Creation myths, evolution, and public reason
Bob McManus points to this column by Will Wilkinson who wonders why secularists get so uptight when the right declares a culture war. Aren't we trying to impose our secular world view on them? Isn't it only fair when they resist our illiberal elitist incursions?
As far as evolution is concerned, the answer is no. Public education dollars should not go towards the teaching of the creation myth of any particular religion. Such funding would violate the separation between church and state.
Teaching evolution in public schools doesn't impose secularism any more than teaching geometry. The creationists coyly construe the theory of evolution as "what secularists believe qua secularists" and then complain that we're imposing secularism on their children by teaching evolution. In so doing they conveniently ignore the number of faiths that accept evolution or remain neutral on the issue.
Evolution is science. Creationism is one Christian creation myth. There are any number of creation myths out there, some compatible with fashionable ID pseudoscience, some not, most incompatible with each other on crucial details. Why do fundamentalist Protestant parents think they are entitled hijack the public school science curriculum to service their theological beliefs? Who gave them the right to butt in line ahead of Jews, self-styled mystics, Catholics, Hindus, American Indians, or anyone else with a creation myth?
The rhetoric about teaching "both" sides is nonsense. It's science vs. a mythology. Evangelical mythology is no better supported than any of the thousands of alternative cosmologies. It is the height of arrogance to champion one's parochial theology as the religious alternative to the scientific worldview. Such strategies are also contrary to public reason, whereas teaching evolution is not.
We all believe that science should be taught in public school. If we share that belief, then we ought to share the conviction that the best science of our day should be taught. That includes the structure of scientific reasoning and the norms of scientific justification. If we are allowed to teach physiology or physics as science (as opposed to revealed truth or random guessing) we are also allowed to teach other beliefs that have been arrived at by the same processes of rational inquiry, including evolution.
I've seen people say "Evolution is a religion!". I'm not optimistic that any rational argument can work on such people.
Posted by: steve | November 26, 2004 at 07:11 PM
This brings up a question that is dificult to really answer, what is a religion. I think the case could be made that Soviet Communism was functionally a religion. As ab athiest I accept as reality scientific observations; how different is this than the religious fundementalist who accepts the word of a 2000+ year old manuscript? I don't have the answer, I'm only asking the question. Is secularism my religion?
Posted by: Ron In Portland | November 26, 2004 at 07:29 PM
God, whether involved in creation or not, doesn't belong in a scientific theory, because, in order to be scientific, your thesis must be, at least in theory, disprovable. Put God in there, and anything is possible--i.e., nothing is disprovable.
Science is a method--an inductive method. Observation, hypothesis, testing of the hypothesis, appropriate revision of the hypothesis, etc. Stick a miracle, or God's hand, or fairy dust in there, and the method breaks down. It may be true that life is miraculous, but it is not scientific to explain life that way.
Posted by: Raenelle | November 26, 2004 at 07:49 PM
What do you mean by saying that a thesis must be "disprovable"? Do you mean by empirical evidence? If this is the case, then I'm not sure that the theory of Creation, in one form or another, is disprovable. (Though, I think it is warranted from empirical evidence.) However, mathematics does not produce empirically disprovable theories, either, is it not a science?
Or do you mean disprovable by any means? If so, then you could certainly show that creation is not the case if you could show it was or entailed a contradiction. God is called omnipotent because He can do everything that is possible; creating square triangles or making two and two equal to five are not things that are possible to do.
Science is not just about induction. In fact, Aristotle, quite the scientist in his own right, said that an inductive science is a mediocre place-holder for the superior deductive science. Imagine if instead of being able to reason mathematical truths--like, say, some of the theories of calculus, we had to mind-numbingly try to "test" them--if such a thing is even possible for most mathematical theories--until we arrived at only an approximation of the correct theory. Being able to use reason, which entails necessary conclusions, is obviously much more efficient and in many cases necessary to advance our knowledge in a particular area.
Science is about truth. If God created the world, and "science" tells us that He did not, then science has failed. Science is not about yielding "scientific" results; it is about yielding true results.
