A subtle change in language: The Kansas evolution controversy

[BurtWorm]

Creating a Controversy
Today's anti-evolutionists don't want to abolish science -- they just want to render it irrelevant.

by Chris Mooney of the American Prospect

http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=9671


Kansas’s previously proposed science standards had appropriately defined science as "the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us." Anti-evolutionists want to change this language to the following: "Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation, that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building, to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."

This may seem harmless at first glance. But the change carefully removes any reference to science's search for natural explanations in favor of “more adequate” explanations, creating a opening for creationists to insert the supernatural. Such a change reflects the fact that the new generation of anti-evolutionists has launched an attack on modern science itself, claiming that it amounts, essentially, to institutionalized atheism. Science, they say, has a prejudice against supernatural causation (by which they generally mean “the actions of God”). Instead, the new anti-evolutionists claim that if scientists would simply open their minds to the possible action of forces acting beyond the purview of natural laws, they would suddenly perceive the weaknesses of evolutionary theory.

[smoogatz]

1. And the last tattered shreds of the Enlightenment

go into the garbage. Weclome to the New American dark ages.

[H2O Man]

2. They are fools ....

If there is "God" {and I am convinced there is} then that God would be more likely to be found within the Laws of Nature than outside of them. Keep science in the classroom, and teach your values at home or in church.

[ibid]

4. Amen :-) there should be no conflict IMHO

BY DEFINITION THERE CAN NOT BE "Scientific evidence" that God either exists, or does not exist.

Indeed the "Scientific evidence/theory" that folks like myself have fun playing with atheists with is not "Scientific evidence" - it is just the silly backfilling required (because there is no experimental evidence for the new theory) so as to go from "new theory that solves conflicts in old theories" to those conflicts, and the pretending that there is less faith required to believe in "new theory" than is required to believe in God.

There is a good case to be made to changing the words used for thinking/speculating about 11 dimemsion string theory - or M theory from "the latest scientific theory of everything is 10, or 11, dimemsion string theory - or M theory, etc" - to a more correct - IMHO - "the latest piece of philosophy/religion that attempts to explain, with math, creation" is 11 dimemsion string theory - or M theory, etc .

[Imperialism Inc.]

3. *sigh*

There are only 2 possibilities.

1) A proposed theory, entity, phenomena etc, has effects in the "natural world". These effects can be seen by people or their instruments. The effects may also be able to be measured and quantified. An example would be an electric field. I can't hold up an electric field and show it to you. Can't carry it around in my back pocket. However, the concept of electric field has measurable, highly regular effects on things in the "natural world" that can be seen. If God , or astrology or global consciousness has such measurable effects then it too becomes a part of the "natural world".

2) A proposed theory, entity, phenomena etc, has NO effects in the "natural world". There is no way to study these theories, entities etc except in the realm of pure thought and logic (a.k.a. philosophy and religion). Science does not study these concepts because its methodology is based on things that can be seen.

So, what they are doing is playing a dirty semantic game. They start with the concept outlined above, that science cannot study things that do not create evidence in the natural world. They label this as "supernatural". Using essentially this definition

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=supernatural
su·per·nat·u·ral
adj.
1. Of or relating to existence outside the natural world.


Then they morph the meaning of "supernatural" in mid-argument!! to mean simply things that people generally don't currently think are part of the natural world. The new meaning is a closer to the other definitions of supernatural.

2. Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.
3. Of or relating to a deity.
4. Of or relating to the immediate exercise of divine power; miraculous.
5. Of or relating to the miraculous.

This, of course, is not the case at all. If scientific evidence exists that show an entity called God exists then the scientists will go where the evidence leads. Currently, there is a lack of evidence (in the natural world) for that so thinking and speculating about such things is confined to philosophy and religion.