luvluv

Phillip E. Johnson, in his book Reason in the Balance states the following:

Okay, out of the gate, please understand that positing evolution as a creation myth is not the same as saying it isn't true. It is simply a statment as to the function of evolution as a creation story sociologically and anthropologically (or however you spell it).

That being the case, I think senor Johnson is onto something. Moral inexorably follow the "creation myth" (accurate or not) of how we came to be. And it occurs to me that the modern operation of science operates much lilke a priesthood, at least so far as the general public is concerned. Now I know that particular scientific theories are subject to falsification and so thereby it becomes impossible for any demonstrably untrue theories to gaine widespread acceptance for very long (though I don't think this is true about scientific philsophies, about which it is quite possible for scientists to be wrong about for a very long time).

However, for the regular public, the established forumula of publication and critique occurs behind a veil. Your average non-scientist roaming the streets couldn't tell you about any particular theory that had been refuted in published debates.

In point of fact they simply assume, like the medeivals did of Catholic priests, that whatever scientists say is simply unassailably true by definition. I myself have often found that people make spectacular assumptions about the current state of scientific knowledge without the least bit of information. (not that I am fantastically informed myself). I have had conversations where intelligent people simply ASSUME that science has figured out the entire evolutionary history of life from the pre-biotic soup all the way up to present day man, with no gaps in their knowledge. I've been laughed out of the room on several occasions when I suggested that scientist do not know, and have no promising leads for, an origin of life scenario. These same people often justify their moral decisions on the simple fact that God doesn't exist, and this fact is buttressed (by them) from the fact of evolution.

So the problem is not necessarily with science, it is with the unquestioned authority they have on the public mind as concerns questions about existential reality. People simply do not question what scientists say, and many of their moral decisions follow what scientists say. In this way the scientists of today function in the public sphere precisely as the priests of old, though in a more indirect fashion.

The creation myth of science is the evolution story, and this has an inalterable effect on public morality whether it is intended or not.

So, I guess I just wanted to discuss this in general, I don't have in mind any particular direction for this discussion to go. I simply ask is it likely or even possible that scientists can make statements about bedrock reality and not have those statements have moral ramifications.

Not that I think intelligent design is a lie and evolution the truth, but generally speaking people think it is a fait accompli that superior morality always follows the truth. I'm not sure that isn't just wishful thinking, particularly if naturalism is true. It is entirely conceivable that even if the evolution story is actually true and creationism false, the morality which proceeds from the "creation myth" of naturalism could be considerably worse for society than that produced by the creation myth of the Bible.

I also ask that, given the moral power scientists inevitably indirectly had (since you cannot seperate existential truth from morality) shouldn't they be more careful about keeping people informed about what they don't know? Quite often, scientists fend off evolutionary attacks, for example, on the grounds that "evolution is a fact". (which is almost a mantra in published debates I've read). Well, the public takes that as gospel, literally AS GOSPEL, as a revelation about who they really are and where they really come from and thus what they really have an obligation to do. But in point of fact, certain aspects of evolution are not fact, and that kind of dogmatic assurance on the part of scientists, in a culture wherein the word of scientists is often considered infallible, is morally irresponsible. If you haven't really ESTABLISHED yet that God is superflous, even if you have to consider Him to be so to conduct your investigation, you should not TELL LAYMEN that God is superflous because this has inevitable consequences in the moral sphere. But the latest trend in science, at leat the biolgical scientists who considered themselves to be under attack by creationists, is to retreat to an argument for their infallibility and appeals to the inevitability of their discoveries. Well, excuse me, but nothing is infallible or inevitable, even in science, and when science proclaims certainty about future discoveries they are no longer performing as scientits, but as proselytes or prophets of the True Religion of Naturalism. And since their word is not subject to anything like the criticism of the words of priests or politicians, they often have the most direct and unchallenged access to moral-shaping than any other institution in our world.

I would think that given the power and influence that scientists have, humility should really be stressed in their proclamations. There is the general problem of education, to be sure, but with that I think that certain segments of our population should be weened of the notion of scientific infallibility or the notion of inevitable discovery.

End Rant.

99Percent

You seem to be implying that science is some kind of religious dogma. It is not. It tries to explain things which best fit the evidence. From then you derive that science has a moral agenda, which is completely false. Science and morality are completely separate.

Theory of evolution tries to explain our origins with the empirical facts at our disposal (fossil record, etc). If a new evidence were to be discovered this theory could be discarded, and science accepts this because it is not dogmatic in nature as religion is, like Christianism.

