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The Cedars of Lebanon

The Big Problem

Pollyanna Meets Captain Kirk

Does God Bless America?

Ticket Touts

Paedophilia is Not a Crime

Kill the puppy dogs

Is sex with animals always wrong?

Circumcision

Family Values in The Bible

Evolution: Do you Get it?

Religious indoctrination is child abuse

Military Salute

Science is alive, it acts like a cell. It is surrounded by a membrane. Like a living cell science does not simply act like a passive sponge. Certain substances are recognized as food and others as poisons, some scientific findings will instantly be seized upon because they are the right kind of thing, the sort of thing science is wanting and expecting to find. Other findings are not accepted so readily and can take years to force themselves through the membrane to become accepted.

Creationism works in a similar way but is more selective still. Young Earth Creationists are the filter feeders of the scientific world, poring through huge mounds of conventional scientific findings looking for the crumbs which sustain them. They will ignore 99% of the material which passes through but seize on anything which might be twisted into a shape to be used as a goad to prod real science.

Any decent scientist dreams of making a discovery which will rock conventional science on its heels. Not because they dislike the shape of science but because that is the way science gets nearer to the truth and a better grasp on the bigger picture, hundreds of minor tweaks and then every few years something unexpected makes a big change. The history of science is full of stories of cantankerous old professors who did their last decent work in their twenties spending forty five years steadfastly refusing to budge in the face of increasing opposition. In many cases the old guard is never itself changed, they never come round to the new ways of thinking but that isn’t a problem, they die and their objections get buried with them.

The gravedigger's spade has contributed as much to the advancement of science as the bunsen burner.

If immortality is ever developed science will stagnate. Science requires the capacity to overthrow previously accepted notions and dearly held views. It is inevitable that the scientific endeavour results in casualties and hurt feelings as cherished notions are put to one side. Academia must be watchful to ensure that the processes which rightly bestow honours on great scientists of the last generation do not enshrine their views, findings and theories on huge pedestals. Respecting the achievements of previous generations is good, seeing them as The Great Ones and incapable of error is very wrong.

Finding examples of highly respected scientists who were fundamentally wrong is easy. Lord Kelvin was one of the greatest physicists of all time but most of his scientific career was involved in fighting a rearguard action defending the idea that the Earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists knew it must be, was and is. His work on thermodynamics was impeccable but he was simply wrong, proving that something is impossible is futile when the evidence clearly shows it is true. The Earth is old. Geologists knew it had to be at the very least several hundred million years old. If Kelvin’s thermodynamics showed it could not be that old there had to be something wrong with the theory. There was nothing wrong with the basic theory of thermodynamics, the problem was in the assumptions. Kelvin assumed the only heat in the Earth was the heat coming from the sun and the heat that was in the Earth from the time of its origin. He was wrong, there is another source of heat, a huge source of heat in the form of radioactive decay. The geologists couldn’t say why his assertions were wrong but they knew they had far too much unimpeachable evidence, in many cases quite literally mountains of evidence such as Mount Etna clearly showing great age because they showed multiple eruptions and yet sitting on strata which must have been considerably older still which were in turn obviously younger than other rocks because they contain fossils of species which were clearly almost identical to current extant species. Geologists knew the Earth must be old, the evidence was compelling, while they could not silence Kelvin they knew his dogmatism was wrong. Something had to give. It did. Kelvin died and radioactive decay and its potential to generate heat was discovered, peace broke out between physics and geology.

Plate tectonics is another classic example of scientific orthodoxy being slow to come to terms with apparently heretical findings. The ideas began with speculations which seemed about as rigorous as claims to have discovered Atlantis. But evidence kept coming to light and the resistance of the scientific establishment was worn down over time, the entire process took around a single human lifetime to go from heresy to become a central aspect of the new orthodoxy. Evidence appeared to suggest that South America and Africa could fit together and were at one time joined. Conventional geologists hated the idea and declared that the rocks on the two sides were completely different, which was not true, but it was what they wanted to believe. Eventually more and more evidence was found which supported the theory and it was adopted by younger geologists readily. Older geologists kept on fighting it and looking for evidence that caused the theory some difficulties even if they had nothing better to put in its place apart from an increasingly Byzantine network of long distance land bridges which obligingly rose and fell out of the oceans in the past in order to allow ancient species to navigate their way from one continent to another. The construction of such land bridges was the greatest act of imaginary engineering since the digging of the canals on Mars.

With the discovery of seafloor spreading and a vast chain of undersea mountains of active volcanism the theory of continental drift had at last got a credible mechanism to account for the pattern of observations and the hypothesis gained the status of respectable theory. A theory being an explanation for facts as observed which allows accurate predictions to be made about future discoveries. The theory of plate tectonics does not just explain facts in geology it also explains many facts in evolutionary biology. While there remain many puzzles and it is certain that the theory will be amended in the future its status as a respected theory rightfully enjoying the status of conventional wisdom is now assured. No more will mysterious land bridges be expected to carry great theoretical cargoes from one continent to another. Instead we look to a future in which Africa will have a new East coast as a new ocean is formed from the Red Sea and the Great African Rift Valley while simultaneously the Atlantic gets wider and the Pacific gets smaller. But don't hold your breath, these changes are caused by rocks shifting much less rapidly than the hour hand on the tiniest ladies watch. But if you have all the time in the world that is quite fast enough to transform the face of a planet. The engine may be low on revs but there is a whole world of torque.

