal sense that they expect to connect the factual dots of Genesis to scientific data. They are frequently addressed with the rather inadequate statement “You shouldn’t take the Bible so literally!” Second, an excessively literal reading of scripture is not the sole theological problem with the theory of evolution.

    Regarding the first point, the issue is a bit more complex than simply “not taking the Bible literally.” One has to ask just how one is to take it. I’m not going to address this in detail in this post (I talk about it a great deal more in my book When People Speak for God), but at a minimum one needs to specify how someone ought to take the Bible. For example, assuming Genesis 1 is not narrative history (one of the things loosely grouped as literal) what is it? I would suggest that it is liturgy, and that in turn suggests some things about how to understand it.

    But today I want to look at a theological argument in a different form. Instead of arguing that evolution must be incorrect because the Bible makes certain historical claims, one can argue that evolution must be incorrect based on certain theological claims. These theological claims may be derived from the Bible, but the important issue is that they seem to contradict certain things derived from evolution.

    Those who are not religious, or specifically not Christian will find this a strange form of argument, but it is valuable to see how certain people think about these issues in any case, and to realize that there are many for whom evolution poses substantial theological problems, quite apart from the interpretation of Genesis 1-11 as narrative history.

    Sin and death is such an issue, and in my experience, it is the key issue. The theological proposition involved states that physical death is the result of human sin, and that had human beings remained loyal to God, there would be no death. Now I’ve discussed this position from the point of view of theodicy in Theodicy: Taking a Stab at Natural Evil. Since some may have a hard time comprehending this argument, it states that evolution cannot be true simply because it involves creatures dying before there were human beings to have committed sin. As I discuss in the referenced post, this is a problem for old earth creationism as much as it is for evolution, and Dembski has proposed an alternate suggestion, that God created physical death as a sort of pre-emptive response to sin, which God’s foreknowledge told him would occur.

    But I’m dealing here solely with those who hold a chronological relationship. In this view human beings are created perfect in a world without death, they rebel against God, and death results. Obviously, for someone who holds that position, evolution cannot possibly be true. I grew up with that view as a member of the Seventh-day Adventist church. It took me some time to step away from it, as it can get pretty much ingrained.

    I can now argue against the theology involved, pointing out that Genesis doesn’t actually say that, but in fact suggests that barring the way to the tree of life is a way to prevent human beings from becoming immortal. One can understand spiritual death in many other passages that relate to death. None of that really matters for my purposes here; this particular position demonstrates that there are theological consequences to belief in evolution, and the presence of physical death as a fundamental fact of the universe is one of those.

    Indeed, one key mental exercise I propose to such people is to propose a universe in which there is no death and yet there are things such as “fruit” to eat. How exactly does such a thing work? In particular, choice seems to be a fundamental of the universe and of the Bible, and what exactly is choice without a chance of failure?

    I heard this very recently presented in quite different terms, dealing with God’s care, grace, and gentleness. How could a God who teaches the law of love create by means of such violence? Then there are those promises of a future, peaceful world where “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah.” Isaiah 65:25 (ASV). Surely if it’s promised for the future world, it must also have been true of the past!

    Now I personally would compare this approach to a belief in verbal dictation of scripture, for example. People accept this position while ignoring the abundant evidence of different writers, backgrounds, perspectives and so forth throughout. Don’t come to a conclusion of how something ought to be, and then assume that it is that way. The physical evidence for evolution is extremely strong, and for an old earth it is overwhelming, either of which would require substantial modification of this particular doctrine.

    The key thing to remember, however, is that for someone who holds the specific form of this doctrine I cited, there is a serious theological impediment to accepting the theory of evolution, and this is based not necessarily on reading the Bible literally, although the sequence is. You can argue the evidence for evolution as much as you want, but they won’t be moved, because they have a key theological proposition that directly contradicts it.

    I have been interested to note as well that my own view of God is perceived as more distant, because I believe that God honors choice and allows the consequences to take place. In fact, I believe those who suggest I see God as more distant are quite correct. I believe God is distant enough to allow human responsibility to be meaningful.

    This separates me just a bit from the NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) approach, since I hold that the discoveries of science can have a substantial impact on one’s theology. They certainly have had such an impact on my own theology. In general, I believe NOMA to be the correct approach, and theology and science must clearly be separated to prevent theology from attempting to predetermine the results of scientific research. (I’m reminded of the notice at my graduate school offering grant money to those who would do research “to support a 6,000 year model of the earth’s history.) But physical reality should have an impact on theology.

