2. What is the evidence for relativity? The article doesn't say. One argument I've often read is evidence of time-dilation. But is this evidence that time is not a constant, or only that the rate of a physical process is not a constant? These are two very different questions.
One problem with relativity theory is that it doesn't mesh with quantum theory.
3. What is the evidence for heliocentrism? The article doesn't say. Actually, the theories of Mach and Einstein on equivalent forces and equivalent reference-frames would seem to make it easier to defend geocentrism. I ran this very question by a professional astronomer I happen to know (John Byl), who confirmed my intuitions:
"Yes. According to general relativity one should get the same observational results, regardless of whether the earth is considered to be at rest, with the rest of the universe revolving about it, or vice versa. (See D.Lynden-Bell et al, "Mach's Principle from the Relativistic Constraint Equations", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1995 Vol 272: 150-160)."
Geocentrism appears to be obviously false, but appearances are deceiving.
4. What is the evidence for plate tectonics? The article doesn't say. Einstein wrote a glowing forward to Charles Hapgood's book on polar shifts, Path of the Pole (Adventures Unlimited Press 1999), which is a rival theory to continental drift.
Robert Gange, the NASA scientist, is a critic of plate tectonics. See his article on "Continental Drift."
Walt Brown, who has a doctorate in mechanical engineering from MIT, has a rather damning conversation with J. Tuzo Wilson, one of the founders of plate tectonics. www.creationscience.com.
5. What is the evidence for atomic theory? The article doesn't say. Isn't atomic theory bound up with modern-day particle physics, quantum mechanics, and string theory? Much of this is extremely abstract and counterintuitive.
A theory doesn't have to be true to be successful. Newtonian physics and 19C ether theories were very successful in their heyday.
Scientists often operate with such metascientific assumptions as uniformity and methodological naturalism. These are not empirical data. They are not derived from the evidence. Rather, they serve as an interpretive grid through which the evidence is filtered, and contrary evidence is screened out.
My purpose is not to take a position on the truth of falsity of Relativity or plate tectonics or atomic theory or heliocentrism. Quammen is trying to predispose the reader to accept Darwinism by appealing to various other theories which he takes for granted. And my point is simply that his softening-up exercise is question-begging. One theory is not a preparation for another theory on an unrelated topc.
It is true that Christians feel threatened by Darwinism. However, the Darwinist should feel just as threatened by Darwinism. The hard-core Darwinist denies the afterlife, moral absolutes, and consciousness itself. If true, he is trapped aboard the same burning and sinking ship as the Christian.
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Thanks for calling my attention to Selbin's article in the Boulder Camera.
A few comments:
<< Selbin: Faith is outside realm of science >>
This way of framing the issue misses the point. The point is what may be known, and how it may be known. To draw stipulative lines in the sand assumes that we already know what is knowable before we look out the window.
<< School boards around the country are considering whether to put faith-based Intelligent Design alongside science-based evolution in science classes. >>
ID-theory is not faith-based. It reasons from science to God. That is why Dembski entitled his first book _The Design Inference_.
<< The recent re-election of an administration that advocates "creation science" and often makes political decisions on faith-based philosophies rather than on hard, cold reality. >>
What administration officials subscribe to creation science? Can Selbin name any? If he can, why doesn't he?
What political decisions have been made on faith-based philosophies? Again, where are the specifics?
<< Religion has a clear place in the home, in comparative religion courses and in churches, synagogues, mosques, etc., but it has no place in science courses. >>
This assumes, without benefit of argument, that science has no religious presuppostitions or implications. Why, only last week, I was reading a paper by a leading physicist (Don Page), entitled "Attaching Theories of Consciousness to Bohmian Quatum Mechanics" in which he said the following: "I personally also believe that a description of full SQM [Sensible Quantum Mechanics] or SBM [Sensible Bohmian Mechanics] world wold be simpler if one postulates the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent God as the Creator of this world, but of course this further extrapolation from direct conscious experience takes one beyond what is traditionally called physics to metaphysics."
Now, simplicity is a key criterion in scientific theorizing. If the "extrapolation" of God simplifies quantum mechanics, then that does have a place in science courses--to take but one example.
<< After the Supreme Court in 1987 banned the teaching of creationism in public schools on grounds of separation of church and state, creationists have changed their call for teaching "creationism" to the teaching of "intelligent design." Only the words are different. The so-called "theory" is not. >>
So it took 200 years after the ratification of the Constitution to discover that the teaching of creationism violated the separation of church and state? Doesn't this judicial finding seem a tad anachronistic?
