Facts and Beliefs

So I've just finished reading a book called "Monkey Girl" which filled out details of the Kitzmiller trial. In this trial the school board tried to include Intelligent Design (a religious argument) as an alternative to the theory of Evolution in the grade nine curriculum. They claimed that they were supporting the students by trying to broaden the course material. However, the understanding of the science by the board was - to put it mildly - woefully, no, comically inaccurate. They were motivated not by the facts of science but rather their beliefs of religion.

Intelligent Design is a religious argument that attempts to pass itself off as science and it infuriates me because it works so hard to hamstring scientific investigation. ID is a 'God of the gaps' theory. It claims that gaps of evidence in evolutionary theory is proof of an intelligent designer (denied to be God but no alternative is suggested). ID is not science, it is confusing and disingenuous.

So here is my analogy of ID and why it bothers me as a scientist. Say we are explorers in the 15th century. We have a fairly robust theory of continents; they probably have forests and rivers, mountains and deserts. They don't, for example have giant holes that go straight down to the centre of the earth. So North America is discovered and is most easily explored by water. You gradually get an outline of a continent and maybe some details up a major rivers. However, when you draw a map you have great big white spots with no exploration, the gaps. Are the gaps proof that your theory of what continents are is incorrect? Or have you just not gotten to all the places yet.

What would it take to make you change your opinion about what continents are? Is someone pointing at the blank spots enough? Or would you need evidence, like someone making it to the middle and showing that it is like the surface of the sun?

ID tries to claim scientists refuse to accept alternatives to evolution and that gaps in knowledge are a fatal flaw in the theory. In science we are exploring new country, and seeing fantastic new places but nothing we have seen have shaken the roots of the theory of Evolution. I can't remember of the origin of this quote but when asked what it would take to disprove evolution the scientist quipped "rabbits in the Cretaceous".

The ID movement has at best managed to point out gaps, it has not provided evidence. And I'm not even getting into the fact that ID needs a supernatural explanation which is outside the realm of science. As a scientist I am not as interested in supporting Darwin as I am interested in knowing the truth. If the truth says the middle of the continent is hotter than the surface of the sun, I will not walk there, ignoring all evidence to the contrary just to cling to my precious and unquestionable theory. I have not yet seen evidence of rabbits in the Creataceous.

Finally I have one quote that I thought the most telling from the book "Monkey Girl".

The argument [against ID] went nowhere, for it was not really about evidence or logic anymore. It was about belief - and, more specifically, about what people choose to believe, because it is a choice. As Stough would later realize, the women bearing those petitions would not be convinced by anything he could possibly say. They chose to believe something that they did not understand and that sounded scientific - ID - and to reject something else that they did not understand and that sounded scientific: evolution. They did this because one appealed to their worldview and their religious convictions, while the other scared and challenged them.