"And That Wheel Thing? It's Gotta Go, Too!"
The extraordinarily mind-numbingly STUPID state of Kansas just ensured that its children will get stupider yesterday when it required criticism of evolutionary theory in its classrooms. One of the religious nutcases who are on their school board, chairman Steve Abrams, who is on record as saying evolutionary theory is incompatible with the Bible's version of God's creation of life on Earth, commented that "This is a great day for education. This is one of the best things that we can do."
So, instead of preparing their children for a world in which understanding of science is taking a more key role than ever before, Kansas has ensured that those children will be wallowing in the mire of idiotic biblical teachings on science.
Dear Mr. Abrams: yes, evolutionary theory is incompatible with the Bible's version of God's creation of life on Earth. And you know why that is? BECAUSE THE BIBLE IS HEBREW MYTHOLOGY! It's a collection of stories that are meant to guide people morally, not literally!
The fact that people like this can actually get elected to public office absolutely infuriates me. If you can't tell the difference between hard science and fairy tales, you have absolutely NO business planning other people's lives.
My sister and her husband live in Kansas. I hope that for their sakes, they get out of that state before they have kids, because the stupidity flowing out of that state is mind-numbing.
5 comments:
Welllll...it's a lot more complicated than that.
Starting with the fact that the Bible can't be waved off with a catchall dismissal of "Hebrew mythology." That bespeaks a certain limited knowledge of the topic, he says gently. The Bible is actually a compendium of bafflingly diverse literary genres, running from more-or-less straight historical accounts (the Samuels, the Kings, 1 Maccabees, yes, the Gospels/Acts) to personal correspondence (Philemon), to royal training manuals (Proverbs), to deliberate historical fiction (Judith, likely Esther), to, yes, the mythic (Gen. 1-3 being a case in point). Admittedly, it is not a scientific manual, as those from as far back as St. Augustine have cheerfully acknowledged. In the words of Cardinal Baronius (misattributed to his contemporary Galileo), "Scripture tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." But it's a lot more than a Jewish Grimm collection.
Moreover, it is generally acknowledged that the scientific method developed in a Judeo-Christian milieu, largely because of the philosophical conviction stemming from that same Bible that the universe had to be intelligible because it had been created by God, and he had gifted his human creatures with the intelligence to discern the order(part of that whole "his image" thing).
Back to Kansas, Toto: Strictly speaking, the State is not mandating the teaching of young earth creationism, which has always struck me as more than a little goofy (George Will's memorable quote is "nonsense on stilts"). It is going to be teaching "intelligent design" alongside evolution, which, in a wild oversimplification, critiques holes in evolutionary theory. ID is actually not wildly popular among fundamentalists because it eschews a biblical approach.
I'm not sure how I feel about ID (it, too, has its holes) but one thing is certain--you wouldn't have the push for ID if evolutionary theory wasn't consistently accompanied by a philosophical materialism openly hostile to religious citizens of all stripes, which can be seen in the science texts which, e.g., use words like "random" or "purposeless" when describing evolution. It's when evolution--or even the scientific method itself--start becoming the stalking horses for anti-religious worldviews that you get the pushback.
First, any religious belief can be waved off as mythology. Justifying it with descriptions of the various works that went into its compilation doesn't make that any more or less true. I think most Christians would be more than happy to do the same with the Koran, Bhagavad Gita, etc., despite the historical references they hold. The only difference is the amount of creedence people place in the work.
Second, this "general acknowledgement" of the scientific method's development orgins is hardly widespread - this is the first I've heard of it, for example. It smacks of Descartian thoughts on the existence of God - "Well, we came up with the idea. He must exist." (I realize this is a vast oversimplification but that's the basic thrust of it. But even if that were the case (that it developed due to beliefs about the origin of human intelligence being from God), that doesn't change the fact that it is strictly scientific, which should rule out religion as a reason for anything to happen. Religions are faith-based. Science is fact-based. The two don't mesh - if they did, we wouldn't be having this discussion. To say that
Third - there is a huge difference between teaching science, which is based on facts and the hypotheses that go along with the facts that have so far been discovered; and the teaching of philosophy, which is what Intelligent Design is. It is MUCH MORE than just poking holes in the theory of evolution. It's a belief (note the word "belief") that existence is too structured to have come from random events as evolution holds. Rather, it insists that there must be some sort of overseeing force guiding the path of natural development.
True, the fundmentalists don't like it because it doesn't mention God. But that certainly doesn't make it science. It's philosophy and should be treated as such.
Now, if Kansas was suggesting criticism of evolution based on other scientific theories (which Intelligent Design is not) then I would encourage it. That would be fact vs. fact, or interpretation of fact vs. different interpretation of fact. That's not what is going on here, though.
It's difficult to know where to begin, but here goes.
