On the Definition of Science
Given their encroachment on my beloved (heh) hometown, it should not be surprising that I've been poking around the AIG website (the Creationists, not the financial advisers). They've made available an excerpt from Evolution Exposed. Or maybe it's a summary or something. I can't really tell. At any rate, it's been a while since I've read a Creationist argument that was so upfront about the philosophical differences between Creationist and conventional science. While I disagree with the argument for philosophical/theological and practical reasons, I can't fault its emphasis on the philosophy behind the science.
I'm hardly the first one to point this out; plenty of comparisons have been made between the ID crowd and traditional Creationists. The feeling is that at least YECs are honest. It was a huge, scandalous revelation when Behe admitted in Dover that ID theory seeks to change the definition of science. Yet AIG is quite frank about this. And honestly, I have to admire anybody who is willing to challenge a paradigm that has dominated scientific thought for at least the last two hundred years. I think it's premature to challenge a paradigm that has not accumulated a cumbersome number of anomalies, but it does show a certain kind of intellectual bravery.
Because of this focus on the Real Issue, part of me thinks tackling this argument will be easier than just discussing the science. I've often felt that more headway could be made in these debates if everybody was on the same philosophical page. On the other hand, philosophy is a more slippery subject than science. It's easy to refute Creationist claims scientifically because Creationist claims are quite simply not scientific. But to address the real root of the problem and argue the epistemology? Now we're dealing less with hard evidence and more with personal beliefs that have nothing to do with evidence.
Still, the fact that people argue about this stuff means that they think that other people can be convinced to accept their beliefs (at least, that's the charitable conclusion). This means that their beliefs must have some objective relevance, i.e. be logically supported. One can't expect quite as much certainty from philosophy as from Biology or Physics, but it's not as though everything is relative.
There. I think that's enough preamble. Now to address the article itself. It starts out with an appeal to the past.
The idea that science cannot accept a creationist perspective is a denial of scientific history.
The argument, if I understand it correctly, is that Creationism is scientific because great scientists of the past have been Creationists. Issac Newton is a favorite example, but there are many others. Now, I realize that the entire Creationist argument is not meant to stand on this one point and that the purpose of referring to the history of science is to make it easier to accept the idea of Creationist science by pointing out that this is nothing new. However, if "many people do not realize that science was actually developed in Christian Europe by men who assumed that God created an orderly universe," then it would also make sense to inform these people not only of the creationist origins of science but of the Scientific Revolution, the reasons for it, and the participation of theists in it. The article does not, however, mention any of these things. So I'll do it.
I am, of course, no expert on this period of history, but I have read a few things that I think are relevant. It is, of course, true that there have been many creationist scientists. However, most creationist scientists didn't call themselves scientists because the word hadn't been coined yet. They were "natural philosophers" or some such. Darwin himself studied "natural theology," IIRC. The word "science" (as we use it today) came about with the Scientific Revolution (roughly, during the 17th and 18th centuries, although everybody argues about the dates). The change was so great, so revolutionary, that it demanded a new name. Science as we know it today was born (well, more like slowly emerged; obviously it's not as though everybody picked a day to expunge the old words from their vocabularies and introduce the new ones).
This doesn't negate the Creationist argument, but I think it's a relevant bit of information. It is also significant that the new methods for scientific inquiry came about because they worked. The emphasis on experimentation and methodological naturalism arose because it produced better results than untestable religious explanations for natural phenomena. Actually, I shouldn't even call them "untestable" because the precise problem was that those religious explanations did not survive experimentation.
Obviously, the Scientific Revolution could not have occurred if Christian philosophers (and non-Christian philosophers like Aristotle) had not been studying the natural world for thousands of years. When Newton talked about standing on the shoulders of giants? Yeah. That's what he meant. Excluding wrong answers is just as important as finding right ones. We should not look down on the intellectual giants of the past. We owe them everything. However, just because they came to smart conclusions based on the evidence they had at the time doesn't mean that we should ignore the additional evidence we've since collected. It's possible to respect the achievements of creationist scientists of the past without wanting to turn back the clock. For instance, modern evolutionary theory has changed quite a bit since Darwin first described natural selection. Darwin was a great scientist, but that doesn't mean he was right about everything. We know stuff he didn't know and couldn't have known (well, he could have known about Mendel, he just didn't, but that's another story).
Being Catholic, I'm happy to admit that the Church was responsible for preserving vital knowledge over the centuries (though I would add that we also owe a lot to the Greeks, the Romans and the Muslims, among others). But the Church did survive the Scientific Revolution. Not only that, it survived without denying science (yes, it took a while, but the Church eventually made peace with Galileo). It is possible to practice methodological naturalism while still believing in God. Ever met a Jesuit? Heck, as early as the fifth century, St. Augustine was suggesting that we not take Genesis literally. The theory of evolution (not natural selection but evolution) was being discussed by theists before Darwin was even born. Evolutionary theory did not come out of atheism. It is a part of that Christian tradition of scientific inquiry of which AIG is so enamoured.
