Facts of the Matter
RICHARD BRILL
Sunday, September 2, 2001
The ongoing conflict between creationism vs. evolution is one that will never be resolved. It can't. The principles involved are two completely different things. Apples and oranges. Creationism vs. science
is apples vs. orangesThe reasons behind that statement will become an ongoing theme to be explored and expanded in different contexts in future columns.
Why anyone would want to us to science to validate their faith is a mystery. It shows a misunderstanding of science: what it is and what it isn't, what it can do and what it can't. It also shows a misunderstanding as well as betrayal of faith and spirituality. To use science to validate faith, then to turn around and use faith to invalidate science just doesn't make sense.
First and foremost, science does not and can not prove anything. Science is a process that form a series of tentative conclusions while examining facts.
The conclusions, called laws or theories, are put together in a way that is most consistent with as many facts and previously validated laws as possible, and in the simplest possible way.
A theory or natural law is subject to change when new facts are discovered or when new laws are formulated, although scientists remain skeptical and are slow to accept new ideas.
A natural law is a strong statement, backed up by years and years of evidence, experiment, observation, calculation, consideration and discussion. There are few such laws, and they are generally irrefutable by practice, not by decree.
A good law is both explanatory and predictive. It not only explains how things are, but how they will be. The law of gravity is one such law. We can predict with great precision how a rock will fall, or how a projectile or satellite will behave.
Rather than proving things, science looks to disprove. Einstein once said that no amount of experimentation or observation could prove his theory of general relativity to be correct, but it would take only one to prove it wrong. The laws and theories that have withstood the tests of time are those that have not been able to be disproved.
A scientific theory is dynamic. It is subject to change when new facts are discovered.
Even natural laws are not immutable. If exceptions are found the law will be modified and adapted, but rarely discarded.
This malleability of theories is often criticized as a weakness by pseudoscientists, along with facts that don't quite fit the theories, and expected facts that are undiscovered.
Facts that don't fit the theories is all the more reason to look for modifications to the theory to accommodate the facts. By contrast pseudoscience looks for facts to support the theory. By no logic can the absence of supporting facts be used to disprove anything. The absence of a 'missing link' does not repudiate evolution any more than a missing mechanism for attraction repudiates gravity.
Truth is the goal, and history has shown that current 'truths' are often incorrect.
The processes of science have been undeniably and tremendously successful in the past 300 years at focusing in on physical truths. The pseudoscience method of accepting only those facts that support the theory had not, for more than 2,000 years of inquiry. They do not discover truth even today.
Creationism is pseudoscience, but also pseudoreligion, neither science nor religion. In attempting to be both it violates the principles of both and becomes little more than weak sophistry. It's not science because there is no 'evidence' for the Judeo-Christian view of creation other than the scriptures, which are taken on faith to be the truth.
Otherwise they have no factual value. It's not religion because it tries to use science to validate faith. Sorry, but hard as you may try you can't paint air with a spray can.
There are different kinds of truth, both internal and external reality. It is within our intellectual and spiritual capacities to accept and reconcile them, even if they may appear to be in conflict.
Let's try to live up to our own high opinion of our intelligence that our science and religions, art, literature and music suggest that we have, despite the fact that as a species our behavior does not justify that opinion.
Should creation be taught in schools? Yes. As mythology and religion, but not science and not just one, which usually turns out to be the Christian version.
Should evolution be taught in schools? Yes. As part of the dynamic voyage of discovery that is science, but not as as an immutable law, and not as religion or mythology.
The more we all understand what science is and what it is not, what it can do and what it can not, and what constitutes faith the fewer will be these unresolvable conflicts.
Einstein also said, "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Let's devote our energies to reconciling rather than to polarizing.
We could all be a little smarter, no? Richard Brill picks up
where your high school science teacher left off. He is a professor of science
at Honolulu Community College, where he teaches earth and physical
science and investigates life and the universe.
He can be contacted by e-mail at rickb@hcc.hawaii.edu
