Sunday, March 05, 2006

Is Science True?

In science, truth = facts that fit into a coherent explanation. This is not a claim for ultimate Truth – it is a claim that we can know accurate things about the natural world, and that from that knowledge we can develop coherent explanations that, when not falsified by evidence, form reliable models of reality.

The explanations do change, and they are sometimes contiguous with previous explanations, sometimes not.

From a metaphysics standpoint, we can never know if we have Truth, or just an explanation that is consistent with all known facts. This is why science cannot deal with the supernatural - there is no way to detect the supernatural, only its effects on the natural world. ID is an attempt to infer a designer from complicated structures in the natural world. When it is defining rules for complex things, and where these rules can be tests and falsified, it is doing science. When it is criticizing evolutionary theory, and proposing tests that could falsify evolution, it is doing science. When it is claiming that complications equal design, it is engaging in metaphysical speculation that may be tru, but is not science.

Is there a God? From a scientific perspective, we don't know.

Is the world 6,000 years old? From a scientific perspective, all facts say no, but science can't rule out some form of "last Thursdayism" - that some designer just made it to look old.

Does evolution work such that it explains observed development of anti-biotic resistance? It seems so, but again, it is possible that some designer has set things up so this is just an illusion - and science cannot detect this.

Did this designer actually design the "hard parts" of evolution, and let nature take its course on the rest? At best, all we can say, should we identify some such hard part, is "we don't know."

On what basis could we resolve this difficulty? The only answer I am aware of is an appeal to authority. For example, in John 1, John states that Jesus created everything. Now it is not clear to me if by this is meant Theistic Evolution, Intelligent Design, or Old or Young-earth Creationism, or something else we haven't figured out yet.

As this is an appeal to authority, it is not a valid logical argument. This does not make it untrue, just not propositionally compelling.

ID takes the bull by the horns, and argues that "We can see no way it could have happened using current evolutionary theory" means "It is reasonable to infer a Designer." Of course, Christians then reasonably (to their mind) infer the God of the Bible is the Designer.

This leaves the debate to 2 questions:
1) Has the ID movement provided a hypothesis that accounts for all the facts (recall that Einstein's equations had to work for all the situations where Newton’s would work, plus solve some where Newton’s broke down), and performed experiments that would falsify their deign hypothesis?
2) In the meantime, does "We don't know" actually infer "a designer did it?"


So far, I would say "No" to the first question, and "No" to the second as well.