I’m getting tired of all this fuss about evolution, creationism, and intelligent design. Just…tired. I don’t expect the faith-based to shut up, but I certainly wish the scientists would.
The point that both sides are missing is that there ought not be any conflict. Science, by its very nature, can have no opinion about matters of faith – they are completely foreign to it. Likewise, faith-based beliefs are not applicable to scientific issues. They lack foundations in empirical data that can be tested by peer review, the way science – all science – is done. Concepts that boil down to “because I believe it,” or “it seems logical,” are not science and can never be.
So why do we pay any attention to these issues? Children will grow up exposed to both concepts, as they have for decades. (There really aren’t three concepts here; intelligent design is just creation with a different schedule and fewer specifics.) The folks who have the ambition and brains to learn to understand scientific principles and apply them to their own quandaries will resolve their questions on their own, according to their ability and willingness to use what they have learned. Those who choose to remain ignorant will go their own way, doing as such folks have always done. Whether or not we agree with them, they are and will continue to be the majority.
[A pertinent aside: the Greeks proved mathematically that the Earth was round a couple of hundred years B.C.E. Due to other influences, however, most folk believed it was flat for some centuries afterward. The fact that a majority believed it had nothing to do with Truth.]
We live in a period when it is in the interest of our leaders and their associates to downgrade science in the public eye. Current scientific thought is anathema to their aims and those of their partners. We have seen this in their continued resistance to any findings, scientific or otherwise, that are not supportive of their interests. Of course the US is falling behind in science! How could we not?
What is of utmost importance is that there be accurate information, and training in clear, logical thinking – the ability to see reality – for all who choose to take advantage of it. It is not the business of science nor scientists to become involved in silly disputes about non-scientific issues. Scientists need to understand that ignorance is often engendered by people with axes to grind, that its adoption is almost always willful, and that regardless of the outcome of the current controversy, people will continue to make up their own minds based on the information they are willing to digest.
We need to do whatever we can to counter this concerted undermining of logic and scientific thought. Let’s do, and teach, science. Let the results speak for themselves. Those who purport continued disbelief in evolution, the basis of all the biological sciences, are free to reject the advances in medicine and other areas that evolve from them.
I suspect they won’t.
Namasté
