Through Everything, God Still With Us To Help Us

I would agree with Lewis Loflin in two details. First, that the scientific method should be properly taught. I consider this highlighted by his own apparent failure to have learned what it is, what it assumes, what it does not assume but rather infers from the assumptions, and what it neither assumes nor infers.

Science refers to the process of gathering evidence, forming conjectures about the evidence, developing a formal hypothesis which indicates how the current evidence may be described under the conjecture, competitive testing of all candidate hypotheses under a formal criterion for probable correctness, and also sometimes refers to the body of hypotheses testing best thereby and which thereafter are referred to as “Theories”.

Science is based on the primary premises of formal logic’s validity (EG, via the Robbins Axioms and the Existential-Universal relation) for inference between propositions, Mathematics (the self-consistent joint affirmation of the Axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory), and that Reality is Relatable to Evidence. While there are other commonly used principles, such as cause-and-effect and naturalism, they are not primary premises, but secondary provisional inferences, usually only approximations, and subject to refutation.

The formal criterion underlying the methodology of science is a mathematically rigorous version of Occam’s Razor, derivable from the primary premises. In essence, the description most probably correct is that which can completely convey all details about the data most concisely. Details, for the curious, are found papers by Wallace and Dowe (doi:10.1093/comjnl/42.4.270) and by Vitanyi and Li (doi:10.1109/18.825807).

The quote by Dr. Schroeder is an oversimplification of what the Second Law of Thermodynamics actually states. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously in a CLOSED system; however, in multiple systems where there is mass-energy flow (aka, open system), order may flow from one region to another. A mundane example of this is easily seen with a glass of ice water on a humid day: the condensation on the outside of the glass from vapor to liquid represents an increase in its order, as the heat from the outside system of surrounding air goes into the system of the glass. Similarly, earth’s Biosphere is not a closed system, but receives a continuing flow of energy from the sun (much eventually re-radiated at a lower black-body temperature and thus higher entropy level).

A recent paper by Daniel Styer of Oberlin College (doi:10.1119/1.2973046) does the mathematical analysis for the case of our biosphere, and shows the order of Earth’s species is abundantly sustained. Another paper by Ville R. I. Kaila and Arto Annila of the University of Helsinki (doi:10.1098/rspa.2008.0178) in fact mathematically derives the principle of competitive selection of variations from the Second Law open-system expression. Our universe is one where life and other self-replicating systems are manifestly possible to exist, where the products of one polymerization reaction (such as enzymes) can catalyze the formation of the ingredient monomers or other polymers of smaller, equal, or greater size (Robinson et al, doi:10.1039/a803602k), and where such monomers appear to be produced naturally under conditions such as are understood to have existed on the early earth (Miller and Urey doi:10.1126/science.130.3370.245 and Johnson et al. doi:10.1126/science.1161527). Given such conditions, it is mathematically suggested (Nowak and Ohtsuki, doi:10.1073/pnas.0806714105) that there can be a natural tendency for self-replicating systems to arise “spontaneously”. As such, believing life could begin on our world without a creator is not irrational, for howsoever unintuitive this conclusion, the details of the evidence indeed rationally supports the inference.

Mr. Loflin makes the blank assertion that “Humans didn’t evolve from apes”; however, he offers no evidence in support. I would challenge him to provide a explanation (better under the criterion used by science) for the near-total correspondence between human DNA and that of the other primates, including in particular the correspondence between human chromosome 2 to the chimpanzee chromosomes 2p and 2q, consistent with a chromosome fusion in the human lineage from a mutual ancestor even to inclusion of a block of telomeres (normally only found at endpoints) centrally placed in that human chromosome. (The curious may visit tinyurl.com/9wx43x for more details.)

As to whether God belongs in a science class, I would agree the answer is no, but perhaps with different reasoning than Mr. Loflin. Under the criterion used by science, the conjecture of God while not precluded is also not supported. To include God in the science curriculum without mention of this would seem (to my non-lawyer eyes) a gross violation of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment under the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman. Contrariwise, specifically mentioning it for the purpose of indicating it is unsupported would appear an equivalent violation of the Free Exercise clause under the Lemon test. While teachers should be trained to expect such questions to arise, they response should be that Science and Religion provide different ways for looking at the world, and that since each Religion has its own explanation for the extent and significance of the differences, students should ask their parents and/or their pastors (or equivalent) for the explanation of their own creed.

Many individuals obviously find solace in some personification of ideals, some personification that you can call mother nature or jesus or buddah or allah or zeus or god or whatever.  The personifications are manifestations of ‘truth’ to those having some form of faith or the other.  The personifications help the faithful deal with their respective mortality, or calamity, or difficult situations or whatever.
But if these personifications represented reality, they would all be identical.  They’re obviously not identical.  People from one faith sometimes even want to kill those with other faiths.  All these people with faith in different personifications claim that they know the ‘truth’.  The problem arises when anyone tries to force his subjective version of ‘truth’ on everybody else, claiming that their ‘truth’ is part of objective reality.  When in fact their ‘truth’ is no more real than the easter bunny or santa claus.
But if personifications provide solace to you, that’s a good thing.  As long as you don’t revert to being a sanctimonious totalitarian wingnut and try to force your beliefs on others pretending you are enlightened or something.

Science is indeed not about ‘truth’.  Like beauty, ‘truth’ is in the eye of the beholder.  Science is about reality.  Evolution is part of reality.  The fact that you cannot reproduce it in some laboratory is totally irrelevant.  You cannot create gravity in a laboratory, but nevertheless gravity is a part of reality.
People used to think that the sun literally ‘rose’ in the morning, having faith in the notion that the sun was going around the earth.  This fallacy was ‘truth’ to these people, especially the religious rulers.
People could ‘see’ the earth rise every morning.  The notion that the sun was going around the earth was NOT part of reality though.