Expelled: Science, like Medicine, Isn’t About Free Speech
Ben Stein’s new movie, Expelled, is coming in February and promises to examine how “Big Science has Expelled New Ideas from the Classroom”. Stein is one of my favorite columnists, and I admire him for his intelligence, wit and personal ethics. And I understand his concerns, but I think they are misplaced.
The controversy about the film pits religious folks against non-religious folks. At Panda’s Thumb, there is chortling that the ID folks are embarrassed that Stein approaches the issue from a religious perspective (proof that ID is a religious belief, in their view). Undisguised disdain for religious views is seen in the comments, providing more fodder for those on the other side who claim its an “anti-religious bias” that prevents the Academy from showcasing non-evolutionary theories. This excerpt from The Christian Post frames the issue from the Christian perspective:
For example, one biologist who allowed a peer-reviewed research paper describing the evidence for intelligence in the universe to be published in a scientific journal was the target of a smear and intimidation campaign by National Center for Science Education and the Smithsonian Institution, where he was a fellow, to get him expelled from his position. Flagged as egregious, the attack prompted a congressional investigation.
In another case, Caroline Crocker, a biology teacher at George Mason University who was forced out of the university for briefly discussing problems with Darwinian Theory and for telling the students that some scientists believe there is evidence of intelligent design in the universe.
“If you just stand up and question Darwinism – that’s it – your career is over,” Crocker said the film’s trailer.
There may be more to those stories, and I’m sure we’ll find out more about them as people debate the issue. But I think all of this misses the point.
The problem with the debate is that it is being framed as a free speech debate. Certain things are not “open” to just any speech. Instruction in a topic should reflect the majority opinion of the experts. In cases where there is a significant minority view that is held by experts, then that minority view can share a proportional amount of classroom instruction time. Not “equal time”, but proportional time. That standard is the reason you don’t give equal time to Holocaust denial in history classes, as very few historians would support such a view.
But, they say, most Americans believe in some form of creationism. The problem is that a majority view is not a high enough standard for a technical field. You would not be able to teach medical students that putting a bar of soap in your bed is a cure for leg cramps, even though many non experts swear it’s effective. Thousands believe it, and swear by it. But that doesn’t make it medically sound.
It is true that formerly ridiculed and suppressed ideas, such as the Big Bang theory, do gain favor and become the dominant theory. That’s how science works, and unlike the presentation often given … that scientists “don’t have a dog in the fight” … they often hold onto untenable positions far too long. Simon Singh’s enjoyable The Big Bang chronicled such a struggle spanning several decades, with luminaries such as Albert Einstein having to eat crow and admit a French Priest and physicist, Georges Lemaitre, was correct and not a moron. Many thought that Lemaitre was simply “channeling” his religious belief.
The story is instructive in that Lemaitre provided a theory, was rebuffed, but worked within the known science of the time to provide the proofs of his theory. It wasn’t until the scientific community had enough proof that it was probably true that it made its way into the classroom.
The sciences, mathematics and associated disciplines like engineering, are no place for giving equal time to minority opinions. Free speech is still available … witness Stein’s new movie for an example of how that works: you are free to operate your own printing press, but you do not get to force the NY Times to give you their presses. Stein’s movie can play in every movie house in the nation, but should not play in a single science classroom. Free speech is not the same as equal time or equal access.
Until ID or Creationism can convince a majority of the experts that they are viable scientific theories, they should not find a home in the science classroom. They are not, not yet anyway, science. They have not even crossed the one-tenth of one percent threshold among the experts. If they have a viable theory, they have a lot of work to do to convince biologists, paleontologists, astronomers, etc. And until that hard work is done they should quit whining.
Have you ever seen natural selection– nope, neither have I– neither can you extract it, examine it, test it, MANIPULATE IT (which is key to science) because you CANNOT identify it (ID). There is no formula to identify it (like for gravity or momentum and other like things), so therefore it is Unidentifiable (UD). No need to complicate it, as Darwin would suggest, because at the fundamentals evolution is flawed and is NOT a science by definition. You may be able to predict behaviors and such but to attribute that to evolution is conjecture and not empirical at all. Evolution is clearly an ideology– and some have tried to pervert science to that point (through theories of evolution) as well. I admit that Intelligent Design, is basically, all about faith– but SO IS EVOLUTION– you evolution guys need to tie up a LOT of loose ends– and have failed to do so– but have pushed your ideas down peoples throats long enough. Leave your atheistic faith out of the classroom.
Jason, your belief may be sincere, but you have not understood my point.
In order to establish anything other than the dominant theory … which is evolution, like it or not … you have to propose your theory in peer reviewed journals and gain acceptance of the experts. Until then, you don’t have a voice in the matter, any more than a person who claims an herb cures cancer has a place in the clinic until he proves his assertion.