Some ideas are accepted easily, others are fought over. Science seems to have a bias towards seeing man and man’s place in the universe as less significant than popular culture and religion want. If a cosmologist comes up with a finding that suggests the Earth, the solar system or our galaxy is abnormal in some way there is resistance to that idea. Similarly there is resistance to the idea that we are living in an abnormal age or any kind of an end stage. The bias towards a uniform universe and a uniform time spectrum which has us in the here and now being in the thick of things rather than at the heart or the apex is I believe a necessary bias because the opposite bias is so appealing to the enemies of science and reason. It is important to maintain this presumption of mediocrity. Any findings which suggest our time or our place in the universe is special should be resisted and subject to greater scrutiny and scepticism for the same reason why it is reasonable to be especially prudent before reacting to a beautiful woman gesticulating at you as you stand in a crowd, you run the risk of making a spectacular fool of yourself. It is more likely that you are wrong, that you overlooked something in your method, it is far more likely that the beautiful woman is gesticulating at somebody she actually knows who is merely standing in the same line of sight.

Science also has a bias about race, but not the one you might expect. Apparently at one time in Europe, according to some scholars, there were as many as thirteen different species of the genus Homo living all at the same time, and yet now every single living member of the genus is of the same species and sub-species and the term race is apparently very misleading and meaningless. Yeah right. That simply stinks. Bones can be identified as belonging to particular races, people have been able to do that for a long time. The original Neanderthal skeleton was at times identified as a Cossack or an Eskimo, people know that people are different and racial differences can be detected in skeletons, especially in groups of skeletons. If two sets of bones are visually distinct and nobody has got their names on them then the new lot is a new species, as long as they’ve been dead for long enough so nobody is going to have any political quarrels. That’s the scientific way. Glory to the scientist and nobody gets hurt. But an even bigger visual distinction between bones of existing people, well, that can’t be a difference in species, or even sub-species, that would never do. It’s just variation, it doesn't mean anything We vary. We always breed with each other, it’s what we do, so races don’t mean anything. Move along please there's nothing to see, move along please.

I bet you if our species goes extinct the next species capable of taxonomy wouldn’t be so PC about it, they’re just apemen, not people, that one can be your species, professor, and I’ll have these as mine.

The reason for this bias is obvious. Only racists are interested in race and nobody wants to fund a racist or have one working at their university. At least not in recent decades. Perhaps one day we will grow up enough to be able to look at race, or predictable patterns in human genetic variability if you prefer, without producing more heat than light. Race as a basis for political discrimination is completely blown out of the water by the scientific facts. All racial groupings have produced people capable of doing highly skilled worked, producing great art, showing leadership and entrepreneurial ability. Preventing anybody from having an opportunity on the basis of their race is absurd. But likewise it is equally absurd to expect that all races, tribes, cultures, ethnic groups, populations, lineages, strains, varieties or whatever you want to call them must produce exactly the same ratio of potential professionals, potential great artists and potential civil servants class 4b and any deviation from equality of outcome is down to deliberate and malicious discrimination by a corrupt system. Stating as a dogma that all races are equal and that races don't exist and that if you check up on the claim or show any interest in it at all then you are a racist monster yourself is a far more pernicious lie than most religious claims. Expecting all races to produce exactly the same scores on an IQ test is as absurd as expecting them to have the same average height. It is even more absurd to expect it and then refuse to look in case you don't find what you so want to find. Science doesn't work like that. Science done correctly looks boldly at the evidence as it is and draws conclusions that haven't been pre-approved by the university's Public Relations committee but follow from the findings.

How long ago was it that African Eve was discovered? More to the point how long was it before every biology teacher in the world was teaching African Eve as fact? This was what the scientific world wanted to hear. Mankind is all one, we have a universal common ancestor, that ancestor emerged in Africa and this happened very recently in geological/evolutionary terms. The amount of evidence that this assertion is based on is infinitesimally small. One study. Not of people from all over the world but of Americans. If such a study had suggested a conclusion which was contrary to what the scientific orthodoxy was trying to hear you could rest assured that all the faults with the study would be magnified and it would have been dismissed as inconclusive and based on poor methodology. The scientific orthodoxy is almost as biased as smokers, creationists and flat Earthers looking for what they want to be true and finding it while ignoring any evidence which suggests anything else. Note that I am not saying that they are wrong just that they don’t seem to be as scrupulous in excluding possibilities and avoiding premature conclusions when results suggest something they want to be true. Perhaps a better analogy instead of creationists would be drug experiments, they want to find their drug works and is safe, good results are always more welcome than mixed or bad results. Did I mean illegal drug takers or researchers for pharmaceutical companies? The analogy works equally well with either, doesn't it? It's called confirmation bias. People listen out for what they want to hear.

Science is also prejudiced against magic. Intelligent Design is basically a theory of biological explanation which posits magic as its only explanation. If it is hard to work out how and why a particular structure came into existence just stop looking for an explanation. You don’t need one. The designer did it. Somehow, in a way they won’t explain or look into and for a reason they won’t investigate either. Intelligent Design is the equivalent of putting up plastic tape barriers and shooing the crowds away while claiming that there’s nothing to see. It’s just an act of God, that’s all you need to know, add it to the list and I’ll see you in church on Sunday professor. No! That will not do. If it really has been designed I want to know how it was done. ID theorists are totally silent on this matter, they are not able to tell you when the design took place, whether it had been planned for all along or whether it is an on-going process of tinkering. If this is meant to be a scientific explanation then when and how are all very important questions, at least as important as the who and why which ID theorists seem to want to leave to others.

Have you ever come across any suggestion as to how intelligent design happens? It cannot possibly rise to the status of being a scientific theory until there is at least some suggestion as to how it is achieved. Currently intelligent design enthusiasts simply collect examples of structures which they claim are too complicated to have evolved and yet they offer no alternative explanation as to how the information to code for such structures entered the genome. Some unseen and ineffable designer did it in some way we can't detect and for reasons we should not probe. That is simply magic.

© 1999 - 2010 by Martin Willett.

mwillett.org: Debate Unlimited