Marcus R. Ross submitted an “impeccable” doctoral dissertation on the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. But Ross is part of a growing number of Ph.D. candidates causing controversy – he is a “young earth creationist.”
Ross, along with individuals like Los Alamos National Laboratory geophysicist Dr. John R. Baumgardner, are causing many ardent evolutionist all kinds of heart burn. Baumgardner is a recognized expert on the earth’s mantle, but he is also a young earth creationists. Dr. Kurt Wise studied under famed evolutionsit Stephen Jay Gould at Harvard. As a creationists, he teaches at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Dr. Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, says people like this are trying to “miseducate the public.” I guess by illustrating that not every trained qualified scientist agrees in lock-step with Scott is some type of miseducation for us ignorant masses.
Professor of Biology at Texas Tech University, Michael Dini was threatened with a federal investigation when students complained about his refusal to write letters of recommendations essentially for those who did not tow the evolution line.
Bryan Leonard was not allowed to give his selected topic, the pedagogical usefulness of teaching alternatives to the theory of evolution, for his doctorate in education dissertation at Ohio State University. He had to change topics after three faculty members wrote the administration saying his thesis would subject students to something harmful (the idea that there were scientific alternatives to the theory of evolution) without any benefit.
Some would allow for religious individuals with differing beliefs to continue to pursue higher level degrees in science. Dr. Steven Case, a research professor at the University of Kansas, said it would be wrong to “censor someone for a belief system as long as it does not affect their work. Science is an open enterprise to anyone who practices it.” Even though he champions the teaching of evolution, he said it would be frightening if universities began “enforcing some sort of belief system on their graduate students.”
Others, like Scott and Dini, disagree. Scott said that universities should consider the difficulties that would arise from admitting a doctoral candidate with views “so at variance with what we consider standard science.” She said such students “would require so much remedial instruction it would not be worth my time.”
Why does she believe creationists would need “remedial instruction?” Is it not clear from cases such as Ross, Baumgardner and Wise that creationists have no problem learning the evolutionists material. They can even write their dissertation using that belief system, so clearly she is using the false assumption that they would be academically behind as a reason to discriminate on religious grounds.
Dr. David E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist, professor of geosciences and Ross’ dissertation adviser said that he had talked with Ross often about his religious beliefs, but that was not reason to block his Ph.D. candidacy. “We are not here to certify his religious beliefs,” he said. “All I can tell you is he came here and did science that was completely defensible.”
Shouldn’t that be all that matters?
“Scientists do not base their acceptance or rejection of theories on religion, and someone who does should not be able to become a scientist.”
I agree. To do otherwise is being intellectually dishonest. nine9s sums my thoughts up well.
"Dr. Ross" essentially lied through his teeth to get that degree.
I don't think he lied at all. He played the game he had to, because being openly creationist in science is a recipe for rejection, not because it is bad science, but because there is an evolutionary orthodoxy which you can't contradict without being rejected and ridiculed, no matter how good your science is. You can't even ask the hard questions or express doubts without becoming a target of anti-religious fear and wrath.
He did what he had to, doing "impeccable" science, proving he has the skills that any top flight university would confer a degree upon. Now that he has MORE than earned his PhD (because he was basically forced to produce work he knew was PC but not correct in his own opinion), he can now do what he wants if he can get funding.
However, the same unhealthy Darwinist orthodoxy that permeates the University system is endemic in all of funding, including those who evaluate grant proposals. So he may have trouble funding research he wants to do – this often happens in science. The fact is, you try to design experiments that you are interested in AND you feel will get funded in the current environment.
Rather than being a liar, I think he is a hero, a martyr who had to suffer the bias of modern day evolutionary theory masquerading as proven fact. He should be pitied for having to do a PhD that contracted his convictions in order to avoid censure for doing un-PC research.
As the author of Unprotected said in her interview, discussing why she initially wrote her book as "Anonymous," "our campuses celebrate diversity, but not ideological diversity."
I don't think he lied at all.
Of course he lied! What? You believe Dr. Ross was completely honest? Get real, Seeker.
If an atheist wanted to become an Evangelical Pastor (God only knows why) he would have to lie just like Ross. He would lie about his religious beliefs because there would be no way an Atheist could become an Evangelical Pastor any other way. It's still lying though which means there are some serious ethical dilemmas with an atheist becoming an Evangelical Pastor; not the least of which is he does not believe a word he is preaching. Now, after becoming an Evangelical Pastor, the atheist then uses his credentials to teach atheism. Not overtly lest he be caught, but through insinuation. It is feared Dr. Ross will do the equivalent.