When I was a Creationist, in the 1970s, it was said that there were no transitional forms for a particular animal that was said to have come from a fish-like creature to be a land animal. I have lived long enough to see science find the transitional forms, and today the Creationists don’t feature the lack of transitional forms. The past 50 years have revealed transitional forms in very expected ways.
Faithful Christians, such as Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project, have written eloquently about why your concern is misplaced. Find a copy of “The Language of God”, and read it. To do otherwise is to ignore the real debate, which is not whether or not evolution is true, but whether or not Christians are dedicated to the truth.
You are right, we do have the freedom to operate our own printing press or alcohol still that produces fuel to run our auto’s, but the N.Y. Times does not have the right to run us out of business, or the Prohibition Act, a manipulation, prevented the farmers from making a good cash crop and producing fuel that burns much cleaner than petrol. Same with this arguement Creationism has a right to be discussed in the classroom right along with Darwinism. The ideas need to be vetted out rather than manipulated out, by employment termination or political pressure. Remember, readers we all die, and then regardless of your rationalizations, wordsmithing, and PHd’s, the truth rules.
Frank … great name, by the way … I understand your point. But a science class isn’t the place for debate about what is science, its a place where science is taught.
We would not allow a herbalist to take up valuable class time in a medical school course on heart surgery; while his theories about natural foods and plants might have value, the venue for them is not the class on surgery.
Creationism and ID have to prove themselves BEFORE they are in the classroom. Otherwise they are just opinions held by students and other non-scientists.
Christians approach this issue from a philosophical standpoint, and frame the issue as part of the culture wars. Fair enough, but the arguments then are for a philosophy class.
Do the hard work, and earn your place in the classroom.
Your point is clear. Those who question parts of the evolutionary theory have to proceed through the proper “scientific” channels – journals and such to gain acceptance by “experts.” I have not viewed the film, but I think this point is where the heart of the debate lies: the reading of a paper/idea questioning evolution with straight-faced, objectively-minded “experts” will never happen because the evolutionary scientific community believe that ID is religous in their minds…period.
Certainly Frank, you don’t believe the current evolutionary theories explain everything…do you? I always found it quite ironic that Spontaneous Generation is shown as disproved in current Biology textbooks by Louis Pasteur, but then a few chapters later, the Organic Soup Theory is on proud display for our 14 and 15 year olds to digest (nice pun). All of this without debate; without thought; and without questioning from the high schoolers because of the strong-hold (maybe pride?) and fear of religion (maybe paranoia?) of the scientific community.
You’ve compared your thoughts to the school of medicine a few times. I certainly hope the community of “experts” does keep and open mind and welcome new ideas – even when their pride and paranoid states are rightfully affected.
I respect the way in which you present your thoughts; but I humbly disagree with most of them. I am a former Biology teacher that believes in most evolutionary theories. However, I know it has many holes, and I believe debating the mysteries of origins, without religion, is healthy in a classroom.
I have done the hard work and earned my place in the classroom. But the truth is, you cannot question Darwin dogma, period.
Hi “another Frank” (this may be a first, three Franks!)
No, I don’t think evolution (or science in general) explains everything. But my critique of science is less meaningful than yours, as you have some formal education in science and I do not. My views are no more than lay opinions, and certainly would not be persuasive enough to convince a trained scientist. But I’ll cite a couple of my disagreements with science that I think you’ll agree with.
First, as I think you noted, there seems to be an insistence on “randomness”, especially in text books. But the idea that everything biological is a result of random processes seems to me to fly in the face of our scientific understanding of the universe. We can shoot a missile to take out a satellite, launch a spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet, and design drugs to mute pain. That speaks not of randomness, but of great organization. Beyond that impression I have, there’s another point I think is important: because you can’t see a pattern doesn’t mean it isn’t there. What appears like random threads on a rug reveals itself to be beautiful needlepoint when turned right side up.
The second point of contention is with those who insist on being “evangelical atheists”. Science is to the world what the old card catalog was to the library (in this digital age, I may need a new analogy!) Science catalogs facts, but does not satisfy our need to know why those facts are there. “Why” is a philosophical question, and they simply deny that anything philosophical or spiritual needs to be addressed. But nevertheless, they do deal in philosophy. The educated “evangelical atheists” like Carl Sagan choose what appears to me to be a philosophy that was dis-proven by the Big Bang: Sagan said “it always just was”. Wasn’t that called “steady state” theory?
The beauty of Genesis and the rest of the Bible is that it speaks of the relationship between God and man, something you can’t measure on scales or a ruler. Philosophy and religion are as important … perhaps more so! … than science is, not because they meet the artificial standard of proof some hold, but because they meet our human needs.