Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Things that Make Me Go "Arghhh"

When people act like science is supposed to make claims about God and supposedly Supernatural phenomena.
There's an "intelligent design" conference on campus, yes that's the UCSC campus, and "creation scientists" (an oxy-moron if you ask me) are coming to gather to say things like "The world is so complex and so beyond our own understanding that there MUST be an intelligent creator." Here's part of the problem: why is it that we expect science to be one thing for us sometimes and another thing entirely at other times? For example, would you trust a medical researcher who said "Well, this disease is really hard to comprehend, we can't really know what's behind it, we have a lot to learn, so it MUST be a supernatural phenomena." You'd laugh and say "Very funny, so when will y'all be developing medicines to combat this thing?" We EXPECT medical science to use the scientific method and stay within the world of the knowable, the concrete. Why does this suddenly go out the window when we talk about further understanding the origins of the universe? Sure, I see why some people have a HUGE spiritual investment in making "just so" stories about the beginnings of time, but THAT'S NOT SCIENCE, SO DON"T CALL IT SCIENCE....I'll be the first person to say that science is not above reproach, I mean, Karen Barad, is on my top-ten Science Studies reading list. I don't think that we should blindly follow science as though it were a religion, which is hard to do seeing as science is self-correcting, but I don't think science should become obsolete when a person's faith is in jeopardy. If you insist on dragging science into lala land to make yourself feel better about Genesis, I'm cool staying where I am: in a natural world wherein knowlege about that world is held to standards of, you know, ACCURACY and PROCESS. (imagine!)

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