Seeker, you go on to say that lying like this makes Ross a hero. By your rational, then the atheist who lies to become a pastor is a hero as well. This is just another example of religious hypocrisy in action. Your calling Ross a hero was even predicted by the article.
…there is an evolutionary orthodoxy which you can't contradict without being rejected and ridiculed, no matter how good your science is.
There is also an orthodoxy about heliocentric theory. Even this can be overcome if you provide solid science to the contrary. Dr. Ross however didn't provide any science to contradict Earth's age, he provided lip service. What a hero! Nay! A martyr and a liar!
If Dr. Ross had more than just his religious beliefs, if he had something tangible, he would have used it on his dissertation.
I'd like to ask him how he thinks oil is formed. The migration of petroleum from their strata of origin into surrounding rocks takes a long time, measured in millions of years, not centuries. This is based on the physics of fluid flow through semi-permeable material under a pressure gradient. There is nothing speculative about this mechanism, anymore than there is controversy over how water flows through a garden hose. There is also the problem of the time scale for conversion "or cracking" of organic matter into oil and gas derivatives under the rather gentle temperature and pressure conditions found in nature. Again this is a matter of organic chemistry, not speculation, and the time scales are again measured in millions of years not days or centuries.
Cineaste, I don't think your comparrison is suitable. What if an atheists wanted a degree from a seminary? They were upfront with everyone about their atheistic beliefs, as Dr. Ross was, but in order to get the degree, they had to write their dissertation from the viewpoint that God exists. That makes them a liar?
Just as if you are on a debate team and you are forced to argue the opposite of what you believe. You are not lying. You are showing that you understand all sides of the discussion.
I was not aware that a requirement for the dissertation is that the presenter must be in 100% agreement with everything they wrote. What happens if they change their mind latter in life. Does that still make them a liar?
The fact that Dr. Ross and the others understand evolution enough to get a doctorate in a related field and yet still reject it as an explanation for life shows that it is not a matter of ignorance, as has been so often humbly suggested.
What if an atheists wanted a degree from a seminary? They were upfront with everyone about their atheistic beliefs, as Dr. Ross was, but in order to get the degree, they had to write their dissertation from the viewpoint that God exists. That makes them a liar?
Yes! Yes, indeed. The Atheist would be a liar because he is only paying lip service in his dissertation to a belief he thinks is completely unreasonable. The atheists is not being intellectually honest in this situation.
Seminaries are training for religious life. In keeping with your article about Marcus R. Ross, what priest or pastor in his right mind would act like Dr. David E. Fastovsky? For example, give me access to young Evangelical children and I will teach them to question everything logically, reasonably and scientifically. Nothing would be spared, including their own religion and I'm sorry but the concept of talking snakes and demons would wither under rational scrutiny. Islam would too so I'm not picking on Christianity per se. Is that what you want a pastor to do?
Shouldn't any preacher practice what he preaches? Surely I wouldn't practice Christianity. I wouldn't even believe in it. But I can just mouth the words but that does not make me a Pastor. I'd be lying. I'm not be intellectually honest in my Christianity. Surely Dr. Ross is doing the same thing.
Just as if you are on a debate team and you are forced to argue the opposite of what you believe. You are not lying. You are showing that you understand all sides of the discussion.
Aaron, this is a Non Sequitur.
I was not aware that a requirement for the dissertation is that the presenter must be in 100% agreement with everything they wrote.
It's not a requirement. Dr. Ross deserves his degree. However, he is not being intellectually honest and as such, "Scientists do not base their acceptance or rejection of theories on religion, and someone who does should not be able to become a scientist." Ross may have a PhD. but he is not a genuine scientist anymore than an atheist can be a genuine Evangelical Pastor. Didn't Ted Haggart have to step down because by being gay he was no longer: genuine, practicing what he preached, viable.
The fact that Dr. Ross and the others understand evolution enough to get a doctorate in a related field and yet still reject it as an explanation for life shows that it is not a matter of ignorance, as has been so often humbly suggested.
You are correct, it's not a matter of ignorance. At Dr. Ross's level it's delusion and I have OFTEN said the harm caused by indoctrinating children into a religion at a young age results in both ignorance and delusion. Scientists in Turkey are under attack by Muslim creationists. But guess what? Instead of Genesis they say creation is according to the Qu'ran. That's religious indoctrination as well, not science. Those Muslims are just as deluded about Allah as Christians are about Jesus. How in the world can one SCIENTIFICALLY prove creation happened according to Genesis and not the Qu'ran?
