Science is Not Truth

On further analysis, I have decided that science fits better with hope than it does with history. History and Religion are more properly located in studies that explore what is and what was. These are explorations in big-T Truth, unlike science. Science cannot explore bit-T Truth because science is nothing more than a tool, like a crescent wrench, or a strong judicial system.

Tools- Science, Crescent wrenches, hope, and a strong judicial system are all tools that we use to get things done. They are beliefs, not truths. It is improper to say that science is true because science is necessarily founded on the premise that better science will eventually come. How can Truth be better or worse? It cannot. Truth is static and either is or is not. The kind of truth that science encompasses is not in fact Truth at all, but storytelling, a fiction of sorts, that enables human beings to do things. It's like a U.V. filter.

When we drop a scientific theory over the way that we see the world, the world is made simple enough that we can understand how it works. However, at the same time, we are necessarily filtering out a lot of what the world has to offer. When astronomy was still based on the theory that the Earth was the focal point of the universe, astronomers were able to make calculations that correctly predicted the movements of the stars, the planets, and even predict early eclipses. However, when we moved to a model of the solar system that placed the sun at the center, all of those calculations became better, more accurate, and more simple. If scientists believed that the earth was at the center of the solar system today, we would still be able to make sense of the solar system, but we would not have progressed to easily or quickly in astronomical science.

So it must be with science, that a good scientist can never believe in any kind of big-T truth, because the next fiction that comes along, perhaps that the solar system is actually centered around a point in space that is only very near the sun, could make the calculations to Mars and back more accurate. Right now, we are only able to calculate the movements of the planets to within a couple of dozen meters or so, but if we found another point to center our universe, perhaps we could start calculating to a couple of dozen centimeters, and then perhaps millimeters as our fictions and our stories change.

So too must it be with evolution. One of the problems of the scientific and secular communities who are attempting to defend evolution is that we present it as though it is some kind of big-T Truth, but this is a basic misunderstanding of science. Big-T Truth can never change. Big-T Truth can never be adjusted and is not malleable, and it either works entirely, or leads only to disaster. Evolution is, like all science, at best, a half truth, and perhaps it is only a very small amount of truth with a lot of guess work. Evolution is a means of understanding the world that makes every known living thing come into sharper focus than it ever has before. Science must necessarily only move incrementally, while big-T truth is all or nothing. Scientists who have made evolution into some kind of bit-T truth will be desperately disappointed every time we make a discovery that brings things into sharper focus (like homo floresiensis). In a misguided attempt to defend science, they will constantly alienate those who know that science will never be able to explain everything, because science is only a tool, not a paradigm.

It is improper to say that evolution is not a theory, because if it is not a theory, but some kind of scientific fact, than human beings have reached the end point of exploration for the origins of human beings, and we have ceased to progress. Science is a belief, just as is religion, but it is not truth. Science is a belief just like when we look at a soccer ball and a net and say, "I believe in kicking." We should not say that we believe that kicking exists, that somewhere on the planet, right now, even as we speak, some child is kicking a soccer ball into a net. What we mean is that the best way to get that soccer ball into that net is to kick. When we say, "I believe in evolution." we are saying that the best way to understand the way that things work and to have those things work for us, as far as we know, is through the code book written by Darwin and his progeny. It is needless, and anti-scientific, to say that we believe in the physical existence of australopithicines, homo erectus, and homo habilis. Not only does it not matter if they actually existed, worse than that, it is anti-scientific because it speaks about the thing rather than the evidence of the thing. Scientists are allowed to use shorthand for the evidence of a thing, by saying australopithicus afrensis (think Lucy) as though it exists as a fact, but they only do so in order to build on the theory behind evolution and attempt to challenge the theory until it is best able to conform with the world. It is only a bad scientist that does not understand that evolution is only a theory, a tool, which can, for example, help us to understand generational change, which is a tool for helping us understand DNA, which is a tool for saving lives.

Religion is a belief like when we say, "I believe we are in Delaware." as we drive up I-90. Believing that we are in Deleware is a belief about the existence and relation of things. When we say "I believe in God and that he created the world." we are speaking about the existence of a deity, and his relationship to the creation of the world. Because we believe that he told us how he created the world, we also believe that the world was created a certain way, and that way cannot be modified. When we believe in God as told through the Bible, we must believe in the Bible, because it is God's book. The words are literally true, as true as any words can literally be. We can take into consideration the possibility that our understanding of the Bible is flawed, and every Christian does at some point feel that her understanding of the Bibile is flawed (usually our spiritual guides help us through those moments), but we can never question the truth of the Bible. That does not mean, however, that we must turn down medication that was only available through understanding of the theory of evoltiuon. We are all still allowed to take antibiotics despite the fact that they wouldn't be possible without the theory of evolution. Our belief in the existence of things and their relationship to one another does not change when we take that pill in order to save our own lives.

So why, then, do we feel so threatened by seeing the tool in use? Because we are confused. We think that evolution is the same as the Bible in that it pruports to be big-T truth, and for many misguided scientists it does, but the fact remains that it cannot and does not. Learning about evolution and believing in it as a way to create powerful drugs, plants, and domesticated animals that we use and enjoy every day of our lives is like learning about and believing in democracy. For millenia, the leaders of nations believed that monarchy was the only Christian way to lead a country, that to believe in democracy was literally to denegrade God. That believe seems foolish that we understand the difference between a belief in democracy and a belief in God. They are two entirely seperate beliefs. In millenia, evolution or its progeny, will still be around because it is too powerful to ignore, and too successful a tool to simply disregard. The many millions who comfortably believe in evolution as a tool and in religion as big-T truth understand that science is a tool, while religion is a life. Those who do not understand the difference between belief in God and belief in science, may never be convinced, but there numbers are dwindling, and soon they will be as outdated as monarchists and fuedelists.