Creationist insecurity
Via the delightfully snarky Ron Britton over at Bay of Fundie, I heard about this conference/webcast called “Darwin Was Wrong” [link to program PDF]. It’s sponsored by the Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa and some group called Logos Research Associates, Inc. (Sounds sciencey!) The program itself sounds like a real train wreck, with talks such as “Darwin Was Wrong About Science,” “Darwin Was Wrong About the Fossil Record,” and “Darwin Was Wrong About God,” but out of some kind of morbid curiosity I’m going to try to watch the webcast—today’s talks are just starting now.
It’s not my goal to rebut all the stupid claims made by the speakers in these talks. First, because nobody who cares about this event would care what I have to say, but second, because I’m sure it’s been done before. I’m also in touch with the fact that, no matter how much creationists would like to paint it that way, scientists don’t worship Darwin’s word as the ultimate and unquestionable truth. (And hey, guys, if you want to criticize that way of thinking as unscientific and therefore invalid… look in the mirror.) Bottom line: sure, there were some particular claims and conjectures that Darwin put forth in his writings which we now have evidence against, but we still appreciate his work and groundbreaking ideas. We adjust and modify our theoretical models in light of new evidence, new data to compare our models with. That’s how science works.
I really just want to make one simple point, and that is: isn’t this all terrifically insecure? Creationists are really obsessed with trying to demonstrate that “Darwin was wrong” (just search Amazon for “darwin wrong” and you’ll see what I mean), but you practically never see a panel discussion with a handful of evolutionary biologists just riffing on how Biblical creation has a couple plot holes. Yes, the community of skeptics is growing, and yes, there are groups like the National Center for Science Education which have sprung up to advocate for evolution. But the vast, vast majority of the time, scientists are just going about their science, and ignoring the crazy fringe ideas. That’s because the crazy fringe ideas are obviously wrong. It would just be superfluous for biologists to spend one tenth the time creationists do, flailing around and shouting about how the other side is wrong. If you have no real proof of your point of view, the best you can do is insist that your opponent’s proof is insufficient, but if the evidence is on your side, you can rest assured that the evidence will speak for itself.
One other note. Lunch at this conference is being provided by Chick-fil-A. Of course.
Not so grand a bargain
I haven’t written in a while, but I promised Z that I’d start up again. I think a good way to start is to talk about Robert Wright’s New York Times op-ed from Saturday, which bothered me in a lot of ways. The title is “A Grand Bargain Over Evolution,” and the goal is to propose a “common ground” between science/atheism and religion over evolution. Very little that he says is actually wrong, but all of it is missing the point. He proposes that the religious concede that evolution is fact. He then points out that many believe evolution is a process that is bound to yield intelligent beings with an idea of morality. He says that atheists should concede that this realization of moral sense being built into a natural process can reasonably be seen as evidence that the universe was created by a supernatural being who wanted those laws of morality to be known.
My biggest problem is with the idea of a “bargain” in the first place. I have no problem with a bargain in the sense of agreeing to disagree. I can easily reach that kind of understanding (and do) all the time with individual people. I also have no problem with (and very much support) the idea of a political compromise, where government stays out of the religion-atheism debate and guarantees the right of everyone to make the decision for themselves. I am not, however, okay with the idea of a bargain over the facts. If I claim the sky is blue, and you claim it is red, we don’t decide to just split the difference and agree that it’s purple. You don’t bargain over what is true. You debate and give logical reasons and do research and try to figure out what the real answer is. This article asks us to believe something because it’s a nice middle position. I have trouble any time I’m asked to believe something for any reason other than that it’s probably true.
Wright also makes it clear that he does not fully understand the atheist argument, which is surprising considering that he just wrote a book on the history of religious belief. He states the grand compromise he proposes this way:
Believers could scale back their conception of God’s role in creation, and atheists could accept that some notions of “higher purpose” are compatible with scientific materialism. And the two might learn to get along.
