There is a place near Bristol (UK) called the Noah's Ark Zoo Farm, it claims to belong to the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums and claims to offer science education to school parties; however following a recent visit by a member of the Humanist association it has become clear that certain educational elements of the establishment run entirely contrary to established science, one could go so far as to say these people are lying to children. You have probably guessed by now that as usual religion is behind it; a simple cursory glance at their WEB site reveals a link called "creation research" (an oxymoron if ever there was one) and the report from Paul Pettinger of the BHA exposes many falsehoods being passed off as "science education", for example signs proclaiming reasons why apes are *not* related to man and how goats are biblically clean because of their cloven hooves.
No one objects to these people having religiously inspired theme parks, or indeed expressing their views as much as they like, however they cross a line when they call it "science" and encourage school children to visit as part of the national curriculum. To qualify as science and therefore part of the science education program you need to go through a proper peer reviewed process, do research and get published in respected scientific journals. There are no short cuts as these people seem to think there are, i.e. you can't just make stuff up that agrees with your religious beliefs and contradicts reality then call it "science", that is called dishonesty.
Someone from the educational authorities in Avon needs to drop in for a couple of hours and explain this fact of life before these people make even more cash from unsuspecting families by peddling their delusions as science.
11 comments:
Apes not related to huamns - give me his address and I'll go and talk to him.
Better yet I'll invite him over to my family's house and he can watch us eat dinner!
Still, while the religion behind this institution is perpetrating a fraud, this is not proof that all religion is by definition misfounded - by your own standards correlation is not causation.
You know my position on religion pretty well by now so I won't repeat it, but I will repeat that it is important to insist on equally rigorous standards on all sides of a debate.
Hi OP
You are right on both points (your house sounds like mine!), the only thing I would add is that every organisation, group or person who claims to know things about the universe which they cannot possibly know is either a fraud or a fool.
I think all religions qualify to varying degrees, or at least I don't know of one that doesn't make such claims?
Clearly, there's not much money or kudos to be had from simply saying "I don't know how life originated" :)
'Creation science' -- what an oxymoron.
Thanks for this fine post. You should send it to the local paper as a letter to the editor.
I won't jump from saying one religion may be fraudulent to saying all religions are without specifying more clearly what qualifies as a religion.
As it happens I quite like the idea that politics is a secular religion and that this resolves quite a few of the false traditional arguments about both.
On the subject of the origins of life there are a number of potential answers any or all of which could be true either separately or simultaneously, so it's not even like we don't know, it's just that we're not sure!
I had a good conversation this weekend which you'd've liked - think of all the natural causes of death you can and consider how they relate to biological function, then start to see that death explains what life is and where it comes from!
So for example, your dna is like a zip and cancer is the process which the teeth of the zip break off and get it stuck preventing it from zipping up properly. The process can also affect other complex proteins, so ultimately we can compare the process of how they are formed with how they decompose. Apparently cancer treatment focuses on enabling healthy cells to replicate in a way which replaces and compensates for the dead cells to stop them from spreading.
I found it fascinating, but the science got a bit beyond me. It interesting that we have the capability to discover real knowledge, yet so many people prefer to hinder these efforts under whatever guise - I don't think my lack of understanding prevents facts from being real, but I'd just love to understand better.
OP – Yes I need to define religion; the definition for me is somewhat circular in this conversation but I think the central premise is faith, i.e. believing unfalsifiable things within the context of some kind of cultural/social dogma. I don’t think politics would qualify, or maybe it would? It’s an interesting thought.
Sounds like your conversation was right up my alley! I can’t remember if you’ve read the selfish gene?, anyway, if not you might enjoy it, kind of turns your worldview upside down when you realise that (with all our self importance) we’re just survival capsules for our DNA to travel around in, which in turn just builds more bodies that are good at surviving.
