My mother was taught evolution by a nun. Apparently someone remembered the passage about a thousand years being as one day. Darwin said that none of the evolutionary process would have been possible without the hand of God to guide it. I think we're looking for arguments where none exist.

I agree that there is no necessary conflict between religion (including many sorts of creation mythology) and science (including evolution). It has always struck me as rather arrogant to say that god (or God if you prefer) couldn't arrange the world to include evolution. However:

"To say "science just hasn't figured it out yet" is no less a cop-out than saying "'cuz Jesus told me so!"."

I disagree; science makes no claim* to reveal "The Truth". The ideal of science is for each subsequent theory revision to asymptotically approach a complete description of the real world. In practice, science is probably better analogized as naval gunnery in a rough sea: Each attempt may be closer or farther from the target than the previous attempt, but over time the mean error decreases.

"Teach science in science class, and creation in religion class". And that's so very wrong."

Religion is, by definition, not science; it offers no falsifiable theory. If you do not make a falsifiable prediction, you are not doing science. Note that this need not be immediately falsifiable, theoretical falsifiability is adequate, but if the theory is only theoretically falsifiable, it is less compelling. Religion addresses matters that are not falsifiable even in theory.

However satisfying you may find (whatever) religion, it is philosophy, not science, and should be taught as such**. This would not preclude (and should be read as encouraging) a full discussion of the limits of science in a science class. If you would teach science, you should teach its boundaries as well.

* Properly executed, that is. There are certainly those who make such claims, but they are charlatans.

** Religion isn't the only thing that should be kept out of science classes. The same applies to discussions of "E=mc^2 as a 'sexed' equation", the morality of scientific investigation, and the propriety of beseeching government or industry for funding for science. Each of these could be a reasonable discussion topic (OK, maybe not the first one), but none belongs in a science class.

"Religion is, by definition, not science; it offers no falsifiable theory."

I know that - I was a pre-med for three weeks, after all :-)

My point is that while cosmology may not have a place in a Chemistry class, helping students look into the "why" behind the "how" could only make them better people - whether they become scientists or not - in the future.

Not saying "teach religion in science class". Am saying "quit artificically divorcing science from the rest of the world of thought. It creates artificial intellectual silos that only hurt everyone in the long run."

I, too, see no conflict up until the moment religion insists the mystery of faith contains the answer to the current gaps in scientific knowledge. Note how James Lileks prudently applies the mental brakes in his own faith-centred wonder at the universe - "I stop myself there, because everything after that is dogma and schism and debate". Wise fellow.
However, you go slightly out on a limb by saying: "To say "science just hasn't figured it out yet" is no less a cop-out than saying "'cuz Jesus told me so!"."
With respect, what Jesus told you, me or anyone else is a fixed quantity. Science continues to progress and to that end I have confidence - faith, if you will, that it will continue to do so and amaze us. The notion of putting a page of Shakespeare instantly into the hands of a correspondent on the other side of the world is just one of those once unthinkables that technology has figured out...

"However, you go slightly out on a limb by saying: "To say "science just hasn't figured it out yet" is no less a cop-out than saying "'cuz Jesus told me so!". With respect, what Jesus told you, me or anyone else is a fixed quantity. Science continues to progress and to that end I have confidence - faith, if you will, that it will continue to do so and amaze us."

And this is where the argument, with all due respect, far too often swerves into obtusion.

THe "It" that science has yet to figure out in the sentence you quote was "the origins of life, the universe and everything", not the invention of (to use your example) the fax machine. I'm not claiming divine intervention in the invention of the fax (my particular office's fax would seem to be more satanic in origin) - merely in the creation of the world in which the fax resides.

"My point is that while cosmology may not have a place in a Chemistry class, helping students look into the "why" behind the "how" could only make them better people - whether they become scientists or not - in the future."

I take that as an argument for philosophy distribution requirements; I suspect that's not what you intended. I'm pretty sure I just argued explicitly for keeping exactly those things out of science classes, so this looks irreconcilable to me.

"I'm ... claiming divine intervention ... in the creation of the world in which the fax resides."

I could claim the correct origin is in some form of pervasive animism, call it Extreme Shintoism (tm), in which every atom (perhaps molecule or quark instead, testing to await the correct tools) has its own guardian spirit. Each such spirit ensures that said atom follows the rules we think we understand about physics.