Of course the idea of a “higher purpose” is compatible with scientific materialism. Atheists believe in morality, after all. I am not sure why he thinks this is a concession. He makes himself a little more clear later on:
[Atheists] could acknowledge, first of all, that any god whose creative role ends with the beginning of natural selection is, strictly speaking, logically compatible with Darwinism.
I have never seen even the most extreme and combative atheist fail to concede this. A creator-only god is logically compatible with any scientific evidence that could ever be produced, and this is fully conceded by atheists. In fact, even a much more active god is logically compatible with all scientific evidence that could ever be produced. You want to believe God created humans in their current form? Fine. You just also have to believe that God created fossils of various early humanoid species in such a way as to create an apparent link between them and other early apes. It seems to me like a really strange thing to believe, but it’s not logically inconsistent.
The point atheists make is that, while the religious view is logically consistent, there’s no reason to favor it over the non-religious view. We have every reason to believe that logical consequences of the laws of physics govern the events we see around us. Sure, those could be explained by any one of thousands of different possible religious beliefs, but why would we choose to believe any one of these supernatural explanations over any other, let alone over the simple straightforward explanation we can see in the world every day? Atheists don’t claim to disprove religion—they just claim that given the existence of these numerous logically consistent worldviews, the one that doesn’t posit the existence of a random supernatural being without any evidence of its existence is the one that is most reasonable to hold. Wright never even references this argument, and it’s hard to convince people to change their minds when you can’t even prove you understand what they already believe.
Science teachers bad at science
16% of US high school biology teachers are creationists, and about 12.5% lecture on it as a “valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species,” according to this study led by Prof. Michael Berkman at Penn State University. New Scientist reports:
Science teaching experts say they are not surprised to find such a large number of science teachers advocating creationism.
“It seems a bit high, but I am not shocked by it,” says Linda Froschauer, past president of the National Science Teachers Association based in Arlington, Virginia. “We do know there’s a problem out there, and this gives more credibility to the issue.”
I am shocked, even if Ms. Froschauer isn’t. I had always assumed it was interventionist school boards and activist parents who were pushing the creationist agenda. Apparently naively, I assumed that science teachers had been educated in the science they were teaching and were doing their best to communicate real scientific knowledge to their students. Silly, silly me.
How does this happen? Why are we as a society so apologetic for these people? We don’t tolerate it in other fields… but maybe no one’s tried it yet. Can you imagine a math teacher who taught that pi was exactly 3 (as in 1 Kings 7:23) or a history teacher who taught nothing more than six thousand years of who begat whom? Honestly, “My religion told me so” isn’t a valid reason for ignoring the facts in front of your nose. These numbers are more than “a bit high.” One biology teacher who lectures on creationism as a valid scientific theory is one too many.
The concept of evolution by natural selection doesn’t say anything about where life originally came from. It doesn’t answer every question we have about how the world works — even though Ben Stein seems to think that’s the claim — but it explains and predicts a lot. (Here are fifteen well-written answers to creationist nonsense by John Rennie, editor in chief of Scientific American.) If you’ve received any kind of scientific education, you know that you don’t form a scientific theory merely by saying, “Some aspects of the world are not explained by your theory!” then asserting what you would like to be true. Creationism/”intelligent design” hasn’t come anywhere close to science.
These biology teachers can’t possibly have an adequate biology education. An education degree, however impressive it might sound to school administrators, simply does not demonstrate an adequate knowledge of the subject material, and the bar must be set higher. We ought to require high school teachers to have a college-level education in the actual subjects they’re teaching. Indeed, Berkman’s study showed that teachers who had taken more science courses, particularly in evolutionary biology, were less likely to spend class time on creationism or ID. This isn’t stacking blocks and playing dress-up in kindergarten; in order for someone to be able to teach biology (or any other subject) properly it’s necessary for them to have truly learned it themselves first. If these teachers don’t know that creationism belongs in religious services rather than in science classrooms, they should never have been hired.
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