l82start wrote:
the most difficult and somehow frightening thought for humans to hold in their head seems to be [glow=red,2,300]"I DON'T KNOW"[/glow] i wonder why that is? evolution is sound in some parts, needs work in some parts, and may be wrong in some parts. Maybe i have internalized agnosticism/model agnosticism to deeply but i am not in the least bit bothered by "i don't know". AGW, the nature of god, and any number of other aspects of existence and nature of the universe "i don't know" or "i don't know for sure, but at this time it seems to me" is the answer that fits best.
I tend to split things up into 4 categories
The unknowable, things i cant possibly know and don't feel any worries or stress about not knowing
The knowable things i can know or be certain enough about that i can use that knowledge to make my way around in the world.
The unknown things that can be known that i (or possibly everybody) don't know yet.
The indescribable things that can be known but transcend language symbols and art, the direct experience that language symbols and art point towards but but can never wholly transmit
or to restate, evolution falls into the categories of knowable and unknown, some of it works some of it may be wrong and some may get corrected or improved or discovered..
why is that so hard to accept?
l82start,
There's plenty of people willing to say "I don't know." But "I don't know" in a vacuum is just as pointless as "I know, so listen to me," in a vacuum.
There seem to me to be three aspects of knowledge:
- Figuring out what it is we truly know versus don't know, and everything in between (eg, what we THINK is the case but don't know for sure).
- Discovering the best process of developing that knowledge, and weeding out processes that simply don't work (eg, I read it in a book, and therefore it is true)
- Deciding whether or not to continue to develop knowledge in an area, or whether we've tapped some sort of natural extremity of it. (eg, Newtonian physics used to be "perfect" for what we needed to observe using physics. Turns out there was more to it, and we needed to dive deeper).
The definition of a scientific theory is this:
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method, and repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation. As with most (if not all) forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and aim for predictive power and explanatory force.
1) This is inductive. It is not a perfect proof. God could have us all strapped into the Matrix. We could all be multiple personalities of a guy who snorted too much unicorn horn powder. These would be almost impossible to prove given the natural world that has exposed itself to us so far. There are areas of science (AGW, evolution, certain astro/particle physics) that are VERY difficult to test. We can't do numerous controlled experiments on them the same way we can do with gravity.
2) It uses a scientific method. It attempts to collect data and share every observation and finding with a bunch of other dudes (and women) who take great pride in picking apart other people's work, whether for the sake of their ego, or for "science," or for money, or whatever.
If we are going to go with the "I don't know" attitude on evolution, that's perfectly ok (in fact there's plenty I don't know about it, and certain things certainly DO appear to be irreducibly complex in nature... they appear to be a product of "intelligent design," like a complex machine), but we have to decide what the PROCESS should be once we've stated "I don't know." We can continue to apply the scientific method, which is superb in its ability to discover physical realities, or we can allow non-scientific hypotheses equal footing in the conversation. We can allow any assertion in because "science doesn't know." This is where "intelligent design" is at. It pretends to be science, but doesn't obey any of the rules that have allowed science to make so many amazing discoveries (unless you think they're lying liars about all those discoveries). It just says, "look, this is more like a wrist watch than a rock, so it must be designed by a creator." This is really all they have... the irreducible complexity (and to some degree specified complexity) argument against evolution. There are some details in there, but it usually boils down to "this is too complex to occur naturally over hundreds of millions of years." Therefore, they say, it must be the work of a creator.
This is the same anti-knowledge that has been going on for centuries, even WITHIN the scientific community. I agree that it is up to evolutionists to work their asses off to try to describe how seemingly-complex systems resulted from tiny changes from basic organisms, but because of how difficult it is to look that far back, I'm going to accept that this could take some time. But the "this doesn't make natural sense, so it must be God" argument can always be used, and has, to the detriment of knowledge. Things that just didn't seem possible based on the rules of the natural world as we knew them to be at the time, eventually made PERFECT sense given a new, or more nuanced model.
And even when science is "technically wrong," given a more limited understanding of the natural world (Newtonian physics), it can 1) still be phenomenally useful, and 2) is eventually debunked not by the "intelligent design" community of thinkers, but of other scientists that dug deeper into the natural world that we would/could before.
Sorry to keep dipping into religion on-and-off here. But I think it's important to juxtapose what science is, and its imperfections, rather than the alternative, which is just either making made-up statements, believing someone else's, or trusting a feeling in your gut that tells you that "X Religion" has it correct.
