The Three Failures of Creationism. Walter Fitch
due to a dream, a deceiving God, or a deceiving daemon. Philosophers belonging to the branch of philosophy known as skepticism point out that we cannot be sure that we are not a disembodied “brain in a vat” and that all our observations are merely illusions being fed to us. (Think of the movie The Matrix). Various justifications have been proposed for thinking that our experiences are reliable. One answer to the problem is the formation of a suitable track record of memories that makes it reasonable to attribute reliability to our perceptions and gives us some hope that our observations correspond to reality!
2. Observation is like experience but more structured. You perform experiments with proper controls. You time how long it takes to get to work by different routes and then use the one that gets you to work the quickest—unless, of course, you dislike work. You alter the spices in a recipe to see if the resulting pancakes taste better or worse. Scientists continually use this method to learn about the material world, and for them it is the definitive way of knowing that some belief (knowledge) is correct. There is no higher authority to which a scientist can appeal. It is the most important source of information for scientists, because it is verifiable by additional and repeated observations. One does need to be careful, though, because things are not always what they superficially seem. Moreover, as someone once said, “If I hadn't believed it, I wouldn't have seen it.” This important humorous saying indicates that it is possible to be led astray by believing something so strongly that you are led to see things that are not there, or to fail to see things that are.
3. Logic is the mathematical subject that assures that the reasoning process is valid, with erroneous reasoning revealed as such. But logic doesn't prove anything even if the logic is valid, because the correctness of the conclusion still depends upon the correctness of the assumptions. All knowledge can be put through the tests of logic, logic having nothing to do with the philosophy one may be examining. It can test for logical (in)consistency. Thus both creationism and science (and other systems of belief) strive to make their knowledge system as logical, as internally consistent, as possible. It is the second most important way of knowing for the scientist, but logically it is important for the creationist as well.
4. Authority is learning from the learned, the most bountiful source of knowledge that we have. We learn first from our parents, then from teachers and playmates, and then from employers. We also learn from books, newspapers, magazines, television, and games. Not all authorities are equally good, and a good authority in one field may be limited in another field. If you have a theological question, you'll probably do better to ask a rabbi (priest, imam, etc.) than a scientist. But if you have a scientific question, the scientist is probably a better choice than the rabbi (or priest or imam). And even in their own fields scientists are not all equally knowledgeable. As the Romans put it: caveat emptor—let the buyer beware.
For the literal creationist, on matters of evolution there is no higher authority to which one can appeal than the first two chapters of Genesis, literally interpreted. On this the creationists insist. It should come as no surprise, then, that, as things now stand, the differences between evolutionists and the strict creationists are irresolvable. They could be resolvable only if one of the two groups changed their criteria for truth to that of the other, or if they separated the areas addressed between them. Specifically, the evolutionists would agree that they have no authority in the realm of the theological, and the creationists would agree they have no authority in the realm of the material world. One should recognize that authority comes in different flavors. It is important that one recognize the difference between an authority that talks a lot about what is true, and one that presents experimental evidence in favor of a proposition being true (or not).
5. Intuition is the sudden appearance of an idea that feels correct to you although you can't say why or how it came into your head. It is a frequent source of knowledge, although its probability of being correct may be very low. “I don't know whether this organism (Archaeopteryx) is a bird or a mammal, but I feel that it is a bird.” Scientists frequently have these feelings, and those who have the best intuition tend to be the more successful scientists. Intuition tends to be most valuable when it is about a topic of which the one doing the intuiting has much experience. Note how weak the prediction is. Intuition is of little value in an intellectual argument, but it may be of great value in suggesting a fruitful line of research.
6. Revelation is God speaking to you, telling you what to believe or do, or what is true. For scientists it is their experiments or observations that are revealing, rather than God. The scientist's attitude is often one of “If God tells you something, that is revelation. When you tell me what God said, that is hearsay.”
7. Faith is the knowing of something for which none of the above applies: “There is no logical reason why I believe this, but I am certain that it is true.” The philosopher S
Each of these ways of knowing can sometimes serve a useful purpose, but for the scientist as a scientist, only careful, controlled observations can decide between two contradictory materialist views. The paradigm is to discover what contradictory predictions the two views make and how to discover data and perform experiments that will give results that determine which of the opposing views, if not both, is clearly incorrect. A scientist's explanation must function; that is, it must permit control over some observed condition of the material world. A creationist's explanation for the same observations need only be asserted.
B. FOUR AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE
1. Theology (metaphysics), as used here, is the study of gods and their activities, which leads to questions such as “How many gods are there?” and “Are any of them male?” and “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
2. Ethics is a system of moral principles to guide human conduct. It deals with an individual's standard of conduct or a body of rules pertaining to social obligations and duties. The word ethics comes from the Greek thikos, meaning “personal disposition.” Much has been written concerning which principles a person should use to guide his or her personal conduct. It has been claimed that the theory of evolution destroys faith in the Bible as an authority for moral guidance, and hence is an attack on morality and ethics. Although the theory of evolution differs from literal interpretations of the Bible on factual questions such as the age of the Earth, evolution says nothing about what moral codes we should follow. On this matter, evolution is currently silent or neutral. In addition, moral codes can change over time and are derived from a number of sources other than the Christian Bible. Confucius devised a system of ethical precepts based upon the practice of jen (sympathy or human-heartedness) centuries before Christ. In ancient Greece, idealists such as Plato held that there is an absolute good to which human conduct aspires. Ethical systems have been ascribed to divine will, but also to an innate sense (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and to human experience (John Stuart Mill and John Locke). David Hume made contributions on the nature and necessity of a humanly inspired morality. Immanuel Kant sought to set up an ethical system independent of theology, and spoke of the categorical imperative: “Act as if the maxim from which you act were to become through your will a universal law.” Philosophers such as G. E. Moore have postulated an immediate awareness of the morally good.
Science does not pretend to answer moral questions. But science has wrongly been cited as a justification for moral and ethical views, which is a misuse of the theory of evolution.