That said, I think a number of persuasive arguments can be given for thinking that the universe was created by God and that, in fact, God must have created the universe. Did God create the Earth six or seven thousand years ago? Almost certainly not, and we have good evidence for thinking this. (Estimates are around 10 or 12 billion years, I think, with the Earth's age at 4.5 billion years. Note, though, that this is not in tension with Church teaching or Scripture.)
Posted by: ATAT | November 26, 2004 at 08:17 PM
First, math is NOT a science. Math is the use of deduction to arrive at truth--the opposite of the scientific METHOD of induction.
Second, we're hung up on definitions here about whether science lays claim to truth or just to a method for approaching some truth. But let's just say God is inconsistent with the scientific inductive method. With a scientific theory, you have to be able to imagine a set of facts, which if true, would invalidate your theory. If you can't, you don't have a scientific theory. To have it any other way would invalidate the method, then you just have a group of speculators like any other group, except these call themselves "scientists."
With God in a theory, you cannot imagine any set of FACTS (not logical constructions, but empirical facts) that would invalidate anything. God does not belong in a scientific theory.
Posted by: Raenelle | November 26, 2004 at 08:34 PM
Well, you're just obscuring the matter by tampering with definitions. Even if we use your definition of science, nothing follows in terms of what should be taught at schools, which was the focus of your original comment.
Should only facts attained by inductive matters be taught in school? How would you respond to a Creationist, who, accepting your definition of "science", says that he thinks kids should learn the whole truth, which includes science as well as all other reliable methods of finding the truth?
Posted by: ATAT | November 26, 2004 at 08:40 PM
It's not just a matter of definitions, now that I think this through. Science is empirical, reliant on facts. It tries to understand Nature through facts, inductively, and that means its conclusions, unlike those of math (which are certain and absolute if the premises are true), are always tentative. Always. Tentative. There are no scientific laws, only scientific theories.
I think children should be taught all kinds of things. But we do have the notion of disciplines. We learn German in language classes, Algebra in math classes, how to write in English classes, history, humanities, etc. In science classes, they should learn science. I really don't care if they go to Bible class or not, if they engage in religious discussions that deduce the number of angels dancing on whatever. Just--God does not belong in science. It's not that God is wrong, untrue, irrelevant, nothing of that kind. It's that the notion is too powerful. It makes mush out of the whole method.
Posted by: Raenelle | November 26, 2004 at 08:48 PM
First of all, I don't think "kids should be taught all kinds of things", that would be far too silly and, also, needlessly accepting of the validity in the Creationists’ line: If your paradigm, then why not mine? (Sorry for rhyming) It’s also not about demarcation or clever, semantic elegance that elides our collective understanding of the ultimate nature of reality.
"What evidence has Creationism brought to bear on Quantum Mechanics?" Neils Bohr’s ghost would ask demandingly. What systemized theories, that lend themselves to the falsifiability of the scientific method, have been offered to the naturalistic appendages of our (or a) cosmology?
While essentially enjoying the largess of the RD efforts made by Science, in our long march forward to progress, religion has offered only a meta-narrative of why we are, never thorough enough to get its hands dirty with the questions of what we are.(That is to say our physical constitution, temporally.) (Though, this is not to say that the Church as an historical institution hasn’t cultivated the pursuit of Science. There is no doubt it has; though only tendentiously.) (Semantic qualifiers, anyone?)
Granted Science is a language, and, thus, is spoken with different levels of comprehension among interlocutors; but, there are rules of syntax and grammar that make it intelligible as a coherent theory—and, more importantly, it doesn’t rely on a question begging thesis to underlie its foundation.
I’m not certain, though I’m open to be corrected and/or persuaded, that Creationism can give me an alternative system to Cellular Biology, to Organic Chemistry, to Physics. What I am certain of, however, is that Creationism and/or competing cosmologies aren’t trying very hard to—through their own paradigms of systemized empirical evidence and the explication of physical phenomena—refute naturalistic sciences. They accept the consequent, have no qualms with its operational necessity in everyday, practical life, but reject the antecedent.
This is why we have the soft “sciences” of ID, New Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Young World whatever—and what have you. They understand, and concede the fact, that their theories of cosmogony have to, at least in some persuasive, commonsense way, comport to the Scientific method--or some close approximation of it, or something like it, or close to it.(Make sense?) They understand that there must be a public reason—simply beyond belief and faith without evidence—for their theories to hold sway against and/or with Science.
