Christopher O'Brien of Northstate Science discusses what Ken Ham’s Creation 'Museum' is doing. The 'museum ' tries to cause doubt in science by pointing out bears have sharp teeth and eat vegetation therefore dinosaurs could have been herbivores: (my bold)
Certainly the responses to these observations are important, but that is not what prompted me to write this post. What really intrigued me was the process I engaged in while obtaining the information. It is the process of discovery that, as much as the answers, serves to radically distinguish science from creationism in all its forms. As I said, my reader raised several issues that, on face value, would be sufficient for most people to stop and wonder if Ham and AIG weren’t at least raising a legitimate issue. For Ham, AIG, and on a different level, the intelligent design advocates, inquiry would completely cease at this point. See, O’Brien is wrong: polar bear teeth are hardly different from other bear teeth and they exclusively eat meat…hence it is possible that tyrannosaurs ate vegetation at one time. Here, the entire goal is accomplished: raise reasonable doubt with the general populace at large.
But science follows a completely different process. Upon reading the phrase “polar bear teeth are hardly different from other bears” the first thing I did was ask myself, “is that true?” and reach for a book on mammalian anatomy; and I did it so sub-consciously and automatically that the significance of the act did not become apparent until a few hours later. Scientists constantly question whether their data (and others') are correct…it’s ingrained as part of the process. The same cannot be said for creationists.
I'd rather have science than faith explain to me why I don't fall off.
9 comments:
Faith isn't about why, it's about trusting that it happens in some way such as that dropping the book will cause it to fall to the ground even in the absence of a theory of gravity to explain it.
To then suggest that a theory of gravity is wrong or useless would be the error of the anti-science fundamentalists.
I guess I'm asking you not to fall into the opposite error of believing that religion is wrong or useless, when it does help us to have faith in some things even when our science is unable to comprehend them.
If you were teaching children without an educational establishment that could provide specialized instruction in mathematics and science, if you were teaching children who were starting from a society that had been deprived of its institutions by a war or famine or internal collapse, how would you teach the necessary skills of survival and preparedness for the future without using religious metaphor? You can say here is a method for learning, and it is so, science builds knowledge upon knowledge but does nothing to preserve that knowledge against loss if it cannot be passed along to the uneducated until they can understand better the way it works.
If there is a nuclear war, it is at least as much the fault of amoral science as religious zealotry, and in fact the only country that has used atomic weapons in war is this one.
Will the scientists stop the nuclear armageddon from happening? Will the religious left be shut out? Let's see a new awakening that we are one consciousness, and we learn how to cooperate by ceasing to war against one another.
Well said, whig. I stand corrected. It IS the anti-science fundamentalists that so irritate me.
And yes, I would consider myself a religious person. But my religion and belief in God in no way affects my belief in the logical factual processes of science nor the belief that each one must walk his own road to the truth. We can help each other but we cannot force anyone to walk a path they weren't meant to walk.
One can live with contradictions of faith and science, church and secular, God and man. The desire of the fundamentalists to force everyone to conform to their religious viewpoint is insulting to everyone who has another faith, another philosophy, or none at all.
I've not seen so rabid and hungry a crowd of religious extremists let loose and encouraged by Bush and co. I fear for our country, our Constitution. The Handmaid's Tale is not such a work of fiction after all.
And yes, you are right that scientists can be just as dangerous. Quoting Jurassic Park's Ian Malcolm: "Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Monsanto is an illustration of science gone wrong. Greed can live in any environment apparently.
I have to disagree with you on several points, whig.
1 - Religion is useless, in so far as it provides no practical assistance for survival. Hope? You don't need religion to have hope in anything. Morality? Again, you don't need religion to understand, or even feel, that it's wrong to kill, rob or rape, as examples.
2 - how would you teach the necessary skills of survival and preparedness for the future without using religious metaphor?
Religion doesn't teach one to fish or forage, seek shelter or build a fire. Nor does it teach carpentry, plumbing, electrical or auto mechanics. Knowledge is not passed along because of religion - dogma is passed along because of religion.
3 - Your last comment is fairly on the money. But - while science begat the technology for nuclear armegeddon, it's amorality, in itself, that's responsible for using the technology as a tool of death. You can't blame science, under the assumption that it's diametrically opposed to religion, for the amoral and destructive tendencies of people who abuse the technology.
To say that "only religion keeps Man from doing wrong" is a very flimsy argument.
We don't need religion - we need love, empathy and the actions they induce. If religion brings people comfort, I'm all for it. But it's as sharp a double-edged sword as science - it has no evidence to back up its "laws", nor clean hands to justify its history or perpetuation.
"To say that "only religion keeps Man from doing wrong" is a very flimsy argument.
We don't need religion - we need love, empathy and the actions they induce. If religion brings people comfort, I'm all for it."
This also is true. Having been involved in a religion for a large percentage of my life I can understand why the religious feel they own the words love, empathy, etc. The further I get from being in a church now, the more I can see how incestuously inturned it was, how oblivious to reality it had become.
It is hard for some to realize that agnostics and atheists are able to love, have empathy without religion to tell them what to do. (I posted on PZ Myer's take on this as well:
http://rantsfromtherookery.blogspot.com/2007/04/atheists-are-unable-to-feel-sympathy.html)
Too many times we've seen Christianist religions go off the rails and lose their way because of the greed and lust for power by the leaders. Nothing wrong with helping the poor, healing the sick, it's the grabbing for money and demanding air time by ego-bloated hatebags that's wrong. That has nothing to do with God.
To digress from the philosophical discussion, bears eat anything and everything especially as they bulk up for hibernation. And they have the teeth and claws to prove it.
When I worked in Alaska, we had mechanical problems and stayed in camp instead of flying out to the work site. In our absence a bear ate every speck of food it could find (including some in cans) and it ate half a bucket of petroleum grease. I can only imagine what that did for her arteries and digestive system.
Yike! I'm glad you weren't at the worksite then! We have plenty of stories about Yosemite and bears prying open VW bugs to get to the coolers etc.
I have great ... respect... for bears. And am also very grateful T-Rex lived millions of years ago.
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