The evangelical right’s guerrilla warfare against science education continues without letup, though America’s international competitiveness continues to decline. The latest is a proposed list of questions that high school students ought to pose to biology teachers, all of them based upon false but hidden premises.
The most invidious of the bunch is Number 3, which would pop-up in a classroom conversation like this:
Teacher: We don’t teach intelligent design in science class because it isn’t science.
Student: Who determines the rules of science? Are these rules written in stone? Is it mandatory that scientific explanations only appeal to matter and energy operating by unbroken natural laws?
There is so much wrong here, so much implied that is untrue, that it’s worthwhile to look at it piece by piece.
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Who determines the rules of science?
Everybody — and nobody. Science relies upon consensus reached by open inspection and discussion; it’s a genteel barroom brawl where the ‘truth’ is the last idea standing. But that truth is not ‘revealed’ or ‘inerrant’ truth; it’s the current winner — and that’s all. And the incentive structure rewards those who displace the prevailing truth.
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Are these rules written in stone?
It’s hard to overstate the nastiness of this; it implies on the part of science precisely that intellectual sclerosis which distinguishes the Creationism/Intelligent Design crowd who believe in the divine revelation of Genesis.
No, the rules are not written in stone. In fact, the philosophy of science has a long, lively, contentious, and still-busy history. The question How do we know? is the subject matter of epistemology, and has engaged the best minds since time immemorial. It was a concern of Socrates, of Epicurus, of Augustine, of Aquinas and, at the start of the last century, of Einstein, of Russell, of Poincare. Recent and contemporary writers who address that question include Ayn Rand, Karl Popper, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Daniel Dennett.
So, once again, No. The rules are not written in stone; they are all up for grabs, all the time. Only theology teaches that everything is all settled.
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Is it mandatory that scientific explanations only appeal to matter and energy operating by unbroken natural laws?
Yes. Whatever could the expression ‘natural law’ mean if its subject matter is not nature itself, and if nature violates it at … what? Whim? Science is not concerned with cotton-candy fairy castles in the sky. Science is concerned with reality.
The discussion following this question gives away its underhanded purposes.
The rules of science are not written in stone. They have been negotiated over many centuries as science (formerly called “natural philosophy”) has tried to understand the natural world. These rules have changed in the past and they will change in the future. Right now much of the scientific community is bewitched by a view of science called methodological naturalism, which says that science may only offer naturalistic explanations. Science seeks to understand nature. If intelligent causes operate in nature, then methodological naturalism must not be used to rule them out.
Negotiated? It is a very odd choice of words, a word connoting a certain indifference to the actual operation of the universe provided that individual interests are protected. It is more correct to say that the answer to How do we know? is constantly updated with advances in technology, including our understanding of the workings of the human senses and mind.
Bewitched? Science goes with what works; systematic physical observations give reproducible results that can be analyzed and exploited to make life better. On the other hand, there’s no Holy Man on earth so gaudy that he won’t concede that praying to Our Invisible Friend is a hit-and-miss proposition. Who is bewitched?
But the real point of it all, of course, is to frustrate science education. And nobody should doubt that high school students armed with laziness and the resolute ignorance of a pious upbringing, and the stout-hearted encouragement of the Holy Men who feed on their ignorance, will succeed in maddening some science teachers to resignation and defrauding their classmates out of the education their parents are paying for.
The authors of this list of questions are William Dembski and Sean McDowell. McDowell is a Talbot Theological Seminary graduate who operates something called Worldview Ministries.
Worldview Ministries exists to create a paradigm shift in the way we teach truth to young people.
May he crash and burn.
Dembski teaches at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, within whose catalog the word ‘mathematics’ appears only 3 times, and which school offers no science courses at all.
It seems clear to me a sane parent should freak at the thought of either of these clowns presuming to instruct their children in the matter of science or its philosophy.
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