I find it revealing that we use language like “discover” when we talk about science, almost like science is about stumbling across a lost 50p behind the sofa; in my experience 99.99% of it is hard graft, and real knowledge is usually only gained sparingly and at great personal expense. (Unlike “revealed” knowledge)
You may be interested in this, I read today that Craig Venter (he of Human genome project fame) is adamant that he’ll create artificial life from scratch before the end of this year; he certainly has the resources – where do you think that would leave the faithful?
I'm quite amused by the concept of 'artificial' life - doesn't that challenge the definition of life itself, or is Venter merely overhyping his ability to place one part of the chain in a lab?
Frankly, I see 'life' as an essential component of existence - if there were no life then there would be no universe and vice versa.
I mean, it was a statistical certainty that there is other organic life out there and we've already found it in the ice caps of other planets. So perhaps we shouldn't see processes as disconnected at all.
OP, Venter both impresses and scares me at the same time, I love his lateral thinking and his "can do" approach, but boy does he move fast.
I don't think this would simply challenge our definition, it would rewrite it, i.e. "life" would move from a biological science to a computing science!
I'm not sure if faith is believing 'unfalsifiable things', or just things which are more than the evidence allows. How much more is the difference between reasonable faith and blind faith.
Most of us have reasonable faith - we eat food believing it won't poison us, we fly planes believing they won't crash: available experience and science points us towards eating and flying, but we don't actually know for sure until the event. Same with, for example, marriage: we don't know for sure if it's going to work, but some things can only be reached by a step of faith, by knowing enough to justify the step, rather than knowing everything.
Most Christians (I'm one, you may have guessed) infer their faith from the evidence and experience open to them, and I guess we maintain it as a paradigm: a worldview which makes sense of the data in a certain way. It's also a worldview which affects the way we engage with the data, so Oranjepan's point about the similarity with politics is close to the mark.
Blind faith is more of the 'unfalsifiable' kind, and it's the kind that tends to either resist all evidence, or come crashing down in a heap once too much evidence piles up. Reasonable faith engages with the evidence and adjusts to it. Some scientists (Fred Hoyle is one of the better known ones) have even moved towards a belief in God as a result of the science they're engaged with.
I live in Somerset but haven't visited the zoo. Not sure yet whether it's the kind of Christian stuff I'd be enlightened by or embarassed by.
Hi dmk, many thanks for your comment and it's great to get a Christian perspective on the topics we chew the fat over here.
I think I understand what you are driving at WRT defining reasonable faith and blind faith, i.e. it's a continuum of thought etc. But I think you are using the term "faith" in two different settings and they are not equivalent, and therefore unable to be placed on the same continuum together.
I think we are in agreement that to follow a religion you need "faith" which is more towards the "blind" end of your spectrum, i.e. a belief in things that cannot be proven scientifically or even unfathomably unlikely things; I'm not sure if there are any religions that don't expect this but certainly the most popular ones do and in fact revere the emotion.
You then go on to say that it also requires faith to take a plane or eat food etc. albeit "less" faith than say being a Christian. I think this is the flaw in your argument because we don't fly in 747's via faith, we do it via evidence, we look at the odds (subconsciously perhaps) we know that statistically we are more likely to die in our car than in a plane. These are two distinct uses of the word “faith”, one is evidential faith and one is just faith or in some cases I suppose you could say blind faith.
Interesting you should mention Fred Hoyle, he is dead now of course, but when it came to evolution he has been shown to have had some rather erroneous views about it; his 747 junk yard argument for instance shows a complete lack of understanding at a deep level of what evolution is and how it works. Interestingly he believed in the “panspermia” theory of origin, i.e. life was seeded from outer-space. In any case many scientists have been religious, heck most people in recorded history have been religious, I’m sure there are very good evolutionary reasons why that is the case. Of course this has no bearing on the truth of any particular religion though as I’m sure you would concede, and the vast majority of scientists these days are not.
