To some, science seems like “the new Authority”, the new self-sustaining system perpetuated by clergy named “scientists” and to be dogmatically obeyed by the rest of us in the pews. (Heh. Not even church is like that, assuming you choose a nice progressive community.) The problem is “science” is pigeonholed into something it isn’t, and this is helped by the fact that it has such a handy pre-existing label. Develop a pigeonholed understanding of the label, then the job is done!

So instead of saying “I care too much about science”, I’m going to talk about… “I care too much about understanding reality/creation as best I can”, “I’m too interested in the evidence about the past that surrounds us”, or something similar.

And so my quest for maximizing understandability continues down the road of ever-increasing verbosity. *sigh*.

For that reason, I will also not have time to attempt a similar treatment of the Noah’s Flood seminar, so instead I’m just providing a link to Auke’s transcript. (A friend pointed out she — if I correctly remember who it was — opposes the use of the word “seminar” for these things. I suppose I could rather call them “talks”?) Auke’s hope is that some scientists in relevant fields will be able to give a thorough response to such nonsense from their areas of expertise.

You may wonder: “does it really matter if some people take some mythological stories literally instead of metaphorically?” Well, imagine the potential impact when a science-denying creationist is appointed dean of a faculty of Natural Sciences at an otherwise excellent university. Even if he is able to keep his own beliefs out of the picture, it could affect e.g. funding decisions. So the fight for a good education continues, and we continue to hold thumbs for the appointing of a good dean. (Without taking a thumb-holding superstition seriously: it’s merely a figure of speech. M’kay? You got that?)

Consider the theory of gravity. An apple, unsupported by tree or table, falls. That is what it does. And it seems to do it every time. Hold an apple in the air, let go, it falls. It falls once, it falls twice, it falls a million times. And by that method, every time we test the theory of gravity, it holds. So eventually we come to the tentative conclusion: “apples will always fall”. But how can we really know that? What about the million-and-oneth time? It might behave differently if we do it one more time. It really might!

The answer is we can never know for certain.

We can boil water at sea level, a million times, and eventually conclude that water always boils at 100 degrees Celsius. And we would be wrong. It would be a theory that would eventually be proven wrong, when we eventually boil water at high altitude. The theory would have been falsified. For this reason, science works not by verifying the same experiment over and over again, but rather by attempting to disprove, over and over, and failing to do so. Find a single example that disproves a theory, and the theory has been shown to be incorrect. (Of course, there are various measures of incorrectness. Sometimes the theory can be revised and improved, sometimes it has to be scrapped.)

Now back to the apple. If, lo-and-behold, at one point we make the experiment and the apple doesn’t fall, observed under scientific conditions with no other force at play, the correct scientific conclusion is this: the theory of gravity is incorrect. This is how science works, and it works because science is practised under methodological naturalism. It is a term possibly coined by a conservative Christian to help distinguish between methodically approaching scientific experiments from a naturalistic perspective, and the philosophical stance of ontological naturalism, which states that the supernatural does not exist.

If the apple proved to float, just once, and we did not practice science from a methodological naturalistic approach, we could conclude “God has bent the rules of gravity, this once, to make the apple float”. That is all good and well, but how do we then make any scientific progress when theories do not match with predictions? Every single time a theory is proven incorrect, we could merely conclude “it is but divine intervention”.

This is no way to make progress in science, which is why science must be practised from a naturalistic perspective. Without accepting the falsification of a theory, how can we ever go about testing it? We would stick with “we’re ill because of supernatural forces”, there would be no reason to go look for germs and discover the germ theory for illness. That a heavy object and a light object fall at the same speed (e.g. in a vacuum, even a feather) could be attributed divine significance, and we wouldn’t revise our theories on gravity… We could look at the strange orbits of planets in our geocentric model for the universe, constructing ever-more complicated epicycle theories in order to fit the ever-more curious and inexplicable observations, because we believe God says the Earth is the centre of the universe and everything must therefore rotate around it. Or we might conclude the orbits are so intricate and utterly bizarre or silly-seeming, because “God is shuffling the planets around” to prove omnipotence.

