Blessed Relief (pun intended)
Jun. 21st, 2005 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenNo, this isn't about Batman. It's about something more important. While movies and entertainment monopolize a good deal of my time, I am working in the field of science, and my respect for it and the people in it does occasionally trump my obsession with everything pop culture related to [insert title here] flavor of the week.
The New York Times reported this story about reputable, God-fearing scientists who are staying out of the debate on creationism and evolution in Kansas. Why? Not because they think they can win, but precisely because they know they'd be going there to be slaughtered. It's a stacked deck, so why play by the way the Kansans want them to?
Now, I'm all for 'don't argue with him because you'll give him the idea that his arguments can call your knowledge into question,' type thinking, but isn't running away the problem here? As one of the defenders says in the article, "Evolution is not the only issue at stake. The very definition of science is at stake." That's fundamentally what's wrong with the debate between evolution and creationism. Creationism and intelligent design aren't science. They are more systematic these days, but they are still matters of faith not fact. If the conservative religious right would call a spade a spade, straight-talking apparently being patented and copyrighted by them (as opposed to the two-faced, lying liberal media), they'd admit what they were really doing with this push to throw evolution out of favor and into 'controversy.'
They want to teach faith in schools. This drive to kill evolution is the same as putting prayer in a classroom, only without the 'amen' to clue us in as to the infringement on the separation of church and state.
But they can't say that's what they want to do because there'd be a bunch of those pinko, hippie liberals who would come along and remind them that this is a free society where our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantees us our rights to worships as we choose. If you start putting intelligent design into classrooms, you remove that right by saying there has to be a God, or, if you don't believe in evolution either, you must believe in God the creator as the only other system. It boils down to a competition of faith versus fact, when the two cannot possibly compete on the same plane. If you've read the Bible, or hell, even The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you know faith is predicated on belief, fact on what our senses tell us. Faith requires no proof and often no proof could ever exist to justify it.
But, some might say, don't we allow people to teach theories in school? We sure do. Take philosophy if you want theories, though. The point of theories in hard, physical sciences is to have something to guide our thinking that can be ultimately proved or disproved with observation. Saying the fact we exist and go to church proves God created man isn't proof and never will be. Saying we descended from apes and all life started out as single-celled organisms in the primordial ooze has parameters that can be tested, expanded, revised, torn down (who knows? maybe the scientologists are right and we were dropped here by aliens).
What the article pointed out to me was that there's a real stodgy set-in-our-ways stubborness in both sides, and abandoning the discussion does nothing for science and allows ignorance to flourish. I AM NOT CALLING CREATIONISTS IGNORANT, ANONYMOUS CONSERVATIVE WHO MIGHT BE READING THIS. What people are ignorant of these days are the subtleties that make a fight between faith and fact an irreconcilable one. You can't match faith to fact, and scientists need to stop talking about evolution entirely and just start talking about science. Go to these town hall meetings in bumbfuck, Kansas, and say, 'this is what science is.' Then, still without mentioning the E-word, say what a scientific theory needs in order to have the justification to teach it. Point out that creationism (AND DO NOT EVEREVEREVEREVER CALL IT CREATION "SCIENCE") fails the model. Repeat that it fails the scientific model. Say it again, maybe four times in all. As it does not fall under the fairly rigourous but allowing strictures for scientific theory, it cannot be presented as a healthy, complete theory in a classroom.
DO NOT give up the fight because they're going to throw facts at you that are as yet questions with no answers. Do we have all the facts on evolution? Nope. Admit that. Has it been proven wrong? Nope, and make sure that you REPEAT THAT. The only way a theory can be considered false is if it is proven false. Another admission that might seem to be in their favor as no one can ever prove God did or didn't create life, the universe, and everything. But, to that end, you might remind them that gravity is no more a reality because it is still only a theory and then invite the nearest creationist to jump out a window and prove it wrong. Sarcasm won't help, but the dramatic example couldn't hurt.
Man, this blows. I hate when people get themselves into a snit over things that aren't comparable. Do I like apples or oranges? Fact or faith? Get a clue people. The reason liberals come off as snobs is because we insist there's a difference, I'm almost positive that's the problem. It seems prissy, priggy nit-picking to say you can't measure God against Darwin, but they sure don't match up in my book. For one, I like the people who follow Darwin a lot better these days...
