2013

Robust Knowledge Versus Flimsy Knowledge

Creationism purports to be a rival of evolution, an explanation of where we come from that deserves to be given respect comparable to the respect that Darwin’s explanation enjoys. It’s hard to argue facts with creationists because they come equipped with their own facts. But even if we set aside the facts, we can still see that creationism is a pseudoscience. We can judge these two bodies of knowledge, creationism and evolutionary theory, by how robust they are. Knowledge is robust when it is dense, thorough, useful, interconnected, predictive, teachable, measurable, falsifiable, and growing. Creationism and evolutionary science present a clear case where one side’s knowledge is robust and the other side’s is slim.

Consider, first, everything that evolutionary scientists have learned in the last 100 years. Their discoveries incorporate new evidence from genetics, paleontology, game theory, and more. What have the creationists discovered in the last century? If the creationists are right, they should be able to use genetic analysis to trace the races of humanity back to Noah’s three sons and their respective wives. That would be exciting confirmation of Noah’s flood and useful information for understanding humanity’s origins. But creationists aren’t even trying to do link human genetics to the Flood. Instead, secular scientists have traced humanity’s genetic lineages back to our evolution in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The theory of evolution also proves itself by being useful to people other than evolutionary scientists. People use evolution to understand the spread of viruses, the control of agricultural pests, and the nature of living things in general. If you ask a creationist why birds have feathers, the answer is that God created them that way. A biologist, however, can tell you a detailed story about scaly dinosaurs evolving feathers and eventually flight. The right paleontologist could talk you to sleep with what we know about the evolution of birds, far more than a creationist can tell you about all of creation. Evolutionary scientists also demonstrate that their theories are based on evidence when they debate each other. As new evidence comes in, it gives scientists new information to disagree about. For instance, consider the question of whether humans have evolved into five or more distinct “races,” or whether evolution has resulted in a single, basically homogeneous human race. Scientists are studying genes to find out, and in the mean time, there’s heated debate. Creationists don’t debate each other. There’s a split between “new earth” and “old earth” creationists, but there’s no public debate over the issue. Old-earth creationists think the new-earthers are blind to science, and the new-earth creationists think that the old-earthers are blinded by Satan, but both factions work happily together on the “Intelligent Design” team. The amount of intellectual work being accomplished with the theory of evolution swamps the work being done with creationism. You don’t even have to look at the facts that each side proclaims. The two bodies of knowledge aren’t comparable, and creationism isn’t even in evolution’s league.

Naturally, other bodies of knowledge besides creationism also fail the test of robustness. Compare, for example, everything that astronomers have learned about the stars in the last 100 years to everything that astrologers have learned. Is there a correlation among genes, star signs, and personality? Do animals have star signs, too, or just humans? Or maybe just humans, apes, and whales? These are interesting questions, but no astrologers are looking into them. Astronomers learn countless new things every year while astrologers reiterate traditional ideas. Furthermore, the only people who use astrology in their businesses are astrologers. Astronomy, on the other hand, is useful for understanding tides, getting to the moon, and putting satellites in orbit. And what about debates? You never read about a hard-hitting debate between astrologers. Twentieth century astronomers, on the other hand, hotly debated whether our Milky Way was the whole universe, or whether it was just one cluster of stars among many others. Astronomers were able to resolve the debate with cold, hard facts because their body of knowledge is based on evidence. For another example, let’s consider Mormon archeology. The Mormons claim to have secret knowledge of past civilizations in the Americas, but this knowledge doesn’t help them do archeology better than anyone else. No one takes anomalous archeological finds to the Mormons for their inside knowledge and superior perspective. In one field after another, the people who are doing real research have robust, growing bodies of knowledge, and they offer useful expertise. By comparison, fringe theories are flimsy.

A personal interest of mine is Jesus scholarship, where you might not be surprised to find a similar split. A few scholars say Jesus didn’t exist at all, and the world-renowned experts, most of whom are agnostic, say he did. The skeptics make simple judgments and blanket statements, such as dismissing all the written evidence equally. Mainstream scholars, on the other hand, differentiate minutely between evidence that’s more reliable or less. Of the four gospels, for example, they regard John as not useful on the subject of the historical Jesus and the gospel of Mark less touched by authorial bias than Matthew or Luke. The mainstream scholars also have an ever-growing body of historical information about Jesus and his time, while scholarship that counts Jesus as mythical peaked about a hundred years ago and has declined since then. If Jesus didn’t exist, then there are a number of exciting historical problems that could have been explored over the last century. Who was it who first said, “Blessed are the hungry”? The phrase appears in different contexts in Matthew, Luke, and Thomas. Someone must have said or written it first. Who was it? And where did the baptism and crucifixion stories in the gospels come from? Both events are exactly the sort of thing that a first-century Jew would never invent because each event was embarrassing in its own way. Jesus’ baptism made him look like a follower of John the Baptist and a sinner. His crucifixion marked him as a failure of the worst sort. If there wasn’t any Jesus getting baptized, blessing the hungry, and getting crucified, then there are remarkable historical discoveries to be made about the origins of these gospel accounts. But there’s no such research being done. The scholars who say Jesus didn’t exist just stop there and have nothing else to show for their perspective. No iconoclastic graduate student is using unorthodox scholarship to promote a bold new vision of Christian origins, one in which Jesus didn’t even exist. Instead there’s more and more research that ends up in line with the well-established view that Jesus was an historical Jewish prophet, albeit one who never claimed to be God and didn’t intend to found a new religion.

I like using the robustness argument because it works regardless of the facts of the case. Ideally it’s a neutral perspective, looking at each body of knowledge from the outside and getting away from each side’s debating points. Everyone in the debate can see for themselves how one body of knowledge stacks up against another. Fans of any given fringe theory will always be able to find reasons that the robustness test doesn’t apply to their particular perspective. Reason is notoriously ineffective at making people admit that they’re wrong. Still, in the scope of centuries reason seems to be winning out, one winning argument at a time.

(The thinking in this post is inspired primarily by similar observations made by Steven Pinker in his book The Blank Slate. It is similar to earlier posts about magic not working and about Intelligent Design lacking controversy.)