I refuse to continue to allow religious apologists to blame and warp science with strawman attacks. This wont happen on my watch, and I will demonstrate with evidence the apologists are biased, using silly arguments, and are simply wrong about what science is, and what it does.
This is the comment I am responding to:
Finally, it seems that genuine science as practiced by genuine scientists, rather than being a closed dogma, is still open to fundamental revision:
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterso ... oAMIFd2.99
Religious apologists of many stripes [I'm eyeing you Dr. Peterson] continue proclaiming that science is dogmatic and as such is not the last word on truth and reality. Being dogmatic is a rather negative assessment on the assumptions of religious apologists, and is a liability that weakens science. But, science is not dogmatic and in fact, it changes all the time. However, apologists assume and assert it never has actual and real knowledge to begin with so we are better off just listening and believing what religion says about reality. Is this how science works though? I don’t think so, and have some evidence that shows otherwise. The mis-characterization of science does not make religion credible.
George Gamow, one of the planet’s most interesting physicists noted decades ago “Our galaxy is not the only isolated society of stars floating in the vast spaces of the universe. Telescopic studies reveal the existence, far away in space, of many other giant groups of stars very similar to that to which our sun belongs.”[1] Granted, his certainty here seems pretty conclusive doesn’t it? I mean, dogmatically saying our galaxy is not the only one in existence seems pretty straight forwardly presented as a fact doesn’t it? But is this dogmatism, or simply a claim shown with the evidence, which is literally now, literally over 50 years later to be billions of more times confirmed than even Gamow at that time of writing could have even conceived of! But is this dogmatism? It’s certainly supported by our space telescope that been in operation these last two decades.
Speaking of Edwin Abbott’s delightful “Flatland,” Paul Watzlawick notes “What Flatland brilliantly depicts is the utter relativity of reality. Perhaps the most murderous element in human history is the delusion of a ‘real’ reality, with all the logical consequences that logically follow from it. On the other hand, it requires a very high degree of maturity and tolerance for others to live with relative truth, with questions for which there are no answers, with the knowledge that one knows nothing, and with uncertainties produced by paradox.”[2] Once again, this does not appear as dogmatism to me of any sort, a certitude that is irreversible and hence universal.
David Deutsch claims that “there is indeed an objective difference between a false explanation and a true one, between chronic failure to solve a problem and solving it, and also between wrong and right, ugly and beautiful, suffering and its alleviation – and thus between stagnation and progress in the fullest sense.”[3] In conjunction with this I would propose the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson offers some perspective also. “The chemical elements of the universe are forged in the fires of high-mass stars that end their lives in titanic explosions, enriching their host galaxies with the chemical arsenal of life as we know it. The result? The four most common, chemically active elements in the universe – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen – are the four most common elements of life on Earth, with carbon serving as the foundation of biochemistry.
We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us… At least once a week, if not once a day, we might each ponder what cosmic truths lies undiscovered before us, perhaps awaiting the arrival of a clever thinker, an ingenious experiment, or an innovative space mission to reveal them.”[4] Is this dogmatic certitude, or just explaining what, in fact, we have happen to come to know by discovering some truths of our universe? It appears to me that scientists are saying we don’t know everything about chemistry, but we do know something. We sure don’t know everything about the universe, and may never be able to, but we do know something about it, and how it works in our lives at the present moment. Is that dogmatic though to declare that there are some things we actually do and can know?
Carl Sagan, the world renowned astronomer, spoke clearly saying “A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment.”[5] This is the exact opposite of what religious apologists say scientists think, say, and do. Of course, Sagan is going with the ideology of how we should prepare ourselves, which some, perhaps many scientists don’t do. But is that a shot against science proper or against a human scientist bungling? There is a difference. But notice, there is no talk of certainty, but opening our minds exactly against certainty, no dogma is the thinking. Sagan is honestly quite clear on that here.
Michael Shermer, well known founder of the Skeptic Society, author of numerous texts on science, noted “Science is not a religion. Science is a very specific branch of human knowledge with a set of methods quite distinct from other branches of knowledge… science is a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.”[6] Do we read him saying there is certainty and absolute unmoveable truth here? Not a bit!
Again on evolution, the greatly prolific science writer Isaac Asimov noted decades ago that the mechanism of evolution is argued over, but of course, because there could have been more than a singular dogmatic way nature behaves, but disagreements over how evolution occurred is not arguing against it having occurred.[7] Is it dogmatic to say evolution happened when the evidence shows this? Am I dogmatic when I say the rock I hold in my hand falls down to earth every single time I let go of it? What if I contend earnestly that the same thing will happen with you and everyone else on our planet, always… every single time? If I insist, based on all our knowledge and experience of earth life that this will always happen, is that being morbidly dogmatic and unreasonable? Not at all. It is simply explaining the truth of what we know, for now, pending any other changes in our universe. We are entirely justified in going with what evidence we have on this.
The evolutionary scientist Jerry Coyne has noted how simple it is to grasp how science works. Empirical claims, even though sometimes they might be hard to support or show, must have evidence and reason, or they cannot be touted as conforming to reality just yet. “If we find no credible evidence, no good reason to believe, then those claims should be discarded.”[8] It is exactly why, even the most diehard religionists, skeptics, atheists, and believers simply put no paid to the claim of a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. That’s a fairytale, and we all think that. The reason is simplicity itself. There is no evidence for that claim. Without evidence, reality does not exist for us of any claim.
