REBUTTAL
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Ila Johnson (“Evolution is still just a theory,” Rebuttal, Thursday)
has it partly right: Conclusive, certain knowledge is not attainable
through science, but only by direct, personal revelation from God, such
as the appearance of Jesus Christ to the Apostle Paul on the road to
Damascus.
I respect the faith of those who have had such experiences, as long as
the truths they proclaim are limited to the spiritual realm.
When it comes to truths about the material world, however, we mortals
must do the intellectual labor of using our reason and our senses if we
are to learn about nature. Our collective scientific knowledge grows
(dare I say “evolves”?) as we acquire ever more information. That is why
all scientific knowledge is necessarily inconclusive, incomplete and
subject to revision -- in a word, theory. Nor is it meaningful to
distinguish scientific “fact” from scientific “theory.” There is no such
thing as a scientific fact, if that means something that is conclusively
proven.
Lack of finality does not make theories unreliable. We do accept and
rely on scientific theories every day, even those that are not subject to
experiment, such as the Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around
the sun rather than the other way around. We wash our hands to avoid the
spread of infection, and we use vaccines, antiseptics and antibiotics,
which are all based on Pasteur’s germ theory of disease. Engineers design
aircraft and spacecraft using Newton’s theory of gravity and his laws of
motion, even while physicists are busy adding to our knowledge about
those phenomena -- and we believe in those theories enough to entrust our
lives to them. We teach our children these theories both to help them
understand the world we live in and to educate the scientific
professionals and technicians who do their part to keep our society and
our economy running.
Of course, the Copernican theory is subject to verification by
scientific observation, as are all scientific theories, including
evolution. But we can’t set up an experiment in which we change the
Earth’s orbit and watch what happens. Likewise, if we discovered, i.e.
observed, a fossil skeleton of a modern human being that dated back to
the dinosaur era or earlier, that would disprove our theory of evolution.
So far, however, the fossil record completely supports the theory.
The theory of evolution is no different from those other scientific
theories. It constitutes our best, current, scientific knowledge of the
ancestry of today’s living creatures (including human beings), based on
what we have observed in fossils and in living plants and animals. It
neither precludes nor establishes the idea that there is purpose to life,
nor does it undermine, contradict or support anyone’s spiritual values.
Scientific knowledge has nothing to do with these matters. It deals
purely with the natural world not the supernatural; it concerns the
physical not the metaphysical. The practice of scientific inquiry does,
however, promote the values of intellectual honesty and humility, care
and thoroughness, critical thinking, the courage to stand behind one’s
own work, and respect for the work of others.
Children learn their values at home, in religious institutions and
from their cultural heritage. Our schools need to teach our children
about biological evolution to help them understand the natural world we
live in and to educate the future doctors, nurses and other health
professionals, as well as biologists, biochemists and paleontologists,
who will increase scientific knowledge and put it to use for the benefit
of our descendants.
So-called creationism is not science because it does not increase our
understanding of how the natural world works. Creationism distorts
natural science in order to try to force it to appear to support certain
religious beliefs. Its purpose is not to discover new knowledge but to
prove conclusions that are never subject to questioning within the system
of creationism. It is a hodgepodge of biblical phrases engrafted upon
pseudoscience, as a substitute for intellectual honesty and scientific
labor. It has no place in our public schools. (By the way, that concept,
“the missing link,” has no place in the science of evolution. It is based
on the idea that human beings are descended from the ape species that
exist today -- a notion which has no basis in observation or theory --
and no respectable biologist supports it.) Any school board member who
tries to push the teaching of pseudoscience on an equal plane with
genuine science should not be accorded the recognition that the board
presidency represents.
ELEANOR EGAN
Costa Mesa
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