I appreciated this article on water on Mars. In a tribute to deductive reasoning, this post is a little different. It even has a photo. (Actually, that idea is stolen from a pastor I know who helping lead a really cool church in Los Angeles.
Read the article and see if you can guess where I am going with this line of reasoning. Here's the key points:
A pair of newly released studies have challenged the theory that a salty sea once lapped the shores of Mars' Meridiani Planum.
Now two new papers based on the same data ... suggest different explanations for the formations, and cast doubt on the idea that conditions there could have been hospitable to any sort of life.
So which of the three theories is correct? Neither McCollum nor Knauth would say that he knows for sure that he's right and the others are wrong, though each believes his theory to be the best.
"Certainly I wouldn't say at this point that they are absolutely wrong," McCollum said.
"This happened three-and-a-half billion years ago. We weren't there when it happened," Knauth said. "So we can't know what happened then, I mean we can't know for sure, and so to speak with certainty would be foolish."Or in other words:
1. Theory for occurrence of geological formation proposed.
2. Alternate theories proposed based on same data.
3. Researchers have preferred theories, but refuse to reject alternate theories.
4. Researchers observe that occurrences 3.5 billion years ago are difficult to know with certainty.
Now, where is this sanity when it comes to the evolution / creation debate? (And no, I didn't really expect CNN to put together one of the best secular arguments I've read in a while for creationism and intelligent design. It is an appreciated spice to life.)
4 comments:
Yet we have to teach with certainty about evolution in public schools. Brilliant!
Sorry Alan, but your analogy is not apt. There is no credible alternative SCIENTIFIC theory to evolution. Intelligent design and/or Creationism is not science (and I would also argue not credible). Also, speaking as a Christian scientist I can say that evolution is a virtual scientific certainty, unlike the lake on Mars thing which is much more speculative. The body of evidence for evolution is so immense it is impossible to logically deny. See this website for more details: http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Having said that, I'm sure a philosopher would point out that we can't know anything in life with absolute certainty. Maybe our bodies are really somewhere else and our brains are just being stimulated to think that we are living our lives (ala The Matrix). How would we know? Can I prove without a doubt that this is untrue? No. Would I say that I am very confident that it not true? Yes.
However, I am just as confident, if not more confident, that evolution is true.
Since I have the time and motivation, let me expound more formally on why this analogy is not in any way applicable to evolution. I want to clearly articulate its failings, so I will go through each of your points and explain how the Mars analogy does not apply to evolution
<1. Theory for occurrence of geological formation proposed.>
Refutation of 1: You are using the word “theory” incorrectly. In a scientific context, a theory an explanation based on the evidence that is possible to be falsified but is so well established that it is generally accepted as true. Examples of theories: Newton’s Theory of Gravitation, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, Mendel’s theory of Inheritance, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. The water on Mars explanations are hypotheses, not theories. They are explanations that the scientists wish to test, but are in no way proven or established. The word hypothesis implies much more uncertainty, and while “in theory” a theory could be wrong/disproven, there must be substantial inductive evidence supporting it before it earns that distinction (see examples above.)
The Mars analogy does not apply to evolution because the Mars explanations are hypotheses, while evolution is a theory.
<2. Alternate theories proposed based on same data.>
Refutation of 2: As I mentioned, there is only one theory for the diversity of life that has been proposed which is based on actual scientific data, and that is evolution. Creationism is not a scientific theory because it is based on an interpretation of the Bible, not an interpretation of the physical world. Intelligent design is also not a scientific explanation based on data. It commits the logical fallacy of argument from ignorance, contending that some things exist whose complexity natural selection can not explain, and therefore they must have been designed. This is a fallacy. (Note: Besides the logical fallacy, the premise is also false for that argument.) In addition, intelligent design can not be a scientific theory or even a scientific hypothesis because it is not empirically testable and not falsifiable.
The Mars analogy does not apply to evolution because the Mars situation has two alternative hypotheses based on empirical data, while there is only one theory with no competitors based on empirical data for the evolution situation.
<3. Researchers have preferred theories, but refuse to reject alternate theories.>
Refutation of 3: As mentioned for number 2 above, there are no alternate scientific theories to evolution. In addition, scientists would reject evolution if it were falsified, but no significant evidence has been found to support this course of action. (Note that science is always testing and falsifying peripheral parts of theories. That is the cool thing about science, it adapts to our increasing knowledge. However, finding one little thing that we got wrong does not falsify the entire theory. Please see http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ for ways that evolution could be falsified. For each of its 29+ arguments in support of evolution, it gives empirical evidence that could falsify that argument.)
Finally, evolution is not an issue where there are several different camps, each with their own preferred theory, as in the Mars argument. Rather, there is as close to scientific unanimity as is possible on the topic. As an example, for the recent ID trial in PA, the Discovery Institute over the course of four years collected around 200 signatures of scientists who supported ID. A counter petition was organized, and in less that 4 days over 10,000 scientists signed. The difference in orders of magnitude of both the timeframe and the number of signatures is evidence of the consensus in the scientific community about evolution.
The Mars analogy does not apply to evolution because in the Mars situation there are two preferred hypotheses, while for evolution there is one consensus theory.
<4. Researchers observe that occurrences 3.5 billion years ago are difficult to know with certainty.>
Refutation of 4: I don’t disagree with this statement, but once again it is not applicable to evolution. First, just because something is difficult to know for certain, does not me it cannot be known. The argument from ignorance fallacy applies here again. Just because it is hard to know what happened 3.5 billion years ago, it does not mean that evolution is false.
However, there is a bigger issue here. The theory of evolution is not based only on occurrences that happened billions of years ago. Evolution is an ongoing process. It happened billions of years ago, it is happening now. We can study it in the present tense. There are thousands of scientists around the world (including me) doing that right now.
Also, most of the compelling evidence for evolution is not based on events that happened a long time ago, but rather things that we can study in the present. Please go to the website I gave in the refutation of point 3 and note how few of the arguments require knowing what happened billions of years ago.
The Mars analogy does not apply to evolution because the support for evolution does not come only from events that happened billions of years ago.
I hope you see that CNN was not really doing you any favors, as trying to use the Mars situation as an analogy for evolution is clearly not appropriate.
Closing remarks:
I once again urge you to delve into this website: http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/. It fleshes out my arguments in much more detail. Please read through it. Here is a quote from it that I think will be a relevant end to my post:
“In scientific practice, a superior and well-supported hypothesis will be regarded as a theory. A theory that has withstood the test of time and the collection of new data is about as close as we can get to a scientific fact. An example is the aforementioned notion of a heliocentric solar system. At one time it was a mere hypothesis. Although it is still formally just a well-supported theory, validated by many independent lines of evidence, it is now widely regarded as scientific "fact". Nobody has ever directly observed an electron, stellar fusion, radiowaves, entropy, or the earth circling the Sun, yet these are all scientific facts. As Stephen J. Gould has said, a scientific fact is not "absolute certainty", but simply a theory that has been "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent".”
Lindsey...:)
What do you think the purpose of the study of the past is?
Post a Comment