A Victory for Science (Part 3)

While the recent Texas evolution fight made a loser out of both Creationists and Evolutionists, thankfully science came out the winner.

A Victory for Science (Part 1)

A Victory for Science (Part 2)

Recently, the state of Texas underwent a periodic review of it's biology curriculum textbook. At primary issue was a debate over how evolution should be taught. The results were mixed. For the last part of this three-part blog, I'm going to look at the real winner of this battle of wits: science.

The entire point of science, as I see it, is to make the most accurate generalizations about the universe. In order to do this, it tries to be objective as it can, demanding rigor through repeatable experimentation, falsifiability, and open disclosure of methods, along with debate of conclusions in peer-reviewed journals. Subjectivity can produce accuracy, but not consistently, and it's much more difficult to dislodge subjective falsehoods than objectively-created ones.

As such, in order to avoid the pitfalls of subjectivity, science has to constantly be critical and skeptical. It has to be constantly on the lookout for doctrine and dogma. Otherwise, people could make up their own worldviews using some data generated by the scientific method and then call their worldview "science", and that everyone else is a subjective moron for not believing in it. It is these worldviews, no matter the data that is in them, that becomes dogmatic.

Tragically, huge swaths of what the theory of evolution has created is, in fact, worldview. Long ago, people like Huxley made up their own religion using some real science that Darwin had done. This worldview hijacked the objective system of science to create a subjective ideology, and then branded anyone who didn't believe in evolution to not believe in science. Refusal to believe in ANY subjective system, no matter who came up with the data does NOT mean that you disbelieve in objective systems, like science.

But tragically, this hasn't been apparent to so many scientists over time. As such, many believe that in order to believe in the objective system of science, you need to believe in the subjective parts that snuck in.

Thankfully, however, at least in the state of Texas, this tragedy is under siege. Now high schoolers are being taught that they need to approach theories critically and conclusions with skepticism. They are learning that real science involves real debate, not simply accepting what more senior scientists, or a simple majority of the science community says is so. They are learning that disagreeing with conclusions does not mean that you are an unscientific heretic to rational thought and reasonable disposition.

Not only will students have a more mature understanding of how the scientific process works, but it also emphasizes the power that real science has. As mentioned before, students who are able to critically handle data and debate conclusions are less likely to fall for non-science like creationism while they're busy disbelieving non-science like evolutionism. As well, it embeds the principle that conclusions from authority should be questioned and tested, whether the truth comes from the lips of high-ranking priests, or high-ranking scientists. Noocracy averted, democracy is still safe for the future.

Hopefully these kinds of people will go on to enter scientific professions so that they can help clean out future subjective messes, and the scientific body will be better off for it. If we are forced to have non-scientific groups propounding real science to clean out the non-science from scientific groups, then so be it. Texas definitely made the right call.


For further reading, click here.