(no subject)
Here is (more or less) the text of the talk I gave in church today. It was quite well-recieved, which was great, because I worked very hard on it. It's so nice to have a deadline and a reason to put your thoughts in order like that.
Colorado science standard six says that "Students understand that science involves a particular way of knowing." I really like that phrase "way of knowing." It strikes me that two of the major ways of knowing about the world available to people are science and faith. People turn to science and faith to answer the big questions. They are some of the best tools we have to examine the mysteries of nature and humanity. While they are often at odds with each other, I find that they are very complementary.
So what is the "particular way of knowing" that science involves? Maybe you remember learning about the scientific method, which, in science classrooms, usually goes something like: problem, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. There's nothing wrong with this characterization, but to me it's a little like when somebody's cell phone beeps out Beethoven's Fifth. The basic structure is there, but all of the richness that made it interesting in the first place is gone.
The scientific process starts with evidence. A scientist looks at the experimental evidence so far and tries to come up with a theory that explains it all. The theory can't be in conflict with any of the evidence. And it's better if it explains more evidence in a more precise way. Then, digging a little deeper into the theory, the scientist tries to figure out what predictions the theory makes. A good scientific theory will make predictions, and then another scientist can test the predictions to test the theory. It's important to note that a scientific theory can never be "proved right" for certain. If the tests agree with the theory, then it goes into the pile of evidence that supports the theory. If they disagree, then the theory needs to be modified. Often the theory works in some cases, but not in others. For instance, Newton's explanation of gravity works very well unless things are very massive or moving very fast. Einstein's theory of General Relativity is a more general case. And starting with a new theory, the whole process starts over again, like a big circle. Good scientists will always be looking for evidence which proves them wrong.
Science is often characterized as being definite, certain. In some ways, it is. But, more importantly, science is concerned with uncertainty. An important part of science is deciding how well you know something, how certain you are. Scientists will never say that something is absolutely true. The best a theory can hope to do is survive centuries in the continual process of being tested and re-worked. The theory of evolution has itself evolved in the past couple hundred years, but the basic idea is still a foundational concept in biology -- the best-adapted organisms survive to pass characteristics on to their offspring, and so on, which results in long-term change.
Science is very good at answering some questions: If I do this, what will happen? How does that work? Why did I notice that happening? But it's really bad at answering other questions: How should we live? How should we treat each other? Does anybody care? And why things happen, not just what caused them to happen, but why. For that, we turn to other ways of knowing, especially faith.
What makes faith not science is that a faith statement doesn't make predictions that can be tested. Whether it's "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth," or faith in the "inherent worth and dignity of every person," you either believe it or you don't. In fact, a faith statement doesn't need testing or proving. Unlike good scientists, who try to see the evidence as it is, and then fit the theory to it, faithful people will filter the evidence through their beliefs. If filtering the evidence through your beliefs sounds like it's not such a great idea, here's a UU example: When someone is rude to you, you could go with the evidence and dismiss them as an inherently rude or bad person. Or, you could go with a belief in the worth and dignity of everyone, and consider that they may be a generally good person who's having a bad day. You've filtered the evidence through your belief. Likewise, people who hold different beliefs from ours use them as a filter. We may agree or disagree with the conclusions that someone comes to, but that is the nature of faith: there's no way to prove that any one conclusion is right.
There is some idea that science is somehow better or more right for being science, and faith is somehow inferior for not having been tested or proved. I disagree: I think that faith is important in its own right, and to try to make it like science lessens the value of faith.
The proponents of intelligent design are trying to force their faith into science. According to its proponents, "Intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection." Intelligent design was crafted as a media-savvy form of creationism, to make creationism sound scientific. Notice that, although almost all advocates of intelligent design would name the Christian God as the designer, the statement is carefully put into secular, scientific-sounding terms.
