Thinking Christian

From EurekAlert, a terribly dangerous finding:

A study of college freshmen in the United States and in China found that Chinese students know more science facts than their American counterparts — but both groups are nearly identical when it comes to their ability to do scientific reasoning.

Neither group is especially skilled at reasoning, however, and the study suggests that educators must go beyond teaching science facts if they hope to boost students’ reasoning ability.

[Link: Study: Learning science facts doesn't boost science reasoning]

What’s the danger? Evolution, says Michael Ruse, is a fact, Fact, FACT! And it is the facts that must be taught in high school! Meanwhile Texas is under condemnation for approving science standards that include being able to “analyze and evaluate” scientific theories.

The article later notes,

How to boost scientific reasoning? Bao points to inquiry-based learning, where students work in groups, question teachers and design their own investigations. This teaching technique is growing in popularity worldwide.

The danger, in other words, is that this finding might actually apply to evolutionary studies. Maybe just teaching fact, Fact, FACT! isn’t necessarily the best thing for science students. And to question teachers? My daughter sat through six weeks of evolution studies last year and was never allowed to ask a question. (We have discussed this with the principal, and confirmed that this was the case.)

But an unquestioning, unchallenged, party-line approach to teaching evolution is supposed to save America’s science future from going down the tubes. That’s the line from the NCSE. Does NCSE really stand for National Center for Science Education?

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Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott write in a Scientific American article dated today,

Creationists who want religious ideas taught as scientific fact in public schools continue to adapt to courtroom defeats by hiding their true aims under ever changing guises

Such is the expected stance from leaders of the National Center for Science Education, which would be more aptly named the National Center for Serving up Evolution. The burden of their message is this: Creationism hasn’t changed in any way since the 1920s. It has only “thinly disguised” itself “with a fake mustache.” Intelligent Design is creationism; creationism (today) is Intelligent Design.

Conspiracies can be so scintillating, and a conspiracy is what Branch and Scott see here. They see conspiracy behind the recent Louisiana legislation on science education, which was designed to

“create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied,” which includes providing “support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories being studied.”

First asking “what’s not to like” about that, Branch and Scott go on to see dark things in it indeed:

[L]urking in the background of the law is creationism, the rejection of a scientific explanation of the history of life in favor of a supernatural account involving a personal creator. Indeed, to mutate Dobzhansky’s dictum, nothing about the Louisiana law makes sense except in the light of creationism.

Most of the rest of the article is about creationism lurking everywhere.

Rhetoric is a blunt weapon, and in many cases, the blunter the better. A clear, sharp definition of the terms used here would not have served Branch and Scott’s purpose at all. What is creationism? They don’t say (but it’s lurking everywhere!). What is it about creationism that’s so awful? They’re more clear on that: it disputes evolution, and it proposes the possibility of a Creator. (Watch out! It’s after you!) In the end it’s going to get you:

Moreover, it is a dangerous lie…. Students who are not given the chance to acquire a proper understanding of evolution will not achieve a basic level of scientific literacy. And scientific literacy will be indispensable for workers, consumers and policymakers in a future dominated by medical, biotechnological and environmental concerns. (Emphasis added.)

Let me note in passing the lie (shall I call it a dangerous lie?) contained there. There are no responsible spokespersons or leaders in the Intelligent Design movement who want to deny anyone a chance to acquire a proper understanding of evolution. I’ve been urging my own son and daughter to learn it better than their classmates. But oh! there’s an awful risk–the risk that some might not believe! It cannot be worth taking, can it? There may be advantages, yes, in students learning “critical thinking skills” and “logical analysis,” and the ability to “understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories.” But stand that up against the possibility that they might not believe everything about evolution, and those advantages begin to look pretty small. Critical thinking and analytical understanding are okay in their own way, but belief in evolution (not just knowledge, but unquestioning, unblinking, unchallenged belief) is more important by far. Yes, sir, that’s how we keep science advancing! Make sure everybody believes everything the prior generation believed, and make sure they never hear about any dissent!

After all, as Branch and Scott assure us, “Allowing teachers to instill scientifically unwarranted doubts about evolution is clearly beyond the pale.” Really, now. It’s bad, sick, immoral, and unconscionable! Well, my, my! It certainly wouldn’t do to reveal that where textbooks say such-and-such “could have” or “might have” happened to bring about the first life, what they really mean is “nobody in the whole world has the vaguest trace of an idea how the first life originated, or could even possibly have done so just by natural means.” That would be instilling “unwarranted doubts,” wouldn’t it?