(1) Define your terms, then. Mythology generally means "didn't happen," or at best "possible historical germ so wrapped in fable that historical truth can't be teased out."
Please note that I am not talking about the crunch time, creedal claims of, say, Christianity here, either: e.g., the incarnation and Resurrection.
The fact that the Hebrew/Christian books contain the the historically verifiable (say, the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, Pontius Pilate or the Israeli monarchy) explodes the claim that it's a mythological compendium. That's my entire point.
(2) Your response reveals a few assumptions of the materialist worldview I am talking about.
Starting with the erroneous assertion that science invariably deals with "facts." Well, no. For example, the very term "hypothesis" describes the viewpoint of a scientist that is not yet verified but that *if* true would explain certain facts or phenomena. Those scientists who hold to various hypotheses do so in the absence of verification/replication--i.e., facts. Sometimes for decades. Sometimes forever (the unverifiable). Is that faith?
Nor is religion some kind of delusional sky-gazing devoid of fact: for example, there was a Jesus of Nazareth executed by a Roman procurator named Pontius Pilate; there was an itinerant preacher named Paul who left a collection of writings about this Jesus fellow and so on.
(3) "[T]o have come from random events as evolution holds."
That's the kicker--and where evolutionary science becomes evolutionism.
"Random" is more than the science behind evolution can honestly state. That smacks of Richard Dawkins' entirely unscientific "Darwinism makes it possible for me to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
Just how has this "random" been verified?
(4) The scientific method was stillborn among the Greeks after a promising start because the philosophical/theological pre-commitments (starting with Aristotle's perpetual universe) shut down inquiry. The scientific method was born among the Catholic medievals (Pierre Duhem's century-old works on the historigraphy of science are the starting point), starting with John Buridan and proceeding on a straight line to Copernicus, Kepler, Pascal, Newton (not Catholic, but devoutly Christian) and Galileo, to name but a handful. The idea that the scientific method was born during the enlightenment is the mistaken one. Stanley Jaki's Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe is a good start. And, yes, he's a Catholic. So was Copernicus, et al. :)
1) I disagree that just because the Bible contains historically verifiable facts, such as the ones you mention, that the Bible in itself can't be described as mythology. The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War. Troy was a real city, where a real war was fought. The causes and effects of that war are unknown but there is no doubt that the stories are based on historical events. But the Iliad is considered mythology.
2) A hypothesis is just what you've said, however, a hypothesis is what is created after facts are gathered. In short, it is the distillation of evidence after experimentation and fact-gathering. In other words, hypotheses undergo testing.
Religion, on the other hand, does not exist without faith. Faith belies evidence - in fact, if one looks for evidence that religious tenets are fact, then that shows a lack of faith, and is beginning to burrow into the world of science.
3. The science of random mutation and natural selection (or whatever you want to call it - I've actually best heard it referred to as "survival of the luckiest") has been proven time and time again. If there was no random mutation we wouldn't continually be having issues with new diseases popping up that are resistant to currently available antibiotics and other medicines.
4. Okay, I see what you mean in this case. The acceptance of discussion and philosophy as the way to enlightenment that the Ancient Greeks understood certainly did cause them to not have much of a scientific method.
I do, however, disagree that the Judeo-Christian milieu is responsible for the Scientific Method. It developed in other cultures without Judeo-Christian beliefs of any kind - China, India, etc. all had well developed science without it.
The point remains, however: Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory at all. It's a philosophy - it actually harkens back to the very concepts of "science" that the Greeks understood. That is to say: science based on the picking apart of theories based not on evidence and experimentation, but on the way they have been described.
My, I've let this one lay fallow for a while.
OK. Just on 2, 3 and 4:
2. Yes, the ultimate leap to belief is one of faith--but that does not mean there are no factual predicates to it. There is significant difference between a religious worldview that is entirely feelings oriented/has no factual underpinnings and one that does. Some leaps are shorter than others, as it were.
3. I'm not arguing against natural selection or mutation. I accept both. Quibble--antibiotic resistance is natural selection more than mutation. Drug-resistent staph is still staph (not something else), it's just the suckers that have adapted to the ABs. Either way, I fight like hell to keep my kids from getting overprescribed antibiotics.
Where I'm gagging is on the term "random." Where has the *random*ness of evolution been scientifically established? It strikes me as a remarkably philosophical statement, unless there is a scientific definition of random--and if so, I truly want to know this. As long as the science stays in its corner, fine. But it doesn't, and you get otherwise smart men like Julian Huxley using the science as a crutch for their atheism, or claiming that evolution excuses all manner of hellish human behavior from infanticide to euthanasia. Evolution is the prop for many a rotten philosophy, but this is not acknowledged.
4. But, despite promising starts, the scientific method stagnated and withered in every other place but Western (read: Catholic) Europe. Apparently the philosophical underpinnings are crucial.
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