Bottom line: Ross deserves his secular degree. Ross was not intellectually honest in obtaining it. He lied. If he uses his science degree to teach religion, he should not be considered a real scientist. He would rightly be called a preacher with an extensive science background. Think Seeker with a PhD.
You need to believe in science to be a scientist. You need to practice what you preach and not just pay lip service. In my view, even Kurt Wise is not a real scientist though he is incredibly knowledgeable. Scientists follow the scientific method. That's why Kurt Wise had a breakdown and took a pair of scissors to his Bible and cut it to pieces. What the facts told him and what his faith told him conflicted and he lost it. He chose faith over science and from that day on, he was not a real scientist.
Oh, I just thought of this right after I hit the submit button. just playing a little devils advocate with myself…
What if an atheist runs for political office and hides her atheism from the public just so she can get elected. Is she a liar?
Yes! She is being intellectually dishonest. However, being two faced actually qualifies her to be a politician.
Would you vote for her?
All things being equal, No! She is being dishonest. I'd vote for her if she ran as an atheist, and if we agreed on the issues.
Cineaste, we will simply have to disagree. I see no problem with an atheists getting a Ph.D. in religion and writing a dissertation using the existence of God as part of the framework. I see little difference between that and a debate team arguing opposite sides.
I don't think you can scientifically prove that creation happened according to Genesis or the Qu'ran because I don't know how much differences there is in the explanation. Christians today use a form of logic that Muslims used to defend creation – the Kalaam argument.
No one is trying to prove scientifically that Jehovah God of Christianity created the world. But many scientists who are Christians see that science can be consistent with the Biblical account. I don't know of anyone who would say that they can prove through science that a specific God created everything, which is why I get so frustrated at the silly arguments about that in ID discussions. No one ever makes that argument, yet evolutionists knock down that straw man with such glee and fury.
You can be in and believe in science and be a scientists while being a Bible-believing Christian. There is conflict in accepting the evolutionary theory, but again we simply disagree that scientists have to follow in lock step with the prevailing theory du jour no matter how vital many consider it to be. As Dr. Wise said, evidence is merely date plus interpretation. Where he has a priori that calls for God, Darwinists have one that calls for no god both start with an assumption and work the data from there.
Also, not that I doubt you, but could you please reference Dr. Wise' "breakdown?"
Someone being a pastor and being an atheist would be on par with a creationists teaching evolution, while undermining it at a secular school – not simply earning a degree and writing a dissertation using a viewpoint you disagreed with.
You continue to fail to understand about ID. It is not set out to prove any specific God or even a god, but simply intelligence – it could be Jehovah God, Allah, super intelligent aliens, or even your FSM, if you are merely looking at ID. It does not give the whole picture, but demonstrates that intelligence had to have been involved in the origins process.
The same is true in all areas of science, you don't discount geology because it doesn't tell you how animals function. That's not the design of that science. ID is not set up to say Allah is the creator God, simply that the development of life is too complex to have happened randomly.
Creation science is different from ID because for creation science they do a lot of what Darwinists do. They start with their theory and then work with that framework in mind. The Darwinists examines everything in the light of materialism. The creation scientists examines everything in the light of Genesis. Neither can be positively proven by science, but either can be used as a framework to examine data. That is where the conflict comes in – the worldview used to interpret the data.
How about looking at it this way, what if in 100 years people look back at the evolution theory today as we look back at a flat earth? No one has all knowledge. We can't possible know the future discoveries of science and to what that will lead. Perhaps the theory will be discarded as new evidence comes available. My point is we do not know for sure.
Herein is why Dr. Wise decided to trust his Bible over the evolutionary theory (not science). Wise believed that man is not perfect, does not have perfect knowledge and has not existed from the beginning, therefore he cannot be 100% what man has to say about origins is true. They could have incomplete information. They could be interpreting it wrong – a host of things. However, being a Christian, he believed that God is perfect, does have perfect knowledge and has existed before the beginnings, and has revealed Himself to humans in the Bible, therefore it is more logically (for him) to trust what God said through the Bible than to trust what man says through science.
Oh and I disagree with one of your examples. I know lots of doctors who believe that God can miraculously heal people, yet they continue with their practice of medicine, surgeries, etc.
Someone being a pastor and being an atheist would be on par with a creationists teaching evolution, while undermining it at a secular school
Yes, exactly. I don't dispute Dr. Ross's credentials as a PhD. I dispute labeling him scientist. He may have the requisite scientific knowledge, but he does not practice science.
You continue to fail to understand about ID. It is not set out to prove any specific God or even a god, but simply intelligence.
