Assumptions in Science

It has been a very, very long time since I last set out to write about this topic of intelligent design. The reasons for this long hiatus are many and complex, and would be of no benefit to recount here. At this time, I feel that it is important to resume this discourse and let it continue to a more natural end.

Before beginning again, I would like to take a moment to share some evidences which were recently shared with me. In this tension between the view of a created origin of the world and an evolving origin of the world, the primary attack leveled against those who hold to a view of creation is that they must "bite a bullet" in order to maintain that position. That is, they must believe steadfastly in certain facts or ideas which are not impossible, but nevertheless difficult to keep consistent with the rest of the body of knowledge. Specifically, creationists have to believe that a large percentage of scientific facts and interpretations, corroborated by a large percentage of the scientific community, are either false, misguided, or misrepresented. It would seem that--at least probabilistically speaking--the odds are in favor of agreeing with the scientific community, and to do otherwise is nothing but foolishness and stubborn.

However, this need not be the end of the story, even though most would like it to be. If it can be shown that, contrary to the assumption that the conclusions of every researcher are formed independently of every other researcher, there is in fact some influence from one researcher on the next, the possibility of error is no longer infeasible. Instead of measuring the probability that each researcher might introduce the same error again and again, we really are looking for the probability that the following researcher will not question an error carried along by the previous one. We know that researchers do not work independently of one another and realistically, not much progress could be made if they did not. It is not an inherently bad or dangerous thing that this collusion occurs, but neither are these people necessarily above reproach.

Still, the question remains as to whether or not the scientific community would and does allow grievous misconceptions to be perpetuated. One such example was recently shared with me of how this has happened in recent history. I will let you read the story for yourself, and in case you are doubtful I made every effort to find an "unbiased" source. For background, begin with an article on Catastrophism and then read about J. Harlen Bretz. As you will see, Uniformitarianism was preferred to Catastrophism in the 18th and 19th century not so much because of any new-found evidence, but because Uniformitarianism offered an escape from the religious baggage implicitly associated with Catastrophism. From the way the story was first told to me, Bretz's findings were initially discounted not on the basis of any particular flaws in his research, but simply because his conclusions did not conform to the accepted standard of the day. They would be on the level of silliness and pseudo-science. It wasn't until the rest of the scientific community actually went out and looked at his findings themselves that they were willing to concede that perhaps there were some flaws in their assumptions. Despite a general agreement, popular opinion turned out to be not quite correct, and it had been carried along through time without much trouble.

Hopefully this illustration will soften any hardened resolutions you may have regarding the preferability of mainstream thought over any other position, or at least that regarding the essentially infallibile nature of mainstream thought. It is often claimed that the opposition has no evidence at all for its claims, and it was my intention to show that this is not so. Furthermore, I would like to point out the role that presuppositions played in this instance. In hindsight, we see that geologists were mistaken for some time because they held onto certain presupposed views through which they interpreted what they found, but these views were not wholly consistent with a true picture of what was going on. We are told that science seeks to lay aside these biases and presuppositions and only look at matters objectively. Aside from the fact that this is very, very hard--because they are hard to find and harder to part with--I would suggest that it is actually impossible. Consider carefully by what means we judge that "objectivity" is a reliable standard, and you may see that this, too, is a presupposition, after a fashion. The goal, then, is not to be as neutral as possible in one's reasoning, as this seems a futile task, but to seek out a right foundation for all other reasoning, and it is in this direction I wish to go.