Pliny's Academic Freedom Statute: Teaching the Controversy

The Discovery Institute (a name that George Orwell would have loved) has posted its version of academic freedom legislation that right thinkers can use as a basis for a cavalcade of proposed bills to chip away at scientific enlightenment. So in a similar vein, Pliny is posting his language that can be used in the front of science texts or recited by teachers to satisfy these stringent requirements laid out in these statutes.

Teaching the Controversy surrounding Descent with Modification

The Board of Education of the State of _________ is another victim in an ongoing culture war between science and superstition dressed in sheep's clothing. Scared to death by the scientific and philosophical implications of the theory of evolution, which could result in a major loss in status, power and revenues, Christian fundamentalist leaning groups have successfully employed the marketing tactics and sound bites used to get us to part with billions of our hard earned dollars buying stuff we don't need, to steadily erode scientific literacy in this country further creating fertile ground for their relentless efforts to return our precious family values and world view to the safety of the 13th century.

Despite the fact that evolutionary theory is more firmly supported by mountains of evidence from multiple disparate disciplines than is our understanding of gravity, these marketeers have successfully created a sense of controversy where none exists aided by decades of work in weakening the public school system's treatment of science. In the face of a relentless stream of new discoveries supporting evolution, creationist marketeers follow the example of Major General O. P. Smith, and "attack in another direction". These opponents will stoop to amazing depths to misrepresent the science of evolution while simultaneously claiming the moral high ground. Demonstrating that lipstick on a pig can indeed be convincing, these religiously motivated groups continue to intelligently design their messaging to avoid objections that derailed their earlier efforts to snuff out the candles of enlightenment. Coining secular sounding names like Intelligent Design, these creationists deny their God thousands of times more than Saint Peter in an effort to save our morals - with the obvious exception of truth telling.

Creationists are aided by the media which either does not understand or is unwilling to present a cogent representation of the scale of the immense disparity between those who oppose evolution and the vast array of actual science supporting it. They are further aided by politicians who are either reluctant to alienate a block of voters, chose to pander to said voting block, or are ignorant of the facts to a degree that makes one fear for the nation's future.

The pseudo-controversy surrounding evolutionary theory is an outstanding example of the successful use of populist adversarial tactics to undermine the foundations of science in a Democracy. As such it is a fertile topic for discussions of group think and behavioral psychology rather than biology.

Now that that is over with, we can get on with learning some hard science. Let's all open our biology texts to page...

Citing Pliny is not necessary. Use it as you see fit...

The Seventh Seal Has been Broken :(

The Seventh Seal of the Apocalypse has been broken. I'm moving to Idaho. On second thought, I'm trying to dodge eternal damnation so maybe I should reconsider.

What has me so rattled? As predicted in the Book of Revelations: 'Yeah (or really, BOO!) unto yea will come a rumor of war in Babylon upon a cultural icon which cannot and must not be duplicated." And it has come to pass. It has been announced that a Three Stooges Movie starring Sean Penn is in the works...

Goodbye World!

Knowing, Understanding and Belief: Essential Differences Between Religion and Science

Of all of the wedge strategies used against science and science education none is potentially as damaging, in my opinion, as the notion that science and religion are just competing belief structures. This is the simplest of the fairness doctrines that social conservatives use in this culture war. The implication of course is that it’s a simple matter of choice where one is as good as the other. At the same time, they work to tip the scales by trying to associate pure science with unseemly episodes in human history or portray it as eroding a social fabric that is not of this world. Why does this work? I think because to a certain extent it seems obvious and logical to most people. After all, one can believe in the tenants of science or the teachings of faith. What makes one better then the other, particularly when we are indoctrinated to believe that divinely-inspired morality is all that keeps us at bay. Unlike many, I happen to buy the fundamentalist notion that science and faith cannot co-exist for very long so I can understand their fears if not condone their tactics.

But after years of thought on the subject I must adamantly reject the premise of equality of belief. For science, unlike religion, is not a belief system but a true methodology. Science is a true methodology because its foundation is a belief in its own fallibility - not a false fallibility used to make humans feel inferior and compliant, but a true notion of the limits of observation, the biases of observers and their methods and ways to mitigate these effects in the search for real truth.

But as a simpler explanation I present the following: The implications of 3 words to the scientist vs the theologian - Knowing, Understanding, and Belief. These differences distinguish science from any other human approach to knowledge and in in my humble opinion make it clearly superior.

In many discussions of religion, knowing is a self-referential given. One knows the truth of religion because of the existence of works which claim to be the product of revealed truth. Not the revealed truth that comes from relentlessly peeling back the fabric of reality through cycles of hypotheses, experimentation, observation and reassessment (science) but their claim to truth comes from the claim itself. Justification to the claim is unnecessary because it is defended by a powerful entity shown in the same texts to not be a fan of explanation. Questioning is impolite, impious or just plain dangerous. Take Christianity for example, Doubting Thomas is portrayed not so much as a reasonable guy wanting to see extraordinary evidence of an extraordinary claim but rather as a less pious follower. ‘Blessed are those that have to see to believe but far better are those who just take our word for it over the generations’, - not the actual text but pretty close to the intent I fear. And what of poor Moses, who suffered for years as an agent of God, got punished for what happened while he was away getting the Ten Commandments and then is denied the promised land because he whacked a rock twice instead of once like he was told. My point is not to quibble with the Bible but merely to point out a couple of examples illustrating religion’s approach to squelching human curiosity - a critical requirement of science.

In religion, understanding is often portrayed as impossible or impious as the follower cannot reasonably expect to fathom the why or the how of the omnipotent. This paternalistic approach is mimicked in a million households each day where a child’s push back is answered with ‘because I said so’ backed by the power to enforce the edict - maybe not by an omnipotent force but one with sufficient force none the less. Knowing is unquestionable so there is no requirement or allowance for the formulation of new beliefs or questions. It is knowing in its least examined form.

No in religion, belief leaps over understanding to the knowing. Understanding, the foundation of science, is forever veiled behind the inscrutable face of the divine revealer. All that need be known has been revealed and understanding is beyond you anyway.

To the scientist, understanding is a vital step in the process of knowing. Science does not act in inscrutable ways beyond the understanding of men as many theologians would have us believe. No science acts according to principles, though often challenging, which are amenable to codification through iterative experimentation. In essence, science provides a method for proposing a belief and formulating a means to test the explanation required to express our understanding of how this belief is possible. Only when this belief (and its foundational understanding) has been subjected to rigorous testing can it hope to achieve the status of knowing. A status that is almost without exception understood to be tentative.

Knowing in science is never a process of ‘take our word for it’. Science always leaves a trail of intellectual bread crumbs that others may follow in order to gain understanding of how a particular belief became knowing. It may be difficult and technical and beyond the average person’s education, but it is always there. Relativity is not an understanding because Einstein said so but because he took the time to leave both formulae representing his understanding but also unambiguous predictions that could be tested and which had to be true in order for his beliefs to survive to the present day. These weren’t cryptic ‘and a nation will rise and fall and there will be a great war..’ kinds of predictions. No, for his understanding to be correct, there had to exist singularities in space with infinite gravity, a prediction which worried even he. And one which has now been observed.

Science dares us to pose new questions and seek new understandings. And it rewards us not with eternal torment for our temerity, but with a greater knowledge of the universe. That is about as cool as it gets.