The unstated major premise behind every argument Intelligent Design proponents employ is that science can somehow be used to support a supernatural cause. Everything boils down to this one (not inconsequential) assumption. It’s the reason that these and other promoters of “creation” models fight to have their ideas taught in science classrooms.
This assumption is wrong by definition. Science is defined by a particular method of gathering and evaluating information (the scientific method). Anything that proposes to call itself science must therefore follow this method. ID does not and cannot follow it. By calling itself science, ID confuses the compatible realms of science and theology, actively undermining the integrity of both.
To understand why ID doesn’t fall under the purview of science, it’s necessary to understand what science does as well as what it does not do.
The testable hypothesis is the crux of scientific method. A testable hypothesis is an answer to a question, phrased as a fact which can then be shown to be accurate or inaccurate through some form of experimentation.
For instance, you may start with the question, “Why is the sky blue?” You might form several hypotheses from this question, such as “The sky is blue because there’s a giant mirror up there reflecting the ocean.”
There are two potential outcomes when you formulate your hypothesis. If the mirror is there, then you’re correct. If the mirror isn’t there, then you’re wrong, and must offer a new hypothesis.
Although the mirror example may seem ridiculous to us these days, that’s only because we’ve been up there. We’ve seen for ourselves that there cannot be giant mirrors in the sky; we’ve tested this hypothesis. It failed, but until a few hundred years ago it would have been a perfectly viable notion.
By scientific standards, the ID hypothesis is much worse than the mirror hypothesis. Why? Because a mirror is something that we can observe. It exists in the material world, and not outside of it.
The purpose of the scientific method is to discover and describe natural processes, such as how clouds form. This is also the limit of science – it cannot be used to investigate anything outside of the natural world. The scientific method can only be used on hypotheses that fall within the realm of material testability. A supernatural creator is by definition “outside” the realm of purely natural processes, and therefore impossible to prove by scientific means.
How would one go about studying a being that is outside of observation? How would a scientist perform a controlled experiment to learn about the properties of something that purportedly does not have normal physical properties?
This is the entire problem with Intelligent Design. If you claim that the mechanism of creation is something that by definition cannot be proven using the scientific method, then you are dealing with something other than science – which is where it ought to stay.
This assumption is wrong by definition. Science is defined by a particular method of gathering and evaluating information (the scientific method). Anything that proposes to call itself science must therefore follow this method. ID does not and cannot follow it. By calling itself science, ID confuses the compatible realms of science and theology, actively undermining the integrity of both.
To understand why ID doesn’t fall under the purview of science, it’s necessary to understand what science does as well as what it does not do.
The testable hypothesis is the crux of scientific method. A testable hypothesis is an answer to a question, phrased as a fact which can then be shown to be accurate or inaccurate through some form of experimentation.
For instance, you may start with the question, “Why is the sky blue?” You might form several hypotheses from this question, such as “The sky is blue because there’s a giant mirror up there reflecting the ocean.”
There are two potential outcomes when you formulate your hypothesis. If the mirror is there, then you’re correct. If the mirror isn’t there, then you’re wrong, and must offer a new hypothesis.
Although the mirror example may seem ridiculous to us these days, that’s only because we’ve been up there. We’ve seen for ourselves that there cannot be giant mirrors in the sky; we’ve tested this hypothesis. It failed, but until a few hundred years ago it would have been a perfectly viable notion.
By scientific standards, the ID hypothesis is much worse than the mirror hypothesis. Why? Because a mirror is something that we can observe. It exists in the material world, and not outside of it.
The purpose of the scientific method is to discover and describe natural processes, such as how clouds form. This is also the limit of science – it cannot be used to investigate anything outside of the natural world. The scientific method can only be used on hypotheses that fall within the realm of material testability. A supernatural creator is by definition “outside” the realm of purely natural processes, and therefore impossible to prove by scientific means.
How would one go about studying a being that is outside of observation? How would a scientist perform a controlled experiment to learn about the properties of something that purportedly does not have normal physical properties?
This is the entire problem with Intelligent Design. If you claim that the mechanism of creation is something that by definition cannot be proven using the scientific method, then you are dealing with something other than science – which is where it ought to stay.
* * * * *
Of course, that’s not what ID proponents will say. They’ll tell you that the “evolutionists” are trying to disprove god. They’ll tell you that they see things like irreducible complexity and the “fine-tuning” of the cosmological constants as evidence for creation that “Darwinists” ignore.
Both of these claims are misleading.
Many real scientists are atheists, it’s true. Their personal beliefs may or may not be a result of their scientific knowledge. It’s just as likely that many people who started out as atheists are attracted to science, rather than being actively deconverted by what they learn later on.
Whatever the case may be, focusing on the relatively high proportion of atheists in scientific pursuits ignores the fact that many scientists follow some kind of religious teaching. You’ll find every kind of belief system among scientists, from Christian to Pantheist.
Although our concern is with evolutionary scientists in particular, tenets of evolutionary theory have been independently verified in nearly every scientific field (the observed microevolution of viruses that made the “swine flu” and the subsequent vaccine possible, for instance). Because of this, most scientists accept the basic concepts of evolution, no matter what field they work in. So it’s not inappropriate to consider the scientific community as a whole.