  • Bad Theology and ID

    Quite frequently in the debate over intelligent design someone mentions that ID is “bad theology.” That someone might even be me! The problem is that it is not all that easy to delineate just what is bad theology. My bad theology may well be someone else’s belief system. Of course, the reverse may also be true. There isn’t a common set of standards by which someone can judge just what is bad and good in theology when the term is used in a general sense.

    In addition, if ID is bad theology, so what? If the primary issue is whether it belongs in the science classroom, or in peer-reviewed science journals, what difference does it make whether it is good theology or bad? The issue seems irrelevant from that point of view.

    But when we recall that a large part of this battle is political, then we can perhaps understand why the accusation of bad theology is frequently heard. But the question remains of just how one can tell what is good and bad in theology.

    There are two senses in which I believe “bad theology” can justly be referenced in the discussion of ID. There is one overarching point that I must make first, and that is that the simple statement that ID is theology rather than science is more relevant than the quality of the theology involved. One could also say that ID is philosophy, and it would be hard to draw the line in that case. Personally I think it is a theological construct not very cleverly disguised as science, but that is another subject.

    As an aside, it is this variety in the standards, premises, and even processes of theology that differentiate it so much from science and make the teaching of particular religious beliefs so inappropriate for the public school classroom. Teaching about beliefs is another matter. One should ask whether ID behaves like science or theology in this sense.

    The first sense in which ID can be described as bad theology is by showing that it is not internally coherent, i.e. that arguments made in favor of it are inconsistent with one another or are not derived from the stated (or assumed) premises. It is often hard to support such a claim, simply because it’s often hard to tell just what those premises are. It would be inconsistent, for example, to argue that the design of the first living organism requires a supernatural agent, but then claim to have resolved the issue by positing an intelligent natural designer.

    ID advocates rarely do this in one and the same paragraph or speech, but this kind of inconsistency shows up in the difference between the way ID is presented to religious audiences and to secular ones. To the secular audiences the designer is presented as unknown, but potentially natural (as though that would solve anything), while to religious audiences are told (or at least permitted to think) that the designer must be God.

    If ID could be satisfied by a natural designer, then it is either not theology at all or very bad theology. It really bad science, since it proposes an undefined and unbounded entity, and declines to investigate it.

    This type of theological critique requires that the one giving the critique shares some standards with the one critiqued, but only in a minimal way. Both would have to accept, for example, that theology ought to be internally consistent. If that is not the case, this will blend over into my second category.

    Second, one may be asserting that the theology of ID contradicts some important aspect of the theology of a specific group. A simple version of this is pointing out that teaching evolution is not anti-Christian, because there are a substantial number of Christians who accept the theory of evolution. One might point out specific groups, such as the Roman Catholic Church, or the United Methodist Church (of which I’m a member).

    The creationist movement in general has been guilty of a good deal of sleight of hand in dealing with groups. When they want there to be lots of creationist, everyone who believes in God is a creationist. They then turn around and say that theistic evolutionists are not really Christians when challenged with the number of Christians who do accept evolution.

    This sort of behavior is illustrated by recent comments by Michael Behe about Kenneth Miller. Miller believes that the universe is designed by God, yet does not believe in intelligent design. Behe wants to claim him on the one hand, but exclude him on the other, because he doesn’t believe quite enough. He believes in design, but not the (alleged) theory of design. (Pim van Meurs discussed this today on the Panda’s Thumb blog.)

    “Bad theology” in this sense, means theology that contradicts key tenets of a particular group or fails to meet the standards of that group in terms of how theology is formed. Since it is so community based, it is clearly only of value in helping to clarify those groups that support, or are likely to support a particular view and those who will not.

    It is in this second sense that theological critique of ID is most important. As I’ve mentioned, it is really irrelevant just how good of theology is contained in an idea that is trying to masquerade as science. A scientist can justifiably say, “So what?” But in the political and PR game, one of the issues is trying to treat the teaching of evolution as an attack on Christianity. It is quite critical, in that case, to be able to point out how many Christians find the theology involved in ID unacceptable.

    In my own area of work, religious education in local churches, this becomes very important as well, because the ID propaganda mill is working quite well. Many churchgoers, even those who accept evolution, are convinced that the whole argument is over whether God is the ultimate designer of the universe. Stated in those terms, they are in favor of intelligent design. When they realize that ID searches for specific evidence of God’s design at the molecular level, they generally become much less attracted to it. It looks like ID is proposing that God is more the designer of some pieces of the universe than of others. Of course the idea that one can prove design of the whole by discovering instances of design in the whole is as old as Paley’s watch, at least.