But I’m letting myself get sidetracked here. What I really want to know is how Branch and Scott define “creationism.” If we’re going to drive a whole world’s education policy by reference to such a dangerous concept, we ought to know what the concept is and what’s dangerous about it. Creationism was once a pretty useful word, a word that actually had a reliable and useful definition. It stood for a full constellation of ideas, including:

1. Adherence to the Judeo-Christian scriptures, especially Genesis
2. A relatively young earth (thousands or at most tens of thousands of years old)
3. Catastrophism (the Noahic flood) as an explanation for fossils
4. Reliance on a certain literal reading of Genesis as source and guide for research and conclusions about the natural world
5. Rejection of common ancestry of species; all species were created separately

Now if Intelligent Design is creationism in disguise, it is quite an effective disguise indeed. But then a good conspiracy theorist can always see through these things. See how perceptive they are: they’re wise enough to see that Intelligent Design is really creationism, even though ID specifically rejects or at least sets to the side every one of these five creationist tenets.

I’m a Christian; I believe in the truth of Genesis. I hold to Item 1 on the above list, yet I know that some ID proponents do not. I do not hold to a young-earth interpretation of Genesis or of nature, however. I think the fossils are best explained by gradual processes. My interpretation of Genesis, tentatively and non-dogmatically, is more along the lines of the Framework theory, which takes some of Genesis 1 and 2 to have a figurative rather than a plain literal intent. And with regard to #5, my mind is open; I don’t claim to know. I believe in Creation: does that make me a creationist? Not by its usual definition.

>Could creationism’s definition be broadened to include people like me? Certainly! You could say a creationist is any person who believes that God created, without respect to the methods, timelines, or processes involved. But then, if we’re going to be honest with it, we also need to be honest with how we employ the term rhetorically. You see, there’s a reason, other than conspiracy theorizing, that Branch and Scott (and Pennock and Gross and others) keep harping on that “creationism” term. It’s because the scientific evidence lines up so strongly against young earth theories, catastrophism, and so on. Creationism (as in the 5-point definition above) has been discredited; its reputation is poor.

ID and creationism have two things in common, conceptually: they both challenge evolutionism, and they both challenge scientific materialism. In both senses they challenge the reigning dogma. How convenient it is for these defenders of dogma to attach ID to an old, discredited idea; even though the new idea shares little if anything in common with the specific areas in which the old one has been found wanting.

Never mind that a few facts get distorted along the way; never mind that the whole of Intelligent Design is being misrepresented and distorted in the process.

Conspiracy hunters who distort reality to that extent usually get labeled as kooks. They’re in the majority this time, so that protects them from disreputable branding. Being in the majority doesn’t make them right, though. Creationism in its rhetorically useful (for evolutionists) form, the form in which they want you to think of it, is not Intelligent Design; and ID is not creationism of that sort.

A final note as I close. I’ve said this often, and I’ll repeat it yet one more time. I’m probably undercutting ID’s own best strategy by pointing any of this out. As long as ID opponents fight a form of ID that doesn’t exist in reality, they’re not even in touch with the real battle. Branch and Scott are off fighting a war of their own imagining. Maybe I shouldn’t point that out to them; but then, if they ever did come over and address what ID really is, things might actually get a lot more interesting, and a lot more productive besides.

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The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), as reported in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, has made another statement in favor of teaching evolution in schools. There were the usual distortions in their report, but it’s only been a few days since that topic came up here on this blog, and there’s no need to go into that again so soon. Something else there was even more interesting to me:

The report stated that the idea of evolution could be fully compatible with religious faith. “Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world. Needlessly placing them in opposition reduces the potential of each to contribute to a better future,” the report said.

I don’t know who originated the terminology of a “fact-value dichotomy.” Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, credits the concept to Francis Schaeffer, although he used different words for it. (I’m sure the concept could be traced to other thinkers, though I cannot do that work from where I’m sitting in my office today.) The idea is this: the Western world generally accepts that there are facts, and there are values, and never the twain shall meet.

Facts are in the realm of knowledge; they include things like scientific discoveries, political and economic realities, and so on. They are about things we can all touch and hold and agree on; they are public. Values, in contrast, are privately held. What we value is a matter of personal belief and opinion. They’re not susceptible to being shown right or wrong; they can’t be proven. To speak of proving a value to be correct is to commit a serious category error.

Facts are publicly shared (or at least shareable) knowledge; values are private opinions. In the realm of facts you can be right or wrong, in the realm of values what matters is that you have them, and they are neither right nor wrong.

