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.
I have a lot of trouble with that command, especially when my neighbor is throwing a party on a Sunday night and I have a trial in the morning or when he lets his dog bark all night or when the weeds in his backyard start spreading seeds into my lawn, or when he starts up his gas blower at 7 am on a Saturday.
It takes a lot of self sacrifice to love your neighbor as yourself.
In other words, "No", you do not believe the first 10 words of the bible and "Yes", the bible starts out by spewing lies.
Please do not put words in my mouth. It's disrespectful. That is not what I said.
I can accept that answer. Why don't you just answer the questions like that? Are you afraid to express your beliefs?
Because they aren't germane. Scientific fact is scientific fact, and my "beliefs" don't enter into it.
If the first 10 words of the Bible do not express TRUTH, then the rest of the book cannot be trusted.
Does the Bible have no more value to you than as a history or science textbook? Myself, I see it as an excellent guide to being the best person possible. I don't think that is invalidated by the scientific errors contained within it.
The first ten words are fine.
It's thinking that Genesis is a biology textbook that causes problems.
Three of your complaints have to do with noise at inconvenient times.
Have you tried politely explaining that you need to sleep late on Saturday mornings?
Are you friendly otherwise with this neighbor?
Are there city ordinances involved?
Are you on bloodpressure meds?
Amazingly, I get along pretty well with my neighbors. I sorta figure that we each are entitled to an approximately equal amount of doing things that bother the neighbor but are important to us. Seems to work. Smiling and asking"How're yd doing" seems to help, too.
I agree that government can put a gun to the head of the bidders. I agree that that is a corruption of the free market system.
However, I also think that other individuals/groups/entities can also put a gun to the head of the bidders. That, too, would be a corruption of the free market system.
And market manipulation (for example, down-swing predatory pricing to eliminate competition, followed by shorting a cornered market and concomitant up-swing predatory pricing) differs from fraud principally in scale.
I am talking about being able to sell your property at whatever levels someone else agrees to purchase them. Or to give them away if you wish. Why is this so controversial?
It's not controversial. What's controversial is manipulation of the market place. You seem to be under the impression that markets are somehow self-immunized from connivance. They're not. You also seem to be applying microscopic market aphorisms to macroscopic market realities.
They [anti-trust regulations] have been a bludgeon used by the less successful businesses to get a piece of what they feel they are entitled to.
Curious view. Perhaps you have some examples in mind?
We tend to forget that our particular brand of capitalism is, on the whole, a fictional legal construct to begin with. Corporations and securities markets do not exist in nature. We created those legal fictions (and many more) to facilitate relatively pain-free failure and thereby encourage risk-taking.
The corporate and securities fictions are, however, also subject to abusive and manipulative practices by the unscrupulous. These manipulations have the unfortunate effect of truncating, and in many instances eliminating, the very behavior the fictional constructs were intended to facilitate (market risk-taking, innovation, and entrepreneurialism).
Regulation of corporate and securities practices is necessary to prevent these manipulations and abuses. In short, we created a pretty good fictional economic beast, and we put it on measured leash to keep it from eating us.
I said: "There are thresholds of human connivance that we have, as a society, declared inviolable."
You said: "That doesn't make it moral."
I don't understand. Doesn't make what moral?
I think you're missing the point.
If I read Uncle Remus and learn how to be wily to avoid being hurt, I've learned an important lesson from fiction.
However, there is nothing binding about it.
It's the same with the bible. If they are a bunch of made up stories, I might learn some valuable lessons, BUT, they are not binding in any kind of way.
One cannot claim any ultimate morality based on Br'er Rabbit, nor can one claim any ultimate morality if it is only "Br'er Moses or Br'er Jesus."
Nice fables, but it's not like there's a God to enforce it all in some future divine day of reckoning.
You will just be dust after you die and that'll be that. It won't matter if you're Genghis Khan, Mae se Tung, Pol Pot, or Charles Manson.
They're just as well off as you are....little bits of dust that someday will get meaninglessly farflung when the sun supernovas.
So...who cares if the bible events are true?
A free market is nothing if it isn't free. If at any point we arrive at a controlled or contrived market, then there's no use pretending that freedom exists in the market (or anywhere else for that matter.)
So, let's imagine that OPEC wins the day all competitors no longer exist.
They can now sell their product at the price of your slavery. They can get it because they're you're only option. In fact, they are so powerful that they can prevent your turning to other options because that, too, is just an "energy market."
Personally, I'd be interested in how we got to the point that the free market no longer existed. I would call whatever got us there "anti-free market."
A free market is nothing if it isn't free. If at any point we arrive at a controlled or contrived market, then there's no use pretending that freedom exists in the market (or anywhere else for that matter.)
So, let's imagine that OPEC wins the day all competitors no longer exist.
They can now sell their product at the price of your slavery. They can get it because they're you're only option. In fact, they are so powerful that they can prevent your turning to other options because that, too, is just an "energy market."
Personally, I'd be interested in how we got to the point that the free market no longer existed. I would call whatever got us there "anti-free market."
Depends on (1) the product, (2) the level of control you exercise over that product, (3) the manner in which you acquired control over the product, and (4) the machinations you employ to extort a given price and/or prevent others from offering the same or alternative products.
If the foregoing were put into the form of questions, we have, as a deliberative civilization, decided that each question has an acceptable answer that will encourage economic growth and prosperity. We have also decided that each question has an unacceptable answer that will discourage economic growth and prosperity.
I tend to view our answers to those questions as historically rather effective.
I was using "Kings" in a "Bosses" sense...... and I'm sticking to that story! :~)
Then just give a straight answer to a straight question. If you are going to give vague and meaningless answers, then those to whom you give those answers are free to deduce whatever conclusions they wish.
Why don't you just answer the questions? A simple yes or no will suffice.
1) Do you accept as truth the first 10 words of the Bible?
2) Or does the Bible start out by telling lies?
Now for your questions:
Does the Bible have no more value to you than as a history or science textbook?
The Bible is much more than history or science. It is TRUTH. It is not "cleverly designed fables".
Do you have any problem with the 4th Commandment where God states that in six days he made the heavens and the earth and all that in them is?
Was that a lie?
It is creation itself that lies, not the words of the bible. The rocks and the stars are all Satan's minions. Are you going to believe the preacher with the collection plate, or your own lying eyes?
You should refamiliarize yourself with Genesis.
>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.
Look to your earliest Garden of Eden stories. There was no writing communication for thousands of years after these events.
Elementary pictographic "writing" by a few professional scribes by the time of the Exodus, certainly, but much earlier than that, no.
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