Creationism and ID-theory are not the same. Just compare the standard creationist literature (e.g. K. Wise, _Faith, Form, & Time_; W. Brown, _In the Beginning_) with the standard ID literature (e.g., W. Dembski, _No Free Lunch_; M. Behe, _Darwin's Black Box_) to see the difference in methods, presuppositions, and content.
<< The claim by creationists that evolution is merely a theory, is quite simply, and outrageously, false. Evolution has been observed and very extensively established by thousands of scientists, many thousands of times over about 140 years and at sites around the world. The results have been published in thousands of independent articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Evolution, under attack by certain fundamentalist Christians, is very well established by scientific observations. >>
Notice that Selbin doesn't favor the reader with any concrete examples. Why is that? What does he mean by saying that evolution has been observed? Does he mean that the process of evolution has been observed in real time? Or does he mean that the results of evolution have been observed?
Again, is he talking about specialized adaptive variants, or the development of new organs and body-plans?
Of course, "peer-review" is becoming a euphemism for censorship, so the appeal is tendentious.
<< A theory must be able to do two powerful things. It must be able to satisfactorily explain what we already know, and it must be successful in predicting things we do not yet know. When scientists do not understand something, they set up observations and experiments and seek independent and reproducible results. When the proponents of ID (the creationists) do not understand or cannot explain something, they simply attribute the unknown to an even more, albeit magnificent and glorious, unknown, an "intelligent designer." . Science seeks answers without creating or tolerating myths or calling upon faith. There is nothing wrong or unsatisfying with faith. However, since it is by definition not based upon any evidence, it is outside the realm of science. This is the primary reason intelligent design should not appear in a science class. >>
First of all, the testability of ID-theory is discussed in ID-literature, if Selbin bothered to inform himself.
Notice, though, that he applies his two-pronged criterion to ID-theory, but not to evolutionary theory. Why the omission? Why the double-standard?
What predictions has evolutionary theory made? Have these predictions, if any, been proven true?
Punctuated equilibrium was proposed because Darwinian gradualism was falsified by the evidence. At least, that's what Gould and Eldridge thought.
Where has evolution been reproduced in the laboratory? I don't mean microevolution. I mean macro. Why doesn't Selbin give the reader any documented examples for their consideration?
Selbin says that the intelligent designer is unknown. Where is the supporting argument for this claim? There's a vast literature in apologetics, natural and philosophical theology to the contrary.
What "myths?" Could Selbin point the reader to a creation myth in the writings of Denton, Dembski, Behe, et al.?
In what sense is faith by definition not based on any evidence? What about the vast literature in apologetics, natural and philosophical theology?
<< But since the ID people require that all things must have a creator, I would ask them to explain to us: Who or what created the intelligent designer? >>
This is a straw man argument. ID-theory doesn't demand that all things have a creator. Notice that Selbin doesn't quote any ID-theorist who has said that. Here is a canonical definition which I pulled off the official website of the ID movement:
"The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
For all his talk of evidence, Selbin offers no hard evidence for evolution, no references to the relevant literature. Likewise, he shows no evidence of having read any of the standard literature on ID-theory, much less apologetics, natural and philosophical theology.
So the whole exercise reeks of hidebound ignorance and prejudice parading as science.
********************
Thanks for the Time article:
The problem begins with a runaway court system. You have rogue judges, setting themselves above the law, pretending that the Establishment Clause means something it never meant.
And when judges play games with the rule of law, then this, in turn, forces the antievolutionary movement to play semantic games as well.
So the liberal establishment leaves the antievolutionary movement with a bad set of forced options, then faults the antievolutionary movement for exercising a bad forced option!
Another reason these debates keep cropping up is that the liberal establishment makes it as difficult as possible for Christians to opt out of the public school system. They try their damnedest to keep a captive audience, then whine and bellyache when the captives complain about the terms of their confinement!
I don't think that we should delete references to evolution in science textbooks. That simply stifles debate in the opposition direction.
To characterize this as a stealth attack is pretty silly. It's not as though the ID-movement is a secret society with a secret handshake, blood-pacts, and a code language. It's not as though ex-members who spill the beans end up floating down the river in varied states of dismemberment.
The ID-movement publishes books, runs public websites, sponsors public debates, holds public seminars, supplies expert witnesses in court and at public school board meetings, &c. There is no hidden agenda.
I don't quite see the point of who's funding the movement, although the distinction of being the "leading male-chauvinist pig author" was no doubt too good to pass up.
Dawkins holds a chair endowed by a cofounder of Microsoft (Allen). Is that a sinister connection?
