You Can't Use Science if You Deny its Methods

Since right-wing, fundamentalist Christian reactionaries believe that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago and that life on Earth was all created within seven days, despite all the piles of real, empirical scientific evidence that the earth is billions of years old and that life evolved, the fundies are the penultimate science deniers of the 21st century. Therefore, here are some things that, from now on, Christian fundamentalists are not allowed to do, say, or participate in.

Fundamentalists are not allowed to seek medical help when they become ill or have an accident. Medical science is part of biology and the cornerstone on which biology is built is evolutionary theory. This is especially true with regards to medicine. Some fundamentalists already refuse medical help, even refusing to take their sick children to the doctor. But now this rule applies to all fundies. No more visits to the physician for any of them. They can't have it both ways; either believe in the science of biology or don't. All science follows the same rules, so if you believe in medical science you have to believe in evolutionary science, too.

Fundamentalists are no longer allowed to use scientific concepts such as the second law of thermodynamics or the law of conservation of angular momentum as fuel in their debates with the non-science-deniers. A common argument put forth by those who do not believe in science is that the second law of thermodynamics says that evolution can't happen because it causes entropy to decrease instead of increase. Of course, the laws of thermodynamics apply only to closed systems. The earth is an open system. They also apply to the average condition of a closed system; local and momentary increases in entropy are allowed. And in cosmology, momentary can mean billions of years. Some also claim that if stars and planets were caused by an explosion, such as the Big Bang, then the law of conservation of angular momentum would mean that every planet in the universe would have to spin in the same direction. This shows a striking lack of understanding of science as well as math. Angular momentum is a vector quantity, so as long as the total angular momentum of a system is conserved it doesn't matter which direction the individual components are spinning.

Christians have a list of things that the bible says about science, things that were written, they claim, long before science discovered them. They can no longer do that, because it's all bogus. It's a con game. There is nothing in the bible, not a single phrase, that the ancients could not have known about at the time. Blood is the giver of life, which was obvious to anyone who had ever watched someone else bleed to death. The bible does not say that the earth is a sphere; it says it's a circle, like a coin. You know - flat. The bible also speaks of cleanliness of food, but there is not a word about why food should remain clean, not a word about germs. There was not a culture on Earth, contemporaneous with the ancient Middle East, that did not also know about these so-called scientific facts that the bible supposedly speaks about. And even if it were the case, fundamentalists are science deniers, so why do they care about scientific facts of the bible? They can no longer use that argument, because they don't believe in science.

Fundamentalists can no longer claim that "creation science" or intelligent design are at all scientific. Creation science is an oxymoron. The biblical account of creation is the opposite of science. And intelligent design is just "creation science" repackaged so that it can be better sold to schools. If fundamentalists deny the basic premise of the scientific method, they can't make up their own non-scientific method and then call it science. Again, they can't have it both ways, either they believe in the scientific method, in which case they would accept evolution and the Big Bang, or they don't believe in it, in which case they need to stop calling their supernatural contentions scientific.

Fundamentalist Christians believe in science when it is convenient for them. They don't accept any part of science that might go against their precious, 2000-year-old book of superstitious nonsense. But since they cannot accept scientific facts and evidence that runs contrary to their beliefs, then they, in all fairness, should stop using science in any way at all. But, they treat science the same as they treat the bible: They pick and choose what they want to believe. They're fundamentalists; it's in their nature. And most of them are not intelligent enough to realize the fallacy of their ways.

Senate Committee Makes State Look Bad

More than two decades ago when Louisiana passed legislation that would allow schools there to teach Creationism, I thought how foolish and uneducated those people are. When Kansas’ state board of education mandated equal treatment for Intelligent Design, I thought how sad it is that the people in that state who decide how their citizens are educated are so dim-witted. When Dover, Penn. Schools decided to sneak Intelligent Design into their science curriculum I thought it was underhanded and uninformed. I sat here as a science teacher in Indiana and bragged about how good our state science standards are, with their heavy emphasis on evolution theory.

