Greetings heathens, zealots, web denizens and the rest of you!
So apparently my column on the nature of science reporting has some creationists all tied up into knots.
The thrust of my piece was new BBC guidelines for its reporters that insists when reporting science that journalists actually report, you know, science. Creationists do not like this idea much because they want their particular origin myth to be factually true. It’s a line of reasoning that says if their version of the creation myth isn’t true, then nothing in the Bible is true, and their entire universe will collapse.
Of course, creationism isn’t science, has no scientific evidence, creationists produce no research and have discovered nothing. Which isn’t surprising, since religion isn’t science.
Doesn’t stop some of them from trying to claim it is. Take Herman Hunter of Niagara Falls, for instance, who writes:
Grant Rant July 14 “Science reporting should be based on science.” Grant rants as if evolutionary scientists have answers to where life began. He claims that invoking a supernatural act by a creator who is beyond our time/space universe is unscientific. But the naturalistic view of the origin of the universe has to explain how nothing became everything by itself. This view violates the known laws of science. The humanistic, material energy, chance world view, intolerantly uses every form of force at its disposal to make its world view the exclusive one taught. It is rather naive to think that nothing gave rise to something, that non-living matter gave rise to life. What was the first cause that caused everything else? Where did matter and energy come from? Where did intelligence originate? Are we to think of the universe as a massive perpetual-motion apparatus with some sort of impersonal “intelligence” of its own? Or is there a intelligent designer who created everything from nothing and set it all in motion? Evolution is really a fairy tale for grown-ups.
This is a common creationist line of thinking. They like to think it is logic. It is more like a highly selective constipated thought process. And it’s one that can be easily broken down thusly:
1) “He claims that invoking a supernatural act by a creator who is beyond our time/space universe is unscientific. But the naturalistic view of the origin of the universe has to explain how nothing became everything by itself. This view violates the known laws of science.”
This is all kinds of wrong. First off, the theory of evolution by natural selection describes how life forms on Earth change and adapt over time and how new species arise. It does not, in any way shape or form, discuss the origin of the universe. That is described in the big bang theory and related fields of science. These are entirely different scientific theories, describing different things, from different fields of study. Their only point of contact is that they do not invoke a god, which can be said for every single scientific theory. Because it’s science, not religion.
So Herman, you cannot say something violates the “known laws of science,” if you don’t know what science is.
2) The humanistic, material energy, chance world view, intolerantly uses every form of force at its disposal to make its world view the exclusive one taught.
Well, if you are talking about what is taught in a science class room, then yes. You see, in a science class you teach, you know, SCIENCE. Not religion. You can preach your origin myth all you want in your churches and temples. This is the great hypocrisy of the creationist. They want to preach in religion in science classes and have the Bible included as a science book. But you don’t see scientists knocking at the doors of Sunday school classes insisting on “equal” time for the germ theory of disease or evolution do you?
The creationist and like minded people appear to me to need a “them” to feel like they are under assault. Refusing to allow religious dogma into the science class or the lab is not religious persecution. It’s just good science.
Oh and by the way, while change plays a role in evolution in the form of mutation, evolution by natural selection is not a chance process. It is, in fact, a non random process. If it wasn’t, it won’t work.
3) It is rather naive to think that nothing gave rise to something, that non-living matter gave rise to life. What was the first cause that caused everything else? Where did matter and energy come from? Where did intelligence originate? Are we to think of the universe as a massive perpetual-motion apparatus with some sort of impersonal “intelligence” of its own? Or is there a intelligent designer who created everything from nothing and set it all in motion? Evolution is really a fairy tale for grown-ups.
And here is where the creationist babble gaff completely falls apart.
See the creationist likes to think they have a checkmate argument by saying “Well, how did the universe arise from nothing? That makes no sense. It had to be god.” Then when you say “Ok, and where did god come from?” they say “oh, well, ah, you see god always existed…or created himself…or something. Doesn’t matter.”
See, as Carl Sagan pointed out, if you want to postulate that the universe has a creator and that creator was never itself created, you really have explained nothing. You might as well skip a step and say the universe created itself. It makes as much sense.
What science ACTUALLY says is rather different from what Herman, and indeed most creationists will tell you science says. When it comes to the absolute origin point of our universe, science as three words: “We don’t know.”
There is nothing wrong with not knowing. It means we have more to learn. Big Bang cosmology has brought us very far in terms of understanding the origin of our universe. But there is still more to know and discover. And scientists are working toward better answers all the time. What scientists don’t do is fill in our ignorance with whatever fair story happens to appeal to them. Herman, on the other hand, is throwing up his hands and saying in effect “magic man did it,” and then claiming that is science.
The brilliance of science is that it works through evidence, observation, experiment, and constantly attempting to prove its own conclusions wrong. And it does not hide from it’s own ignorance.
Sorry, Herman, but you can’t make an effective argument if you don’t know what which you are trying criticize. Go back to school, son.