Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

One of the most ironic things about the so-called "religion vs. science" debate is that many scientists I know are deeply religious whereas many who push for relgion against science know very little about science. I know active researchers who are practicing and believing Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists as well as non-believers, agnostics, atheists and people who don't care about religion at all. One friend takes breaks each day to pray to Mecca. Another friend would break off a discussion to daven at the proper times. In short, many scientists see no conflict between science and their beliefs. I suspect those religious reactionaries who DO see such a conflict are less comfortable in their belief than the scientists who are also religious. Nothing sparks more dogmatic resistence as a lack of faith in oneself and one's beliefs. In reality the battle is NOT a debate between religion and science but DOGMA and science.

The biography of Darwin was already pissing me off, because so many of the issues that SHOULD have been resolved decades ago are still being debated by people who fear science and who feel that reality should conform to their personal belief structure. This anger was, in a humorous way, spurred further by a sarcastic letter in teh Journal Nature I read at about the same time:

Nature 438, 422 (24 November 2005)

Is the ID debate proof of an intelligent deceiver?
A. Richard Palmer1

1. Systematics and Evolution Group, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E9, Canada

Sir:

In the ongoing debate over whether intelligent design (ID) should be taught as a legitimate alternative to evolution in schools ("Expert witness: the scientists who testified against intelligent design" Nature 438, 11; 2005), I suggest that ID could be presented as an alternative so long as it is always accompanied by a third option: intelligent deception.

This hypothesis proposes that the ID movement is motivated by an 'intelligent deceiver'. Individuals who understand how to debate alternative scientific hypotheses would never intentionally promote religious dogma as science. So an intelligent deceiver must be at work, guiding proponents of ID to sow confusion over valid scientific debate.

To exclude intelligent deception from debates over ID versus evolution could be considered hypocritical on both legal and moral grounds. And if proponents of ID reject the hypothesis of intelligent deception, their objections would be most interesting to hear, particularly the ones that dismiss the deceiver without imperilling the designer.

I think Palmer is right. There are those whose fear of doubt and debate is so great that they WILL do their best to mischaracterize both their own opinion and the opinion of their opponents to try and sway popular opinion. This is MOST obvious in the debate over evolution, but it also comes up in the debate over global warming. It seems that Intelligent Design proponents argue things that fit NEITHER the evolutionary nor the biblical model. Similarly, I noticed in my recent debate with global warming deniers, the same tendency to mischaracterize among those who deny global warming. They refer to themselves as "skeptics," though from what I could tell they would be blindly skeptical of evidence in support of anthropogenic wamring and not skeptical at all regarding the other side. And they would present contradictary arguements--there is no warming, there is warming but it isn't caused by humans, it is caused by humans but it is a good thing, etc. Whether in the evolution debate or warming debate, one side work as genuine scientists and one side are so afraid of science that they will be deceptive at will in their fight against it.

Now those who say evolution is true but put a deity at its origin are one thing. They are taking a reasonable path. But those who push Intelligent Design into our schools are doing something else. They are taking points of faith and trying to teach them as science. They are also ignoring major elements of evolutionary science in their attempt to make science subservient to their personal faith.

Science is a very specific process of hypothesis, testing and revision of hypothesis. When a hypothesis is tested, that test has to be able to solidly DISPROVE the hypothesis. Otherwise it is not a valid scientific test. A hypothesis is something you do your best to DISPROVE. If your careful testing is unable to disprove the hypothesis, then that hypothesis is supported by your test. As years go by and many scientists submit a given hypothesis to successive rounds of testing in an attempt to disprove it, the hypothesis gets refined and further supported until it has such robust support from so many tests that we call it a "theory." A theory is not something that is proven. Nothing in science can ever be definitively proven. A theory can merely be so thoroughly supported that further hypotheses can be built upon it with confidence and very accurate predictions can be made from it. Often years later new information comes up that requires further refining of the theory, but the basics remain intact.

Einsteinian physics did not disprove Newtonian physics per se. What it did was radically refine it in such a way that Newtonian physics is still usable for most day-to-day purposes, but Einsteinian refinement is necessary under extreme conditions.

Evolution is no less robust a theory than Einstein's theories. Both have been subject to many tests and retests and refined over the years. Both are so well supported that although we can expect further refinements, we can also accept them as basically facts from which we can construct confident views of our world and build new theories that can hopefully give us even deeper understandings of the universe.

Intelligent Design, like Creationism before it, is not a scientific theory. Both ID and Creationism start with a desired conclusion and attempt to mold existing evidence around that conclusion. Any scientist who did that would fail out of grad school. For this reason alone, ID and Creationism do not belong in a science class except as examples of what is NOT science. When you start from a desired conclusion and try to mold evidence to fit that conclusion, you are not engaging in science. You are merely trying to bolster up a belief without seriously questioning it. A true attempt to combine belief and fact starts with the fact and tunes the belief to the fact, not visa versa. Proponents of teaching ID and Creationism as "alternative theories" to evolution are trying to bend facts to fit belief. They are being intellectually dishonest. The leaders of this movement are, in fact, intelligent deceivers because they are trying to play on people's beliefs to gain followers to push their particular agenda. ID is even more dishonest than Creationism because Creationism is at least true to its belief. ID is a bastardization that attempts to wedge just enough creationism into evolution classes that a door can be opened for teaching Creationism in its full form.