Now, however, I don’t feel so confident in our state. This week, the Senate Education Committee, despite lots of expert testimony in opposition, passed a bill (SB 89) that would allow public schools in this state to teach Creationism in science classes. They didn’t even try to mask it as Intelligent Design. They want the biblical version of Creationism taught in science. And that passed out of committee, the education committee, by an 8 to 2 vote.

Now I feel ashamed that my state has taken a big giant leap backward in its science education policy. Although the bill has not passed into law yet, and hopefully never will, the passage out of the education committee highlights the increasing danger to science education in Indiana since Republicans took over the General Assembly. I’m embarrassed by the action of these legislators. Eight out of the 10 members of the state’s education committee apparently do not have enough education of their own.

It doesn’t matter what these people believe. That should be irrelevant. What matters is that they are trying to dictate that students be taught religion, their own personal religion, in science class. Why not just go ahead and teach Flat Earth hypothesis in geography class? It’s also supposedly based on biblical teachings. Why not also teach that insects have four legs, like the bible says, instead of the six that they actually have? They are free to believe whatever fairy tales they want, but to try to force those beliefs on the students of Indiana under the guise of science is inexcusable.

It sickens and saddens me that the people with power in this state are such dullards, and so incompetent and ignorant that they have used the state’s time to pass such idiotic legislation while being paid taxpayer money for it.

On behalf of the more rational people of the State of Indiana, I apologize for the idiots on our education committee for making us all look like uneducated yokels.

Science vs. God

People believe in God or they don't. Some say they don't know, but if they don't know or are not sure that God exists, then they don't really believe, do they? But if a person does have belief in God, it is not based on any kind of empirical evidence. It might be based on personal evidence, which is not allowed when doing science. It might be based on a trust in others who have told them that God exists. It is certainly, at the root, based on some authority (like the bible). But any belief in God can never, ever, be based on reason or data, because no empirical data exists in support of the God hypothesis.

Using the methods of science, there is no way to prove that God does or does not exist. The scientific method uses inductive reasoning, which means that even though most theories can never be proven 100 percent, one can collect so much evidence in support of a theory that it is treated, for all practical purposes, as a fact. In other words, it becomes useful at predicting things in the real world. When one hypothesizes the existence of God, and especially a specific god with certain personality traits, then the empirical evidence in support of this hypothesis is so scarce, even non-existent, that it can be completely ignored as a possibility.

So to compare, science does not always get the right answer, or what is closer to the truth, the complete answer. But, unlike religion, science corrects itself. That is the method of science. Science is unbiased, non-judgmental, data-driven, and most importantly, skeptical. A good scientist doubts everything until the evidence is so compelling that it can join the ranks of the most highly-respected theories, such as atomic theory, quantum theory, or the theory of evolution. On the other hand, religion, including Christianity, is based on authority texts (the bible, the Koran). They are driven by feelings and emotions. They are most certainly biased and agenda-based, and highly judgmental. More importantly, a religion cannot be skeptical of itself.

Now, in every aspect of daily life or business life, most people embrace the more rational, data-driven path to problem solving. Only in their religious life do they embrace faith - the blind, authority-driven, emotionally-charged path that defines their religion. Those who claim they are certain that God exists, especially the personal God of the bible, are certain only because they have decided to be. They have nothing external on which to base that certitude. On the other hand, science would never claim 100-percent certainty that God does not exist. It would claim only that the evidence in support of God's existence is so minuscule and rarefied that it need not be considered for practical purposes. The evidence in support of God's existence is exactly the same as the evidence in support of leprechauns and unicorns. Those creatures might exist, but nobody takes that possibility very seriously. Thus, although God has not been disproved, he is relegated to the extremely-unlikely-to-exist pile and forgotten about, that is until some fundamentalist waves him in your face again.