    The theological critique of ID is important in Christian theology, in which Christian theologians need to look carefully at the implications of ID within their own faith traditions. This is where serious questions of a “god of the gaps” argument arise, for example. Scientists do not, and need not, care whether a particular argument is a god of the gaps argument.

    There are also the very interesting issues of the origin and design of damaging organisms raised by Behe in The Edge of Evolution. I have not read this yet, so I cannot critique it directly, but I will certainly be reading it carefully looking for claims of intelligent design of specific pathogens.

    These sorts of issues will have a great impact on how acceptable ID will be in Christian circles, which in turn has a great impact on the success of various political goals related to such success.

  • Shocker: ID is PR with Little Science

    I was working on writing this up earlier, but go distracted, so now I have the excellent post by PvM on the Panda’s Thumb to reference, thus saving me time and words.

    Joe Wolf, president of Florida Citizens for Science was quoted in the saying:

    Joe Wolf, president of Florida Citizens for Science, called the draft standards a “wonderful” blueprint for science education. Wolf, of Winter Haven, said the evolution debate holds little interest to most scientists, who accept it as fact. That’s why the issue did not become controversial during the standards-writing meetings, he said.

    “It’s a PR issue,” he said. “And it’s a religious issue. In the scientific community, it’s not an issue.”

    For most of us, this is a pretty obvious statement. The Panda’s Thumb write-up notes how Crowther carefully dodges the actual statement and responds to something else. He is thus enabled to express a great deal of outrage without proving anything.

    His post is titled Florida Citizens for Science Excommunicate Prominent Scientists from “Scientific Community” For Doubting Darwin, a very pretentious title which misses the point entirely. I’m not certain what he means by “excommunicate” but it doesn’t seem to relate to anything we do in Florida Citizens for Science.

    On the other hand, our officers are quite free to notice the obvious. OK, ID supporters, where is the actual scientific controversy? Where are the scientific papers supporting ID? I see a huge amount of PR, a huge amount of popular literature, a very large number of claims, but the actual scientific controversy doesn’t seem to exist. All we need here is to point out actual scientists engaged in a scientific controversy. Scientists arguing philosophy won’t do. Press releases won’t do it either. What we need is scientists engaging in a scientific dispute.

    What we get, however, is interesting. It shows actual scientists operating within a scientific framework developing and improving the theory of evolution just like they ought to do. Obviously a great deal has been learned since Darwin. If that was not the case, evolution truly would be a theory in crisis. Instead, the very debate that shows a healthy, theory operating under the stresses of scientific discovery, developing and growing as it went along. It shows that rather than some kind of Darwinian conspiracy, as the ID folks suggest, there is healthy, active science, capable of correcting errors and making new discoveries.

    Thanks, Mr. Crowther, for providing evidence for the health of evolutionary theory!

  • Of Colossal Wastes of Time

    Jon Blumenfeld thinks that reconciling religion and science is a colossal waste of time. He says:

    Time for battle stations in the comments section, because I am going to say something that is sure to ruffle some feathers: The attempt to reconcile religion and science in general, and the bible and evolution in particular, is a colossal waste of time.

    He’s apparently particularly concerned that the most recent Reports of the National Center for Science Education contains many articles on the topic.

    I have a suggestion: If you believe reconciling religion and science is a colossal waste of tim, just don’t do it. Hmm. Come to think of it, I don’t think he does. Problem solved. Well, not quite, because apparently he doesn’t like anyone else to take their time doing it. Now I’m not going to bother to defend theism. I rarely do. I’m not even going to suggest that any particular group of people need to read material on religion and science.

    But the NCSE is interested in sound science education in the United States, and particularly in the teaching of evolution (see their about page), and in the United States there are a variety of groups that support that goal. I, for example, am a Christian Bible teacher who supports the teaching of evolution (and the absence of creationism of any variety including ID) in public schools.

    As an advocacy organization, NCSE is simply intelligent to serve all of the constituent groups who are likely to support the cause they advocate–sound science education, and particularly the inclusion of evolution. I know atheists are making a few gains as a percentage of the population right now, but sound science standards for public schools are going to need the support of some religious people.

    I don’t mean to sound cynical, but this is simple, basic politics. The NCSE staff seems to understand it quite well, which is one reason they are very effective. We can go ahead some day and have an argument over religion vs. atheism. But let’s not mix up the battle for sound science education get confused with that issue.

