Loading ...Giving up too soon
The brilliant Isaac Newton described the universal law of gravitation and the laws of physics and explained the elliptical orbits of the planets using calculus, a new form of math that he developed just to answer that question. Yet after describing the movements of the objects in the solar system with an astounding precision, he reached a point where he paused in awe of the stability of the motion of the celestial bodies, and stating that he could not see how his equations were able to explain the universality of gravity, he summarized in his monumental Principia, “This most beautiful system of the Sun, Planets, and Comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being, a God.”
Does this sound at all familiar?
Here’s the sad part: the Principia was written at the astoundingly young age of 35, and he went to his grave at the ripe old age of 84 without exploring the issue any further. About a century later, however, the French scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace, using Newton’s own calculus and the laws of physics and gravitation Newton first postulated, explained the stability of the motion of the celestial bodies described by Newton with a method of mathematics that was certainly well within Newton’s mathematical ability. What caused the difference? Why did the English genius not solve the problem in the fifty years between Principia and his death? Laplace saw a challenge and went for it; Newton thought he saw an intelligent design and stopped looking.
This is why the ID movement’s masquerade as science produces such a negative reaction among Christian scientists. Scientific research is harmed and hindered by those who say, “Our current scientific understanding has not explained X, therefore X lies outside the bounds of scientific inquiry.”
HT to elbogz on Steve Martin’s site, who referred me to a talk by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson that made this point about Newton.
Filed under: Evolution/origins, Science
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Wow. I’m quite speechless. Of course, it doesn’t surprise me. You read Ray Bohlin’s comment on my blog in which he admitted that, after all these years, the Discovery Institute still hadn’t provided the scientific community a shred of significant “something” for which their organization seems to have been instituted.
But of course it has: beyond its perfect demonstration of the futility of trying to prove the supernatural using the natural, ID has managed to distract scientists into closely examining complex structures such as the eye and confirmed in the end that the ToE has the ability to explain them after all. Sure, it’s great to know that stuff, but there was an aspect of “inevitable discovery” to the whole endeavor that suggests that scientists who answered the IC charge could probably have spent their time on other matters.
The ID movement has, in spite of itself, strengthened the ToE on points (such as the complexity of the eye) that even Darwin doubted its ability to explain. But these discoveries (sorry, Ray) could have been envisioned and birthed from within the scientific community without rousing the rabble and furthering the false perception that there are intractable conflicts of interest between the pursuits of faith and of science.
But wait a minute - your blog? I have heard tell of such, but have not seen evidence of it in so long…
I have read some ID literature, and I don’t remember these folks promoting their project in order to promote scientific laziness. I think they’re only positing that, if some structure can be demonstrated as beyond reasonable bounds of statistical probability, then it may reveal a designer. I don’t recall any of them saying when they reached that point then they would hang up the microscopes and head for the pub.
The ID movement has other problems, but I don’t think this is one of them.
Hi, Mairnéalach (Gaelic, I presume?),
I’m not saying that they would retire from science and become garbage collectors or something. However, as I tried to show in the OP, any demonstration that natural processes have been “tampered with” by God (i.e. the processes that guided their creation are unrecoverable by the scientific method) undermines the foundations of scientific inquiry and, in effect, ensures that a visit to the pub would be no less productive than trying to look any further into natural causes for the diversity of life.
What would happen if they were to convince all scientists that their efforts at studying evolution was fruitless? Would they, indeed, go to the pub? No, but they darn well would stop studying evolution - a worthy goal for ID advocates and other special creationists, but a wholly unwarranted goal given the strength of the theory and the paucity of the evidence for design.
I’m also not trying to paint this as the sworn objective of ID advocates: I’m sure that many don’t realize that positing a physical universe run by an even mix of natural processes and supernatural intervention circumventing those processes renders scientific research which is built on the uniformity of nature a tail-chasing endeavor.
Thanks for your comment! I hope this clarifies my position
Christians have long held that nature and supernature are both at work in creation, yet we managed to do good science based upon this idea of uniformity.
Surely, misplaced piety has sometimes obstructed scientific inquiry. However, I don’t think that arises merely from speculating about supernatural agency, as much as from a distorted understanding of the supernatural itself.
Perhaps the reason I am reluctant to follow your argument all the way here is that it easily plays into scientism’s hands as the “progressive human reason displaces beknighted religion” myth. For all its excellence otherwise, I see this very myth undergirding Tyson’s presentation.
Surely this worldview is just as problematic as the opposite.