Why? Because we selfishly need it in order to achieve some sense of wonder? Some sense of marvel at God’s creation? Isn’t it that much more marvellous and wonderful when we can comprehend how the orbits really work, how the earth rotates around the sun despite it feeling like we’re “standing still”? Eventually coming up with the remarkable theory of relativity by which we comprehend the utter marvellousness of a universe that has no centre, by which we can construct a Global Positioning System that requires taking into account how space and time warps near large mass and at speed? By which we can discover the source of illness and cure it with medicine? By which we can discover penicillin and cure disease? Create vaccinations against polio? Do you think Jesus would disapprove of us healing the sick?! WTF…

Methodological Naturalism is an absolute necessity in practising science, we would not have gotten this far if we didn’t embrace it. It is not about trying to push God out of the picture, it is merely about seeking greater understanding of this marvellous creation.

More Material: my old post titled What is Science? — I may want to revise it some time, but in the mean time, I believe you may find it enlightening.

Go read The Value of Science by Richard P. Feynman, a legend of a scientist and educator. Go, read it, think about it. If you want, come back here and share your thoughts and feelings.

When I become really busy in August, I hope to still get around to one post per week. I know where I want to take this blog next. I have something of a commitment to the plan, though I cannot predict how it will go down. Despite my fears and doubts about it, it remains something I feel a need to do. On the other side of that mountain lies a valley I’m eager to explore… but first, over the mountain I go.

From now until mid-August, hopefully two posts per week — there are a couple of loose ends I want to tie up this month. Likely only two per week though, as I’m busy with relocation arrangements and some side projects: I will probably fork off a second blog as found a focus. I need a place for computer-geek stuff, and other personal things unrelated to this blog’s focus.

But I digress, and into unnecessary detail at that. Go read the Feynman talk, it is a public address given at the 1955 autumn meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. May we find a good path forward, and use our keys wisely.

(Thanks to Pieter for the link.)

Some snippets from this article:

But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

Now that’s a scientist speaking. Brian Greene is a string theorist, but I won’t hold it against him because this Op-Ed is so cool. On the nature of children:

As every parent knows, children begin life as uninhibited, unabashed explorers of the unknown. From the time we can walk and talk, we want to know what things are and how they work — we begin life as little scientists. But most of us quickly lose our intrinsic scientific passion. And it’s a profound loss.

Can we not all become like children again? Ready to be wide-eyed at the wonders of life, exploring the unknown in awe?

What does happen to our scientific passion? Why does “adulthood” kill it? Is it too challenging to have to sacrifice cherished dogma and beliefs when they turn out to be false? No, actually, I don’t think that’s really the reason. Children are learning machines… learning and absorbing new knowledge at a pace that boggles the mind. At some point one has enough knowledge and experience to get by, and priorities shift. It is no longer that important to know the truth, knowing enough to survive is, well, enough to survive. Such is life?

Not quite. It is a choice. Like the choice to appreciate the arts, or the choice to appreciate sport or the outdoors or good food or wine. Not everyone makes the same choices, and I believe we should respect diversity and individuality. However, we don’t all have the same choices in the first place…

Some people cannot afford good food or wine, or do not have opportunity to experience the arts, sport or the “outdoor lifestyle”. Various factors can suppress the choice, just like various societal pressures can suppress our ability to choose to enjoy and appreciate science. The question is then: what can we do to provide people with more choice, more opportunities, to appreciate the wonders of life?

Three weeks ago, I experienced what some might call a synchronicity (a concept introduced by Carl Jung). Wikipedia defines it as follows:

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally unrelated. In order to be synchronous, the events must be related to one another conceptually, and the chance that they would occur together by random chance must be very small.

A “fundamentalistic atheist” (sorry about the label, can’t be helped) will typically assume that synchronicity is nothing other than observational selection, i.e. bias. We remember and notice the interesting coincidences more than the uninteresting ones. The “fundamentalistic theist” will typically assume that synchronicity is definite proof of the existence of their God.

The scientist? What will the scientist do? Ideally: neither. The scientist would think: “Hey, this is interesting! Can’t we test it? Let’s test whether it is nothing other than coincidence, or something more…” (assuming funding could be found for such experiments). A scientist that would love to “prove” it, should ideally try his or her best to disprove it, in order to avoid his or her own bias. (See What is Science?)

