I had an interesting experience Friday night, which I've been meaning to write about since. My brain is such a jumble these days, I hope I can do justice to the experience and my perceptions of it.
Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist held a public discussion forum on "Evolution, Creation, and Intelligent Design". The speaker was John Suarez, who has for many years been active in church/state issues. On the side of separation, I mean.
Suarez started out with a simple question for the audience. What, he asked, are the differences between the scientific terms hypothesis, theory, and law?
Hands shot up all over the room. Most people suggested that the difference between theory and law was one of degree; law presumably having been more thoroughly tested, and even absolute. No, Suarez explained, law and theory are really the same thing. We shouldn't even have two words, actually.
Hands shot up again. "What does Webster's say?" "I don't have Webster's here." he replied. A man with a determined look on his face insisted that law referred to an absolute, observable thing, like gravity. To demonstrate, he held his pen up so we could all see it, and dropped it.
No, Suarez explained: gravity isn't absolute, as you'd realize if you were on an airplane that suddenly lost altitude. And the Theory of Relativity disproves more than one element of Newton's Laws. So law is neither absolute nor consistently observable.
Arguing ensues. From various corners of the room, disagreement with Suarez's first assertion. Look, he says, all I'm saying is that there is no practical scientific difference between the two terms. You can toss one of them, pick whichever one you like.
He goes on, giving us a political history of the debate, beginning in the 1920s. He covers the Scopes trial, and some other state-by-state attempts to insert young-earth creationism into the classroom, one by one defeated. Eventually a few creationists with big degrees after their names came up with ID. Through the Discovery Institute's Center For Science and Culture, they have steadily organized a debate (see
The Wedge Strategy) intended to confuse, using negative arguments in place of positive theory. And, sadly, it works a lot of the time. And I experienced it in spades on Friday night.
Hands shoot up, again, from various corners. Lots of pseudo-scientific posturing. Evolution can't be proven. Look at the beaks on the Galapagos birds. Changes in petri dish cells aren't adaptations, they're deficiencies. The Cambrian Explosion doesn't explain enough, the pocket-watch argument, irreducible complexity, you name it, they trotted it out.
There were, of course, plenty of hands shooting up to answer these debunked ID arguments. Some of the people answering were scientists, some were not. I think I can say that all were surprised that what we thought would be a casual discussion turned out to be nothing of the sort. One woman said, "I am a microbiologist, and I wish I had all of the answers to what you've said in the front of my mind, but I don't right now. But there are answers. What you are saying is wrong."
See that was the problem: we didn't know we were supposed to have done homework before coming to the forum.
I have kept up with the ID movement's claims, court cases, etc over the years. But I don't keep all that data in the forefront of my skull. All of the minutiae, every debunked claim- it's not my job.
Here's what I do- what most of us do, I'll wager. A controversy arises. ID proponents make their arguments. I think, hm. Wonder what the scientific community says. I look it up. Science answers. Science has made a much better argument. I get a beer and watch another episode of
Deadliest Catch.
Here's what they do. A group of them get in a van. They drive to an event. They get out of the van and pray together. The enter the event separately, and take seats around the room. They have spent (according to one of them) two years memorizing CSC talking points. The forum begins, and they fire out talking points like shotgun pellets, fast, fast, fast, and if you aren't prepared, you haven't a chance at answering them fully.
I made a direct response to one of them, who'd asserted that there was no scientific consensus on evolution and many scientists support the theory of ID, blah blah blah. I'm not a scientist, I said, but I do know that for a concept to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be tested. The work must be peer-reviewed. I know that there are smart men with impressive sounding science credentials who are trying to advance ID as a theory, but it is not testable, none of them has ever produced a piece of data for peer-review, and ID is not science.
Another of them responded to me with the
Richard Steinberg BS that Ben Stein pushed in his (thoroughly debunked) movie. No, I said, I'm sorry. It never happened.
Conejo Valley Unitarian Universalist held a public discussion forum on "Evolution, Creation, and Intelligent Design". The speaker was John Suarez, who has for many years been active in church/state issues. On the side of separation, I mean.
Suarez started out with a simple question for the audience. What, he asked, are the differences between the scientific terms hypothesis, theory, and law?
Hands shot up all over the room. Most people suggested that the difference between theory and law was one of degree; law presumably having been more thoroughly tested, and even absolute. No, Suarez explained, law and theory are really the same thing. We shouldn't even have two words, actually.
Hands shot up again. "What does Webster's say?" "I don't have Webster's here." he replied. A man with a determined look on his face insisted that law referred to an absolute, observable thing, like gravity. To demonstrate, he held his pen up so we could all see it, and dropped it.
No, Suarez explained: gravity isn't absolute, as you'd realize if you were on an airplane that suddenly lost altitude. And the Theory of Relativity disproves more than one element of Newton's Laws. So law is neither absolute nor consistently observable.
Arguing ensues. From various corners of the room, disagreement with Suarez's first assertion. Look, he says, all I'm saying is that there is no practical scientific difference between the two terms. You can toss one of them, pick whichever one you like.