Some scientist claim that the evidence is so overwhelming that evolution is practically a fact, but of course, as any scientist admits, new evidence could change what is established. After all Newtonian physics were established fact until Eistein came up with an even more comprehensive theory.

Philosoft

I'm inclined to agree with 99%, luvluv. Your entire post seems to be predicated on an ought/is fallacy. And I don't think the relative moralities of the average science-minded person and the average layperson differ significantly enough that you can justify speculating about the sources of their respective moral codes.

In any case, I have a simple remedy for the alleged tendency for the lay-public to consider scientists paragons of truth: Teach. Critical. Thinking. Early.

Jamie_L

Wow. There's a whole lot in that OP for me to sink my teeth into. For now, I'll just pick a couple to start with.

Much of the OP has an implication that science is something that is kept from the average person. The truth is that science is completely out in the open. It just so happens most average people aren't interested enough in the details to read all the journals out there. Mass media being what it is, things that aren't marketable don't get much coverage, so the "veil" that you speak of ends up getting created by society at large (directly and indirectly) rather than by scientists themselves. I think this makes scientists fundamentally different from priests of old.

Now, on evolution as a "creation myth":
Compared to actual mythology, evolution is a pretty flimsy creation myth. It explains speciation of living creatures. Period. It doesn't explain where life came from. Where the universe came from. It's incomplete in this respect. It So, to directly compare it to say Christian Creationism or some other creation myth is a bit of an apples and oranges thing. At the very least, it's comparing apples to pears.

Furthermore, evolution is not confined to naturalist philosophies. The "average person" who sees science from behind a veil is also a religious person who has religiously rooted morals.

Physical science as a source of morals seems like a real strawman to me. Most true naturalists try to build some logical foundation for their morality. Though it may be flawed, it is not necessarily drawn from some creation myth model (though there are a small percentage of folks who think like that). People that aren't die-hard naturalists are going to have a mix of theologically-defined morals, logically reasoned morals, and so fourth. I don't really see scientists doing much of anything to drive moral discourse in one direction or the other.

Much like the OP, I'm not exactly sure where to go with this. But those are a few starting thoughts.

Jamie

Godless Dave

I take issue with this assertion by Philip E. Johnson:
I disagree strongly with the "must have". Most cultures may have used a creation story as a basis for things like philosophy, education, and law, but that doesn't mean they have to. And as a counterexample, the philosophy, education, and law of the Classical Greeks seems to have been divorced from their creation story - the creation story being one of the more obscure components of Greek mythology anyway.

I'm not denying those people exist, but I have never met anyone, including myself, who justifies moral decisions on the fact that God doesn't exist. The existence or non-existence of a God or gods is completely irrelevant to my conception of morality.

I think you have a point in there, luvluv, and I too am distressed at the general lack of knowledge about science. But I don't think it has much to do with morality.

As to your second-to-last paragraph, evolution IS a fact; but certain aspects of evolution are not established facts. But anyone who bases their morality on a scientific theory is not right in the head, and I don't think it's the job of the scientific community to try to accomodate them.

luvluv

99%

You guys are missing entirely my point. The problem is not scientists or their methods.

The problem is the ESTEEM given to scientists by the average "layperson" if you'll excuse the terminology is precisely identical to the kind of esteem given to priests during Medeival times.

The general public, while vastly uninformed, considers science infallible. If a scientist says that evolution is a fact, and doesn't clarify WHICH PORTIONS OF EVOLUTION ARE FACT, the general public while thenceforth operate as if science has the entire history of life mapped out with empirical proof.

Science does indeed speak about what really is, but there is simply no divorcing what really is and where we really came from, from moral implications. That is sleepy-dream time unrealistic thinking which would say otherwise. There is no way that the notion that we are accidents and have no purpose will produce an identical morality to the notion that we were created by God with an eternal purpose.

That is my point, and basically you've proved it. Scientists, or the scientifically inclined, simply don't see the link. They have tunnel vision. They think facts can be divorced from morality, and it ain't so. Moral flow from facts. To the extent that it actually is the case that promiscuos unprotected sex actually does cause the spread of AIDS, promiscuous unprotected sex is wrong. But if no one knew, or had proven, that unprotected sex had anything to do with AIDS or any other venereal disease, one would have a hard time justifying the notion that unprotected sex was wrong.

It isn't reall the THEORY of evolution that is the problem, it is the PHILOSOPHY of naturalism which is prior to the scientific endeavor. Thus if supernaturalism is true, science proceeds upon a delusion. Much progress may be possible, but the notion that EVERYTHING is reducible to particle physics might one day be regarded much as we regard alchemy and astrology today.

