Creationism and Evolution in the U.S., On
Anti-Intellectualism and Scientism
Massimo Pigliucci
(University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA)
[now at SUNY-Stony Brook in Stony Brook, New
York, USA]
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
21 April 2000
Aspects
of anti-intellectualism:
1)
Anti-rationalism - says that intellectualism is bad because it leads to
moral relativism and leads to skepticism for authority. Also, it says
that reason is cold and dull.
2)
Anti-elitism - it is not good to have people who know better than you
(intellectualism is anti-democratic). This is an American attitude.
It is not something you see in Europe. Europeans don’t have a problem
with accepting the reality of an intellectual hierarchy in society. As a
culture, Americans tend to be skeptical of experts. But, this thinking
doesn’t apply to sports experts or health care experts (doctors).
3)
Unreflective instrumentalism - thought has no value if it is not
practical (the basis for capitalism). This idea leads to disdain for
theoretical inquiry.
4)
Unreflective hedonism - points out that the media and mass entertainment
provide pre-interpreted information to the public, which willingly accepts it
without objection, because thinking is hard work, and therefore thinking is not
desirable.
5)
Post-modernism - the only non-American idea of this list, it originates
from France. This idea says that all knowledge is relative (all opinions
are equal, and equally good), and therefore you must have equivalency of
different cultural traditions. Also, this idea concludes that science has
not and should not have special pre-eminence. Advocates of post-modernism
are considered the academic and cultural left, but they agree with Creationist
thinking. This is ironic, since Creationists represent the academic and
cultural far-right.
Anti-intellectualism
converges upon public education by suggesting that book learning is elitist,
vocational schooling is preferrable, and social development of students is more
important than critical thinking or teaching of information.
A
problem on the other side is excess of scientism. Scientism says
that the scientific method is the most powerful tool for investigating
reality. This is an OK statement and is fairly defensible, though some
disagree with it. What isn’t OK to say is that science can solve any
problem given enough time and money and resources (though this is what you say
to NSF!). The problem with this idea is that is gives people a too-high
expectation for science. It is important to realize and admit that
science does have limits, though. This is difficult to explain to the
general public or the media or politicians.
Science
is based on philosophical assumptions, but they are well-founded assumptions:
1)
realism - says there is a real world to be investigated, and that it is
not a figment of one’s imagination.
2)
naturalism - says that all things can be explained using only natural
laws. Intelligent design advocates reject this, of course.
3)
Occam’s Razor - an idea from a 13th century monk that says the simplest
explanation is likely the correct one. This is an assumption that works
very well, but not always.
4)
Hume’s Dictum - extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence. This was a view held and emphasized by Carl Sagan.
Intellectual
snobbism is dangerous and unjustified. No society could exist with only
intellectuals. Intellectual achievement is admittedly an arbitrary human
value - lots of human societies in history and now lived and live without
intellectual advancement, but they were more than happy and content with their
lot in life. It is also important to recognize that the products of
science are not always good.
Logical
fallacies of creationism (this listing is just a subsample):
1)
science must be ethical - tree of evil metaphor, with the root of
unbelief and the tree of evolution and the fruits of the tree include racism,
abortion, alcohol, humanism, drugs, dirty books, hard rock, inflation,
etc. Why the metaphor? Well, some consequences of science can lead
to things that are not good. Therefore, science is bad. Is genetics
bad because Hitler wanted to use eugenics to improve the Aryan race? Is
physics bad because we dropped atomic bombs? There is no excuse for
scientists to not care or to be unethical, though. Science per se is not
bad - it’s what people (scientists, the public, politicians, anybody) do with
that science that can be bad (or not).
2)
discussions among scientists are a sign of crisis - Gould’s punctuated
equilibrium is the classic example. He pushed the idea to sound like it
was very different from Darwinism, but it isn’t very different. This
argument misses the point of science - changing your mind and progress are what
science is all about.
3)
evolution is “just” a theory - the old and tired mixing up of 2
definitions of the word “theory”.
4)
natural processes occur at random - how can complex human beings be the
result of randomness? Well, evolution is not the same as a jumbo
jet being assembled from a junkyard by a tornado. Two forces shape
evolution - mutations (which are random) and natural selection (which is
anything but random).
5)
no intermediate fossils - by now, it is quite puzzling why creationists
continue to raise this point. Actually, it is not a puzzle. They will
always see and point out a gap in the fossil record no matter how many fossils
are found to fill pre-existing gaps.
6)
the world is easy and simple to understand - this is just plain
wrong. The world is not easy to explain. For example, the Flood could
not possibly covered the entire world, and could not possibly have created the
Grand Canyon. The entire biosphere could not fit onto Noah’s Ark.
