Science is a lot of things including, perhaps especially, a methodology. But it’s also a set of assumptions. In particular, one of the assumptions science holds is that effects have causes and that material effects have material causes.
So from this perspective, scientists attempt to explain weather patterns and comets and the gestation period for zebras and the rate at which helium escapes earth’s atmosphere all from other phenomena that can be measured and traced back to material forces.
But for some reason, many people, mostly Americans among the citizens of the West, are extraordinarily (and hilariously) embarrassed to trace human DNA to material causes. They believe in the products of scientific thought (such as satellites and microwave ovens) but would rather reject scientific thinking with respect to life. How did we get DNA? Oh, from God.
Well, sure. No way we can dispute that. Nor should we have to. But why we should stop our thinking there is a little beyond me.
So from this perspective, scientists attempt to explain weather patterns and comets and the gestation period for zebras and the rate at which helium escapes earth’s atmosphere all from other phenomena that can be measured and traced back to material forces.
But for some reason, many people, mostly Americans among the citizens of the West, are extraordinarily (and hilariously) embarrassed to trace human DNA to material causes. They believe in the products of scientific thought (such as satellites and microwave ovens) but would rather reject scientific thinking with respect to life. How did we get DNA? Oh, from God.
Well, sure. No way we can dispute that. Nor should we have to. But why we should stop our thinking there is a little beyond me.
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3 comments:
Maybe because a microwave oven is far easier to understand than DNA. I can see how someone made a microwave, but how in the world did God make DNA to be so incredible useful to us and indeed how can all those patterns make up me? The more I study about the body, the more I am amazed and in awe.
Well, the body is amazing and awesome. I understand neither the microwave nor the body--at least in the way that scientists do. E.O Wilson claims that the brain is by far the most complicated known structure in the universe. And I’m glad that it is. But I’m also glad that there are plenty of folks who are fearless in their scientific study of both DNA and the brain despite their complications.
It's funny to me: Christians love to trot out the occasional noted scientist who is also an evangelical Christian. Right away that demonstrates the extent to which Evangelicals are defensive and in rearguard mode with respect to science—“hey, we’re legitimate, too. Some of us are making contributions to knowledge too, you know.” Of course it rarely occurs to an agnostic to point to agnostic scientists making extraordinary contributions—why would they need to? Right now the Evangelical Christian hero—a guy whose credentials are unquestioned by all scientists—is Francis Collins, the genome dude. And he really is an impressive guy. But what’s funny to me is that ol’ Francis more-or-less takes evolution as a given fact; he just thinks that science cannot rule out the possibility of God. Well, I’m with him on that.
The single most influential anti-evolution guy the Evangelical world can offer is a lawyer, not a scientist: Philip Johnson. Now Philip is no idiot but he’s also no scientist, not really. He argues against evolution not by presenting a thorough understanding of scientific claims (as, to his credit, does Michael Behe) but by rhetorical cleverness. He does pose hard questions, and lots of those questions have not been answered yet by scientists. But here’s the deal: Scientists pose themselves lots of the very same questions. The difference between scientists and Johnson seems to be this: scientists do not take unanswered questions to be sufficient reason to abandon the theory that currently best fits the bodies of evidence that is known to scientists. I say “bodies” because evolution and, more generally, the claim the world is old is supported by a remarkable diversity of independent scientific inquiries employing remarkably different and independent methodologies: chemistry—organic and inorganic; astronomy; physics more generally; biology; sociobiology; psychiatry; geology and even meteorology.
There are lots of puzzles to be solved yet. Plenty of them. But if evolution is overturned it will be overturned by some other material explanation, one equally frustrating to Christians and anyone else who finds material explanations for material phenomena somehow insulting to the Creator. Until Christians become more fearless in their faith and their pursuit of truth wherever it may take them, they’re going to continue to be hayseeds who rightfully are dismissed by the knowledgeable people working hard every day to actually figure out how the universe works. Why should the people who have undergone rigorous training, presented their work to the peer review of equally bright and knowledgeable people, and make public and open to everyone their methodologies that do not depend upon secret knowledge (i.e. revelation) take anyone seriously who refutes their findings because it makes them question the claims of their revealed faith?
Aristotle famously made claims about the number of teeth in the human head that he surmised by thought alone. He was wrong. He should have opened someone’s mouth and counted. Hegel famously irrefutably argued through pure reason alone how the solar system MUST have seven planets. Oh, well. But who knows? Scientists have recently disqualified Pluto as a planet. Hegel’s one planet closer to being right than he was five years ago. Maybe soon they’ll also disqualify Neptune as well.
Bodies "are," not bodies "is." my bad.
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