Or perhaps I should claim solipsism, or that the earth was created out of the mind of (whatever) during the middle of my writing this message, along with my memories of having written it.

I understand that you privilege a specific cosmology; why should I accept that the teaching of your preferred cosmology should be privileged over others for my son? If you don't wish to privilege a particular cosmology, how shall we decide which we shall discuss at the expense of time spent discussing Maxwell's equations (or whatever)?

If you wish to hire a teacher to teach a specific subject to your children, say through a donation given to a religious institution that also receives the donation of the labor of the teacher, great; Sunday School is a fine institution for those that wish it. If you wish to require a broad discussion of competing philosophies and cosmology, well, I'm not sure I see the value, but wouldn't be unalterably opposed to a required philosophy survey class for a science degree.

OTOH, if you wish to use class time otherwise dedicated to teaching science history and theory, I'm afraid I can't support that.*

* The same applies to gratuitous sorting of scientific advances by race or sex, advocacy of particular public policies under the guise of the discussion of science, or whatever else. Science is hard enough without distractions. And yes, I consider these distraction, not synergy. As I said, probably irreconcilable.

I have to disagree with Mitch when he states that "The greatest explosion in science and philosophy of all time - the period between 1815 and 1850 or so - was carried out by people who, in many cases, melded science, philosophy, art and religion."
This was the era of Percy Bysshe Shelley's disestablishmentarian writing, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Burke & Hare, and, if we widen his margin of years a bit, Bonaparte's rational state, Marx, and the European turmoil of 1848. Reason advanced while Faith retreated. Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/dover.html) shows the state of the battle in 1867.
Although I am not an ID'er in the sense most people imagine them to be I am suspicious of proponents of Darwin's Theory who use it not as a tool to explain observable facts but as a means to justify a self-righteous atheism.

I'm not disagreeing with you, Terry, that self-righteous athiests are more than annoying. But can you tell me which athiests, in today's society, have the ear of the networks or the newspapers? I just haven't followed this, so I'm quite ignorant on the subject. Thanks, in advance, for any info you might have.

Teena-
I'm not sure what you mean by "have the ear of the networks or newspapers". My point was not to say that the media was biased towards atheism although this may be true. If you want examples of self-righteous atheists you look to Noam Chomsky, Michael Newdow, Richard Dawkins, and Steven Weinberg for starters. These are all people who believe that religous sentiments should not be considered when making public policy.

Mitch:

Fundamentalist evolutionists, of course, are famously arrogant and dismissive of any notion that science can't give us all the answers. The existence of God, unempirical as that is, would be as big a problem to the scientific fundamentalist as the multi-billion-year-old universe is to the Biblical literalist. And to neither, it seems, is any compromise possible; one is either a believer or not, a person of reason or a yokel. Makes no sense.

EY: Oh this is a nonsensical strawman. Science can't answer all questions - and noone says it can. In fact the questions about the meaning of life, good and evil, and morality aren't addressed by Science but certainly are addressed by both philosophy, theology and religion.

"Fundamentalist evolutionists, of course, are famously arrogant and dismissive of any notion that science can't give us all the answers. The existence of God, unempirical as that is, would be as big a problem to the scientific fundamentalist"

See, there are two things. There's what's been called "scientific materialism," the idea that you can only consider natural causes to understand the natural world. You use it when a lightbulb burns out or the plumbing gets clogged. It's involved in a lot (but not all) of everyday life. It's how modern science works. It means science can't think about God, but it also explains why science is so effective in the physical world (imagine trying to do science with nonnatural causes!)

Then there's philosophical materialism. This (the material world) is all there is. One of ID's big, big problems is that is squishes together both kinds of materialism, even though they don't have to go together. Scientists, evolutionary biologists even, can have all kinds of beliefs - from philosophical materialist to evangelical Christian - without it affecting their science (ideally, anyway - scientists *are* people). Think of it like Internet Explorer, which can run on both PCs and Macs . . . (insert joke here).

"any notion that science can't give us all the answers."
Again, scientists are people, but a lot of them tend towards a healthy respect for how much *we* don't know.