7)
living organisms are perfect and therefore were designed - this is a
very important argument behind why lots of people believe creationism.
Watchmaker argument. Well, have you ever wondered why people have
hemorrhoids, back pain, and vericose veins? Ever wonder why it takes a
year for babies to learn how to walk? It’s because humans aren’t
well-designed for bipedal locomotion. This isn’t a perfect design.
The design is easy to understand using evolutionary theory - humans relatively
recently became bipedal from arboreal & ground-dwelling, knuckle-walking
apes. Design? Yes. Perfect design? Well...
8)
science is an arbitrary assemblage of disconnected facts - this denies
biology, astronomy, geology, and physics. You have to come up with better
substitutes for explaining the universe before you can toss these out.
9)
education must be democratic - this idea is obvious for many.
After all, taxpayers fund public schools, therefore taxpayers must have a say
in what is taught and how it is taught. Europeans don’t make this
argument, though. To counter this, we can point out examples of other
possible equal-time curricula (there are people who are living today that
believe these): flat-earthers, geocentrists.
10)
science is a religion - well, let’s compare the two:
Religion
Science
-
immutable doctrine - self-correcting
-
based on
faith
- based on evidence
-
taught by authority - discovery
by critical thinking
-
dogma
- peer-review process & hypothesis-testing
Common
mistakes of scientists:
1)
We don’t really understand macroevolution [sic] - scientists need to
recognize and admit this. For example, the phylogeny of cetaceans
(whales) shows that what we know now is incomplete and is a work in
progress. Admitting this is not a defeat, but should be an encouraging
thing. If everything is already solved, why should new people become
scientists? What more would there be to do? While irreducible
complexity is a non-concept (Behe), understanding of molecular evolution is at
a beginning. Just because we don’t know doesn’t imply or demand a
designer. There is plenty we know and there is plenty we don’t know.
2)
We don’t have much of a clue as to the origin of life - we really don’t
know. We may never solve the problem, but we’ll certainly learn more in
the future. This is not an evolutionist’s problem, though.
Evolution is concerned with what happens after life appears, not how life
appears.
3)
Anthropic Principle is flawed, but we don’t know the origin of physical
constants [sic] - the old fine-tuning argument. There are several
versions of the Anthropic Principle. We know something about these things
(from quantum mechanics and general relativity and superstring theory).
4)
Scientists make mistakes - not admitting this is bad. The classic
example is Piltdown Man. Yes, it was a fraud, but the fraud was discovered
by scientists (evolutionary biologists, in this case), not
creationsists. And it was discovered by finding and learning about
numerous other fossil finds. This led to the realization that Piltdown
Man didn’t fit in at all, prompting a re-examination. This is a good
example of how science works, not how it fails. Science is
self-correcting.
What
to do?
1)
Adapt the style (but not the content) to the audience - there are 3
types of audiences, and your approach has to be different in front of the 3
different types. One type is the teachers and educators (teach them how
to teach). Second is the general public (emphasize science is relevant to
them - not all the little details, but the big ideas are relevant). The
third type is the religious fundamentalists - talking to them is almost
a waste of time, but the "almost" makes it worth it. The key
with the 3rd type of audience is to teach them to think critically.
Remember that it isn’t essential for the entire world’s population to
understand evolution, but it is essential for as many people as possible to
know how to think critically.
2)
Good teaching of science - science is an open-ended inquiry.
Science is a process, not just a body of knowledge. Hands-on learning is
OK, but not to the exclusion of minds-on learning.
3)
Learn from neurobiology - much is known about the psychology of
education, but we don’t apply neurobiological knowledge to it. We know
nowadays a lot about how the brain works - this should be applied to teaching
methodologies. For example, the left brain is the rationalizing
hemisphere, and the right brain is the challenging hemisphere. The left
side controls what is considered to be acceptable paradigm. The right
side supplies seeds of doubt (i.e., critical thinking!!). It turns out
that lecture is one of the worse ways for communicating information. [sic] If
you want to change a creationist’s mind, ask questions and put seeds of
doubt in their right hemispheres. If they change their minds, it won’t be
instantaneous. Just be content to put seeds of doubt and questions in an
audience’s mind & in debate opponents’ minds. This sort of thing does
work. The threshold for how much seed of doubt is required to result in a
change of mind is low in some, and high in others.
4)
If all else fails, remind that teaching creationism is illegal - use
this argument as a last resort only.
Lots
of Pigliucci’s colleagues say that he’s wasting his time with this interest in creationists.
But, there is a need for people to do this work.