This is exactly what I said. "ID gets around this by positing no specific God." The "intelligence" is implicitly some unknown unnamed God. "Aliens" does not cut it because then who designed the aliens? Some God.
ID is not set up to say Allah is the creator God, simply that the development of life is too complex to have happened randomly.
I know all about ID already. Want to talk about the argument from design Aaron? It would make for a good discussion.
Creation science is different from ID because for creation science they do a lot of what Darwinists do. They start with their theory and then work with that framework in mind.
You both start out with an assumption and then work with that frame work in mind. ID assumes a designer. Creation assumes Genesis. Either way this is exactly why "creation science/ID" is not science. Aaron, this you.
The Darwinists examines everything in the light of materialism. The creation scientists examines everything in the light of Genesis.
Yes. One can prove the tangible. For example the phrase "tangible evidence." Genesis is intangible. Genesis is actually religion. Genesis comes from a religious book. Religion is not science. The Qu'ran is not a science book either.
Neither can be positively proven by science
Evolution has been proved by science. So has gravity. Both are still scientific theories. This is not a contradiction. I can go into this if you are ready for another long discussion. The more I learn about evolution the more amazing it is to me and I welcome the opportunity to share that knowledge with you.
How about looking at it this way, what if in 100 years people look back at the evolution theory today as we look back at a flat earth? No one has all knowledge.
It's way past that Aaron. Though we don't have all knowledge we do have some including, Earth is an imperfect sphere, things fall, life evolves, Earth orbits the sun, 2+2=4, the Earth is far older than 10000 years. All of these are as certain as the others though you would now disagree with two. Your religious predecessors also believed the Sun orbits the Earth and the Earth was flat. The Bible contains far less truth than you suppose Aaron. At least science revels in the unknown and wants to discover and explore. Religion thinks it already has the answers to life's origins. As you said though "no one has all knowledge" including religion.
However, being a Christian, he believed that God is perfect, does have perfect knowledge and has existed before the beginnings, and has revealed Himself to humans in the Bible, therefore it is more logically (for him) to trust what God said through the Bible than to trust what man says through science.
Yes, that is what is so lamentable, "With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science." – Kurt Wise
Very sad.
Oh and I disagree with one of your examples. I know lots of doctors who believe that God can miraculously heal people, yet they continue with their practice of medicine, surgeries, etc.
Faith Healers heal solely though prayer or "laying on hands". It's like a Shaman in many respects. They don't use modern medicine. Otherwise, they wouldn't be "Faith Healers." Like I said, "You can't be a faith healer and be a Medical Doctor." Just to nail this shut, would you like a self professed "Faith Healer" doing heart surgery on you? Hell no! :)
Your religious predecessors also believed the Sun orbits the Earth and the Earth was flat.
So did your "scientific" predecessors.
You link me with the mistakes of the past and lament that I don't accept the gospel of today. Yet, you too can be connected to the past and what you currently accept as fact could be proven false tomorrow. So could I.
As Wise, I believe that trusting in Someone who was there is much wiser and logically than trusting someone removed from the event and their interpretation of what we can see now.
Your cartoon should be changed to "Current scientific method: Evolution is fact, let's support it." "Creation method: Creation is fact, let's support it." Both start out with a priori.
Materialism cannot be proven. You cannot prove that all that matter is all that there is. That is an impossibility, just as it is equally impossibly for me to prove scientifically that their is a god. Both can merely look at the evidence and see where they point.
Everything you do is colored by your worldview. If you start out with disallowing God, then of course "viola" all the evidence points to no god. If you start out with God, it is no surprise when evidence points to God. It is a difficult thing to move beyond that as is evidened by our discussions here, but that is partly my point. I freely admit that I look through colored lenses, but you refuse to. Your conclusions are going to match your assumptions on the basic questions of life.
So did your "scientific" predecessors.
No. Galileo and Copernicus both knew the Earth was not the center of the solar system. It was the church who didn't like what they discovered. Keep in mind, the scientific method of experiment is only about 400 years old.
Regarding a Flat Earth, they are just like creationists. Look at the similarities of their claims and your claims at their website.
* Why we don't believe the world is round
* Scientific data and measurements backing up our claims
* Dispelling common myths about "proof" regarding round earth theory
* Uncovering the conspiracy to withhold the truth from the public
You link me with the mistakes of the past and lament that I don't accept the gospel of today.
I lament that you DO accept the gospel of today. You accept your gospel Genesis. Instead of accepting facts, you prefer deluding yourself like the flat Earthers and their gospel.
Your cartoon should be changed to "Current scientific method: Evolution is fact, let's support it." "Creation method: Creation is fact, let's support it." Both start out with a priori.