This, then, necessarily compromises both the underlying epistemes of their respective theories of life and the fealty they ask of those who subscribe ultimately to these theories.
When we talk about what we want to teach in public schools, we’re talking about what the default position should be: why are we? This can’t be answered in any comprehensive or practicable way—and clearly can’t be answered, at this time, in any conclusively positive way competing theories of cosmologies contend.
Though it may have tried in it younger years, Science isn’t trying, now, to answer that question, "why are we?", definitely (Save maybe for String Theory)—and operates on the assumption that the method will, in the end, tease it out. Competing cosmologies, (Religion, Creationism so on and so forth) have answered the question; no further evidence is required, no further inquiry is necessary—which explains the woolly-headedness in their epistemologies, and, therefore, by extension, their theories of anything. What type of practical education do we want our children to have? That is the vital question. Or, more apropos, and “the” philosophical question Bush would offer, “Is our children learning?”
Posted by: Ron Mashate | November 27, 2004 at 11:32 AM
I'm one of those who think the fundies have not been as bold in Christ as they say they are. This Evolution stuff is piddling. How about Newton? How about Copernicus? How about, crucially, Olaus Roemer?
Olaus Who? He's the guy who first established that light had a finite speed, back in 1680, instead of being instantaneous. This means that the light from the stars we see can be used to calculate both their distance and their chronology.
Now, if the Bible is correct, that distance is only about 6,000 light years away. And given the spread of those stars in the sky, and the calculations of the size of the stars by the astronomers, that means we should be seeing eyecatching supernovae every night. In addition, it means that life on this planet would have long ago been wiped out by pulses of extreme radiation emanating from same.
Meaning -- the speed of light is a fraud! It is instantaenous, as in Let there be light -- Jehovah's word on the subject. What was good enough for Daniel/is good enough for me/ give me that old time religion/ etc.
And those stars aren't as big as those smarty pants, atheistical astronomers say.
So it is time to put stickers on those science text books that the speed of light is a theory! And all that secular humanist astronomy stuff is a theory too! Back to the Bible for real science is my motto.
Posted by: roger | November 28, 2004 at 02:16 PM
Good points, Roger. I've oftened wondered why the ID'ers put so much stock in the Big Bang, and so little in Darwinian evolution, for example. Since the post about the stickers slipped off the front page, I'll chime in here that we really need stickers for both theories, or neither, to be consistent and all.
Posted by: Tom Renbarger | November 28, 2004 at 03:29 PM
Tom, I'm glad your with me on the other sticker. To tell you the truth, though, this is only a cautious first move. In Moral Values America, getting our science textbooks to teach science as it was taught 2000 years ago is going to take a struggle. But I am sure, with the Lord's help, we can do it.
For instance -- have you notice that the Bible never refers to the brain? That is because the writers knew that the seat of consciousness was in the heart. There are too many passages showing this -- let's just say that the fool says in his heart that the brain is the seat of consciousness.
But since Galen, pagan humanists have convinced us that the relatively unimportant brain is the seat of the consciousness. This is -- you guessed it! -- a theory. Not a fact! Facts are only those things that were recognized in Galilee about 20 A.D.
Once we get our science books aligned with our moral values, we will experience a God's real love for this country... After all, we were founded on religious principles.
Posted by: roger | November 28, 2004 at 07:42 PM
Is this the point at which I'm supposed to pipe up with an "Amen, brother!"? I have to admit being a little rusty concerning proper form in such matters.
Posted by: Tom Renbarger | November 29, 2004 at 02:26 PM
Tom, yeah, amen brother is good. Amen sister would carry the suspicion that I'm a trans-sexual -- and I believe Leviticus has a recipe for trans-sexuals:
1 clove garlic
1 transsexual
salt to taste
chicken stock.
Set on slow boil for 10 days.
A perfect consumme for your next I heart the Inquisition party, or Local Republican Party convention -- whichever comes first!
Posted by: roger | November 29, 2004 at 11:36 PM