But this statement can never be a scientific one, mostly because it can never be disproved. Any evidence I might bring to you to disprove it, you can say it was part of the design. Thus it is a faith statement. An often-used example in debates over evolution is the eye. Creationists say that the eye is too complex, too specialized an instrument to have evolved over time from a simpler form. But we do find animals with simpler forms of eyes. Certainly an organism with even a little bit of an ability to sense light and dark would be at an advantage over others without that ability. Well, a creationist could say, the designer also gave those animals that sense- that's all they were meant to have. That doesn't disprove anything. And, really, we can have this conversation over and over-- there's no evidence that's enough.
And this is one reason that the movement to teach intelligent design in science classes, or to "teach the controversy" is concerning to me: because the controversy is cultural and not scientific in nature. If this fact is muddled in science classrooms, we will produce citizens who are less scientifically literate, who don't understand what science is and is not. The scientific thought process cannot solve all problems, but it is important for informed decision-making, for instance in the political process. Biology in particular is important to understand right now, because many of the crises of our time are at least partly biological in nature: climate disruption, drug-resistant bacteria, the AIDS epidemic, genetic engineering. Understanding of the last three, in particular, is based on an understanding of evolution. Science classrooms should be focusing on these issues instead of the non-scientific-controversy over intelligent design.
The Colorado Science Standards do a very nice job of drawing the line between the scientific and the religious. Standard 3.2 requires that students understand that evolution is the unifying concept in biology, and that it explains the diversity of life and a wide variety of other observations. Then it contains this fantastic line: "This content standard does not define any student expectations related to the origins of life."
The Colorado courts and legislature have been relatively quiet on the issue of teaching evolution and intelligent design. Most other states have had some challenge to teaching only evolution in public schools. Usually this takes the form of a bill requiring or encouraging biology teachers to include intelligent design in their instruction of evolution. Typically these bills don't hold up in court, because public schools can't and shouldn't teach religious doctrine. Just recently, in December, a US district court in Pennsylvania ruled that teaching Intelligent Design in biology classrooms violates the First Amendment. In his decision, Judge John Jones -- a Republican, Lutheran Bush appointee- wrote, "The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."
Being outside the realm of science, intelligent design, as it's stated above, isn't really in conflict with the theory of evolution. Perhaps this unnamed designer evolves its organisms over time, through natural selection. Science can't comment on that, one way or the other. In fact many people subscribe to this belief: according to a Gallup poll taken last September, 31% of people in the US believe that people evolved over millions of years, and God guided the process. Of course, where I see a false dichotomy, some people see a real one. In the same poll, stunning 53% of people in the US said they most agreed with the statement "God created human beings in their present form exactly as described in the Bible." And, like a couple arguing over the dishes, sometimes the problem is not the problem, when you get down to it.
To the people who attack evolution, the problem is that they would like Christianity -- and their particular brand of it -- to hold more power in society. They believe that our society is in trouble because it has gone further and further from God. To them it is important to get more God into society. The real heart of the debate is cultural and religious in nature.
So how do we as liberal religious people respond? Here's one option: the Flying Spaghetti Monster. In a letter to several school boards this summer, "concerned citizen" Bobby Henderson described his concern that students would only be taught one theory of intelligent design, and not his own belief that the universe was created by a flying spaghetti monster, who created the world with His Noodly Appendage. In addition, Henderson expressed his belief that the average global temperature has increased since the 1800s because of the decrease in the number of pirates. He had a graph.
I have to admit that the phenomenon of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is so funny but it makes me uneasy at the same time: is making fun of someone else's deeply held beliefs a great way to make a point?
The point, though, is a good one: almost nobody wants religious doctrine to be taught as fact in public schools, because somebody's doctrine is always going to be left out.
I propose that the liberal religious people should proceed in this cultural debate respectfully but loudly. We should continue to frame it as a cultural and not a scientific controversy. We cannot allow religious dogma to be taught in classrooms, masquerading as science, both for the sake of science and for the sake of freedom of religion.
