Creating a stir

Quacks and charlatans exploit the gaps that the scientific method inevitably leaves. Science does not claim to be true – rather it tends to take the Popperian approach that it seeks falsehoods not truths – and the charlatans see this as a weakness, since they offer truth whole and pure.
In this oldie but goodie, a creationist exploits uncertainties about the Grand Canyon’s formation to claim that it might have been formed in Noah’s Flood.
It’s a hallmark of creationists that while they jump on inconsistencies and pieces of evidence that cause difficulties for scientific theories, they ignore those that are bad for their own. (This raging nutter says “No one knows what light is or that it always travels the same speed throughout all time, space and matter” – well, prove it isn’t! You might win yourself a Nobel if you can. Naturally, he ignores for a starter that we do know that light travels at different speeds in different media. And we have a very good idea what it is!)
“I also want you to realize that when someone asks me whether the flood of Noah created the Grand Canyon, I have to say that I don't know. And that's okay!” says Bohlin.
He ignores the lack of contemporaneous features across the world, the paucity of evidence for a widespread trauma in the surrounding region (I love the boulders as a result of the action of waves though), the missing organic life. You could go on.
But why bother? If a guy tried to prove that there really Lilliputians with a few hooky skeletons, you’d laugh him out of the place. The energy that some put into discounting these fools is wasted (if you want to wade through the refutations of creationism, you can – I looked at a couple and they’re pretty cogent). We are allowed simply to dismiss them. It’s a book. A beautiful story. But a story.

But. Note that it wasn’t just the one word.

And.. The “evidence against evolution”? This verges on the insane. You can see evolution. You can do it in a lab. It is a fact. The theory of natural selection is where the controversy is (and I note that this is what the scientists signed to suggest). How can a person call themselves a scientist and claim that evolution is in dispute? These people do not even grasp the difference between evolution as a mechanism and natural selection as a theory of change in form over time.

This is a statement I think I could happily sign up to. Our schools are not open to the influence of these charlatans, but it does matter that they don’t win in the US. The US remains the heartland of the culture we are part of – whether we want it to be or not – and its citizens lead the world in science. But maybe not forever, if the anti-immigrant bent of the Republicans bites.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:07 am