Incidentally, the Wikipedia page seems to indicate this matter is not yet satisfactorily settled. (Not that you can take Wikipedia’s word for it, though. Wikipedia is not God after all ) The (ideal) scientist would go look for literature on the matter, to find out what experiments have been done, and what can be learned from them. He/she will then design another experiment, possibly improving on previous ones, or otherwise re-testing previous ones, to test whether this is merely coincidence and observational selection or sampling bias, or whether there really is some unexpected and unpredictable coincidences that we can not yet explain.

If the scientist finds these coincidences, the conclusion is not “Wow! There is a God!” If the scientist finds it is nothing other than sampling bias, the conclusion is not “See! There is no God!”

In the first case, the conclusion is just: Ah, there is some surprising but measurable effect that we don’t yet understand. It would seem there may be some form of “connectedness” between things in the universe. Whether that “connectedness” is God or not, is not relevant to science. (Jung, for example, believed synchronicities occur too often to be random chance, even after controlling for observational selection.)

In the second case, the conclusion is ah, it would seem accounts of synchronicity really are nothing other than a case of sampling bias. Even if the sequence of events are purely random chance, I think the subjective experience of meaning behind a random sequence of events, can still be attributed to “God”. Why not? What’s wrong with that?

In this sense, I’d argue there is no way of either proving or disproving “God”. In this sense, God isn’t within the realms of science. In this sense, I feel I must agree with Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of “non-overlapping magesteria”, though I have yet to read any of his books.

Enjoy.

ps: So the discussion of such experiences is then not in the realm of science. (I wonder, does that put such discussions outside the realm of the “Freethinking Maties” society?) If it’s not a scientific discussion, what is it? Theology perhaps? Or something similar at least?

We can observe an apple, and wonder, “Will it fall, or will it jump over the moon?” We see one falling, and think “hey, apples fall!” With that conjecture, we watch another apple, and it also falls. After watching a dozen apples or so, we conclude “apples always fall”. How do we know though? We can watch a million apples falling, and we still won’t know for a fact that the million-and-oneth apple will not jump. You know what we do? We take it on faith.

We can only hypothesize that the apple will always fall. We can never prove it. We can only have faith that the theory that the next apple will fall, is correct. What, then, makes science any different from religion?

This is the crux of the scientific method, of what makes something “scientific”: scientists do not try to prove their hypotheses, instead, they try their best to disprove them. A scientist comes up with the hypothesis that apples always fall. He then observes as many apples as he can, trying his best to find one that jumps over the moon. If he were to find one, he would conclude “ah, so my hypothesis was incorrect, apples do indeed not always fall”, and go searching for a better hypothesis.

The harder a scientist tries to disprove a hypothesis, and the more the scientist fails, the more faith can be placed in that theory. In this way, Newton’s theory of gravity became generally accepted as “fact”.

However, at some point, people started noticing jumping apples. Originally they thought their eyes were deceiving them – that their measuring instruments were not accurate enough, or that there is some other influence at work which they have over-looked. One of these jumping apples was the planet Mercury. It did not move exactly as predicted.

This is where the “no deferring to divine influence as an explanation in science” comes into play. Humans could simply have concluded: “Wow! Conclusive proof that God exists! God is pulling Mercury around, breaking all the known laws of physics!” This is not valid science, whether God exists or not. Instead, scientists continued scratching their heads.

In 1915, Einstein presented his theory of General Relativity. This theory includes a new formulation for the effect we know as gravity. In simple cases, this reduces mathematically to Newton’s laws, indicating he was correct for the cases we have here on earth. However, for Mercury, General Relativity’s prediction was spot-on, while Newton’s law of universal gravitation was inadequate. For highly accurate science and technology applications, such as GPS satellites, Einstein’s relativity is of the utmost importance, Newton doesn’t cut it.

So yes, science also requires some “faith”. However, science is a process that is self-correcting, that improves over time, and that searches incessantly for its own flaws. Effectively, science is continually examining its own eye in the mirror, to determine if there isn’t maybe a beam in it, or even just a splinter for that matter, that could be removed in order to further improve its vision.

