OK, let's suppose you aren't fooled by creationist
attempts to distort evolution into something other than what it is.
That's when creationists will typically move to their backup
plan: attack the very concept of science itself.
Audacious? Absolutely, but also a fairly successful tactic, for
the simple reason that the majority of people did not particularly
enjoy science class in high school, they never went on to take it
at the university level, and in a very real sense, many of them
have learned to resent scientists. Just look at the way scientists
are typically portrayed in movies: arrogant, socially reclusive,
seriously neurotic, possibly megalomaniacal. This resentment means
that it is often quite easy in many circles to score rhetorical
points by pointing out that "scientists don't know
everything", accusing scientists of "arrogance" or
living in an "ivory tower", accusing them of being
"close-minded", etc. Thomas Kuhn in particular attacked
science by almost exclusively attacking the psychology and
character flaws of scientists, in what was really nothing more than
a long-winded "attack the messenger, not the message"
tactic.
Of course, attacking the messenger is a very weak argument. The
more clever debaters attack empirical thinking itself, by employing
one of the following methods:
Attacking empiricism. This
idea was pioneered by David Hume, whose argument can be distilled
down to the idea that you can't be 100% sure that the Sun will
rise in the East tomorrow just because it did every day before (he
actually used this exact example himself). In short, he argued that
you cannot use physical experience as a basis for gaining knowledge
about how the universe works. A skilled debater can make this
argument seem surprisingly convincing, so you should keep in mind
that it relies on a single conceit: that a piece of knowledge is
either 100% certain or it's totally worthless, with no middle
ground. This is the argument's central weakness. Once you
accept that absolute knowledge is beyond the grasp of humanity
(despite the best efforts of religious leaders to claim it), you
will realize that a good system of intellectual inquiry will
recognize this fact and work within that limitation, rather than
pretending to have some detour around it.
Attacking parsimony and
atheism. One of the basic principles of science (known as
"Occam's Razor") is that you only employ as many
terms as you need. Or, put another way, you eliminate all of the
variables that you don't find useful. One of those useless
variables is God, who lacks measurement, observation, definition,
mechanism, or predictive usefulness. And so, science really has no
choice but to dismiss God. Not because scientists ignore that which
they disbelieve, but because science must ignore variables that
are of no use in their work. Like it or not, God falls into
that category. Scientists can still be religious even though the
nature of their work is not, just as mathematicians can go to
church even though no one will ever write a mathematical proof with
a "God" term. The signature example of the scientific
approach toward religion was Kepler who, when asked why God was not
mentioned in his equations of planetary motion, reputedly replied
that he had no need of that term (despite being a very religious
man himself). Unfortunately, since atheists are the most distrusted
group in America (according to Gallup polling), this means that
creationists can score political points by attacking science for
not incorporating God, even though the same accusation could be
made against mathematics or even automobile repair.
Attacking the fallibility of
scientists. Are scientists capable of error? Of course. Are
there corrupt, incompetent, or dishonest scientists? With tens of
thousands of scientists doing research at any given time, there
must be. But you cannot damage the credibility of science by
pointing out the human flaws of its practitioners, because
science is based on a competition model. If scientists make
mistakes or try to defraud their peers, at least one of their peers
will eventually seize upon these mistakes or deceptions as an
opportunity to write his own paper and make a name for himself. The
scientific competition model (which is similar to the capitalist
free market competition model) is the built-in error correction
mechanism of science.
Saying that evolution is not
perfect, so it could be totally wrong. Any good scientist will
admit that we lack perfect certainty about evolution theory. So
this means it could be completely wrong, right? Some new piece of
evidence could arise which brings evolution crashing down, right?
Well, Not exactly. Isaac Asimov once wrote an article entitled
"The Relativity of Wrong", in which he explained this
better than I could, but let's just say that even if you could
show that it is wrong, you would only be able to show that it is
slightly wrong, in the same sense that the statement
"pi=3.1" is slightly wrong. This is because we've
already catalogued tens of thousands of species which are
consistent with an evolutionary model, so any new theory would need
to make very similar predictions almost all of the time. Imagine
asking if Newton's theory of action/reaction could be
overturned. Yes, any theory might be wrong, but just how
much wrong can it possibly be?
Equating trust in scientists to
faith in prophets. A common anti-science tactic is to argue
that anyone who trusts the major scientific bodies is no different
from someone who has faith in religious prophets. The goal is to
pretend that science is no more reliable than religion. But there
is a difference between trust and faith. When you get into an
elevator marked "3500 lb max weight", you trust
that the elevator will actually hold 3500 lbs because it was
designed by licensed professionals who can produce engineering
calculations to justify their conclusions. Even if you don't
understand these calculations, you trust them because the
competition model and thorough testing means that if the science
was wrong, someone would have either pointed it out by now or a
disaster would have already occurred. If the elevator was designed
by someone who claimed that God did his calculations for him and
refused to justify his work in any other way, then you would
need faith to ride it.
In conclusion, if there is one piece of logic you should take
away from this, just remember that you can't dispose of an idea
by simply showing that its source is not infallible.
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