Evolution vs. Creation "Debate"
There has been a lot of fanfare about the recent debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham regarding evolution vs. creation, and I have a few thoughts on this matter I feel the need to share.
First and foremost, I think it is clear that this debate (meaning the evolution/creation discussion as a whole, not just specifically Nye-vs.-Ham) is a political debate, not a scientific one. By that I mean that at its core, the whole reason for having such a debate is for each side to try to win the hearts and minds of the public - a fight over which side gets to dictate what is taught in schools, and which proponents should be elected to public office. If it were a scientific debate, the goal would be to reach a consensus on the most reasonable conclusion, but I think it is clear that neither side has that goal, primarily because the two sides cannot agree on what the definition of a "reasonable conclusion" is. Both sides can agree on the political impact; if schools start adopting science textbooks that include intelligent design, then the Creationists have won the debate, but if the public instead decides that including elements of faith should not be a part of scientific training, then the evolution camp has won.
The impact of such a debate - even if it is "only" political - should not be underestimated, however. At stake is the vision each side has for what will lead to a better society. Nye's concern (and the concern of everyone in mainstream science) is that losing this debate will set back humanity's ability to progress in the way that it has for the last few hundred years. I can only guess at Ham's concern over losing. At best it is an other-minded concern that losing the debate means that society will turn completely secular and there will be immoral chaos - public sodomy, guiltless murder, torture of godly people for their beliefs, and things like that. At worst, it is a self-centered concern - he (like all evangelists) just can't stand the thought of other people thinking differently than he does.
So given that this debate is political, the fundamental question for each side is, "What strategy do I need to use to win the hearts and minds?" From the time of Copernicus to roughly the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Church dominated this kind of debate. The body politic is pretty consistent in looking after its own best interests, and eternal paradise vs. eternal damnation makes for a pretty compelling argument, especially in pre-modern times, when life on Earth was no picnic. The religious side started losing ground with public opinion when modern scientists, iconoclasts cut from the same cloth as Copernicus and Galileo, started producing technology that made life on Earth much more tolerable. Every modern convenience sprang forth from this thing called "science," and the effect on society was so powerful that it became impossible to fight it. It became clear that the only possible strategy for saving the faith-based perspective was to stop framing the debate as "religion-vs.-science," and start framing it as "faith-related-science-vs.secular-science." Just by changing the description to make it sound like a type of science, creationists were able to take some of the bite out of being opposed to the popular heroes that invented microwave ovens and smart phones. And they still have tradition and fear of what happens after death working in their favor.
The most insidious part of this strategy is that the population is so scientifically-illiterate that they don't easily see the distinction between something that is called a science in a political debate and something that actually is science. In the Nye-vs.-Ham debate, Ham bemoans that the secular scientists have hijacked the word "science" to mean only their version, while he claims that there are in fact two types (observational/experimental and historical), so he's taking this strategy to another level. He seems to imply that his side can equally lay claim to all of the modern amenities, because those lie within the realm of observational/experimental, which he also subscribes to, but that historical science must rely upon some kind of faith because no one was there to witness it, and his biblical account is as valid as any other.
The part that is conveniently missing from his thesis also happens to be something that is hard to express to the public, which is why this "debate" has raged on much longer than it should have. The "secret sauce" in science - what has made it so remarkably successful - is that it asserts that ultimately there is a single answer to any question, and when an explanation comes along that is better than the prevailing explanation, the old theory is discarded in favor of the new one. (It just occurred to me that this is a sort of natural selection!) Many people might be surprised to hear that I agree that the bible is (a collection of) scientific literature. It explains how the universe came into being, how humans came to be here, and even why we see a rainbow in the sky after it rains. These are all conjectures in the best tradition of science. But the cornerstone of science is that when new theories come along that better explain observed phenomena, and actually predict new things not predicted by the old paradigm, then the old theories are discarded in favor of the new ones. This is how progress is achieved. If instead we always clung to our first theory, and continually patched it with new articles of faith, we would not be able to use that form of "science" to actually understand the world around us, or to improve our standard of living with technological innovation.
Mainstream scientists have no problem with people believing whatever they want to believe, even if we are utterly convinced they are demonstrably wrong. Sometimes we'll argue with such people because we think that the discourse will bring them around, forgetting that they are likely impervious to learning in this way - we foolishly assume that they can discard cherished ideas in the face of contrary evidence, as we scientists do on a regular basis. But when it comes to determining public policy, it is very clear that science literacy needs to be improved so that these specious arguments made by creationists (and others, like global warming deniers) don't take hold and head us in a dangerous direction. What is particularly unnerving to me is the feedback-loop aspect of this when it comes to creation science: If mainstream scientists slip-up just a bit, then public policy turns ever more toward teaching non-science to children, which drives the electorate ever deeper into science illiteracy, which is passed along to the next generation. This can't be allowed to happen.