In my experience people of faith often argue that emotions like love and trust are taken purely on faith, superficially it seems like a strong argument for faith, but again I would argue this is simply not the case. I’m sure you already appreciate this fact, but even Atheists like me feel love, it’s a universal human emotion of course but even so, I could easily hear myself saying something like “I have faith that my wife loves me”, this is not a statement of faith in the same why that you might say that you have faith that Jesus Christ is the son of the creator of the universe, why?, because I have evidence that my wife loves me, she tells me for a start, the look on her face, the things she says, the things other people say about her, the things she does, and so on, hopefully you see the difference I’m driving at.
I guess a lot of faith looks 'blind' because it's not the same as a scientific theory backed up by evidence. With a few exceptions people don't become Christians (or whatever) for purely scientific reasons. It's usually a combination of things.
For example:
- person x reads a couple of books about Christian missionaries. He's impressed by their character and life stories, but doesn't really get what motivates them.
- A friend invites him to church. The friend is fairly normal, the church seems relaxed and friendly, person x enjoys it and enjoys the sense of community and acceptance.
- As an experiment, person x prays for a sick friend. They get better. Just to check he prays for something else. That seems to be answered too.
- Person x starts reading the Bible - the good bits like the teachings of Jesus. They make sense. Certain words seem to jump off the page: a command to forgive, which, when x puts it into practice, sorts out a damaged relationship and makes him feel loads better.
Within this sort of story - which isn't too far removed from some of the people I know, a developing faith in the Christian God makes sense. Sure it's not scientifically rigorous, but then Christians would say that faith is a relationship with God, and not a scientific theory.
Why it is that faith 'makes sense' in this way to quite a lot of people is something I'm sure evolutionists have an explanation for, but calling it 'blind faith' is a bit of a misnomer. At no stage has person x taken a complete leap into the dark, against all the evidence. Their faith has 'evolved' in response to their own experiences and reflections.
For myself, it's only since I became a Christian that I've thought more deeply about questions of science and faith, and within what I know my faith still 'makes sense', though there are some things which are harder to make sense of than others.
To expand my point on marriage; Marriage is, to a degree, a step of faith: the vows themselves admit that neither person knows what's coming, but they pledge themselves to love each other come what may. They don't know whether they will make it 'for better for worse for richer for poorer', but the only way to find out is to step over the line, and to take the risk of giving themselves to one another. Yes the 'evidence' that people have going into marriage is different from the 'evidence' I have for my faith, but in neither case are we talking about a scientific theory, we are talking about the fundamental business of living and loving, which surely has to go beyond the bare data of science?
Hope that makes sense!
dmk, many thanks for your comment, it certainly makes sense, and I agree with a large part of what you say; most of my friends who follow a particular faith would also say the same as you, i.e. their faith isn’t the result of a reasoned process, i.e. it’s little to do with proof, or evidence or science etc. I can certainly see that point of view, i.e. having faith in some patriarchal “order” in order to feel better about the world and oneself; much like the well documented placebo effect I suppose? Such a thing clearly helps some people to overcome challenges in their lives etc. I find it fascinating that there are people who are perfectly happy to accept this methodology and yet there are also some who simply cannot; I would put myself in the second group; I truly wonder if there isn’t some genetic basis for it, like the art-science dichotomy.
As for the tangible evidence that some people claim for God, like prayers being answered or miracles occurring etc., most of it seems to be far too aligned to selfish human interests to be in the slightest bit convincing, but I suppose that’s where the faith part comes in.
I accept your last point on marriage (I reckon some unions are more of a leap of faith than others!) however I would disagree with your conclusion, for me science is not something that is “bare data”, it is hard to explain, but I think for me the quest for an explanation of reality, the possibility of true knowledge is a wonderful and awe-inspiring thing. Clearly I can’t put myself in your head so I’m hypothesising here, but I would wager that many people like me feel that science is as much (actually much more) of a transcendent experience as your faith is for you, certainly from the point of view of personal satisfaction and providing goals and purpose in life etc.
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