    (HT: The Panda’s Thumb)

  • Mixed Emotions about Sweden

    I read this news article from Sweden with mixed emotions (HT: Panda’s Thumb).

    My first reaction is negative. Since these schools are faith based, it seems appropriate to me that they teach from the perspective of the faith involved in sponsoring the school. I relate this to my own experience being home schooled and being taught creationism. At the end of High School, my grades and test scores were substantially above average, and I know many home schooled or Christian schooled kids who have a similar experience.

    Personally I would prefer to have gotten down to learning what evolution actually was earlier. It would have saved me some time exploring this on my own, but in general, I would prefer to leave such choices to parents, as long as the children in question are able to pass the appropriate tests. I prefer directing education through the requirements for standardized testing or for admission to the next level, rather than prescribing a curriculum in faith-related schools.

    But there is actually the real question. Sweden’s schools are not organized like American schools apparently. The schools in question are funded by the state even though they are faith based. This triggers the other side of my mixed emotions. If the taxpayers need to pay for it, then the state should control the content. All church related schools, as well as my home schooling, were entirely funded by my parents, the same parents who chose to teach me creationism. They chose it; they paid for it.

    I also should emphasize that I believe the correct choice in using public money to fund education at the elementary or high school level is to use that money to teach consensus science, and that means evolutionary theory, and no brand of [tag]creationism[/tag], including ID.

    I’m not certain if there are non-state funded schools in Sweden that would not be subject to this mandate or if all schools are state funded in one way or another. That’s an interesting question for further research.

    Americans should be careful in reading this story and blog reactions to it, because it does not reflect our situation in terms of either funding or the general structure of our educational system.

  • Sunday Afternoon Evolution Notes and Links

    I’ve been reading a number of really good posts on the creation, evolution, and intelligent design, but I only have a very small amount to say about each one, so I’m going to combine them into a post.

    The first is from An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution, and is titled Does Evolution lead to Moral Relativism? Making the Bogeyman even Scarier. With that title, how can you go wrong?

    Martin notes:

    I have commented before that humanity’s connectedness to all other life on planet earth does not contradict the fact that we are created in the image of God. What needs to be addressed is the contention that the mechanism of natural selection somehow leads to moral relativism. Briefly, the acceptance of natural selection should not lead us to accept moral relativism since first, it acts on populations not individuals, and second, it is descriptive not prescriptive.

    He then goes on to back this up in some more detail. I appreciate his writing, because he illustrates what I have frequently claimed. Creation-evolution is not a conservative/liberal debate in Christianity, even though a much higher percentage of Christian liberals would accept the ToE. But there are a substantial number of educated evangelicals who also accept the ToE. The comments to this one are also very interesting.

    Second, via The Panda’s Thumb I found this article from Talk.Reason which deals with the impact of creationism in the Muslim world. I have been told by many Muslims that they have no problem with evolution, and I’ve wondered if there would not be a similar problem in portions of Islam to what there is in Christianity. It looks quite possible that there is. Fundamentalists of all stripes do have a higher percentage chance of rejecting mainstream science on various subjects. The question remains of how much of the Muslim world should be viewed as fundamentalist (or sympathizers). I keep hearing various answers on that one.

    Finally, there’s this video clip, which apparently someone thinks should help convince people of ID:

    The problem is, as I remind people about spam and various internet scams, people wouldn’t do it so much if there weren’t people who would actually believe it. Thus there are a number of people out there who find this argument convincing: “It looks designed, it’s complex, and we don’t understand every detail, so it must be designed. Why do those stubborn scientists keep trying to understand the process?” (Before someone points it out, that is not a quote from the video. It’s a summary of an argument I’ve heard over and over.)

    I found this via this post on PT which does a good job of stomping on the arguments in question. Larry Moran at Sandwalk similarity hits the bullseye with some very brief comments.

    The weird argument in this case is that Dembski tries to take a swipe at Evolution: Triumph of an Idea [my brief review], by using the eye pictures on the jacket as an example of how evolutions, he says, put a few pictures together leading from less to more complex and then say, “See, it evolved!”

    If one is charitable one will assume that he did not read the book at all, or was really badly distracted. I will just suggest that if one wants to find the actual science, or in this case the popularization of science, one will have to actually open the book itself. Don’t assume that the science is exhausted by the pictures on the cover.

    Having posted a note on Carl Zimmer’s wonderful book, I should note for anyone who doesn’t know (I trust most of you already know this), he has a blog The Loom, which I follow regularly.