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.
Somehow these got written down real well. The others didn't.
If God wrote these words on stone tablets, isn't it a bit odd that He referred to Himself in the third person. I thought that was an affectation of human monarchs.
It is particularly odd because in other places God uses the first person.
Unless I am mistaken, that's number three in the Catholic version. Whay are you so hung up on 6?
Did you read the rest of my post?
Here is the mark of what science ISN'T:
"The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period. In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases. ......"
A lecture by Michael Crichton California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA January 17, 2003
>Somehow these got written down real well.
Thousands of years before writing existed?
It even goes to issues other than writing. Early man understood quantities as 1, 2 and many.
Then came 1-10 (fingers), then the advanced decimal system we now use.
But early Biblical stories refer to the ages people in the high hundreds, many centuries before either writing or numerical understanding existed.
The Bible versions got written down well, as the manuscripts of the bible, silly. If close variants were popping up all over the place, we'd be seeing them appear in, say, cuneiform writings. This requires a paranoia level conspiracy theory to believe.
And look what happens to the ages up to, and following the Flood. There isn't a step function in the ages; it's a plateau up to the Flood then a decay to the values we know today.
God's -word- is only a small part of the Bible...pretty much Sermon on the Mount, and 10 Commandments.
As has been noted, the explanatory phrases appear to have been added and speak of God in the third person.
I can't address this since I cannot read the original languages and, of course, can't get hold of the original texts.
The rest is commentary and interpretation.
This wasn't addressed to me, but I feel compelled to respond. I don't understand this at all. I have never understood it. What is more rewarding in life than promoting the common good? It doesn't mean giving up what you have. It means making the world a good place for everyone. If you have children you understand this instinctively. You can't look after the welfare of your descendents without promoting justice for everyone.
Are you accepting a biblical dating or are you accepting standard archeological dating?
Sumerian writing goes way back.
The issue of Noah and earlier is, of course, changed by whether or not we accept a cataclysmic universal flood. If so, then there are no records...even if they kept records.
If you accept a biblical dating scheme, then Shem lived into the Abrahamic times. First hand accounts could be written from an observer.
""God did not write the Bible. Man, with all his faults did" ~ MindBender26
"Then how can you trust what they wrote about Jesus? How can you even know that He existed and was not some myth? He rose from the dead, walked on water, healed blind men, and turned water into wine. Things reason and science say are impossible." ~ JohnnyM
Why Bible Critics Do Not Deserve the Benefit of the Doubt
http://www.tektonics.org/af/calcon.html
The Old Testament http://www.tektonics.org/lp/otcanon.html
The New Testament http://www.tektonics.org/lp/ntcanon.html
The Bible is much more than history or science. It is TRUTH. It is not "cleverly designed fables".
The Bible is not a science textbook. Nor is it natural history - it is inaccurate on both counts.
In your vision, should individuals be insulated against liability for the debts they incur in doing business and the torts committed by the business entites they operate?
God did not write the Bible. Man, with all his faults did. God did the acts. Man tried to remember them, and record them, but did so with all the expected errors we find in everything Man does over thousands of years. But that's OK. God forgave them.
Where does anyone get the idea that nobody wrote anything down starting from the time of Adam and Eve? Why is it assumed that the first humans created were dumb caveman-hicks by comparison to those of us who live today?
Your view about who wrote the Bible is itself based on a worldview that excludes the possibility of God revealing Himself to man in written word form to begin with. Why should anyone accept your worldview? It is merely your own biased opinion.
So you have an opinion. Now tell us why anyone should believe what you say. In other words, does your opinion actually line up with Truth?
The Bible is not a science textbook. Nor is it natural history - it is inaccurate on both counts.
So you have an opinion. Now tell us why anyone should believe what you say. In other words, does your opinion actually line up with Truth?
I do not pretend to be some sort of conduit to Truth. I'm only stating that a literal reading of the Bible, with its Young Earth cosmology, is not scientifically accurate.
I would never expect anyone to take my word for that. You wouldn't need to anyway - the evdence aginst a 6,000 year old Earth is manifest.
I guess we'll have to agree that we don't fully agree on anti-trust or the proper role of government in business regulation (the latter being, as I'm sure you are aware, the point of my question).
I'm sure you will agree with me, though, when I say it's kind of nice to converse for a while without being called a hellbound spawn of evilutionist materialism. : )
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.