Imperishable Inheritance

I heard a few hours of talks by a women by the name of Eugenie Scott who is the executive director of the National Center for Science Education. The tag line for the website is: "Defending the Teaching of Evolution in the Public Schools" so we know what position this is all coming from. I would like to summarize the thoughts I have from this day. I'm still in state of thinking deeply on these concepts, so please excuse how raw the thoughts are.

I first went to a talk that she geared towards teachers of evolutionary biology. The talk was entitled: "Problem Concepts in Evolution" where she talked about four topics that can become problematic in teaching evolution. She explained that teachers and professors need to be more cognizant of how the terms: cause, purpose, design, and chance can cloud the teaching of the topic. Her premise was the most of society is (a) most Americans are religious, and (b) that most of these Americans assign existential meaning to these four terms when, in the context of science, they are not to be evaluated in that manner.

For instance, the term "cause" is certainly a sticky one. She illustrated the fact that most Americans ascribe three meanings to this term when in science there are only two, and she used the example of the shooting at Columbine. The students did cause the killings through observable actions, and then we evalute inferential or unobservable causes such as what music they were listening to, what they were reading, and the like. These two forms of causal evalution are scientific, but she claimed that most Americans that want to understand the "ultimate" or existental cause. That being, did God have a role in this? Was there a supernatural cause, and if what then what is it? She went on to explain the other three terms in similiar manners.

While I agree that yes these terms do have different meaning in different contexts, and yes we cannot measure supernatural or existence questions regarding events, that doesn't negate the very question. She did however explain that science can therefore not be an all-encompassing epistemology, and with her definitions I am happy to see her being honest on this fact. This means, then, that if we understand science the way she describes than science can not answer all of our questions; and it isn't meant to.

She then went on to explain the differences between methodological and philosophical naturalism (she used the term "materialism" but philosophically it is more correct to use "naturalism" with her explanations):

Science, however, is an attempt to explain the natural world using natural, not supernatural causes. This methodological materialism distinguishes science from religion, which is allowed by its internal rules to recognize supernatural causation. Science requires testing of alternate explanations. If to test something requires the ability to hold constant certain effects, this means that omnipotent powers cannot be used as part of scientific explanations. Logically, if there are omnipotent powers in the universe, it is impossible to hold their effects constant, to "control" them in the scientific sense. An omnipotent power could interfere, not interfere, or interfere but make it look like it isn’t interfering. It is therefore inappropriate in a science class to either promote or denigrate religious (supernatural) explanations for natural processes.
Eugenie Scott, Ph.D, Problem Concepts in Evolution: Cause, Purpose, Design, and Chance

Does science have nothing to do with God? If not, then who is to say that God is the source of science? Can they really be seen as mutually exclusive? Even though we don't have a, as she termed, a "theometer" we certainly, I believe, can see God's work through science. What if science is a reflection of God? She did make good points that believe in methodological naturalism/materialism (that being that we only excercise science by the observable) does not necessitate philosophical naturalism/materialism. She even talked about her conversation with the controversial progressive creationst Hugh Ross.

But the thing that bothered me most was her thought that science should be taught philosophically-neutral. Now, after hearing this long talk advocating "pure rationalism" this was the most irrational thing she could've said. She should know better that it is impossible to teach anything philosophically-neutral, and believing it can be done is way to optimistic. While this might be an ideal mode of instruction, it is certainly not feasible; because whether an atheistic evolutionist or theistic creationist, presuppositions will guide all of our conclusions.

Her talk later about teaching evolution and/or intelligent design seemingly contradicts all her earlier deductions. If we were to really teach about the origin of species then shouldn't that mean that we can teach both sides equally? Well, her talk at night (to a packed house) was that simply: intelligent design/creation science was simply not science. It is therefore impossible to teach these sides together, because one simply is not valid. Her organization was heavily involved in the recent case in Dover case in Pennsylvania over the question of teaching ID next to evolution and giving a warning that there are unexplained "gaps" in the fossil record. Hello...that's a rather big deal.

She talked about the argument from design ("if there is a watch, there must be a watch maker"), and she did deal a severe blow to the argument. Although, I do not think the argument really holds much weight philosophically; although the Psalmist liked the argument (Psa 50:6, 97:6) and Paul (Rom 1:20). She talked about the how the ID propenents push "irreducible complexity," or that everything fits together too perfectly to not have had a designer.

I could go on and on with what I learned today, but I doubt any of you have read of all of this anyway. It was a challenging day full of information, and I would suggest reading the article from which I quoted above. It was very thought-provoking.