I am biased in this debate. I am a scientist and I am, most of the time, agnostic. But I also am Jewish and I also respect people who have faith. Judaism is a religion where doubt and questioning and arguing are not only accepted, but encouraged. This is best illustrated in the format of the Talmud, the collected commentaries of Rabbis on biblical matters. Each page of the Talmud has at its center a single passage under debate. Surrounding this passage in a kind of spiral are commentaries, often contradictory, from several famous Rabbis. No resolution is reached among contradictory commentaries. Rather, the contradictions and the controversy they imply are an integral part of the study and thought of religious Jews. Although orthodox Jews are as dogmatic as any orthodox religious group, they are also welcoming of debate and doubt. So even what religious background I have is going to be open to scientific debate and doubt thrown on religious texts. Few Jews would ever suggest taking the bible literally. That is a Christian invention as far as I am aware. Jews would consider it detracting from the beautiful complexity of the bible to suggest that its word is literal rather than a mixture of history, myth, morality play and allegory.

But our society is currently dominated by those whose belief is so weak that they consider ANY doubt, ANY questioning of the literal word of the bible (which bible? Which part of the bible? In which language?) so threatening that they will break laws and smear reputations just to stop people from even mentioning those doubts and questions. This is nothing new. Scientific progress has always threatened those whose belief is so weak that when facts threaten their beliefs they have to take the side of beliefs. When someone insists on belief over fact how is that different than psychosis?

The Creationism/ID/Evolution "debate" is not a scientific debate. The scientific debate was over long ago, settled in favor of evolution, and has moved on to bigger and better things like determining whether evolution has been continuous or punctuated, whether the evolution of the universe is best described by a point-particle or a string theory, etc. But our society has backtracked and is now having a renewed debate NOT about science, but about the role of science in society. The debate is not about evolution, which is scientific fact as much as anything is, but is about how society values religion versus science and whether society should favor fact over belief when deciding what to teach in schools.

This debate should not be happening in America. America was founded by students of the Enlightenment, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Those who wrote our Constitution were students of science and often engaged in scientific experimentation. They were not religious fundamentalists, by and large, and in fact wanted to avoid the religious dogmas that dominated Europe. Our Founding Fathers had many flaws, but they very clearly saw that religion was a matter of PERSONAL belief and the less that society and religion mixed the better off the nation would be. Science was seen as a SOCIETAL matter, which the government should encourage in every possible way. Thomas Jefferson funded the Lewis and Clark expedition specifically as a scientific endeavor as well as an exploration of new territory. Our Founding Fathers would be horrified by the attempts by the Bush administration to act as the intelligent deceiver, putting belief over fact.

But the Bush Administration and large segments of the Republican Party are indeed playing the intelligent deceiver, deceiving America to get their way. Evolution isn't even their main front, but it is a way in which they can rally people against science. Republicans wrap themselves in Christianity and declare Crusades. In the process they subjugate fact to belief. They suppress scientific evidence showing that global warming is upon us here and now in their belief that what is good for big oil companies is good for America. They suppress evidence that world fisheries are declining in their belief that deregulation of fisheries is a good thing. They suppress evidence for the harmful effects of mercury and arsenic on children in their belief that deregulation of environmental standards is a good thing. They suppress facts about the Iraq War in their belief that it is a Crusade that will make America strong.

Anytime someone puts belief over fact they are someday going to get hit hard in the face by the facts that they ignored. Global warming will hurt America (probably already is!). When fisheries die out, entire industries fail as was seen on the California coast when the sardine (?) canneries collapsed when the fish populations evaporated. America is probably already facing the consequences of industrial poisons in our environment with cancer rates going up and male fertility declining. And, the Iraq war is dragging down America's economy, international reputation and our soldiers who we are sending over there to fight for Bush's beliefs.

America CANNOT be guided by belief over fact. That is not how America was founded. It is a violation of the secular, rational plan that the Founding Fathers had when they wrote the Constitution. It is impractical and intellectually dishonest to, as the Bush administration and the Republican Party have been doing, try and deceive the entire world to push an agenda of faith, whether that faith is in neocon ideology or Christian fundamentalism. Our nation, built to be a place where all religions and beliefs are allowed, was never intended to favor ANY belief over common sense facts.

I call upon all Americans to reject the reactionary anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party for a revival of science, common sense and an emphasis on facts. For those who are interested in more on these issues, the Union of Concerned Scientists addresses all of these issues, from evolution to environment to energy issues. The National Center for Science Education focuses on evolution and protecting education from creationists. Finally, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State focuses on keeping America the secular, rationalist nation that the Founding Fathers intended it to be. Please join in the fight against the Intelligent Deceivers.