Not at all sir. Evolution happens but we are still learning. Same with gravity. You did get the a priori and creationism correct.
We learn nothing new about Genesis. The mechanism for "species pop" is not even a question in "creation science" it's just assumed.
Aaron the rest of your post makes no sense to a non believer. Here is why…
I freely admit that I look through colored lenses, but you refuse to. Your conclusions are going to match your assumptions on the basic questions of life.
This is so ass backwards. ARRGHH! (apologies for the colorful language) Of course I refuse to look through rose colored glasses because when you wear rose colored glasses, you can't see reality. Look please.
Your last sentence just blows my mind. It should read "Your assumptions on the basic questions of life are going to match your conclusions." I draw conclusions from reality. I don't draw reality from conclusions.
Epistemic Relativism
Creationist Equivocation
Breakthrough of the year 2005: Evolution in Action
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
– Theodosius Dobzhansky
Cineaste,
Um, you get that the Flat Earth site you linked to above is a parody site, right?
To be honest, no I didn't. I thought it was their official site. It's the first link that came up when I Googled them.
There is a <a href=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth_society&q… Earth Society, at least according to Wikipedia. Here is the link.
The whole idea of the church being against science, esp. based on this case, is really a canard, a lie. As previously discussed, what is more true is that biblical thinking and protestant Christianity, much more than the enlightenment, provided the basis for modern science. That is what Stark's book, Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?, Science and Faith: Friends or Foes?, Unnatural Enemies: An Introduction to Science and Christianity and The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, among other books, rightly contend.
The church is not against science, and neither is faith. Faithful men and women have established much, even most of modern science. That is a verifiable fact, and those who oppose faith as a hindrance to science take the worst examples of unhealthy faith as examples, and errantly believe that creation science is one of those "dangerous anti-science ideas," not even being able to conceive of the chance that evolution might not be true.
In fact, they do this out of self-deception, because for them evolution MUST be true or their world view begins to collapse, and they might be left without a theory of origins, or worse, forced to admit that God is real and the creator, and that their cretin ID/creationist opponents may have been right.
Their self-deception also includes having an overly narrow definition of faith ("if I don't have a deity, I am not exercising faith"), but in reality, this definition does not excuse them from calling their faith assumptions fact or science, it merely shows the extent to which they must manipulate semantics in order to assure themselves that their unsupportable and unprovable assumptions are fact.
Those who claim evolution to be proven fact are a hindrance to real science, not the church. And the Galileo/Copernicus event? There is enough guilt to go around, but only to the intellectuals of the day and the corrupt Catholic Church of the time. There is evidence that the Jesuits were very positive about Galileo's contentions, and that Protestant christianity, as well as many post-reformation Catholics, almost singlehandedly built modern science. So don't bow to such liberal canards, they are based on bias and spin, not historical fact.
We are still learning about everything, gravity included, but that doesn't raise evolution up above the level of theory, not even above fanciful tale in my book.
That's because you are ignorant. This is not an ad hominem attack. It's the simple truth. I've explained gravity and evolution to you before and I'll be happy to do so until you understand. Tell me again what your problem is and I'll explain to you how scientific theories work. Make it a separate post though because I am really waiting for Aaron to respond to the points I made against his arguments regarding knowledge and perception.
It's the simple truth. I've explained gravity and evolution to you before and I'll be happy to do so until you understand.
So, I have explained to you why your comparison is invalid. I guess you must be ignorant?
Tell me again what your problem is and I'll explain to you how scientific theories work.
Stop patronizing. I have two degrees in science (honors biochemistry and chemistry), and am not intimidated by your smarter than thou b.s. You just want me to buy into your illogical and dishonest conflation of historical theory and empirical fact, but I'm not evolution's stooge as you seem to be. The more you compare the veracity of evolution with gravity, the more idiotic you seem to those of us who see plainly. Ideology can make smart people stupid. And you can save your "back atcha."
I have explained to you why your comparison is invalid.
You haven’t. What you have presented, I have logically refuted and you had no reply for me. Link to our latest conversation for an example.
Stop patronizing. I have two degrees in science (honors biochemistry and chemistry), and am not intimidated by your smarter than thou b.s.
Despite the degree, you are obviously no biologist (see my conversation with Aaron above). You can’t even explain to me why evolution is a scientific theory, like gravity. If you can’t at least do that, your biology degree is just a piece of paper. It’s as if you can speak Japanese but you don’t know what any of the words mean because you learned how to speak phonetically. If you think I am being patronizing then support your contention evolution is not a scientific theory Mr. biology degree holder (honors).
