Making the world safe for scientific illiteracy

You want "Intelligent Design"? "Stephen K. Robinson, an astronaut with a Stanford Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, walked into space this morning and repaired a worrisome problem on the shuttle Discovery with the simplest of tools: the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

With the president endorsing teaching "intelligent design" (ID) alongside evolution in the public schools, "at the very least it makes Americans who have that position more respectable," observes Christian conservative leader Gary L. Bauer, adding "It's a view held by the majority of Americans." And that's a problem. In fact, it's two problems.

#1. If the polls are to be believed, a majority of our fellow citizens are scientifically illiterate. Rand Simberg of Terrestrial Musings, blogged here, explains:

ID simply says, "I'm not smart enough to figure out how this structure could evolve, therefore there must have been a designer." That's not science -- it's simply an invocation of a deus ex machina, whether its proponents are willing to admit it or not. And it doesn't belong in a science classroom, except as an example of what's not science.

You want deus ex machina? "Perched on the end of the International Space Station's 58-foot robotic arm, Dr. Robinson easily removed the so-called gap-filler cloths that had protruded above the surface of the heat-resistant tiles on the shuttle's underbelly."

#2. The Leader of the Free World appears to think #1 is okay. As The Commissar of The Politburo Diktat " [via Instapundit, who has lots of gratifyingly ranty links] asks with disgust, "Is Bush ‘playing to the base’ or does he believe it? I don’t know which is worse." And Pixy Misa of Ambient Irony [via Balloon Juice] points out -- more in sorrow than in anger -- "President Bush, much as I respect the man, is promoting academic fraud . . . and it has to be said loud and clear."

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled," wrote Nobel Laureate Richard P. Feynman, commenting re the rarely mentioned fact that the foam that's causing the problems was reformulated to appease environmental groups [via Mikes' Noise],

Being a Darwinian Libertarian, we've flogged the topic here early and often:

We know in our bones that Intelligent Design is a matter not of scientific inquiry but of faith, the progenitor of science. Our species is wired for faith. By nature we seek  patterns in chaos and causes in coincidence. It's a survival thing -- as blogged here. But once you've reached the discipline of scientific inquiry, how can you turn back to Intelligent Design?

Of course you have to reach the discipline of scientific inquiry first. Not to mention the discipline of historical inquiry.  Both are casualties of proselytizers determined to force the one true way onto the rest of us.  And they come from both ends of the political spectrum. As we blogged a couple of months back:

Carol Brown -- a dissenting member of the Dover, Pennsylvania school board that voted last fall to mandate the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution in biology classes -- worries that "We have a vocal group within the community who feel very strongly in an evangelical Christian way that there is no separation of church and state." Can you say the Taliban? We agree with Ms. Brown totally but observe that it's hard to tell the difference between the fundamentalists' no-prisoners approach and that of the P.C. thought police on the other side of the cultural divide. They, too, are "a vocal group within the community who feel strongly" in an international progressivist way that there is no separation of politically-correct thought and state.

It's easier to remove gap fillers from a space ship in orbit 220 miles above the Earth than to tell the difference between the religious fundamentalists' no-prisoners approach and that of the P.C. thought police on the other side of the cultural divide.

In a world gone mad, where the #1 priority for math teachers in Newton, MA is teaching "respect for human differences," Dr. Sanity arrives just in time:

The religions of political correctness, multiculturalism and Gaia are already polluting young minds in almost all areas of study -- even math and science. We don't need an ill-informed and angry Christian RIGHT to decimate whatever is left of arts and science education.

What comes to mind?

Update:  Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial Musings expounds upon the "Bozo the Clown" fallacy.

Comments

[goomp]

Control seems to be a dominant characteristic of human nature. "What I believe is what is right." Like other survival features of the make-up of humans, when carried too far it leads to destruction. Science is search for truth by physical means. Faith is a hope for ultimate meaning when the limits of our capabilities have been reached. Faith may have its place but should not be confused with scientific fact.

[Blue Goldfish]

Even the suggestion that we allow children to learn that there *is* controversy about a *theory* is unacceptable for many clinging to a paradigm. As relevant truth is simply abandoned by those in the secular universities and then by their followers in the elementary and high schools, we see hints of a brave new world around us and before us (know all that there is one Science and one Theory and no one shall dare to utter anything differently).

Still. Still. Still many cling tightly to their beliefs and insist that their science is not influenced by their beliefs for their beliefs are not beliefs but fact. Secular fundamentalists exhibit an intolerance for diversity of thought and theory and promote their propaganda talking points reducing faith to church - thus allowing *their* faith-based world view to be integrated in the public marketplace of ideas and policy while banning the faith-based world views of
others as "church" and - thus - to be separated.

