ARTFUL NEGOTIATION
CAN YOU PROVE IT??
Our culture hears the words “fact” and “proven” and immediately there is a word
to which we attach these ideas- Science. Some even champion the enterprise as
“omnipotent”; in their view science can and will eventually have an explanation for
absolutely everything. In our society today, science has become our pillar of
thought and discernment and thus, synonymous with “truth”.
Sure there are those that deny the existence of truth and even claim it a subjective
composition of ideas that merely appeal to us as mere preference, but for the
most part, society will lend its ear to the voice of science. Science plays an important role in many aspects of our society- from the way in which we view information, how we assess and why we pass laws, to ultimately how we define our reality. With such great influence, one surely wonders what exactly science is. Can science truly direct us in the most reasonable path? Is science that powerful of an intellectual enterprise? That is to say, is there another standard to which science answers? What does the answer to these questions mean for us in our society?
There is, of course, a wide spectrum of attitudes and beliefs
about both theories. On both extremes, you have
people like Ken Ham, a young earth creationist who takes a
strict creationists view and proceeds to interpret all
evidence under a biblical lens, and scientists like
Peter Atkins, who adopted the idea of scientism,
which claims that science (strictly naturalistic) is
omnipotent in its explanatory power. Society focuses
on both of these type of radical representatives and fuels the
fire by only presenting advocates of both extremes,
often in the context of political disagreement or in the
forum of a debate. Such a case is well illustrated in
the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye debate. Ken Ham as the
founder for Answers in Genesis who is notable for his
Creation Museum and Bill Nye as the iconic science themed entertainer are really not the most suitable “scientific authorities” to properly illustrate the discussion of the competing theories in origins. Nevertheless, the facts vs faith (non)dilemma must be perpetuated. What does that leave for the scientists who are in the middle of the spectrum? Scientists like Michael Behe, author of “Darwin’s Black Box”, and philosophers of science like Stephen Meyer, author of “Signature in the Cell” bring objective, non-religious challenges to the current theory of evolution, but are typically not engaged appropriately by their opposition. Instead, there is ridicule, mischaracterization (calling them disguised creationists), and often a quick dismissal in favor of the political implication of allowing intelligent design into the scientific discourse. This reveals a collision of conceptual frameworks within the scientific endeavor more than it does a collision of theories about a phenomena.
The pro-naturalistic side demands strict empirical analysis that is myopic to external causes in their scientific inquiries, while the pro-teleological side insists that science be open to instances where the evidence warrants non-empirical inferences. For example, both sides agree that the incredible complexity of the molecular structures of even the simplest of organisms screams of apparent design. Both sides view the similarities of bone structure across different species (homology) and take that into account in their theories. Both sides agree that there is a mechanism of adaptation that all organism undergo to different degrees. Both sides recognize the extra DNA (“junk” DNA) in remnants within certain species. Both sides agree that it is a mystery how the information for molecular structures came about or was developed. There are many different observations that are recognized by both intelligent design and darwinian evolution proponents, but the underlying philosophical assumption emerges when we look at their conclusions. Let’s take them one by one. (Dawkins 87, Behe 52)
What is clearly evident from the reasoning is a tie to a predisposed philosophical perspective from which the evidence is interpreted. It is in this manner that science does have a "higher standard" to appeal to in order to operate. For one must first make the philosophical assumption that the external world can in fact be analyzed and studied before conducting scientific inquiry. One also has to assume philosophically that our five senses allow us accurate information about said external world. So science has a huge debt to philosophical pursuit.
WIth conclusions so vastly different from each other, how can we conclude anything without philosophical bias? If the point of science is to understand the world around us, even if it IS just the natural world, then we owe it to ourselves, as a society concerned with facts, to keep logically viable theories available. It is a true detriment to dismiss either theory simply because they do not align with one's philosophical bent. Afterall, the mindset our society endorses in regards to their approach to scientific inquiry has consequences well outside what the scientific enterprise intends. There are legal and financial considerations in what we choose to uphold and fund, there is the indoctrination of students in school by exposing them to only one worldview alignment with respecs to science (which ultimately limits their use and view of science as a resource), there is internal and external pressure, generated by the constant allusion to the facts vs faith theme, to choose between one's faith and scientific fact, and overall there is the growing, celebrated pretense that science is self sustaining and mutually exclusive from philosophy.
