My Rant About the Worst Anti-Science Excuse: "I Don't Believe In It"

A couple of scientific issues that are continually in the headlines these days are evolution and global climate change. And the thing that irks me continually is to see the people who come out publicly saying "I don't believe in" one or the other.

You know what? We don't have the luxury of not believing in these things, because they're not belief systems. They're science. And both of them are so strongly considered to be consensuses by the scientists that study them that they're can be considered fact.

Science is a process of researching, hypothesizing, experimentation, analysis, and then the same again, over and over. It's the fact-based, empirical search for truth. Scientific consensus is not a matter of opinion. If scientists say something works a certain way, and the theory has been tested and re-tested in numerous ways the way that both evolution and global warming have at this point, then it's truly folly to say you "don't believe in them."

When you hear pundits on the radio and elsewhere talk about how these things are matters of opinion because they have the tag "theory" on them, that's not valid questioning. A "theory" is a tested and verified hypothesis, which is an educated guess to begin with. So subjective evidence supports the claims of these theories. These pundits have a misunderstanding of what a theory actually is, and have attempted to spread that misunderstanding to the world through their "outrage."

Now, if you have an actual scientific reason, based on data, experimentation, and analysis, for questioning a theory, that's a whole different issue. That's the purpose of scientists reporting their data to peer-reviewed journals throughout their discipline - to invite more research and experimentation. It's part of the scientific method - the system of research, hypothesis, experimentation, and results reporting - that all reputable scientists use.

Such concepts as intelligent design and the like, which are proposed as "competing theories," are actually nothing of the sort. If you read them, they are philosophy at best - a "what if" scenario that doesn't have any experimentation to actually back it up. And what they strike me as is the last-gasp attempt of someone, who thinks his belief system is under attack by real evidence, to hold on to something that's given them comfort.