It isn't at all clear to me that evolutionary establishment welcomes an intellectual challenge. To begin with, the battle between Gould and Dawkins got quite nasty. And even if they do welcome a good challenge, they only welcome a challenge within the evolutionary paradigm, and not a challenge to the evolutionary paradigm itself.
It is true that merely slapping the label of a "theory" on evolution doesn't amount to much, for not all theories are equal--some are better attested, and enjoy more explanatory power than others.
It is possible to agree on the facts, but disagree on how the facts came to be. Two oncologists might agree on their diagnosis, but disagree on cause or the treatment of cancer.
However, evolutionary theory places an evolutionary construction on the scientific evidence. It is not that the raw data point unambiguously in an evolutionary direction. Evolution is brought in to account for the pattern; not necessarily that the pattern of evidence is prearrange in a pat evolutionary pattern. Evolutionary theory, as I understand it, is an elaborate intellectual construct which pieces together diverse evidence from different dates and digs and places and so forth. The empirical pattern is pretty scattershot.
To take one example, classic evolution predicted a cone of increasing diversification. But one reason that Gould and Eldridge proposed punctuate equilibrium is that in sites such as the Burgess Shale, they saw the cone in reverse, with a decreasing cone of diversity.
Again, I'm no expert. But when I read articles like this, this sort of thing is constantly ignored or overlooked.
One of the problems with an article like this is that it mounts counterarguments that have already been addressed in the ID-literature. Take the following counterexample:
"Biologists see it differently. They say, for example, a primitive, light-sensing patch of skin--a forerunner of the retina--could help animals detect the shadows of predators."
Notice, first of all, that no chain of evidence has been entered into the record to show that this is, in fact, what happened. No evidence is adduced to show the incremental evolution from a light-sensitive spot to a functioning retina.
We're just told that maybe this "could" confer a survival advantage. Is that what passes for scientific evidence?
Moreover, the impression which the uniformed reader would derive from this counterexample is that no ID-theorist has ever tried to field this objection. Actually, this was brought up in one of the earlier entries into the debate:
"We are invited by Dawkins and Darwin to believe that the evolution of the eye proceeded step-by-step through a series of plausible intermediates in infinitesimal increments. But are they infinitesimal? Remember that the 'light-sensitive spot' that Dawkins takes as his starting point requires a cascade of factors, including 11-cis-retinal and rhodopsin, to function. Dawkins doesn't mention them. And where did the 'little cup' come from? A ball of cells--from which the cup must be made--will tend to be rounded unless held in the correct shape by molecular supports. In fact, there are dozens of complex proteins involved in maintaining cell shape, and dozens more that control extracellular structure; in their absence, cells take on the shape of so many soap bubbles. Do these structures represent single-step mutations?" M. Behe (Simon & Schulster 1996, 1998), 38.
This reply has been in the public domain for nearly a decade, yet the Time science writer trots out the evolutionary counterargument as though this has gone unchallenged and unanswered.
And this is one reason that the evolutionary establishment finds itself on the run. It doesn't think it has to answer back, has to acknowledge any intellectual challenge. If you don't jump into the fray, you lose by default.
Or take this statement: "All the think tanks want to do, they insist, is make the teaching of evolution more honest by bringing up its drawbacks. Who could argue with that? But the mainstream scientific community contends that this seemingly innocuous agenda is actually a stealthy way of promoting religion. "Teaching evidence against evolution is a backdoor way of teaching creationism," says Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education. "
Now, suppose, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Scott is correct. How is that responsive to the question of whether evolutionary theory is or is not problematic on its own grounds? This sounds less like science education than politics. Is it his position that even if evolutionary theory were problematic, the problems must be swept under the rug lest the creationist community exploit the theory's weaknesses? Is that how one teaches science?
When I was a kid in school, we were taught that the first job of a scientist is not to prove his theory, but to try to disprove his theory. In other words, the best way of proving it would be to see if it could resist disproof. But now, at least where evolution is concerned, the theory has been put under glass. Doesn't this begin to resemble the red-capped cardinals who refused to peer into Galileo's telescope for fear of the consequences?
I'm no scientist, but when I can take this and other such articles apart in the course of a few minutes, it merely reinforces the credibility gap.
****************
Chris,
You said:
<
These are questions which rapidly spiral into nested complexities, so all I can do for now is to block out the basic answers. That will oversimplify matters, but we have to start somewhere. Let's begin at a macro level and get a bit more micro later on.
i) Christianity is a revealed religion. It stakes its veracity on its status as a revealed religion.
