Dean's World

Steve Verdon, who's long been one of my favorite writers in the blogosphere, is very saddened and disappointed with me. He also accuses me of asking some "have you stopped beating your wife" questions, which I haven't, but I'll get to that later.

First I want to get to this interesting statement that Steve makes: "Science by its very definition precludes the supernatural."

I've seen this statement in several forums, and seen it go by a few times here on Dean's World, and I have to ask: where on Earth can you find that statement in any science textbook? What paragons of science, other than ideologues like Richard Dawkins, would agree that it is so? This is rank bulls**t of the highest order!

Science has nothing to say about the supernatural one way or the other. Science is about creating testable, falsifiable hypotheses, making predictions, and testing them. It's also about emprical evidence, asking open-minded questions, and conducting open-minded debate until enough empirical evidence is accumulated to definitively settle the question. Then we move on.

Throughout much of the 20th century, many scientists devoted considerable research into such subjects as mental telapathy and psychokinesis, which would undoubtedly be considered "supernatural" phenomena (at least until we found a mechanism for them). At the time no one had any grand working theory that would explain how such things could work. They merely asked whether the phenomena existed. They conducted a large number of double-blind, peer-reviewed studies. Many were well-designed, quite rigorous scientific experiments. When asked how they thought these phenomena might work, they said, "we aren't sure, we have some vague ideas, but first we need to establish the empirical question of whether they exist at all."

They were using science to investigate the supernatural--or what would have stayed seemingly supernatural until they came up with a testable working mechanism anyway.

What was the result? No study has ever convincingly shown evidence of these things. They've tried, tried very hard in fact, and spent a lot of time trying. What they found was generally such thin gruel that most gave up. But was what they were doing "not science?" Horsesh*t! It was real science, and it was research that turned up a lot of valuable information. Somewhat disappointing information, but valuable nonetheless.

But science can't always do double-blind experiments, either. Stephen Hawking and others were predicting for years that black holes existed, based on a lot of guesswork and some fancy math. Was what they were conducting "not science" because they had no lab work, and no empirical evidence? They went literally decades debating the question until the first black hole was definitively observed. Sometimes, therefore, science is indeed wildly speculative, and involves big broad questions with many philosophical ramifications.

Most scientists throughout history thought they were investigating God's way of doing things. Most assumed there was something beyond the natural in creation. It didn't make them stop asking questions. It didn't make scientific research grind to a halt. There are working scientists now who believe in the supernatural, and many of them do terrific work.

Now here are the four questions, phrased by Fred Reed, that Steve thinks are "wife beater" questions:

(1) Has the chance occurrence of life been demonstrated in the laboratory? Yes or no.

(2) Do we really know, as distinct from guess, hope, or imagine, of what the primeval seas consisted? Yes or no.

(3) Do we know, as distinct from guess, pray, wave our arms, and hold our breath and turn blue, what seas would be needed for the chance formation of life? Yes or no.

(4) Can we show mathematically, without crafted and unsupportable assumptions, that the formation of life would be probable in any soup whatever? Yes or no.

Noted biologist Lynn Margulis has gone on record to say that even though she's no I.D.'er or Creationist, she does think that to the extent that they ask hard questions and expose weaknesses in current scientific thinking, they're providing a valuable service. I couldn't agree more. When these people point to holes and gaps on our knowledge, rational people do not thunderingly pronounce, "well yes but one day we will have a logical explanation, so don't you start having any Dangerous Thoughts Of Your Own now!" Rational people smile, shrug, and say, "yep, you're right, we don't know. We hope to someday. Wanna see what we do know?"

As for the "supernatural": isn't this really just a meta-analysis word anyway? Something may seem supernatural until we pin it down, define it, and shape its limits to our understanding. Because that's what science does. But we can certainly investigate something that looks supernatural. Scientists have been doing it throughout all of history. This is why we now have pretty good explanations as to what "sea monsters" are and are not. It's why we're pretty sure there's no Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot, even though we can only say we're pretty sure, not 100% sure. It's why most researchers have given up on telepathy and telekinesis and such.

It's also why we now admit that ball lightning probably exists. And there's a great teaching example: for years, because they had no theoretical support for ball lightning, scientists asserted that it was superstitious supernatural flakery. But enough photographic and reliable eyewitness evidence has been amassed that most now accept that ball lighting is real, even though they still have no good explanation for it. They admit the phenomenon defies most of today's theories about how electricity and plasma behave. Is ball lightning therefore "supernatural?" That's not for science to say: science at this point merely asserts that it exists. You can say "Zeus does it" if you want, and the world doesn't come to an end. Science will remain mum until it has a strong explanation.

Scientific investigation into the seemingly supernatural is also why we know there's no such thing as spontaneous generation--well, except that we're supposed to accept it on Faith In The Great Infallible Darwin that the pre-biotic soup created single-celled life on its own. Anyone who questions that thinking is guilty of practicing something called "Not Science," right? Bah.

My experience in the real world is a lot like Fred Reed's: I have invariably found that real scientists who do real research are open-minded, happy to answer questions, and are inhesitant about saying "we don't know" on almost any subject. One of their favorite answers is, "We don't know, but here's what we think, even though we still have to test for X, Y, and Z."

By comparison, I generally find that fulminating intellectual bullies act condescending, insulting, infuriated at being questioned, and speak of the "dangers" of those who cast doubt on the reigning paradigm--whatever paradigm that happens to be. Some of these cowards even have PhDs, but it doesn't change what they are.

Am I worried at kids getting the wrong impression from the creationists? A little. But I worry a lot more about teaching kids that science must be accepted as orthodox thinking laid down from on high with thundering pronouncements. I worry a lot more about forcibly banning books from the science curriculum by court order. And I certainly worry when people peddle horse hocky about how "science precludes the supernatural" when it certainly does no such thing: science precludes that which is not empirically verifiable. But if you go too far with that, then you have to admit, ipso facto, that much of what today's neo-Darwinists say isn't science either, it's just belief.

You don't even have to believe in the supernatural to recognize that.