Bizarrely, this notion is ends up being part of ID!

"And that’s all ID is to me, really: the possibility that the universe as a cause, that it was, for lack of better terms, summoned by volition." said Lileks

Ok. But the thing is, that completely fails to take into account the actual situation - it would be like defining liberalism or conservatism using 19th century definitions. If that's what ID is to Lileks, that's cool, and not inaccurate. But in terms of current events, it's pointless. What's actually going on is we have a well-funded movement, the intellectual descendent of the scientific creationism of the '80s, but intelligently designed (ha. ha.) to avoid certain legal realities (like that silly Establishment Clause). The quasi-scientific version of ID being pushed by these folks basically says that "if i can't figure out how it happened, God must have done it" is a scientific explation (Behe; a classic God-of-the-Gaps argument (I can't figure out lightning, Goddidit! becomes I can't figure out the bacteria flagellum evolved, Goddidit!), bad theology). This version of ID also says that science can prove God! (well, it talks about an unnamed Designer, but c'mon, take away the fake nose and glasses, and you have a certain familar face . . .
It's hard to pin down what ID advocates claim, though, because they tend to say different things to different audiences, as well claiming stuff like (in the Kansas school board hearings) the earth is anywhere between 4,500 years and 4.5 billion years old. Gee, thanks! Really cleared that right up!

This movement has had a lot of success in terms of getting people to accept their talking points (they've got you, to a degree!!) Their driving goal, however, is to use ID as a "wedge" to shatter atheistic, materialistic science and replace it with a properly Christian science that doesn't cause all this trouble! (you know, society is falling apart, morality has been abandoned, etc.) Yeah, I know, tinfoil hat territory, right? Check that link above, or here. Thing is, science is less than a log to be neatly split than a sweater with an annoying loose thread. Once you start pulling . . .

"Opinions differ. Except, of course, for the idea that evolution occurs, which would seem to be a prerequisite for being an evolutionary biologist"
Crazy, isn't it? Except replace evolution with gravity, and it doesn't sound quite as damning. (well, then it just sounds weird (a gravitational biologist??) but you know what I mean!)

"the world is like a newspaper: you either think that someone put it together, or you think that letters were thrown into a building and somehow they all arranged themselves in the form of editorials and recipes." (lileks said)

One problem is that (biological) evolution is strictly about what happened after the first living thing showed up - *not the origin of the universe or the earth, or how life got started. The debate we're having out in the world focuses on teaching this stuff in biology class, though it is slowly, unstoppably spilling over elsewhere.

And no, that's not what evolution is like. Nor is it a "tornado in a junkyard." Evolution is a specifically non-random process - that's where natural selection comes in. Self replicating creatures - not newsprint - reproduce themselves, but with variations. Some of the variations do better than others under the specific circumstances, and make more of themselves. Repeat for a very, very, very, very long time . . .

Analogies are annoying when they work in ways that just confuse the issue. That's called a bad analogy. Bad analogy! No doughnut . . .

A vast practical joke? The cosmological equivalent of short-sheeting the intellectual beds of His people?
That's pretty funny!
Fafblog has an extremely irreverent post somewhere about a stoned-sounding God comes up with the idea to fill the just-created earth with dinosaur skeletons . . .

"Teach science in science class, and creation in religion class". And that's so very wrong. Lileks:
Is that the job of high-school teachers? At some point, yes; I think any class could profit from philosophical exploration of the origins of life."

Except in the current climate what the debate is about is not a philosophical exploration of the origins of life, but a extremely emotionally loaded discussion about religion ith a bunch of teenagers which will almost certainly end up convincing some of them that you said science said religion was stupid. (Because you'd have to teach the difference between science and religion, if you were actually doing your job). Now, explaining the scientific method and all, and the fact that science doesn't explain anything, and isn't Truth but merely the best guess so far - sure, that's what good science teachers do.

" To divorce the "how" from the larger "why" "
Is necessary to do good science. In life, that's a different matter.

If we really think that we should remove the inspiration and mystery from science, by banning mention that there is are scientifically questionable challenges to evolution, then we need also ban discussing any of the scientists who got us to where we are today. No Einstein ( who involved God philosophically in his work ) or Galileo and his faith let alone his crossing swords with the Catholic church.