So, that's my major point of contention with Creationists. It seems like they're always arguing that methodological naturalism is inherently atheistic or that it arose from atheism. While it's true that the Scientific Revolution destroyed many people's faith in God, I would argue that they simply failed the test of faith, because there is nothing inherently atheistic about modern science.
I'd like to look at this strange distinction between "operational" and "historical" science next, but I think I've babbled enough for one night.
I'm hardly the first one to point this out; plenty of comparisons have been made between the ID crowd and traditional Creationists. The feeling is that at least YECs are honest. It was a huge, scandalous revelation when Behe admitted in Dover that ID theory seeks to change the definition of science. Yet AIG is quite frank about this. And honestly, I have to admire anybody who is willing to challenge a paradigm that has dominated scientific thought for at least the last two hundred years. I think it's premature to challenge a paradigm that has not accumulated a cumbersome number of anomalies, but it does show a certain kind of intellectual bravery.
Because of this focus on the Real Issue, part of me thinks tackling this argument will be easier than just discussing the science. I've often felt that more headway could be made in these debates if everybody was on the same philosophical page. On the other hand, philosophy is a more slippery subject than science. It's easy to refute Creationist claims scientifically because Creationist claims are quite simply not scientific. But to address the real root of the problem and argue the epistemology? Now we're dealing less with hard evidence and more with personal beliefs that have nothing to do with evidence.
Still, the fact that people argue about this stuff means that they think that other people can be convinced to accept their beliefs (at least, that's the charitable conclusion). This means that their beliefs must have some objective relevance, i.e. be logically supported. One can't expect quite as much certainty from philosophy as from Biology or Physics, but it's not as though everything is relative.
There. I think that's enough preamble. Now to address the article itself. It starts out with an appeal to the past.
The idea that science cannot accept a creationist perspective is a denial of scientific history.
The argument, if I understand it correctly, is that Creationism is scientific because great scientists of the past have been Creationists. Issac Newton is a favorite example, but there are many others. Now, I realize that the entire Creationist argument is not meant to stand on this one point and that the purpose of referring to the history of science is to make it easier to accept the idea of Creationist science by pointing out that this is nothing new. However, if "many people do not realize that science was actually developed in Christian Europe by men who assumed that God created an orderly universe," then it would also make sense to inform these people not only of the creationist origins of science but of the Scientific Revolution, the reasons for it, and the participation of theists in it. The article does not, however, mention any of these things. So I'll do it.
I am, of course, no expert on this period of history, but I have read a few things that I think are relevant. It is, of course, true that there have been many creationist scientists. However, most creationist scientists didn't call themselves scientists because the word hadn't been coined yet. They were "natural philosophers" or some such. Darwin himself studied "natural theology," IIRC. The word "science" (as we use it today) came about with the Scientific Revolution (roughly, during the 17th and 18th centuries, although everybody argues about the dates). The change was so great, so revolutionary, that it demanded a new name. Science as we know it today was born (well, more like slowly emerged; obviously it's not as though everybody picked a day to expunge the old words from their vocabularies and introduce the new ones).
This doesn't negate the Creationist argument, but I think it's a relevant bit of information. It is also significant that the new methods for scientific inquiry came about because they worked. The emphasis on experimentation and methodological naturalism arose because it produced better results than untestable religious explanations for natural phenomena. Actually, I shouldn't even call them "untestable" because the precise problem was that those religious explanations did not survive experimentation.
Obviously, the Scientific Revolution could not have occurred if Christian philosophers (and non-Christian philosophers like Aristotle) had not been studying the natural world for thousands of years. When Newton talked about standing on the shoulders of giants? Yeah. That's what he meant. Excluding wrong answers is just as important as finding right ones. We should not look down on the intellectual giants of the past. We owe them everything. However, just because they came to smart conclusions based on the evidence they had at the time doesn't mean that we should ignore the additional evidence we've since collected. It's possible to respect the achievements of creationist scientists of the past without wanting to turn back the clock. For instance, modern evolutionary theory has changed quite a bit since Darwin first described natural selection. Darwin was a great scientist, but that doesn't mean he was right about everything. We know stuff he didn't know and couldn't have known (well, he could have known about Mendel, he just didn't, but that's another story).
Being Catholic, I'm happy to admit that the Church was responsible for preserving vital knowledge over the centuries (though I would add that we also owe a lot to the Greeks, the Romans and the Muslims, among others). But the Church did survive the Scientific Revolution. Not only that, it survived without denying science (yes, it took a while, but the Church eventually made peace with Galileo). It is possible to practice methodological naturalism while still believing in God. Ever met a Jesuit? Heck, as early as the fifth century, St. Augustine was suggesting that we not take Genesis literally. The theory of evolution (not natural selection but evolution) was being discussed by theists before Darwin was even born. Evolutionary theory did not come out of atheism. It is a part of that Christian tradition of scientific inquiry of which AIG is so enamoured.
So, that's my major point of contention with Creationists. It seems like they're always arguing that methodological naturalism is inherently atheistic or that it arose from atheism. While it's true that the Scientific Revolution destroyed many people's faith in God, I would argue that they simply failed the test of faith, because there is nothing inherently atheistic about modern science.
I'd like to look at this strange distinction between "operational" and "historical" science next, but I think I've babbled enough for one night.