Kids and Science

Joey's favorite show is Wild Kratts. It's shown on PBS, and features Chris and Martin Kratt who have been making kid-friendly shows about wild animals for decades now. Overall it's a great show, but the other day we were watching an episode about pollination, and one of the characters in the animated segment referred to "nature's design." While I understand that this is a show for children and cannot possibly explain all of the intricacies of evolution, I was horrified to hear the word "design" used so freely. Design in nature is commonly accepted among scientists to be an illusion which results from millions of years of evolution. The flowers are shaped and colored the way that they are because the insects which pollinate them prefer them that way, and because the ones which accidentally looked that way first were immediately pollinated and their DNA passed on. By talking about "nature's design" they have implicitly endorsed the dogmatic view that somewhere out there is a designer. I am not going to beat a dead horse here. The show is presenting the science of biology to my children. I suggest that the authors of the dialog take the time to read Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker if they don't know what I'm getting at. In fact, I think I'm going to attempt to write to these folks and see what they have to say about this. IMO it is irresponsible to present biology to children in this way. Were they afraid of offending the religious masses by using the word "evolve?" All they needed to say was that the flowers evolved these traits to ensure they were pollinated and more of their kind would grow. No need to get into the intricacies of our biological relationship to apes. Instead, they have chosen a wording which offends me, and I hope offends you too. Who would this offend, anyway? We once had someone criticize us for allowing our kids to have TVs in their rooms and allowing them to watch PBS any time they want. "But PBS shows Nova!" was the response. Are you offended by science? Or by its atheist host? Or by the fact that this show presents the world without regard to your religion? When Joey tells me that Nova is one of his favorite "grown-up" shows I am proud of my son. Oh, shit. I forgot to indoctrinate him. Nope. I made a conscious decision to teach him critical thinking instead of unquestioning submission to authority. Go ahead and raise your children to be sheep, but don't insinuate that it is wrong of me to teach mine to be thinkers rather than followers.

I don't believe in science. I believe in Christianity. That's what someone said to me yesterday. All I can do is SMH. Really? All that translates to is "I am ignorant, and I only believe in God's authority, so you might as well not talk to me." I don't understand how anyone can survive in life with such a worldview. Our entire society is dependent on science and technology. Perhaps this woman should move out to the sticks and start her own farm. Like the Amish. Every time you flip on the lights in your (designed-by-an-architect) house, you are using technology that depends on science never dreamed of by the authors of the Christian Bible. How can you "not believe" in science? It's sort of like the retort that god doesn't believe in atheists, so atheists don't exist. I bet these people think the ontological argument is the greatest thing ever dreamed up. (boils down to: god is perfect, existence is more perfect than non-existence, therefore god exists) In a way, I'm glad I wasn't in a position to tell this lady what I really thought of her at the time, because it would have probably resulted in a poorly-planned ad hominem. It can't really be her own fault she's that ignorant about the world, can it? I've often heard the argument that science is no different than religion. I believe in relativity because Einstein says so. It's no different than believing in Jesus because the pastor, biblical author, academic theologian, or whoever else says so. Let me point out the fallacy here. Einstein discovered (authored) the theory of relativity. He is not the only scientist who has experimentally proven relativity. The whole point of science is that it is based on evidence, and that all hypotheses (and later theories) are falsifiable. Come up with a situation where energy does NOT equal the product of mass and the speed of light squared, and we'll all toss out relativity! They're working on that right now! One of the features of relativity requires that no travel can exceed the speed of light, and an experiment has produced evidence of neutrinos (tiny subatomic particles) which appear to do just that. If this it verified independently to be true, the world of science will be shaken, and we will know more than ever about just how little we know about the nature of the universe. Really, I don't "believe" in science either. I trust science to provide the best explanation possible given all of the available evidence. I don't have faith in science the way a Christian has faith in god. The two aren't even mutually exclusive. Yes, there are scientists who believe in god. There probably aren't too many actual scientists who believe in the literal historical truth of the Christian Bible, but there are most certainly scientists who believe we cannot eliminate the "first cause". Hawking may come damn close to saying there is no god, no first cause, but his view represents a hypothesis, not even a theory. Until we can create synthetic universes, there will always be room for faith with regard to where it all came from. I can wrap my mind around conservation laws (mass, energy, etc) but to say something arose spontaneously from nothing (and those laws simply did not exist until this epoch moment) sounds no less faith-based than "God initiated the process we call the big bang." Maybe there is something more that Dr. Hawking just failed to convey to me in his book, or maybe we all believe the same thing and just call it something different. Given the choice, I'll sooner take Hawking's side on "faith" than trust in a book written by several authors over a few centuries in multiple languages before the invention of the printing press. I am not saying that I think Dr. Hawking is a "god"; he is a man like me, with a brain to analyze and senses with which to take in the world. And his hypothesis doesn't contradict the rest of the whole of science.