One of the things I have done recently is write an essay with the title “Is ‘Creation Science’ really Science?” Since the philosophy department seems to be full of idiots, and this actually counts towards my mark for the end of the year, I couldn’t just write “no” 2000 times. On the other hand I now have a hugely comprehensive knowledge on this subject so I guess it wasn’t all wasted. The central point behind it is that science must confirm predictions whilst giving the opportunity to falsify predictions.
Ignoring for the moment the fact that there is not a shred of evidence to support creation science or it’s newer incarnation “Intelligent Design” over any other explanation, and also ignoring the fact that creation science fails to even fullfil these criteria for science, it turns out that creation science can never be scientific.
The reason for this is as follows:
- If the natural world was designed, it required intervention by a deity.
- For a deity to need to intervene requires that the consequences of this intervention would not occur naturally.
- If the consequences would not occur naturally, the act of intervention must be breaking one or many of the established laws of the universe.
- In breaking laws of the universe, this action excludes itself from being predictable or falsifiable, putting it outside the realm of science (short of a psychological study of God and his motives).
There is no design in the universe and I may have accidentally implied that there is no God either. Whoops.
If this sounds boring to you, consider that it has been the entire focus of my life for the past 3 weeks, since I was confined to my room with only this that needed doing.
Just to keep things up to date:
As a follow up to my most recent post about sleep experimentation, I have had to put that plan on hold for the moment as I started showing signs of glandular fever about a month ago. This put me out of action so heavily that I was unable to attend lectures or labs and spent at least 18-19 hours a day sleeping. Thankfully I am on the mend now, but it has meant that my life has been pretty empty and uninteresting since then, which may be why I wrote an entry about an essay I wrote. Ugh.
26 March, 2009 at 3:18 am |
Wow didn’t know you were that sick, did you eat haggis or something?
Does science have to be predictive though? I’m wondering if String Theory should count as useful scientific research or not.