It shouldn’t be surprising that so many religious people are comfortable with evolution. Many of the ancient religions, some of which are still around, practiced Earth worship, which is friendly to evolution. So are Deists, who believe that a god set the universe in motion but no longer actively participates.
Buddhists have long embraced the theory. As Radhika Abeysekera points out in her book, Practising the Dhamma with a View to Nibbāna: “It is also interesting to read of the Buddha’s description of life on Earth…Incidentally, this description is similar to the description of evolution given by scientists.”
Christianity as a whole does not reject evolution either. In 1996, Pope John Paul II said that evolution was “more than a hypothesis,” and that Charles Darwin’s ideas were sound, provided they took into account God’s responsibility for creation. A few years later, USA Today ran a story in which Pope Benedict XVI made a more nuanced proclamation:
"I find it important to underline that the theory of evolution implies questions that must be assigned to philosophy and which themselves lead beyond the realms of science," the pope was quoted as saying…Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory.”
Although Pope Benedict’s comments are slightly more contentious than Pope John Paul’s, both are willing to accept the basic concepts of evolution without feeling that their faith need be threatened. That’s because most scientists and most religious leaders understand the very thing that Intelligent Design proponents do not: science cannot disprove a god anymore than it can prove it.
The misconception that the ID community pushes about there being some anti-religious component to evolution may be in part a reaction to a sense that science has somehow stripped off the perceived strength of their chosen god. But this need not be the only way to think about it. Yes, a vast number of phenomena can be explained by natural mechanisms that don’t “require” a god. But that doesn’t mean that those are the only mechanisms that have ever been at work.
As my mother, a devout evangelical (though not fundamentalist) Christian, is fond of pointing out, who’s to say how god chose to manifest the universe? Who’s to say god didn’t use the natural mechanisms of the Big Bang, chance, and punctuated equilibrium as a method of creation? Evolution doesn’t dispute any of these possibilities. It only disputes the idea that it can prove god through them.
* * * * *
The other wrongful portrayal that ID proponents present – that evolutionary scientists ignore criticisms of their own theory – is just as much hogwash. Even Darwin made changes to the theory during his lifetime.
Evolution today looks like Origin of the Species only in its most basic principles. Scientists are constantly tweaking their ideas. The entire reason that they use the scientific method is because it allows them to open up more questions.
This is not a weakness of evolution. It is its strength. Theories never go unchanged – Newton’s theories of motion, for example, had to be overhauled when Einstein came along. That’s how science works. It’s always provisional, building on ideas that work and discarding those that don’t.
There are legitimate debates about how evolution works, too. We debate how to draw the family tree. We wonder whether most changes are adaptive, or if factors like genetic drift also play a major role. We update our models of species classification, and adjust timelines when new evidence comes in. Although, as Pope Benedict said, we can’t go back and get all of prehistory into a lab, we can make plenty of testable hypotheses. Evolution has been borne out in every one of these.
One of the most famous examples of using the scientific method to make a prediction about evolution was conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Chicago, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Harvard University in 2004. This team looked at fossil evidence of fish to figure out what a transitional fossil between two species should be and what layer of rock it should be buried in. They then looked at geological maps to find out where in the world they might be able to find this fossilized fish. Their prediction turned out to be entirely correct: they discovered Tiktaalik roseae, a perfect fit between lobe-finned fish and the earliest known tetrapods.
The theory of evolution is, well, always evolving. But despite what ID claims, these changes support the theory rather than contradicting it.
So what of the other objections that Intelligent Designers lob against evolution? Unfortunately, most of them employ fallacious logic, are outdated or irrelevant. The reason that they work is simple – it takes much less time to make a false claim than it does to demonstrate why that claim is false. The ID community has all day to come up with illegitimate claims against evolution (far too many to go into here). Scientists can only devote a small portion of their time to explaining why those claims are wrong; most of their time is taken up by actually performing scientific investigations.
Besides, the few legitimate criticisms that ID proponents do have are also criticisms that are being investigated by real scientists, using hypotheses that can be tested. Having legitimate criticisms doesn’t make your ideas scientific.
The way that ID portrays it, evolution is an all-or-nothing scenario. Criticism of any part of the theory becomes a rebuttal against the whole thing, and any acceptance of it becomes a proclamation of atheism. These falsities constitute the real damage that they do to science – and human culture as a whole.
It should be noted that one cannot speak on this subject without a warning to scientists as well. A few voices in this community have adopted the thinking patterns of ID and actively sought to deconvert people to atheism via scientific evidence. It’s fine to be atheist and to promote atheism. Atheist scientists must be careful, though, in how they approach the argument. Science may certainly inform our beliefs about the world, but it cannot have the final word on god. Just as it can’t prove, it can’t absolutely rule out the existence of otherworldly beings. Nobody should pretend that it can.
Science can’t draw conclusions about things it can’t test. You can’t test a supernatural being. Because of that, Intelligent Design proponents can’t make testable hypotheses, and cannot correctly claim that their ideas belong in science classrooms.
The cultural wedge that Intelligent Design tries to force between religious communities and science is a damnable false dichotomy. For this reason it shouldn’t be taught anywhere.
Picture Credits:
No comments:
Post a Comment