So it's a package deal--all-or-nothing. That's how the Bible presents itself as an object of belief. What is more, there is an inner logic to that presentation inasmuch as partial inspiration would defeat the very rationale for revelation in the first place.
Like it or not, a Christian is precommitted to certain propositions. That just goes with the territory.
ii) Some folks suppose that because the Bible was addressed to a prescientific audience, then it's okay to reinterpret Scripture in light of modern science.
But, for me, the reasoning is just the reverse. Because it was addressed to a prescientific audience, it must be understand at that level, for that was the level at which it was meant to be believed. To do otherwise would be anachronistic, like reinterpreting Dante's Aristotelian-Polemaic cosmology in light of Bohr and Einstein.
Whenever we interpret a document from the past, whether inspired or uninspired, we must assume the historical viewpoint of the original author and his implied audience.
To say that is not to say how we should interpret Genesis, but only to set a benchmark.
iii) As to the scientific evidence, my initial approach to science is via metascience. What is our philosophy of science? In particular, what is our theory of perception?
Our scientific theories are only as good as our theories of perception. So before we ever get to the scientific issues, we need to settle on our general epistemology.
Now, very roughly speaking, I'm in the camp of indirect realism. I don't believe that the mind has direct access to the external world. In my opinion, our mental representation is a correlate of the sensible world rather than a copy of the sensible world.
By way of comparison, the formula for deriving the Mandelbrot set is a correlate of the Mandelbrot set. Yet there is no resemblance between the appearance of the formula and the appearance of the set which the formula can generate--say, on a computer screen.
I've laid out my metascientific views in a couple of essays: one the recent essay "On knowing what we know," the other in the science section of my essay on "I'm glad you asked."
iv) In short, if left to our own devices, I don't know, when I look outside, what I'm actually seeing (or hearing or tasting or touching or smelling), for perception presupposes rather than penetrates the veil of perception.
v) At the level of sensation, there is no public world, only a private world. Yes, there is a public world which we all perceive, but our perceptions are private. The percipient is sealed away in his own, modular subjectivity.
vi) There is, though, one cognitive agent who enjoys an intersubjectival understanding of the world as it really is, in itself. That is the Creator of the world. He can and has disclosed himself to man, and, in so doing, his revelation operates, in part, as an external check on our filtered outlook.
vii) My scientific antirealism is just as sceptical of creation science as it is of evolution or modern cosmology or historical geology. So it cuts both ways. I'm an equal opportunity sceptic! In this respect, I'm not "following in the footsteps of much of the evangelical community today."
viii) As to molecular clocks and the like, I've addressed that question in my essay on "Tell me the time."
ix) Exegetically speaking, you will be unable to decouple the Resurrection from the historic fall of man, for 1 Cor 15 treats them as historically analogous and interconnected.
x) Is it possible to be a Christian and a theistic evolutionist? That question admits different answers. Theistic evolution is a logically coherent position--although guys like Gould and Dawkins don't think it very plausible.
And it is psychologically possible to affirm both. B. B. Warfield was a theistic evolutionist.
But, theologically speaking, these are incompatible beliefs. It is possible to hold inconsistent beliefs, but they are inconsistent--all the same.
xi) As to the fact of evolution--the fossil record, I can only speak as a layman:
a) A global flood would be a fossil factory. I'm not trying to place a more precise construction on its impact than that, because I have no way of knowing the extent or pattern of the evidence generated by such an event. But that does introduce a very large wild card into the deck.
b) Although I've read and viewed a lot of high-level popularizations of evolutionary theory, I've never seen the raw evidence. Instead, what I'm presented with is a smattering of evidence that has been arranged in an evolutionary pattern. The pattern doesn't exist in the natural record itself, as given in that actual order. Rather, miscellaneous odds and ends scavenged from different sites at different levels are cobbled together and fitted together with evolutionary theory driving the reconstruction of the evidence rather than the raw evidence driving the construction of the theory.
c) Darwinians habitually and deliberately blur evidence of macroevolution with microevolution. Of course, I realize that, from their standpoint, it's a natural continuum--that there is no hard-and-fast distinction. That, however, assumes an evolutionary take on the evidence.
What would the evidence look like if they were to scrupulously segregate microevolutionary evidence from macroevolutionary evidence?
d) The fossil evidence for evolution would be clear evidence of evolution if it presented an evolutionary trend. Yet Darwinians also tell us that evolution is, in the nature of the case, undirected, and, therefore, without any consistent linear progression.
Again, I've said a bit more about the particulars in my "I'm glad" essay.
I've covered a lot of ground here in a very short space. But I do have supporting arguments in some of supplemental material I've referred you to.
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