I rarely post creative works here, so I'll take the chance to ask that if you want to quote or share this, that you ask me and also give me credit.
Colorado science standard six says that "Students understand that science involves a particular way of knowing." I really like that phrase "way of knowing." It strikes me that two of the major ways of knowing about the world available to people are science and faith. People turn to science and faith to answer the big questions. They are some of the best tools we have to examine the mysteries of nature and humanity. While they are often at odds with each other, I find that they are very complementary.
So what is the "particular way of knowing" that science involves? Maybe you remember learning about the scientific method, which, in science classrooms, usually goes something like: problem, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. There's nothing wrong with this characterization, but to me it's a little like when somebody's cell phone beeps out Beethoven's Fifth. The basic structure is there, but all of the richness that made it interesting in the first place is gone.
The scientific process starts with evidence. A scientist looks at the experimental evidence so far and tries to come up with a theory that explains it all. The theory can't be in conflict with any of the evidence. And it's better if it explains more evidence in a more precise way. Then, digging a little deeper into the theory, the scientist tries to figure out what predictions the theory makes. A good scientific theory will make predictions, and then another scientist can test the predictions to test the theory. It's important to note that a scientific theory can never be "proved right" for certain. If the tests agree with the theory, then it goes into the pile of evidence that supports the theory. If they disagree, then the theory needs to be modified. Often the theory works in some cases, but not in others. For instance, Newton's explanation of gravity works very well unless things are very massive or moving very fast. Einstein's theory of General Relativity is a more general case. And starting with a new theory, the whole process starts over again, like a big circle. Good scientists will always be looking for evidence which proves them wrong.
Science is often characterized as being definite, certain. In some ways, it is. But, more importantly, science is concerned with uncertainty. An important part of science is deciding how well you know something, how certain you are. Scientists will never say that something is absolutely true. The best a theory can hope to do is survive centuries in the continual process of being tested and re-worked. The theory of evolution has itself evolved in the past couple hundred years, but the basic idea is still a foundational concept in biology -- the best-adapted organisms survive to pass characteristics on to their offspring, and so on, which results in long-term change.
Science is very good at answering some questions: If I do this, what will happen? How does that work? Why did I notice that happening? But it's really bad at answering other questions: How should we live? How should we treat each other? Does anybody care? And why things happen, not just what caused them to happen, but why. For that, we turn to other ways of knowing, especially faith.
What makes faith not science is that a faith statement doesn't make predictions that can be tested. Whether it's "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth," or faith in the "inherent worth and dignity of every person," you either believe it or you don't. In fact, a faith statement doesn't need testing or proving. Unlike good scientists, who try to see the evidence as it is, and then fit the theory to it, faithful people will filter the evidence through their beliefs. If filtering the evidence through your beliefs sounds like it's not such a great idea, here's a UU example: When someone is rude to you, you could go with the evidence and dismiss them as an inherently rude or bad person. Or, you could go with a belief in the worth and dignity of everyone, and consider that they may be a generally good person who's having a bad day. You've filtered the evidence through your belief. Likewise, people who hold different beliefs from ours use them as a filter. We may agree or disagree with the conclusions that someone comes to, but that is the nature of faith: there's no way to prove that any one conclusion is right.
There is some idea that science is somehow better or more right for being science, and faith is somehow inferior for not having been tested or proved. I disagree: I think that faith is important in its own right, and to try to make it like science lessens the value of faith.
The proponents of intelligent design are trying to force their faith into science. According to its proponents, "Intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection." Intelligent design was crafted as a media-savvy form of creationism, to make creationism sound scientific. Notice that, although almost all advocates of intelligent design would name the Christian God as the designer, the statement is carefully put into secular, scientific-sounding terms.