You just want me to buy into your illogical and dishonest conflation of historical theory and empirical fact…
You use words like “illogical” and “dishonest” to describe empiricism. That in itself is “illogical” and “dishonest.”
I’m not evolution’s stooge as you seem to be.
Translation: I’m a creationist and can’t defend my position so out of frustration I call evolutionists and scientists “stooges.”
The more you compare the veracity of evolution with gravity, the more idiotic you seem to those of us who see plainly.
Put you money where your mouth is. Support your position instead of throwing out blind assertions.
Ideology can make smart people stupid.
[Holds mirror up to Seeker] Put down the gospel and use your 5 senses.
I already answered all of these, you did not hear them or agree. We'll just have to disagree, since you seem determined to maintain your self-deception.
We'll just have to disagree, since you seem determined to maintain your self-deception.
"To carefully observe, think freely rediscover forgotten fact and oppose theoretical dogmatic assumptions. To help establish the United States…of the world on this
flat[created] earth. Replace the science religion…with SANITY"Flat Earth Society– SeekerThe Perimeter of Ignorance
A boundary where scientists face a choice: invoke a deity or continue the quest for knowledge
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
From Natural History magazine, November 2005
________________________________________________________
Writing in centuries past, many scientists felt compelled to wax poetic about cosmic mysteries and God’s handiwork. Perhaps one should not be surprised at this: most scientists back then, as well as many scientists today, identify themselves as spiritually devout.
But a careful reading of older texts, particularly those concerned with the universe itself, shows that the authors invoke divinity only when they reach the boundaries of their understanding. They appeal to a higher power only when staring into the ocean of their own ignorance. They call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.
Let’s start at the top. Isaac Newton was one of the greatest intellects the world has ever seen. His laws of motion and his universal law of gravitation, conceived in the mid-seventeenth century, account for cosmic phenomena that had eluded philosophers for millennia. Through those laws, one could understand the gravitational attraction of bodies in a system, and thus come to understand orbits.
Newton’s law of gravity enables you to calculate the force of attraction between any two objects. If you introduce a third object, then each one attracts the other two, and the orbits they trace become much harder to compute. Add another object, and another, and another, and soon you have the planets in our solar system. Earth and the Sun pull on each other, but Jupiter also pulls on Earth, Saturn pulls on Earth, Mars pulls on Earth, Jupiter pulls on Saturn, Saturn pulls on Mars, and on and on.
Newton feared that all this pulling would render the orbits in the solar system unstable. His equations indicated that the planets should long ago have either fallen into the Sun or flown the coop—leaving the Sun, in either case, devoid of planets. Yet the solar system, as well as the larger cosmos, appeared to be the very model of order and durability. So Newton, in his greatest work, the Principia, concludes that God must occasionally step in and make things right:
In the Principia, Newton distinguishes between hypotheses and experimental philosophy, and declares, “Hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.” What he wants is data, “inferr’d from the ph¾nomena.” But in the absence of data, at the border between what he could explain and what he could only honor—the causes he could identify and those he could not—Newton rapturously invokes God:
A century later, the French astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon de Laplace confronted Newton’s dilemma of unstable orbits head-on. Rather than view the mysterious stability of the solar system as the unknowable work of God, Laplace declared it a scientific challenge. In his multipart masterpiece, MŽcanique CŽleste, the first volume of which appeared in 1798, Laplace demonstrates that the solar system is stable over periods of time longer than Newton could predict. To do so, Laplace pioneered a new kind of mathematics called perturbation theory, which enabled him to examine the cumulative effects of many small forces. According to an oft-repeated but probably embellished account, when Laplace gave a copy of MŽcanique CŽleste to his physics-literate friend Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon asked him what role God played in the construction and regulation of the heavens. “Sire,” Laplace replied, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”
* * *
Laplace notwithstanding, plenty of scientists besides Newton have called on God—or the gods—wherever their comprehension fades to ignorance. Consider the second-century a.d. Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy. Armed with a description, but no real understanding, of what the planets were doing up there, he could not contain his religious fervor:
Or consider the seventeenth-century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, whose achievements include constructing the first working pendulum clock and discovering the rings of Saturn. In his charming book The Celestial Worlds Discover’d, posthumously published in 1696, most of the opening chapter celebrates all that was then known of planetary orbits, shapes, and sizes, as well as the planets’ relative brightness and presumed rockiness. The book even includes foldout charts illustrating the structure of the solar system. God is absent from this discussion—even though a mere century earlier, before Newton’s achievements, planetary orbits were supreme mysteries.
