Stumble it!Intelligent Design the Future: Percival Lowell, Mars and Intelligent Design
posted in Creationism, Science by themaiden |When I first saw the headline for this article, I expected a much different argument and I thought it strange that an ID theorist would choose canals on Mars as a selling point. I’ve come to believe those canals are a fantastic illustration of the flaws in ID theory. But I’ll have to save that for another day, as Witt makes another point altogether. My expectations were incorrect.
Today’s Google icon pays homage to Percival Lowell, the 19th century astronomer who popularized the notion that there were Martian-made canals on the surface of Mars and, therefore, Martians. The larger story surrounding his famous blunder discredits the idea that science moves inexorably forward, with never a major backward step.
Intelligent Design the Future: Percival Lowell, Mars and Intelligent Design
No, rather than argue for the Design Hypothesis as I expected, Witt, most perplexingly, makes the less contraversial, even banal, point that scientists sometimes get it wrong. Science does– I think it is pretty blatantly obvious– move forward, in general, over a significantly long time frame. However, it does move forward by fits and starts, and sometimes things go wrong. I am quite sure he won’t get much argument on that issue, which makes me wonder where he got the idea that “the idea that science moves inexorably forward, with never a major backward step” needs discrediting. Really, I’d think an idea would need crediting prior to needing discrediting. Of course there are mis-steps in science!
So why does Witt want to make the point at all? Is he making the argument that science has been wrong before so it is wrong now, as I’ve seen so many times before? And answered.
The implication is that scientists have been wrong before and are just as wrong now. That is, today’s ‘eternal truths’ are tomorrows ‘crackpot theories.’ By presenting the subject as he does, though he does not say as much, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that science is nonsense ultimately. While on the surface this is an attack on science, underneath it is an attack on common sense and, in fact, upon all reasoning. Science is nothing more than looking around and learning from experience, coupled with experiment– the placing oneself in a position to experience what may not be easily observed accidentally. In science, as in life, one must change one’s opinion as new information arrives. If then, science can be faulted because past conclusions have been incorrect, it is equally correct to fault all learning from experience. The result is the undoing of human knowledge. Accept Snow’s criteria and everything becomes unreliable. We’ve all held wrong opinions, is it truly reasonable to therefore conclude that no opinions are reliable?
Nope. He takes a different line. He names three examples of science moving backwards and then concludes…
The motivations for these three missteps in the history of science are complex, but they have in common the fact that they each supported non-theistic worldviews. Each could be reconciled with theism, but each gave aid and comfort to atheism or deism. Darwinism is of a piece with these missteps. It gives aid and comfort to atheism and deism.
The point seems to be that science that supported non-theistic worldviews has been wrong in the past and so, one must assume, it will be wrong in the future. In other words, as it seems to me, science ought to support a theistic world view or it risks being wrong again. Granted, my analysis is a little strained– Witt doesn’t quite come out with it– but I am pretty sure that this is the gist of his argument and I am not quite sure what to make of it. I am a bit floored. Is it a warning to scientists? “Give comfort to atheism and be wrong!”
Wow!
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