Don't mention the 'ether' theory for propogating EM waves, either. Don't discuss Isaac Newton's thoughts on how his faith inspired his explorations into the physical world. Don't being up anything but that which is specifically scientific and falsifiable.

What a freakin' dull curriculum that would be.

Aodhan,
Love your energy, deplore your logic.
Yes, without the biographical context, the struggles against Church authority, the profound faith that often went hand-in-hand with the enduring scientific insights of Newton et al, science can seem a dull dog. We all love the "good story" that goes with the dry facts (James "DNA" Watson's timeless best-seller "The Double Helix" being the perfect modern case in point). But the theory must outlast the personal history, and the mystery is the challenge to science not its central tenet which is where it parts company with faith.

" by banning mention that there is are scientifically questionable challenges to evolution, "

It's one thing to mention Lamarck, or even Lysenko, as a way to understand both the historical background and the way that science works (or gets perverted). But what the ID movement wants right now* is to teach scientifically "questionable" (sometimes outright discredited) "challenges" to evolution as *good* science, as current mainstream thought. That's innacurate and misleading.

Additionally, these challanges are generally very emotionally loaded, or extremely technical. In essense, the claim becomes that 9th or 10th graders wrestling over matters of faith, fine philosophical distinctions, and unspeakably obscure quibbles will be getting a good science education. I suppose that *could* happen, but statistically . . .

*that is, August 10th. Check again in a week or two; it may change. The ID movement *does* have lots of political saavy, ya gots to give it that . . .

" Don't discuss Isaac Newton's thoughts on how his faith inspired his explorations into the physical world. "
Does any high school physics class *do* this? (Remember, that's what _this_ debate is about - what we teach in high school science class.) That would be very interesting . . .

One certainly wants to teach science in a lively and relevant manner. But at the end of the day, you do have to make sure there's time for the actual science . . . .

I think everyone on the pro-science side of the fence has no problem with well-done philosophy or comparitive religion classes in high school (well, some might think we need more time for the basics . . .) A lot of this sort of stuff would go well there . . .

Thanks for the names, Terry.

Mitch, your piece is full of straw men. The debate is over whether it's appropriate to teach the pseudoscience otherwise known as Intelligent Design "theory" in Science classes.

From Panda's Thumb:

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/nightline_expos.html

Nightline: Exposé on ID and the Discovery Institute

Nick Matzke posted Entry 1328 on August 11, 2005 01:48 AM.
Trackback URL: http://degas.fdisk.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1326

http://a.abcnews.com/images/Technology/abc_darwin_bible_050503_t.jpgOh man. The Discovery Institute Media Complaints Division really isn’t just going to like what just got broadcast on ABC's Nightline. Nightline essentially did an exposé on (1) how ID has no scientific support, but (2) has gained national attention through clever marketing. Nightline, unlike most other media which tends to rely on the "dueling quotes" model in a "controversy," did the obvious thing for once. They contacted their partner U.S. News and World Report, got the list of the top ten biology departments in the country, and got the chair of each department to give their opinion on ID. This seems to have informed the rest of Nightline’s analysis. Good for them.

Following the news segment was a discussion between Cal Thomas and George Will — theocon vs. neocon — on the politics of ID. Refreshingly, Cal Thomas didn’t attempt to obfuscate the fact that promoting a particular religious belief is really what ID is about. Thomas argued that ID is part of a larger cultural battle involving school prayer, ten commandments, and similar religion-and-government issues — a politically astute analysis, by a supporter of this agenda. George Will, on the other hand, acknowledged the political appeal of ID but made a stand for restricting science and science classes to studying testable empirical hypotheses, and leaving other discussions for other arenas. At the end of the show I was left with this indescribable fuzzy warmness for George Will. I assure you this is a singularly peculiar feeling for me — I may have to seek medical treatment if it doesn't go away soon.

Actually, Eva, you entire comment is based on a straw man. I'm not participating in the "debate" over where what gets taught, in this post or anywhere else.

I don't care about "intelligent design", because - do try to read my original post more carefully - I don't see evolution and a divine creation as being in any conflict, except in the mind of biblical literalists and atheist fundamentalists. And I'm neither of them.

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