Ironically, it is *they* who exhibit the intellectual intolerance exhibited earlier by those rejecting the theories of Galileo.

[Engineer-Poet]

Ah, yes, the intolerance of insisting that FACTS and EVIDENCE are the supreme arbiters of what is real, and insisting that anything taught in SCIENCE class be vetted for its consistency with the same.

You must really have trouble with those intolerant weather predictors and astronomers, eh Blue Goldfish? Their insistence that the weather is ruled by the laws of fluid mechanics and the motions of the planets by the laws of physics, and not an iota of room for "intelligent anything" in their theories. I bet you toss and turn at night over that.

(Yes, I am anti-idiotarian.)

[Blue Goldfish]

Actually, Engineer-Poet, I sleep at night well and have no trouble at all with facts or with evidence. In fact, I embrace and celebrate them. And, I would recommend to you Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/Kuhn.html). As you read it, you will realize the importance of our paradigms as we interpret so-called facts and evidence. For we all believe we are armed with facts and evidence, do we not? And is not history full of those who thought they had most of the scientific answers, EP? Has not each generation thought that is has known almost all to be learned. Science! And is it not so that we see what we want to see and ignore the rest?

I believe we live within a world and a universe comprised of norms and laws governing all modalities - all aspects - of reality. And I believe these laws and norms - those for each aspect of reality - the modalities of the numerical, the spatial, the kinetic, the physical, the psychic/emotional, the social, the symbolic, the historical, the juridical, the aesthetic, the ethical and ... yes ... the modality of faith (including your faith in Science!, Engineer-Poet), were created by an intelligent designer.

Check out the book by Thomas Kuhn sometime, Engineer-Poet. Then get back to me. We’ll talk.

(For it’s funny, I am anti-idiot Arian as well.)

[Engineer-Poet]

"I sleep at night well and have no trouble at all with facts or with evidence. In fact, I embrace and celebrate them."

You celebrate them?  Then why on earth would you refer to a political campaign which implicitly denies established fact and any role for reason and investigation with words like these:

"Even the suggestion that we allow children to learn that there *is* controversy about a *theory* is unacceptable for many clinging to a paradigm."

If someone suggested that we "allow" children attending public school to learn that Christian Scientists believe that disease is caused by lack of faith and there are no such things as infectious bacteria, would you say that this is acceptable?  Would you say that their disagreement means that a "controversy" exists?

"And I believe these laws and norms ... were created by an intelligent designer."

First, remove the log from your own eye.  Once you have decided that everything is the work of an unspecified designer, you have no further questions to ask, indeed no further questions that you CAN ask... and you are not doing anything that relates to science.

"Check out the book by Thomas Kuhn sometime, Engineer-Poet. Then get back to me. We’ll talk."

I read it before many of today's bloggers had learned their alphabet.  Go ahead and try to lecture me, though; I can use a good laugh.

[Engineer-Poet]

You should check out this Paul Krugman piece:

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/08/paul_krugman_on.html

(Lack of proper HTML links, blockquotes and other formatting in this and previous comment due to someone stripping all HTML out of posts.  How rude.)

[Brian H]

I posted this in a comment thread far, far, away, related to the persecution of the Dutch apostate Muslim, Ms Ali. But it's relevant here, too:
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One way to understand the thrust and effect of various religions is to take them as attempts by cultures to enshrine their practices and attitudes as eternal, and to provide for their ongoing imposition and preservation, in saecula seculorum. Judaism around 800 BC, Catholicism around 400 AD, Islam about 650 AD, Hinduism around 6000 BC, Buddhism around 1,000,000,000,000 BC/AD. Et cetera.

The Reformation and Enlightenment set Protestant Christianity's clock to around 1700 AD, a major "improvement", but resists much change after that.

But no era has the "right" to lock in all succeeding generations into its world view, even though this is perhaps the fundamental wish of every culture at any moment of time. In any case, one can certainly pick and choose between eras that one currently wants to emulate, if any. Ali, e.g., prefers the Enlightenment period over medieval Bedou Desert Arabism--not necessarily as an absolute, just as a huge improvement. But at heart the problem is the "lock-down" impulse.

Cultural relativism claims to be free of all that, but misses the mark totally. The point is not that all world views and cultures are equal and equally deluded; it is that they are powerful, and use many tools including religion to perpetuate themselves. Choose carefully and don't give a blank cheque against your moral and mental bank account to any of them.

_______

Evangelical Christianity is a kind of retrofit to about 300 AD, Protestantism minus the Enlightenment. Go figure.