Celestial Worlds also brims with speculations about life in the solar system, and that’s where Huygens raises questions to which he has no answer. That’s where he mentions the biological conundrums of the day, such as the origin of life’s complexity. And sure enough, because seventeenth-century physics was more advanced than seventeenth-century biology, Huygens invokes the hand of God only when he talks about biology:
Today secular philosophers call that kind of divine invocation “God of the gaps”—which comes in handy, because there has never been a shortage of gaps in people’s knowledge.
* * *
As reverent as Newton, Huygens, and other great scientists of earlier centuries may have been, they were also empiricists. They did not retreat from the conclusions their evidence forced them to draw, and when their discoveries conflicted with prevailing articles of faith, they upheld the discoveries. That doesn’t mean it was easy: sometimes they met fierce opposition, as did Galileo, who had to defend his telescopic evidence against formidable objections drawn from both scripture and “common” sense.
Galileo clearly distinguished the role of religion from the role of science. To him, religion was the service of God and the salvation of souls, whereas science was the source of exact observations and demonstrated truths. In a long, famous, bristly letter written in the summer of 1615 to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany (but, like so many epistles of the day, circulated among the literati), he quotes, in his own defense, an unnamed yet sympathetic church official saying that the Bible “tells you how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”
The letter to the duchess leaves no doubt about where Galileo stood on the literal word of the Holy Writ:
A rare exception among scientists, Galileo saw the unknown as a place to explore rather than as an eternal mystery controlled by the hand of God.
As long as the celestial sphere was generally regarded as the domain of the divine, the fact that mere mortals could not explain its workings could safely be cited as proof of the higher wisdom and power of God. But beginning in the sixteenth century, the work of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton—not to mention Maxwell, Heisenberg, Einstein, and everybody else who discovered fundamental laws of physics—provided rational explanations for an increasing range of phenomena. Little by little, the universe was subjected to the methods and tools of science, and became a demonstrably knowable place.
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Then, in what amounts to a stunning yet unheralded philosophical inversion, throngs of ecclesiastics and scholars began to declare that it was the laws of physics themselves that served as proof of the wisdom and power of God.
One popular theme of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the “clockwork universe”—an ordered, rational, predictable mechanism fashioned and run by God and his physical laws. The early telescopes, which all relied on visible light, did little to undercut that image of an ordered system. The Moon revolved around Earth. Earth and other planets rotated on their axes and revolved around the Sun. The stars shone. The nebulae floated freely in space.
Not until the nineteenth century was it evident that visible light is just one band of a broad spectrum of electromagnetic radiation—the band that human beings just happen to see. Infrared was discovered in 1800, ultraviolet in 1801, radio waves in 1888, X rays in 1895, and gamma rays in 1900. Decade by decade in the following century, new kinds of telescopes came into use, fitted with detectors that could “see” these formerly invisible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now astrophysicists began to unmask the true character of the universe.
Turns out that some celestial bodies give off more light in the invisible bands of the spectrum than in the visible. And the invisible light picked up by the new telescopes showed that mayhem abounds in the cosmos: monstrous gamma-ray bursts, deadly pulsars, matter-crushing gravitational fields, matter-hungry black holes that flay their bloated stellar neighbors, newborn stars igniting within pockets of collapsing gas. And as our ordinary, optical telescopes got bigger and better, more mayhem emerged: galaxies that collide and cannibalize each other, explosions of supermassive stars, chaotic stellar and planetary orbits. Our own cosmic neighborhood—the inner solar system—turned out to be a shooting gallery, full of rogue asteroids and comets that collide with planets from time to time. Occasionally they’ve even wiped out stupendous masses of Earth’s flora and fauna. The evidence all points to the fact that we occupy not a well-mannered clockwork universe, but a destructive, violent, and hostile zoo.
Of course, Earth can be bad for your health too. On land, grizzly bears want to maul you; in the oceans, sharks want to eat you. Snowdrifts can freeze you, deserts dehydrate you, earthquakes bury you, volcanoes incinerate you. Viruses can infect you, parasites suck your vital fluids, cancers take over your body, congenital diseases force an early death. And even if you have the good luck to be healthy, a swarm of locusts could devour your crops, a tsunami could wash away your family, or a hurricane could blow apart your town.
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So the universe wants to kill us all. But let’s ignore that complication for the moment.
Many, perhaps countless, questions hover at the front lines of science. In some cases, answers have eluded the best minds of our species for decades or even centuries. And in contemporary America, the notion that a higher intelligence is the single answer to all enigmas has been enjoying a resurgence. This present-day version of God of the gaps goes by a fresh name: “intelligent design.” The term suggests that some entity, endowed with a mental capacity far greater than the human mind can muster, created or enabled all the things in the physical world that we cannot explain through scientific methods.
