Why Darwin Matters_ The Case Against Intelligent Design - Michael Shermer [43]
This is what the evolution-creation debate is really about—religion, not science—and Intelligent Design theorists should be rightly called Intelligent Design creationists to drive the point home. Science is what scientists do, and Intelligent Design Creationists are not doing science. They are doing religion. It is not coincidental that almost all Intelligent Design creationists are Christians. But I will grant them this: Intelligent Design arguments are reasons to believe if you already believe. If you are not a True Believer, if you are a skeptic or a Fence Sitter, creationism and Intelligent Design are untenable.
Can any good come out of such debates? I think so. Outside heretics can stimulate us to refine our arguments and improve our explanatory prose. As Isaac Asimov once observed in confronting what he called exoheresies, or outside challenges to the status quo (in this case the radical ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky):
An exoheresy may cause scientists to bestir themselves for the purposes of reexamining the bases of their beliefs, even if only to gather firm and logical reasons for the rejection of the exoheresy—and that is good.54
Yet, there is a final question that would chill Asimov’s blood: Will those who accept evolution let those who do not accept it determine what science is?
SCIENCE UNDER ATTACK
How do we look for a new law? First, we guess it. Don’t laugh. That’s really true. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what it implies. Then we compare those computation results to nature—or to experiment, or to experience, or to observation—to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.
—Richard Feynman, lecture at Cornell University on the nature of science, 1964
So much comes down to necessity and chance.
In the 1990s I published a series of articles in respected peer-reviewed journals applying chaos and complexity theory to human history.1 Out of that research I constructed a theoretical model demonstrating the relative roles of necessity and contingency—law and chance—in history, and how the relationship of these two factors helps to explain why sometimes the kingdom is lost for the want of a horseshoe nail while at other times a million horseshoe nails would have made no difference at all. Sometimes “great men” make history; at other times geographical conditions, social circumstances, economic forces, and political machinations swamp any influence that individuals may have. I even published a book with one of the top university presses in which I demonstrated how my theory helps to explain such world-shaping events as the Holocaust.2 I had high hopes that historians would adopt my theory, put it into practice, and perhaps even teach it to their students. They haven’t. Maybe I did not communicate my theory clearly. Possibly historians do not use such theoretical models. Worse, perhaps my theory is wrong or useless. Should I appear before Congress to demand that legislation be passed to give my theory equal time with other theories of history? Should I lobby school board members to force history teachers to teach my theory of history?
The God of the Government
Since Intelligent Design theory has failed