The New York Times reported this story about reputable, God-fearing scientists who are staying out of the debate on creationism and evolution in Kansas. Why? Not because they think they can win, but precisely because they know they'd be going there to be slaughtered. It's a stacked deck, so why play by the way the Kansans want them to?
Now, I'm all for 'don't argue with him because you'll give him the idea that his arguments can call your knowledge into question,' type thinking, but isn't running away the problem here? As one of the defenders says in the article, "Evolution is not the only issue at stake. The very definition of science is at stake." That's fundamentally what's wrong with the debate between evolution and creationism. Creationism and intelligent design aren't science. They are more systematic these days, but they are still matters of faith not fact. If the conservative religious right would call a spade a spade, straight-talking apparently being patented and copyrighted by them (as opposed to the two-faced, lying liberal media), they'd admit what they were really doing with this push to throw evolution out of favor and into 'controversy.'
They want to teach faith in schools. This drive to kill evolution is the same as putting prayer in a classroom, only without the 'amen' to clue us in as to the infringement on the separation of church and state.
But they can't say that's what they want to do because there'd be a bunch of those pinko, hippie liberals who would come along and remind them that this is a free society where our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantees us our rights to worships as we choose. If you start putting intelligent design into classrooms, you remove that right by saying there has to be a God, or, if you don't believe in evolution either, you must believe in God the creator as the only other system. It boils down to a competition of faith versus fact, when the two cannot possibly compete on the same plane. If you've read the Bible, or hell, even The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you know faith is predicated on belief, fact on what our senses tell us. Faith requires no proof and often no proof could ever exist to justify it.
But, some might say, don't we allow people to teach theories in school? We sure do. Take philosophy if you want theories, though. The point of theories in hard, physical sciences is to have something to guide our thinking that can be ultimately proved or disproved with observation. Saying the fact we exist and go to church proves God created man isn't proof and never will be. Saying we descended from apes and all life started out as single-celled organisms in the primordial ooze has parameters that can be tested, expanded, revised, torn down (who knows? maybe the scientologists are right and we were dropped here by aliens).
What the article pointed out to me was that there's a real stodgy set-in-our-ways stubborness in both sides, and abandoning the discussion does nothing for science and allows ignorance to flourish. I AM NOT CALLING CREATIONISTS IGNORANT, ANONYMOUS CONSERVATIVE WHO MIGHT BE READING THIS. What people are ignorant of these days are the subtleties that make a fight between faith and fact an irreconcilable one. You can't match faith to fact, and scientists need to stop talking about evolution entirely and just start talking about science. Go to these town hall meetings in bumbfuck, Kansas, and say, 'this is what science is.' Then, still without mentioning the E-word, say what a scientific theory needs in order to have the justification to teach it. Point out that creationism (AND DO NOT EVEREVEREVEREVER CALL IT CREATION "SCIENCE") fails the model. Repeat that it fails the scientific model. Say it again, maybe four times in all. As it does not fall under the fairly rigourous but allowing strictures for scientific theory, it cannot be presented as a healthy, complete theory in a classroom.
DO NOT give up the fight because they're going to throw facts at you that are as yet questions with no answers. Do we have all the facts on evolution? Nope. Admit that. Has it been proven wrong? Nope, and make sure that you REPEAT THAT. The only way a theory can be considered false is if it is proven false. Another admission that might seem to be in their favor as no one can ever prove God did or didn't create life, the universe, and everything. But, to that end, you might remind them that gravity is no more a reality because it is still only a theory and then invite the nearest creationist to jump out a window and prove it wrong. Sarcasm won't help, but the dramatic example couldn't hurt.
Man, this blows. I hate when people get themselves into a snit over things that aren't comparable. Do I like apples or oranges? Fact or faith? Get a clue people. The reason liberals come off as snobs is because we insist there's a difference, I'm almost positive that's the problem. It seems prissy, priggy nit-picking to say you can't measure God against Darwin, but they sure don't match up in my book. For one, I like the people who follow Darwin a lot better these days...
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-21 10:56 pm (UTC)However, when the issue is teaching it as science, to all children, in public schools, the aesthetic appeal, or lack thereof, of their religious beliefs is of no consequence.