First and foremost, I think it is clear that this debate (meaning the evolution/creation discussion as a whole, not just specifically Nye-vs.-Ham) is a political debate, not a scientific one. By that I mean that at its core, the whole reason for having such a debate is for each side to try to win the hearts and minds of the public - a fight over which side gets to dictate what is taught in schools, and which proponents should be elected to public office. If it were a scientific debate, the goal would be to reach a consensus on the most reasonable conclusion, but I think it is clear that neither side has that goal, primarily because the two sides cannot agree on what the definition of a "reasonable conclusion" is. Both sides can agree on the political impact; if schools start adopting science textbooks that include intelligent design, then the Creationists have won the debate, but if the public instead decides that including elements of faith should not be a part of scientific training, then the evolution camp has won.
The impact of such a debate - even if it is "only" political - should not be underestimated, however. At stake is the vision each side has for what will lead to a better society. Nye's concern (and the concern of everyone in mainstream science) is that losing this debate will set back humanity's ability to progress in the way that it has for the last few hundred years. I can only guess at Ham's concern over losing. At best it is an other-minded concern that losing the debate means that society will turn completely secular and there will be immoral chaos - public sodomy, guiltless murder, torture of godly people for their beliefs, and things like that. At worst, it is a self-centered concern - he (like all evangelists) just can't stand the thought of other people thinking differently than he does.
So given that this debate is political, the fundamental question for each side is, "What strategy do I need to use to win the hearts and minds?" From the time of Copernicus to roughly the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Church dominated this kind of debate. The body politic is pretty consistent in looking after its own best interests, and eternal paradise vs. eternal damnation makes for a pretty compelling argument, especially in pre-modern times, when life on Earth was no picnic. The religious side started losing ground with public opinion when modern scientists, iconoclasts cut from the same cloth as Copernicus and Galileo, started producing technology that made life on Earth much more tolerable. Every modern convenience sprang forth from this thing called "science," and the effect on society was so powerful that it became impossible to fight it. It became clear that the only possible strategy for saving the faith-based perspective was to stop framing the debate as "religion-vs.-science," and start framing it as "faith-related-science-vs.secular-science." Just by changing the description to make it sound like a type of science, creationists were able to take some of the bite out of being opposed to the popular heroes that invented microwave ovens and smart phones. And they still have tradition and fear of what happens after death working in their favor.
The most insidious part of this strategy is that the population is so scientifically-illiterate that they don't easily see the distinction between something that is called a science in a political debate and something that actually is science. In the Nye-vs.-Ham debate, Ham bemoans that the secular scientists have hijacked the word "science" to mean only their version, while he claims that there are in fact two types (observational/experimental and historical), so he's taking this strategy to another level. He seems to imply that his side can equally lay claim to all of the modern amenities, because those lie within the realm of observational/experimental, which he also subscribes to, but that historical science must rely upon some kind of faith because no one was there to witness it, and his biblical account is as valid as any other.
The part that is conveniently missing from his thesis also happens to be something that is hard to express to the public, which is why this "debate" has raged on much longer than it should have. The "secret sauce" in science - what has made it so remarkably successful - is that it asserts that ultimately there is a single answer to any question, and when an explanation comes along that is better than the prevailing explanation, the old theory is discarded in favor of the new one. (It just occurred to me that this is a sort of natural selection!) Many people might be surprised to hear that I agree that the bible is (a collection of) scientific literature. It explains how the universe came into being, how humans came to be here, and even why we see a rainbow in the sky after it rains. These are all conjectures in the best tradition of science. But the cornerstone of science is that when new theories come along that better explain observed phenomena, and actually predict new things not predicted by the old paradigm, then the old theories are discarded in favor of the new ones. This is how progress is achieved. If instead we always clung to our first theory, and continually patched it with new articles of faith, we would not be able to use that form of "science" to actually understand the world around us, or to improve our standard of living with technological innovation.
Mainstream scientists have no problem with people believing whatever they want to believe, even if we are utterly convinced they are demonstrably wrong. Sometimes we'll argue with such people because we think that the discourse will bring them around, forgetting that they are likely impervious to learning in this way - we foolishly assume that they can discard cherished ideas in the face of contrary evidence, as we scientists do on a regular basis. But when it comes to determining public policy, it is very clear that science literacy needs to be improved so that these specious arguments made by creationists (and others, like global warming deniers) don't take hold and head us in a dangerous direction. What is particularly unnerving to me is the feedback-loop aspect of this when it comes to creation science: If mainstream scientists slip-up just a bit, then public policy turns ever more toward teaching non-science to children, which drives the electorate ever deeper into science illiteracy, which is passed along to the next generation. This can't be allowed to happen.