But this statement can never be a scientific one, mostly because it can never be disproved. Any evidence I might bring to you to disprove it, you can say it was part of the design. Thus it is a faith statement. An often-used example in debates over evolution is the eye. Creationists say that the eye is too complex, too specialized an instrument to have evolved over time from a simpler form. But we do find animals with simpler forms of eyes. Certainly an organism with even a little bit of an ability to sense light and dark would be at an advantage over others without that ability. Well, a creationist could say, the designer also gave those animals that sense- that's all they were meant to have. That doesn't disprove anything. And, really, we can have this conversation over and over-- there's no evidence that's enough.
And this is one reason that the movement to teach intelligent design in science classes, or to "teach the controversy" is concerning to me: because the controversy is cultural and not scientific in nature. If this fact is muddled in science classrooms, we will produce citizens who are less scientifically literate, who don't understand what science is and is not. The scientific thought process cannot solve all problems, but it is important for informed decision-making, for instance in the political process. Biology in particular is important to understand right now, because many of the crises of our time are at least partly biological in nature: climate disruption, drug-resistant bacteria, the AIDS epidemic, genetic engineering. Understanding of the last three, in particular, is based on an understanding of evolution. Science classrooms should be focusing on these issues instead of the non-scientific-controversy over intelligent design.
The Colorado Science Standards do a very nice job of drawing the line between the scientific and the religious. Standard 3.2 requires that students understand that evolution is the unifying concept in biology, and that it explains the diversity of life and a wide variety of other observations. Then it contains this fantastic line: "This content standard does not define any student expectations related to the origins of life."
The Colorado courts and legislature have been relatively quiet on the issue of teaching evolution and intelligent design. Most other states have had some challenge to teaching only evolution in public schools. Usually this takes the form of a bill requiring or encouraging biology teachers to include intelligent design in their instruction of evolution. Typically these bills don't hold up in court, because public schools can't and shouldn't teach religious doctrine. Just recently, in December, a US district court in Pennsylvania ruled that teaching Intelligent Design in biology classrooms violates the First Amendment. In his decision, Judge John Jones -- a Republican, Lutheran Bush appointee- wrote, "The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."
Being outside the realm of science, intelligent design, as it's stated above, isn't really in conflict with the theory of evolution. Perhaps this unnamed designer evolves its organisms over time, through natural selection. Science can't comment on that, one way or the other. In fact many people subscribe to this belief: according to a Gallup poll taken last September, 31% of people in the US believe that people evolved over millions of years, and God guided the process. Of course, where I see a false dichotomy, some people see a real one. In the same poll, stunning 53% of people in the US said they most agreed with the statement "God created human beings in their present form exactly as described in the Bible." And, like a couple arguing over the dishes, sometimes the problem is not the problem, when you get down to it.
To the people who attack evolution, the problem is that they would like Christianity -- and their particular brand of it -- to hold more power in society. They believe that our society is in trouble because it has gone further and further from God. To them it is important to get more God into society. The real heart of the debate is cultural and religious in nature.
So how do we as liberal religious people respond? Here's one option: the Flying Spaghetti Monster. In a letter to several school boards this summer, "concerned citizen" Bobby Henderson described his concern that students would only be taught one theory of intelligent design, and not his own belief that the universe was created by a flying spaghetti monster, who created the world with His Noodly Appendage. In addition, Henderson expressed his belief that the average global temperature has increased since the 1800s because of the decrease in the number of pirates. He had a graph.
I have to admit that the phenomenon of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is so funny but it makes me uneasy at the same time: is making fun of someone else's deeply held beliefs a great way to make a point?
The point, though, is a good one: almost nobody wants religious doctrine to be taught as fact in public schools, because somebody's doctrine is always going to be left out.
I propose that the liberal religious people should proceed in this cultural debate respectfully but loudly. We should continue to frame it as a cultural and not a scientific controversy. We cannot allow religious dogma to be taught in classrooms, masquerading as science, both for the sake of science and for the sake of freedom of religion.
I rarely post creative works here, so I'll take the chance to ask that if you want to quote or share this, that you ask me and also give me credit.