An interesting hypothesis.
But why confine ourselves to things too wondrous or intricate for us to understand, whose existence and attributes we then credit to a superintelligence? Instead, why not tally all those things whose design is so clunky, goofy, impractical, or unworkable that they reflect the absence of intelligence?
Take the human form. We eat, drink, and breathe through the same hole in the head, and so, despite Henry J. Heimlich’s eponymous maneuver, choking is the fourth leading cause of “unintentional injury death” in the United States. How about drowning, the fifth leading cause? Water covers almost three-quarters of Earth’s surface, yet we are land creatures—submerge your head for just a few minutes, and you die.
Or take our collection of useless body parts. What good is the pinky toenail? How about the appendix, which stops functioning after childhood and thereafter serves only as the source of appendicitis? Useful parts, too, can be problematic. I happen to like my knees, but nobody ever accused them of being well protected from bumps and bangs. These days, people with problem knees can get them surgically replaced. As for our pain-prone spine, it may be a while before someone finds a way to swap that out.
How about the silent killers? High blood pressure, colon cancer, and diabetes each cause tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. every year, but it’s possible not to know you’re afflicted until your coroner tells you so. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had built-in biogauges to warn us of such dangers well in advance? Even cheap cars, after all, have engine gauges.
And what comedian designer configured the region between our legs—an entertainment complex built around a sewage system?
The eye is often held up as a marvel of biological engineering. To the astrophysicist, though, it’s only a so-so detector. A better one would be much more sensitive to dark things in the sky and to all the invisible parts of the spectrum. How much more breathtaking sunsets would be if we could see ultraviolet and infrared. How useful it would be if, at a glance, we could see every source of microwaves in the environment, or know which radio station transmitters were active. How helpful it would be if we could spot police radar detectors at night.
Think how easy it would be to navigate an unfamiliar city if we, like birds, could always tell which way was north because of the magnetite in our heads. Think how much better off we’d be if we had gills as well as lungs, how much more productive if we had six arms instead of two. And if we had eight, we could safely drive a car while simultaneously talking on a cell phone, changing the radio station, applying makeup, sipping a drink, and scratching our left ear.
Stupid design could fuel a movement unto itself. It may not be nature’s default, but it’s ubiquitous. Yet people seem to enjoy thinking that our bodies, our minds, and even our universe represent pinnacles of form and reason. Maybe it’s a good antidepressant to think so. But it’s not science—not now, not in the past, not ever.
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Another practice that isn’t science is embracing ignorance. Yet it’s fundamental to the philosophy of intelligent design: I don’t know what this is. I don’t know how it works. It’s too complicated for me to figure out. It’s too complicated for any human being to figure out. So it must be the product of a higher intelligence.
What do you do with that line of reasoning? Do you just cede the solving of problems to someone smarter than you, someone who’s not even human? Do you tell students to pursue only questions with easy answers?
There may be a limit to what the human mind can figure out about our universe. But how presumptuous it would be for me to claim that if I can’t solve a problem, neither can any other person who has ever lived or who will ever be born. Suppose Galileo and Laplace had felt that way? Better yet, what if Newton had not? He might then have solved Laplace’s problem a century earlier, making it possible for Laplace to cross the next frontier of ignorance.
Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem. Once upon a time, people identified the god Neptune as the source of storms at sea. Today we call these storms hurricanes. We know when and where they start. We know what drives them. We know what mitigates their destructive power. And anyone who has studied global warming can tell you what makes them worse. The only people who still call hurricanes “acts of God” are the people who write insurance forms.
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To deny or erase the rich, colorful history of scientists and other thinkers who have invoked divinity in their work would be intellectually dishonest. Surely there’s an appropriate place for intelligent design to live in the academic landscape. How about the history of religion? How about philosophy or psychology? The one place it doesn’t belong is the science classroom.
If you’re not swayed by academic arguments, consider the financial consequences. Allow intelligent design into science textbooks, lecture halls, and laboratories, and the cost to the frontier of scientific discovery—the frontier that drives the economies of the future—would be incalculable. I don’t want students who could make the next major breakthrough in renewable energy sources or space travel to have been taught that anything they don’t understand, and that nobody yet understands, is divinely constructed and therefore beyond their intellectual capacity. The day that happens, Americans will just sit in awe of what we don’t understand, while we watch the rest of the world boldly go where no mortal has gone before.
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Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. An anthology of his “Universe” columns will be published in 2006 by W.W. Norton.