We never have dealt with objective certainty in science anyway. As David J. Hand has described, we work in probability, because the universe is about probability, never certainty. We look at all the evidence of any claim and all the evidence of a counter claim. Then “We look at the data, and calculate the probability that it could arise from each of the competing explanations. The explanation which has the greatest probability of having produced the observed data will be the explanation in which we have the most confidence… we prefer the explanation that is most likely to have produced the observed data.”[9] There is nothing about saying we finally have absolute and irrefutable proof and truth here. Science doesn’t work that way. It never has.
Carlo Rovelli says “This acute awareness of our ignorance is the heart of scientific thinking.”[10] I see no cock-sureness here. I see no dogmatic appeal to absolute reality in science. And science thrives on investigation, and spends billions of dollars exploring, investigating, and testing claims such as with the Super Hadron Collider project used for studying sub-atomic physics, and electron microscopes, and space telescopes. These teach us knowledge of our world, is it dogmatic to tell what that knowledge is? Daniel Dennett hits the nail on the head when he contends that “If you decline to put your beliefs on the line, then your beliefs, whatever they are, really cannot be given any consideration in the ongoing investigation, which has no use for one-sided declarations that will not be subjected to rigorous scrutiny and cross-examination.”[11] Religion insists on this with scientific claims, and that is precisely how it should be. Why is religion surprised when science says the same of religious claims? Is it dogmatic to insist on this? Of course not.
It is important to realize that science isn’t unified, but wait… lets take a closer look at what it is, something religious apologists don’t step up and inform us about. “While science itself has fragmented into different disciplines, that use different tools, they all share a core methodology based on doubt, replication, reason, and observation. In other words, while there are different sciences, there is only one form of science, whose conclusions don’t depend on the ethnicity, or faith of the scientist who reaches them.”[12]
And more to the point, it is, as Rovelli zeros in on the crux of the matter, “Awareness of the limits of our knowledge is also awareness of the fact [no dogma is this] that what we know may turn out to be wrong, or inexact. Only by keeping in mind that our beliefs may turn out to be wrong is it possible to free ourselves from wrong ideas, and to learn. To learn something, it is necessary to have the courage to accept that what we think we know [still no dogmatism here], including our most rooted convictions, may be wrong…”[13] No matter where we look, there is just no dogmatism here in scientific thinking. There is precisely the opposite!
On the Quantum theory of the universe [the Quantum being the singularly most tested, and most confirmed theory of all our existence, it is no mere guesswork in any manner], Lee Smolin, one of today’s foremost cosmological scientists says something astounding in light of the liable that science is mere dogmatism. “There are many quantum descriptions of the same universe. Each of them depends on a way of splitting the universe into two parts such that one part contains the observer and the other part contains what the observer wishes to describe. Each such division gives a quantum description of part of the universe…”[14] It can never be a full description, because, as Smolin logically and honestly as it gets, tells the truth that we cannot see the entire universe, so we cannot know all of it. We will always learn something new. This is not dogmatic science, this is realistic truthful acknowledgment of our abilities and inabilities based on what we can do at this time to learn more about our universe.
Once again, using the very newest discussion of science, Carlo Rovelli says “Science is born from this act of humility; not trusting blindly in our past knowledge and our intuition. Not believing what everyone says. Not having faith in the accumulated knowledge of our fathers and grandfathers. We learn nothing if we think that we already know the essentials… had they trusted the knowledge of their fathers, Einstein, Newton and Copernicus would never have called things into question and would have never been able to move our knowledge forwards. If no one had raised doubts, we would still be worshipping pharaohs and thinking that the Earth is supported o the back of a giant turtle.”[15]
Is science dogma? Then how can Rovelli say “Doing science means coming up hard against the limits of your ignorance on a daily basis – the innumerable things which you don’t know, and can’t do. This is quite different from claiming to know everything.”[16]
From what precious few scientific writers, authors, and scientists I have surveyed here briefly, I would have to conclude that the religious apologetic in attempting to smear science and its magnificent accomplishments which apologists themselves are blessed to enjoy, is an utter failure. I refuse to let mere religious rhetorical apologetic pap-n-pablum dictate to the world a falsity against the science the apologists even get benefits from. If they wish to lambast science, then do it off a computer and start sending smoke signals off mountain tops to communicate your disdain against the blessing you so stupidly mock and fight.
Endnotes
1. George Gamow, One, Two, Three… Infinity, 10th printing, Bantam Books, 1972: 290.
2. Paul Watzlawick, How Real is Real?, Vintage Books, 1976: 221-222.
3. David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity, Penguin Books, 2011: vii.
4. Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, W. W. Norton & Co., 2017:203, 207.
5. Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions, Random House, 1997: 157.
6. Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters, Henry Holt & Co., 2006: 94.
7. Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind, Prometheus Books, 1983: 16.
8. Jerry Coyne, Faith Vs. Fact, Viking, 2015: 23.
9. David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle, Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day, Scientific American/Farrar, Staus and Giroux, 2014: 225.
10. Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What it Seems, Penguin/Random House, 2016: 228.
11. Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell, Penguin, 2006: 359.
12. Jerry Coyne, Faith Vs. Fact, p. 86.
13. Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What it Seems, p. 229.
14. Lee Smolin, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Basic Books, 2nd edition, 2017: 47.
15. Carlo Rovelli, Reality is Not What it Seems, p. 229.
16. Carlo Rovelli, Reality is Not What it Seems, p. 230.