Right but I do not think you appreciate, historically or socialogically, the centrality of the evolution/creation paradigm in terms of it's moral implications. To be perfectly blunt, people base their moral lives on the theory of evolution, as it makes God in their view unnecessary. The problem is that many people who do so are SPECTACULARLY UNINFORMED about evolution. I have had arguments with people about morality which quickly collapsed into a discussion about evolution (they argued that they were not bound to any moral rules because God does not exist, and they knew God did not exist because of the theory of evolution). They would assert that evolution is a fact, and I would ask them which evolution? The gradualism of Dawkins or Gould's punctuated equilibrium? They didn't know what I was talking about. In fact, most of the people I have debated had some crude form of Lamarckism in their heads when they spoke of evolution. In point of fact, whether the data is available to them or not, they were completely ignorant about the actual THEORY of evolution. Nevertheless, they were prepared to base their whole moral lives on the non-existence of God because of evolution, and they do so on the scientist's say-so.

Their relation to the scientist is precisely that of the layperson's relation to the priest, despite the possibly superior emprical justifiability of the scientist's dictum. The relation of the layperson to the scientist is one of blind faith. They believe it is true because the scientific community believes it to be true, not because they have verified, or even understand, the claims themselves. That being the case scientists ought to be much more careful about the hubris they sometimes demonstrate.

When a scientist says they are sure that a materialistic explanation of the origin of life is possible, for instance, a layperson will take that to close the issue. The layperson does not know that this scientist is making this claim almost entirely on faith in the philsophy of naturalism, not out of any promising leads or empirical evidence. And the scientist SHOULD ADMIT THAT, it being that his words have so much power in the lives of ordinary people.

Philosoft:

I'm not speculating I am documenting. I wish I lived in the intellecutal circles you folks inhabit, but down here with the morons, I have rarely been involved in a discussion about the efficacy or reality of my beliefs which did not devolve at some point into a discussion about evolution. And generally speaking the people who so calmly believe that God does not exist do so on a frightfully uninformed Lamarckian concept of evolution.

I don't think it will matter if "critical thinking" actually means "critical naturalistic thinking". I don't think those two statements are identical and it is from this distinction that I believe that most of the unjustified hubris of science springs.

If you are a confirmed naturalist, then of course you believe that there is a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life, because in your worldview there is no other possible explanation.

Consider, for example, that even a naturalist is not really justified in his belief that the origin of life on earth absolutely must have a naturalistic explanation. Without even appealing to a God, there is simply no way that statement is justified. Let's say one believes that life is relatively abundant in the universe, intelligent life included, and if we believe that we ourselves, (in, say, two thousand years) will be capable of not only improving on DNA but actually of coming up with an entirely seperate system of transmitting biological information. If you admit that much then how can you possibly deny the possibility that the origin of life on this planet is not the result of intelligence?

But too often scientists parade out the strawman argument that if we do not accept naturalism in explaining everything that happens on earth the only alternative is literal seven day creationism. That is absurd, even their own paradigm suggests that there is no reason why the IMMEDIATE cause of the origin of life on OUR planet, for instance, could not have involved the intelligence of other species of intelligent life, for example. But there are scientists who believe firmly in the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligent life and who simeltaneously maintain that life on earth absolutely must have a fully naturalistic explanation. In my view scientists need to practice some critical thinking themselves.

But, call me cynical, if I was buttering my bread on origin of life research, I would tell the world that I was confident that a naturalistic origin of life explanation was only days away. I honestly think that the next step in human development will be that we come to acknowledge, as we did with the priests, that scientists are just human, that they are often motivated by selfish interests, that they have blind spots and biases, and that while they critique each other thouroughly within their paradigm (as did priests and thelogians, by the way) scientists AS A CLASS have a group of shared beliefs that it is in all of their best ECONOMIC INTEREST in defending, principle of these is naturalism.

Not only can science not get outside of the presumption of naturalism, they cannot afford to, since the possibility of supernaturalistic arguments, involving not necessarily divine power but intelligent causation, would be crippling to the scientific industry. Why spend 5 million anually funding origin of life research at a university when the liklilehood is that God or some other intelligence created life? Even the existence of ONE species of intelligent life in the universe that was signifigantly more advanced than ours would force us in honesty to forfeit the notion that EVERYTHING that has occured in the history of life on this earth has to have a fully naturalistic explanation.

Don't get me started...

