January 9th, 2023
I have this book called Evolution’s Achilles Heels which is a book where “9 Ph.D. Scientists explain evolution’s fatal flaws – in areas claimed to be its greatest strength”. This book was given to me by an older gentleman who is a self described young earth creationist (he believes the earth is only 6,000 years old). I find it difficult to wrap my head around this position as it goes against everything that I have come to believe to be true about the world. I subscribe to what is known as Big History. I am still attempting to understand the bounds of this framework, but essentially it is a narrative of the history of the universe from the beginning to the present that draws on the natural and social sciences. I’ve been watching a Big History Lecture series on Wondrium by David Christian who is one of the leading proponents of the study of Big History and the Emeritus board member of the International Big History Association. In Lecture 4 of this series he talks about Evidence and the Nature of Science and posits the questions: How can we possibly know all things? How reliable is the account of Big History? Why should we trust the claims of modern scientific research into the nature of things? Why should I believe the stories the experts tell me? How can I distinguish between competing claims about the nature of reality, the nature of the universe, and how should I decide which of these claims to trust? In short, what is truth and how can we know truth when we’ve found it? How do we know what we think we know? These questions are the subject of Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. I should like to learn more about this as I think it is useful for how one orientates with the world. There are two things that Dr. Chrsitian mentions when answering the question of what information do you trust? Do you trust the source of the information, or do you trust no claims unless they are based on strong evidence. The early days of the scientific revolution tended towards rejecting authoritative judgments and prefer judgements based on evidence. This is well and good for people that are able to perform a rational inquiry into the things they are questioning and make up their own mind, but not everyone is able to do this. In practical terms, we have to trust people who assure us that the evidence is there if we want to look for it. This makes things a bit messy and I think with the advent of the internet, things have gotten messier. I also recently learned about the FCC Fairness Doctrine which was in effect from 1949 to 1987 which required that holders of broadcast licenses present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. It seems that the abolishment of this doctrine allowed for much of the political polarization we see today. I think all of this boils down to people having access to more information than ever before and not having the skills to discern what should be trusted. A lot of the views that people have seem to boil down to trust one authority over another. Conservatives will trust opinions from conservative commentators, but not liberal commentators, and liberals will do the opposite, trusting liberal commentators, but not conservative commentators. I suppose I don’t know who to believe.
An interesting phenomena, particularly in America, but elsewhere as well is a mistrust of the scientific authorities. Based on a Gallup Poll in 2017, 38% of adults in the US held the view that “God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years” when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings. In 2019 another Gallup poill found that 40% of US adults held the view that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so”. This is alarming to me. This is no doubt the result of organizations such as Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, and Creation Ministries International promoting a young earth creationist view while denigrating much of the scientific consensus. They appeal to the authority of the Bible as God’s word over the authority of “man’s word” as fallible. I actually agree that “man’s word” is fallible which fits within my particular conception of Big History, but within that framework, I also see that the Bible is the result of fallible men writing what they believed to be true. While the Scientific community discounts these particular beliefs and the ones who promote it as pseudoscience, I do believe there is reason to study this phenomena as I think it would offer much enlightenment into the human condition. Within the framework I have of Big History I have, I see the psychological and neuroscientific phenomena of trust and bias as having developed in humans, mostly because it was useful to survival. This basic human nature is what connects the humans of today to the humans of the ancient past. The same cognitive limitations are present throughout all of human history. I think by understanding the phenomena that contributes to the statistics listed above, we can better exist as a species. I think this has broad implications for how we approach educating future generations of humans. This is where I think the usefulness lies. The main question I would want to answer with regard to this is: What is the difference between education and indoctrination? I think generally, it is believed among most secular individuals that religious indoctrination is bad, but then many Christians claim that the public schools are indoctrinating children to believe an anti-christian stance. Where do these beliefs come from and how do they manifest in individuals and societies?
I wish I had the time to study these phenomena in detail, but I have to get back to my engineering job.