Orange Hat Photos: Creative Inquiry Project

I know that I haven't posted in a while, and I can't promise that I will keep up with regular posting this week as it is the week before finals, but I am going to try to get most of the posts that I have waiting to go up done today. But I said try. At least I am going to edit the photos...so yea.

This post is going to be more writing focused, so most of you will probably disregard it, but for those of you who don't, or for those of you who are interested in the Evolution/Creationism debate, I would encourage you to read this post and hope that you enjoy it. And please don't feel like you can't comment on it, one way or the other. Healthy debate is a good thing for research.

A little background, I am in a research group that aims to gather information about the Evolution/Creationism debate with the goal being to show that evolution is not some evil thing that says we are descended from monkeys and show what it really is. (So yes it is biased, but we represent things in an unbiased way meaning that we think if both sides are explained properly and fully it is obvious that there should be no argument between the two because they mean different things. If you are confused then read my podcast, it should help to explain that.) So anyway, part of the project is that the people involved produce a series of podcasts explaining varying things about the whole evolution/creationism debate.

A few weeks ago we actually got to the point where we were recording our first podcast, and here is a written copy of mine, along with some pictures from the recording session:

This series of podcasts deal with the Evolution and Creationism debate, but on a broader scale; over the course of these next few episodes, we will look at not just evolution and creationism, but the bigger topic of Science vs Religion, a topic that is related to, and in most cases a result of the evolution and creationism debate. Just as a preview, over the course of these next few podcasts we will be looking at the goals of science, the goals of religion, the philosophy and purpose behind each of these fields of thought, and some basic misconceptions about the purposes of science and religion. So, lets begin with just an overview of the goals of science and religion, and then touch on a few misconceptions about each, and then in the next episodes, we will take each a little more in-depth.

Let’s look at science first. The goal of science is simple and straightforward; to find out and explain to the best of our knowledge and understanding how the natural world works. There are a few key phrases/words in that definition: first – “explain to the best of our knowledge” and second – “natural” world. These are important because they show the two greatest limitations of scientific inquiry and scientific knowledge: first, science can only explain things that are natural, or that occur in the natural world (this doesn’t mean just out in nature, but anything in the physical world). This does not mean that science doesn’t believe in God; there are lots of scientists who are religious. But, what it does mean, and this is important, science can not make any claim about anything metaphysical or supernatural in origins – because science only deals with things that happen in the natural world. And second, scientific explanations are not an “end-all-be-all” kinda deal; a scientific explanation is an explanation that looks at all the facts and information we have available to us at the time and explains an event with all that information that is deemed relevant. This is important to keep in mind because this means that as more information comes to light, it is possible that explanations (or minor details of explanations) may change. That’s right, science is not as static as your third grade teacher wanted you to think – science changes with the knowledge we gain about it.

Now, we will cover this in more detail in a later podcast, but here is a brief explanation of how science goes about achieving its goal. When a scientist has a hypothesis about something he thinks about all the relevant factors that could affect the outcome of any attempt to test that hypothesis, and then forms an experiment that tries to test the thing in question. The scientist records the data from the test, and then the test is ran again and again to see how the data holds up. Eventually once enough scientists have done the test and gotten the same results, and have reviewed papers and articles published about the test, some kind of scientific statement is made about that thing that they were testing. And, in a sense, new science is made. Now that is just a really general overview that we will go into more detail on later, but the main point is that the goal of science is to figure out how the natural world works, and experiments are how scientists go about doing that.

So, it seems pretty straightforward; however, there are quite a few misconceptions about science. I am going to point out just one of the bigger ones here, and then later in the series there will be a podcast all about misconceptions about science and religion. So, without further ado, one of the biggest misconceptions about science is the thought that science can prove that things are a certain way. This sounds really good, especially if you are in a third grade classroom, but the fact of the matter is that science does not “prove” things; it is very hard to really prove something. So does this mean that science is worthless because it can’t actually prove anything? No, not at all. It is actually very hard to prove something is true; we would have to test and find out every possible thing in the world that could have some affect on the event that we are trying to prove, no matter how small. This is a very substantial task, and virtually impossible because we don’t even know all of the things about the world that we would need to take into consideration when conducting a test (that is the very reason we are still doing science – to figure out these things we don’t know!) So then, what can science do for us if it can’t prove things?