Jamie L:

The only think which would keep people in the old days from reading the scriptures themselves was an inability to read Latin (for the most part) and the ability to read Latin then, and the ability to have an education sufficient enough to have access to and understand published scientific theories are probably about equally hard to come by.

And, in point of fact, for the problem I am concerned with it makes no difference. I make no, repeat, NO ASSERTION that scientists are purposely misleading the public. Nevertheless, the public is being mislead and this is in my view mostly due to both the hubris of scientists, to theri carelessness in their public pronouncements, and their lack of understanding the moral implications of their discoveries.

Again, the problem is in the FAITH that people place in science. The problem is that people believe the results of science to be infallible and unquestionable. And scientists who know better are too quick to endorse that belief, or at least refrain from adequately challenging it.

Still, do you really believe that the notion that human beings were the direct and purposeful creation of God yields an identical morality as the notion that human beings are the entirely accidental result of a mindless, directionless process?

Where do you folks think the moral philsophies of people like Nietsche and Sartre come from? Thin air? Do you think those moral philsophies are possible without God being "dead"? Do you think it would have been possible to kill God without a theory of evolution?

Not all of them, everyone who I have been referencing in my mention of my own discussion has been a naturalist and (for the most part) an atheist. I know you folks like to believe that all atheists are well-informed, but it ain't so.

I'm going MacEnroe in this thread. YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!!

Really, you think that moral philsophies like nihlism are possible without a foundation of atheism? And you think that atheism can be "intellectually satisfied" to use the words of Richard Dawkins, without evolution?

Are you seriously unaware of the fact that the theory of evolution ushered in an entire branch of moral philsophy proceeding from the notion that human beings are accidents with no inherent purpose? And do you really believe that such a belief can have absolutely no moral consequences? If you really believe this, and you are scientists, you are proving my point. You are too out of touch with reality to have the power you have.

Dr. Retard

So when I read contemporary moral philosophy, the majority of inspiration seems to come from Hume and Kant. To over-simplify, people have Humean theories or Kantian theories. These are the big names when it comes to inspiring today's moral philosophy. Aristotle and Plato, sure, but Hume and Kant, definitely.

These guys well preceded Darwin. So what is this entire branch of moral philosophy? Maybe today's moral philosophers are unwittingly missing out on the action.

(Herbert Spencer? He more-or-less just put an evolutionary spin on utilitarianism, which of course goes back to Mill and Bentham, and further back to the Scottish Enlightenment. Almost all before Darwin (1859 Origin of Species, 1861 Mill's Utilitarianism)).

yguy

The problem is that it is assumed by many to explain where human beings came from. If man evolved from lower primates, it follows that what most people think of as soul or consciousness is merely an improvement on older hardware, and that morals are merely programming meant to ensure the survival of the species. Now that the species is established as dominant, it can be argued - and often is, if only in piecemeal and circuitous fasion - that morals may be safely dispensed with.

Dr. Retard

Well, it's a regrettable fact. Goombahs can and do pick up a scientific fact and run with it, to uncharted levels of dumb.

Quantum mechanics springs to mind.

luvluv

Dr. Retard:

We're confusing two issues.

1) The thrust of this post was actually about LAYPEOPLE. That contemporary philsophers are mostly Humean or Kantian is really irrelavent to the majority of people walking the street, who have heard of neither Hume nor Kant. Do you really think that most people who disbelieve in God do so on the basis of Hume and Kant or on the theory of evolution?

2) I brought up several atheistic moral philsophies just to get past the absurd notion that morality has nothing to do with scientific knowledge. You can make the argument that existentialism grew entirely out of the belief in the nonexistence of God and thus the primacy of subjective experience. Out of that you get the philsophy of Rorty, Nietczhse, Sartre, Camus, etc.

That philosophy is entirely based on an atheism which is nearly entirely based on the theory of evolution. It is no accident that these philsophies occured after the theory of evoultion became popular.

Basically, I was just trying to demonstrate that moral philosophies do follow scientific discoveries, and scientists should take that into account and alter their presentation. They should explain the necessity of methodological naturalism while explaining that there is no independant reason to think that naturalism in itself is actually true. Naturalism must be assumed to do science, science does not prove naturalism. Inasmuch as it is succesful, it offers evidential support for naturalism, but one can never prove that everything is explicable in terms of natural causes until one actually finds the natural cause for literally everything. This hasn't been done, and isn't likely ever to be done, and so naturalism must be regarded as an unproveable philsophical position. Scientits often behave as if it is an established fact, and it isn't. In this way they mislead those who put total faith in what they say.