Religion is widely held to be in the the realm of values: neither right nor wrong, but a matter of personal values. This assumption fairly shouts from the quote above. “Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world,” and they need not be in opposition. Why no opposition? Because, the NAS apparently assumes, they deal with entirely separate issues. Religion does not need to deal in facts; thus, it need not involve anything that might conflict with science. Religion is a matter of belief, which has nothing necessarily to do with knowledge.

The problem with that is that facts and values cannot actually be separated. Religion, more specifically Christian religion, cannot be separated from the realm of facts, and science is shot through with values. Conflict between Christianity and science, if it exists, exists in the realms of facts and values, and therefore it cannot be neatly waved away as the NAS suggests it can.

Christianity and the Realm of Fact
Christianity begins with a statement of fact: in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This means that there is no ultimate explanation for anything in nature except for one that includes God in it. There is much we can say without reference to God, but these are not ultimate facts, only contingent ones.

Christianity says God can and actually does do miracles. The regularity of natural law does not rule dictatorially. God rules, and sometimes injects himself into creation in unpredicted ways. That is a statement of fact, or at least (if you want to deny it) it is a statement within the realm of facts.

Christianity says humans have eternal souls, that morals and ethics are based in reality, that we have free will, that we are actually sinners separated from God, that we can come back into relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Christianity says its understanding of values is rooted in a fact: the fact that a transcendent creator God is the ultimate determiner of what is or is not of value.

And Christianity says that these facts are known through revelation and attested to by many means, including history, philosophical inquiry, human experience, and the internal witness of the Holy Spirit. All of these claims are inaccessible to science but are nevertheless claims in the realm of facts.

Science and the Realm of Values
Science, for its part, is laden with values. Science values discovery. It seeks, expects, and values regularity. It honors the unprovable but immensely useful Occam’s Razor. It respects ethics in regard to human and animal research. Naturalistic science leads to certain value conclusions, such as one discussed here recently, that humans are of no greater value than any other living thing.

One point on which I agree with Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens (the atheist Gang of Four) is that they realize facts matter. They think religion is wrong. I don’t agree with that, but I agree it is the type of thing to which the word “wrong” could apply. They don’t treat it as a matter of mere private belief. I could wish for more of that clearheadedness. The NAS statement tends strongly in the other direction, and betrays a real confusion about facts and values.

“Needlessly Placing Them In Opposition”?
The NAS says we should not place science and religion “needlessly … in opposition.” But on some points, some conclusions of science and some conclusions of religion do oppose one another. This is needless opposition only if we assume that one will always yield to the other. Guess which one that would be? Yet there is so much of reality that science cannot begin to investigate. Why should we assume that it rules all possible knowledge?

My purpose today is not to show whose facts or values are better, but to show that differences between science and religion are not irrelevant, and working through those differences is not “needless opposition.” There are conflicts. If we understood science and revelation perfectly, and if we agreed on it all, there would be no conflict there, for truth is unified; but we are not at that ideal state, nor can we expect to reach it short of the return of Jesus Christ. In the meantime, the NAS seems to naively accept an unsupportable distinction between facts and values. We need not follow them there.

Postscript, 2:10 pm
No surprise here, but the Edge has just revealed their own fuzziness on this very subject. This was the opening of the email sent to their list today:

When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.

When God changes your mind, that’s faith.

When facts change your mind, that’s science.

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Here we go again:

According to an article appearing in the January 2008 issue of The FASEB Journal, the introduction of “non-science,” such as creationism and intelligent design, into science education will undermine the fundamentals of science education. Some of these fundamentals include using the scientific method, understanding how to reach scientific consensus, and distinguishing between scientific and nonscientific explanations of natural phenomena.

Let’s say it again:

• No credible Intelligent Design advocate is calling for anyone to stop teaching evolution.
• ID advocates want more of evolution taught, not less; the inclusion of scientifically acknowledged difficulties in the theory. This is not the same as introducing ID.
• “How to reach scientific consensus.” Well, in addition to the time-tested method of coming to agreement over time on clearly supported theory, there’s also chasing dissent out of the academy, and the No True Scotsman method (see also here).
• “Distinguishing between scientific and nonscientific explanations.” How about true versus false explanations–or logical versus illogical explanations? Because “scientific versus non-scientific” seriously begs the question of origins, when “scientific” admits only naturalistic causes, as I’m quite sure this group believes.

I would happily admit “scientific vs. non-scientific” if “scientific” were properly defined as being just one of the many valid routes to genuine knowledge–immensely useful in its proper sphere, but not unlimited in its scope and power. That, by the way, would also go a long way toward resolving that other straw man in this short quote: the “non-scientific” epithet applied to ID.

The coalition of scientific organizations mentioned in the articles headlines includes 17 different groups. Among them are the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Physics, and the National Science Teachers Association.

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