We may never find the best paradigm for science to operate in, but we can certainly avert sensationalizing the superficial clash of two or more theories, that differ in their respective philosophical base, by focusing on the bigger picture at hand. This calls for a revival in honest inquiry and truth seeking.
WORKS CITED
Behe, Michael J. Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: Free, 1996. Print.
"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham - HD (Official)." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 7 Aug. 2014.
"Craig Vs. Atkins - Atheist Peter Atkins Goes From Being Oblivious To Totally Naive."YouTube. YouTube. Web. 7 Aug. 2014.
Dawkins, Richard. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. New York: Free, 2009. Print.
"Discovery Institute." Discovery Institute. Web. 9 Aug. 2014. <http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660>.
Meyer, Stephen C. Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. No ed. New York: HarperOne, 2009. Print.
"Microevolution vs. Macroevolution: What's the Difference?" About.com Agnosticism/Atheism. Web. 9 Aug. 2014. <http://atheism.about.com/od/evolutionexplained/a/micro_macro.htm>.
Pap, Arthur. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. New York: Free of Glencoe, 1962. Print.
"98% of Your DNA Is Junk." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 9 Aug. 2014.
Science has experienced a shift in its philosophical paradigm since its inception. The word science is derived from the latin scientia which means knowledge. Originally, science was just a working body of knowledge about the world around us. Logic, math, philosophy, and empirical observation were all considered science as they shared much of the same goals. What is more, these disciplines were often ranked in a hierarchy from least to most objective. Empirical observation typically ranked as the least objective, whereas logic and philosophy were the highest disciplines. Even today we hold the social sciences -sociology, economics, and psychology, as less rigorous scientific disciplines than their natural science counterparts - biology, chemistry, and psychics. As an endeavor that sought knowledge of the world around it, science had no particular affiliation to a philosophical bent. The case can be made that it was, for some time, the domain of theism, but this is more to emphasize the fertile ground of reasoning and deduction that a theistic western culture allowed. After the Copernican Revolution, science underwent some changes in its working philosophy and ultimately into empiricism. This shift in paradigm takes science from a less structured but more encompassing discipline to a highly rigorous, but equally limited enterprise. The advent of the scientific method brought with it greater structure and method to conducting scientific inquiry, but with time, the method evolved into the cornerstone worldview to govern the operations of science. Empiricism, and now even scientism, has made it so that an a priori naturalistic perspective is maintained in scientific endeavors; a stark contrast to the a posteriori knowledge that modern science purports to champion. It is no surprise, then, that science now defines itself as understanding the natural world around us. (Pap, 33)
A great example of how a philosophical predisposition affects the conclusions of a study in the current paradigm of science is the evolution vs intelligent design controversy. The driving mechanism for darwinian evolution, natural selection, has gone under major wide-spread scrutiny by mainstream scientific community. Natural selection’s teleological alternative, intelligent design, was later proposed by a small group of darwinian dissenting scientists as a viable theory that explains the gaps in gradualistic evolution. Though both intelligent design and evolution look at the same evidence, they arrive at radically different conclusions as to both the origins and the diversity of the organisms. Proponents of both sides will often claim the other side as religious or not scientific. Darwinian evolutionists typically operate under a naturalistic/materialistic mindset as they restrict explanations of their findings to purely natural causes. Intelligent design proponents will take the same evidence and deduce a broader cause that is open to transcending purely natural boundaries.
COMPLEXITY OF MOLECULAR STRUCTURES
With the overwhelming complexity of molecular structures, intelligent design concludes that an intelligent agent is responsible for the assemblage and design of the species we see today. Evolutionists argue that by the blind process of natural selection, eventually we arrived at the structures we recognize today (by chance).
HOMOLOGY
With the evidence of homology, here the intelligent design advocates maintain that similar patterns and repetitions in functional mechanisms are to be expected from a common designer. Evolutionists conclude that gradualism from common ancestry is well reflected in the bone structures across the different species.
ADAPTATION
Evolutionists will usually refer to small gradual changes as proof of the evolutionary process- something intelligent design proponents concede- but, here the distinction by intelligent design is that this type of evolution is nothing more than small adaptations that don’t amount to a significant change.
"JUNK" DNA
Junk DNA is interpreted very differently by both sides. Evolutionists see “junk” DNA as the leftover and useless information that has been filtered through years of natural selection, whereas intelligent design advocates have maintained that there are many different, although subtle, active roles that this DNA plays