If “creation” is a book written by the hand of God, then science is our basic reading skill. All humans should become literate, so that they may part-take in the wonderful stories that are there to be read.

For more on the attempts to prove General Relativity incorrect, please see Tests of general relativity. Any experiment, any test in science, serves to try to disprove the theory, not to prove it.

Gary Bates quote mines Carl Sagan (and many other people, of course). I wonder if he has read any of Carl Sagan’s books? It didn’t sound like it. I practically begged him to read just the first two chapters of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World (Amazon, Kalahari). He explains science beautifully. Of course, I wish he would also read the next seven or eight chapters, as it deals with the exact same subject matter as Bates’ own Alien Intrusion (Amazon, Kalahari), except, from a scientific perspective (and without the altar call at the end, of course). I find it shocking and unforgivable that someone could write a book on that subject matter without having read The Demon-Haunted World, but maybe that’s just me.

With no tertiary education (and secondary education generally not being what it should ideally be), it unfortunately comes as no surprise that Bates does not know what science is. I would not be surprised if 99% of humanity does not know. School mostly teaches things that science has discovered. This is useful and important, but it is so much more important to explain science itself, the scientific method, the role of falsifiability, the ability to think critically, the answer to the very difficult question, “how can we know stuff?”

A friend pointed out that the majority of Bates’ audience probably knows more about science than Bates does, and yet, they listen uncritically to Bates and accepts everything he has to say, no questions asked.

With contemporary media what it is, the marketing departments are running our lives for us. “The Secret” currently tops Kalahari.net’s best-sellers list. Our lives are increasingly dependent upon science and advanced technology. There is no going back. Scientific literacy is becoming one of the most, most important things every human should have.

Please, please read this Slate article on “The Secret”. It is humorous, a fun read, and something all of us should be able to agree on. Except Oprah worshippers, maybe. Discuss, understand and laugh at the quote-mining in “The Secret” and the silliness of its assertions. Done that? Great. Now, stop looking at the splinters in your neighbours’ eyes.

As Wikipedia points out, “other fields of science, such as cosmology and earth science, also conflict with literal interpretations of many religious texts”, yet, “evolutionary biology has borne the brunt of these debates”. Considering evolution is obviously harder to accept than its necessary preconditions, I often think it makes more sense to shift the discussion to the Age of the Earth instead.

Consider this quote from Augustine (apparently the originator of the phrase “Love the sinner and hate the sin”), written around the 5th century CE:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, . . . and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

A more thorough quoting can be found on Wikipedia, the version I used, I found in one of the responses in the Index to Creationist Claims on The TalkOrigins Archive.

Of course, Augustine was arguably a Young Earth creationist, but you can’t blame him, living in the 4th/5th century. His warning from 1600 years ago applies as much to our knowledge as it did to theirs, and our knowledge includes “the world is 4.5 billion years old”. It also applies to physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, cosmology, molecular biology, genomics, linguistics, anthropology and archaeology, all fields that have some conflict with Young Earth creationist perspectives.

Some people do not realize there is such conflict, due to not being educated on such matters, and can therefore not be blamed for believing what they do. (Some may be blameable for some related things though: shunning education or critical thinking, or arguing about things they really know nothing about.) In some cases, then, it should be useful to educate people on such matters. I think it is also important to point out that there really shouldn’t be a conflict between their Christianity and their acceptance of science. (Of course, the anti-theist might disagree. The anti-theist might prefer it if all religious people were literalists, as literalistic religions really are such easy targets. )

I am also certain that accepting evolution does not decrease your chances of going to heaven.

A note about my context: What I see most often in my town and among friends that reject evolution, is Biblical literalism and Young Earth creationism. As such, that is what I will be discussing most often. Similarly, with respect to other religions, I mostly write as a “Christian”, with an audience of Christians in mind. I do also know people that do accept that the earth is old, but still doubt or reject evolution – they seem to be a minority however. We do not have a strong intelligent design movement, I suspect that is mostly limited to USA? (And yes, I placed “Christian” in inverted commas. There has been, for close to two millennia, some disagreement about what that label exactly means. Some of the more than 30 churches on Stellenbosch claim there really are only a small handful of these that are “real churches”.)