He goes on, giving us a political history of the debate, beginning in the 1920s. He covers the Scopes trial, and some other state-by-state attempts to insert young-earth creationism into the classroom, one by one defeated. Eventually a few creationists with big degrees after their names came up with ID. Through the Discovery Institute's Center For Science and Culture, they have steadily organized a debate (see
The Wedge Strategy) intended to confuse, using negative arguments in place of positive theory. And, sadly, it works a lot of the time. And I experienced it in spades on Friday night.
Hands shoot up, again, from various corners. Lots of pseudo-scientific posturing. Evolution can't be proven. Look at the beaks on the Galapagos birds. Changes in petri dish cells aren't adaptations, they're deficiencies. The Cambrian Explosion doesn't explain enough, the pocket-watch argument, irreducible complexity, you name it, they trotted it out.
There were, of course, plenty of hands shooting up to answer these debunked ID arguments. Some of the people answering were scientists, some were not. I think I can say that all were surprised that what we thought would be a casual discussion turned out to be nothing of the sort. One woman said, "I am a microbiologist, and I wish I had all of the answers to what you've said in the front of my mind, but I don't right now. But there are answers. What you are saying is wrong."
See that was the problem: we didn't know we were supposed to have done homework before coming to the forum.
I have kept up with the ID movement's claims, court cases, etc over the years. But I don't keep all that data in the forefront of my skull. All of the minutiae, every debunked claim- it's not my job.
Here's what I do- what most of us do, I'll wager. A controversy arises. ID proponents make their arguments. I think, hm. Wonder what the scientific community says. I look it up. Science answers. Science has made a much better argument. I get a beer and watch another episode of
Deadliest Catch.
Here's what they do. A group of them get in a van. They drive to an event. They get out of the van and pray together. The enter the event separately, and take seats around the room. They have spent (according to one of them) two years memorizing CSC talking points. The forum begins, and they fire out talking points like shotgun pellets, fast, fast, fast, and if you aren't prepared, you haven't a chance at answering them fully.
I made a direct response to one of them, who'd asserted that there was no scientific consensus on evolution and many scientists support the theory of ID, blah blah blah. I'm not a scientist, I said, but I do know that for a concept to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be tested. The work must be peer-reviewed. I know that there are smart men with impressive sounding science credentials who are trying to advance ID as a theory, but it is not testable, none of them has ever produced a piece of data for peer-review, and ID is not science.
Another of them responded to me with the
Richard Steinberg BS that Ben Stein pushed in his (thoroughly debunked) movie. No, I said, I'm sorry. It never happened.
I mean- ok, something happened. What did not happen was a guy getting fired for trying to get ID scientific paper peer-reviewed. (Follow the link above to the full story)
I got up to go outside for a bit. I wanted to smoke, and get my thoughts together. I couldn't recall the particulars of the Steinberg affair, for instance, and I wanted to try and remember details. One of them followed me out. He wanted to discuss science in the Bible (which most people don't know, he said, even ministers). I refused to discuss the Bible with him. We had, I suppose a cheerful conversation, but a frustrating one. "How many mammals are in the fossil record?" he demanded. I don't know, I said. I am not a scientist, I don't keep that data in the front of my head. And you are not a scientist, either.
Eventually I got away from him and back to my friends. The event was over, and we all mingled a bit. A friend said to me, "You'll never get through to those people."
No, I said, you won't. But one of them had a teenage girl with him, maybe 17 or 19 years old. I can see her face clearly right now. And what you hope, as you engage their talking points, is that she will hear you, and get a good education, and eventually reject doctrine in favor of science.
That's what you hope. And you keep hoping, every time you have the opportunity to have another frustrating discussion with another regiment of culture warriors.
Next month the forum will be lead by an economist, topic is the mortgage crisis. I'm looking forward to October, when the issue will be same gender marriage.
Just to be on the safe side, I'll do some homework before I go.
Eventually I got away from him and back to my friends. The event was over, and we all mingled a bit. A friend said to me, "You'll never get through to those people."
No, I said, you won't. But one of them had a teenage girl with him, maybe 17 or 19 years old. I can see her face clearly right now. And what you hope, as you engage their talking points, is that she will hear you, and get a good education, and eventually reject doctrine in favor of science.
That's what you hope. And you keep hoping, every time you have the opportunity to have another frustrating discussion with another regiment of culture warriors.
Next month the forum will be lead by an economist, topic is the mortgage crisis. I'm looking forward to October, when the issue will be same gender marriage.
Just to be on the safe side, I'll do some homework before I go.
2 comments:
Sorry I missed it. I don't think I would have handled them any better - as you said, they're better trained - but it would have been fun. If you're still bothered, YouTube some Ken Miller. He was a bio professor at my school, and a big anti-ID speaker.
I need to find a schedule. Economics bore me, but same-sex arguing should be fun.
I shall YouTube- thanks for the tip.
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