Reasonable Dissent

The Problem with Science

No, I don’t hate science. It’s wonderful. Sorry if the title was misleading. I guess the problem isn’t with science, exactly. It’s with people’s application of science. Maybe it’s shortsighted of me to say this, but it seems like human knowledge is getting to be so vast in this “information age” that no one person can possibly hope to have a deep understanding in all the important subjects. I know that as our culture develops, our children are learning more and more, earlier and earlier, but this can’t go on forever. Sure, we can picture 1000 years from now having (relative to us) super-intelligent children who have an intuition for calculus at age 3. But I think that it’s obvious to most that our knowledge is growing faster than any evolutionary mechanism is keeping up with. At some point (which may already be here), there is a very real limit to how much one person can master. Will you be a Jack of all Trades, but a Master of None? Will you pick a path, stick with it, and have some authority on the subject?

Map of science

This is incredibly important to our society in the here and now, however. The latest buzz in the United States seems to be about the rise of the “nones”, those suave, smart (and might I say, good-looking?) people who claim no religion. The conflict between theists and anti-theists and/or atheists is growing extremely rapidly, probably because of the incredible communication power of the internet.  Here’s how these two things are so intimately linked: the conflict of religion and science (Yes, there is one. Maybe not on every issue or with every person, but there is. Deal with it.) is being brought on just about every front. We have the creation debate which touches biology, evolutionary biology, geology, paleontology, cosmology, physics, particle physics, astronomy and dozens of sub-topics of those. We have debates about scriptural accuracy touching history, archaeology, anthropology, literature and dozens of foreign languages.  We have moral debates and afterlife debates, proofs and disproofs of supernatural beings, and arguments about the meaning of life which touch all the spread out fingers of philosophy.

So are we to understand that this debate that is so easily characterized is so easily soluble? No, what it tends to come down to in individual debate is you and your opponent searching for the particular subject in which you each have an advantage of knowledge or experience. Then, you can rest in that comfortable space saying “They may have answers for somethings, but not this one, which  proves my point.” If this scenario doesn’t play out, the usual alternative is an appeal to authority (yes it’s a fallacy, yes everyone does it once in a while). It seems reasonable to say that we can’t possibly know everything, so building on someone else’s conclusions makes sense. But it doesn’t play out this way. Theists get slammed for “not thinking for themselves,” and atheists get it back even worse since that’s supposed to be a tenet of the “atheist philosophy”.

What’s the solution? I don’t know. The sum of human knowledge is too vast and is growing all the time. An individual simply can’t keep up.  That doesn’t mean that I plan on never drawing another conclusion again. It’s better to be as informed as possible and decide what that means than to be in a state of perpetual inaction and un-decidedness. But I do it knowing full well that the debate will almost certainly never be closed. Blogs full of ranting and railing against the other side for “ignoring the facts” and being ignorant (or stupid, as the blogger decides) are pointless and add to the noise that detracts from real discussion. It’s almost a certainty: the debate will go on. Fight for what’s right, but do it for yourself first.  That’s the only person you’ve got a shot at convincing.

Tags: atheism, logical fallacies, science