For my international readers, a little background on why this relevant to me: I’m studying at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Stellenbosch is situated about 50km from Cape Town. The town is host not only to a University, but also to a diversity of churches. Apparently there are more than 30 Christian congregations of various denominations. Many of these (I’m being optimistic here) are not in conflict with science, rational thought, and critical thinking, but a couple are, and pride themselves in it. In certain groups of friends, the greater majority rejects evolution and embraces young earth creationism (and most of the rest are not prepared to stand up for evolution). Some embrace the “fundamentalism” label as something positive. (Maybe in a similar way as I might embrace “geeky” or “nerdy”, using some specific definitions of those words, but rejecting others.) There was some controversy at the beginning of the year, when the student newspaper, Die Matie, published an article titled “Dosente bevraagteken Shofar”, roughly translated “Lecturers question Shofar”, one of the pentecostal churches that denounce evolution. (If there is interest, I can write a bit about it, though some translation of articles might be necessary, and my time remains limited.)

Enough background, which I’m sure made my supposed “bias” in the matter rather obvious (to those that consider it bias). Let’s state it directly. I accept the theory of evolution as our best explanation thus far, and this post is obviously written from that perspective. This isn’t the place for a debate, “debates” just waste time. If you want some arguments, take a look at TalkOrigins’ An Index to Creationist Claims, responding to creationist claims from the perspective of mainstream science, or look at Answers in Genesis, arguably the leading site on Creationism. (Somehow, it pains me to link there. But I’ll get over it.)

So, why do people reject evolution (including theistic evolution)? Thoughts on “deeper” reasons behind such rejection, can be found at old posts (2005) on 3quarksdaily, majikthise and pharyngula. I found these three links at darwiniana.

3quarksdaily:

My explanation is simply this: Human beings have a strong visceral reaction to disbelieve any theory which injects uncertainty or chance into their world view. They will cling to some other “explanation” of the facts which does not depend on chance until provided with absolutely incontrovertible proof to the contrary.

majikthise:

Mostly, evolution makes people uncomfortable because it explains how life could have emerged without any external purpose or design. Evolutionary explanations are threatening to people who assume that naturalistic explanations undercut meaning in life. If we assume that we were designed by some creator, it follows that our existence has at least some built-in purpose. At the very least, we could say that we were designed by someone for some reason. It wouldn’t necessarily follow that we were designed for any good reason, of course.

pharyngula:

Ultimately, what brings people together to reject evolution is a sense of identity and belonging to a group that has a non-rational anti-evolutionary dogma as a part of their social toolkit. It’s not assessment of the evidence that drives them away from science, it’s entirely because the evidence challenges a facet of the beliefs they recognize as distinguishing elements of their tribe. In a war between reality and their social group, they cling to their subculture. It actually makes sense, in an evolutionary and biological way: an isolated human being is not a particularly viable unit, and it’s the cohesion of the clan and tribe that is more important for long-term success.

Please go and read the original posts for more on these ideas, read on for my list of “shallow” reasons.

In the light of these possible “deep” answers, I’m rather shy about the more “shallow” reasons I want to list. I’d like to think I’m being more “practically minded” because it’s rather close to home. (Many friends typically reject evolution, and many members of my extended family are also very likely to.) Maybe I’m just being silly, of course, if symptomatic treatment is ineffective and the “deeper” reasons, the origins, are the true power behind the rejection. (Discussing symptoms might help make the root cause more accessible though?)

Reasons (“shallow” reasons) why people reject evolution:

1. uninformed (lack of knowledge with regards to evolution)
2. misinformed (believing another evolution-denier, who might fall under another category)
3. apathy towards, or rejection of science (favouring some other form of authority, possibly their church’s leadership, despite being informed)
4. a perceived threat to cherished beliefs/memes
5. a perceived controversy in the scientific community, making it “more arbitrary” which perspective (of two “equally valid” perspectives) is chosen.

These reasons do intersect in places, and it is usually a combination of reasons. Some examples that do not fall into this list, so that this list can be lengthened? Or might this list be shortened? I don’t think so?

Also, read some info about the photo.

I got this link from Auke’s website.