Well, what science can do is point us in the right direction, and offer a “best scientific explanation” for some happening that we see in the natural world. For example; in order to prove that the sun is at the center of our solar system, we would have to know absolutely everything about our solar system, the sun, stars, astronomy, astrophysics, etc. etc., and we just don’t know all of that. But, as this example shows us, just because we can’t actually prove something, that doesn’t mean there is not good scientific evidence to believe it. In this particular case of whether or not the sun is at the center of our solar system, there is an abundance of scientific evidence that points us towards believing that the sun is in the center of our solar system. But to say that we can prove it with no question is just scientifically inaccurate. Now the example of the sun being in the center of the solar system may seem a little silly because of the extremeness of it, but it demonstrates one of the fundamental limitations of science.

This is not to say that science should not be taken seriously though – that is very far from the truth. Knowing that science doesn’t just take arbitrary facts and “prove” things helps to understand more about the nature of science. It is not some rigid fortress that has an agenda and wants to make school boring for everyone. Science is a flowing and shifting body of knowledge that constantly seeks to better understand and explain the natural world, and is willing to change in light of new evidence.

So, that is a basic overview of science; now for the other side of the coin – religion. Religion stands in stark contrast to science, but, unlike most people seem to think, that does not mean that it stands in opposition to science – just that it is different than science, a lot different. Let’s start out the same way we did with science and look at what the goal of religion really is (and more specifically the Christian faith, since creationism is a mainly Christian-based idea).

Now, one of the obvious differences in religion and science is that there are many different religions in the world, and only one “science” (yes there is biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc., but they are all part of Science [with a capital S]). Now, this doesn’t mean that because they aren’t unified all religions are wrong and science is right; what it does show however is that there is a stark difference in the goals of science and religion. In science the goal is to find out how the natural world works; religion doesn’t try to “find out” anything in the same since that science does. Religion has a set of truths (theological, moral, and/or philosophical truths, not scientific truths) and followers of a religion seek to order their lives around that particular set of truths. So, in a broad since, religion’s goal is to motivate people to a moral or philosophical change. There are a lot of ways to achieve this goal, about as many different ways as there are different religions themselves. Some religions seek to achieve this through rituals, worship services, sacrifices, or a variety of different ways. But, mainly, religions deal with explaining why things such as philosophical, moral, and theological ideas are the way they are; they deal with the supernatural world, not the natural. And, just like science is limited to matters of the physical world, religions are limited to the metaphysical.

That is a basic overview of religions, but since the evolution and creationism controversy centers on Christianity, lets look at the goal of Christianity, and how Christians seek to achieve that goal. No matter what the goals of Christianity were in its beginning days, to most present day American church-goers the goal of Christianity is to “spread the kingdom of God to all parts of the world.” Now, regardless of if you agree with whether that “goal” is the correct one or not, it is obvious that it is a lot different from science’s goal “to figure out how the natural world works.” And, given what we know about the nature of religions (to motivate people to a moral/philosophical/and/or theological change) it would seem that modern day Christianity wants to change how people think about the metaphysical aspect of their lives. And, if the goals are so different, it seems obvious (or at least I would think that it seems obvious) that science and religion don’t actually compete with each other; each deals with its own realm of knowledge, and each has different ways to achieve its respective goals. But, there is a movement in America that holds that science and religion are in contention. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time left in this podcast to talk about that movement; but rest assured that there will be one to address these issues.

There are a lot of things that I didn’t mention in this podcast that are important differences between religion and science, but that is because there is not enough time for me to mention them all in this podcast. However there will be more podcasts in this series, and a lot of key differences will be addressed when we talk about the philosophies behind science and religion. But for now, let’s do a quick review of what we have covered today.

Review:

1. Science is not “the best and only explanation there will ever be for something” it is “the best explanation that we have for an event, given all the information that we have at our disposal.”

2. Science is limited to explaining things in the natural world, and cannot make any claims (affirming or denying) about the existence of anything in the supernatural realm.

3. Science cannot explicitly prove anything; it only points us in the right direction to finding the true answer.

4. Scientific explanations for things can change in light of new evidence.

5. Running experiments is how scientists test ideas about how the world works, but figuring out how the world works is the goal of science; doing experiments is not the goal, it is how scientists achieve the goal.

6. Religions have sets of moral/philosophical/and/or theological truths that instruct their adherents to make a life change, and that make statements about the moral/philosophical/and/or theological conditions of the metaphysical world.

7. Modern-day Christianity has a goal that is not directed at figuring out how the natural world works, so in reality there should be no conflict between evolution and creationism.

Thanks for listening and hope you tune in next time for more.

Sam is our professor's kid. He was needed by one of the students in the group to read a child's part in a podcast.