- If you had asked any kid, at least under 12 or so years old, in my childhood neighborhood, you’d have been told that the boogerman was the one to be feared and that he hid under beds, in dark and cluttered closets, and lurked in abandoned houses and often left a slimy residue wherever he had been.
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And he always checks under his own bed to make sure Chuck Norris isn’t there.
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No creationist could have said it better… Their justification and rhetoric all has the “aim” to offer a “framework of knowledge which serves as the best explanation for scriptural data.”
Indeed the claim reformed theology achieves that aim is rejected by many including myself who sees this more as a framework of distortions than anything else. And at the top of the list of those distortions is a pretense to objectivity, which I frankly see as a major poison in religion which has caused many to throw all of religion in the garbage.
I see no overlap in the Venn diagram at all. Science is objective observation. Religion is all about subjective participation (as is life itself). But perhaps for me, more important is the fact that I see very little overlap between the value I see in Christianity and Reformed theology.
The problem with this is, for many people, it can look a bit like a failure to commit to anything as true (which brings back to the topic of the thread regarding science). So instead I would say it is the pretention to objectivity in things of religion which make them brittle. We will never have the objectivity in religion which we have in science. There are no written procedures which will give the same result no matter what we want or believe. And perhaps we cannot have quite the same kind of honesty which insists on testing hypotheses with such procedures. But we can aim at a different sort of honesty of, at least, acknowledging the subjectivity of our choices in religion. I think we can justify that subjectivity quite well – but that is the best we can do.
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Why trust science in a post-truth age?
Science deniers make hay of every flaw and shortcoming in science, real or perceived, that they can, to try and justify rejecting anything and everything about science that they don’t like, and it is important to push back on this. But they do make a valid point that needs to be addressed properly. Science isn’t infallible. Peer review doesn’t catch everything. Peer pressure, political pressure, cancel culture and groupthink are a thing. The scientific consensus on some things does change from time to time. We need to address these concerns effectively, and for that reason there’s a different question we need to be asking.
When is it reasonable to be sceptical about the scientific consensus? At what point is it reasonable to ask if factors such as peer pressure, political pressure, groupthink or cancel culture could be skewing the consensus by suppressing funding or the publication of results?
My answer here is to ask what factors are at play over and above the level of consensus that would mitigate the problem or counteract it entirely. For example, if a scientific theory has commercially important applications that require it to be correct rather than ideologically convenient, then it isn’t reasonable to suggest that the scientific consensus could be compromised in this way. Or if a scientific theory has other theories that depend on it—in other words, if it is foundational science—then if it turned out to be wrong, all those other theories would have to be wrong as well. Another mitigating factor is the level of detail and precision in the consensus. A detailed, mathematically or numerically precise consensus in the physical sciences is going to be much more robust than a more general, statistically broad consensus about something in the social sciences.
This is why it is not reasonable to be sceptical about deep geological time or the basic mechanics of biological evolution. These are theories which have significant commercial and practical applications, and where there are other areas of research that depend on them, requiring them to be correct rather than ideologically convenient in other to work. For man made climate change, there is also another factor to consider: this is an area where the conflict of interest is strongest on the side of the deniers. Climate sceptics sometimes claim that green energy companies have a motivation to talk up man made climate change, but this is a classic example of looking at a speck in their brother’s eye while ignoring the proverbial Travis Perkins sawmill in their own. People taking man made climate change seriously pose a massive threat to a large, established industry with very deep pockets—namely, the oil industry.
On the other hand, there may be some areas of research where some scepticism about the integrity of the scientific consensus as a whole may be warranted. This would particularly be the case for politically charged and controversial subjects, where one side of the debate is dominant in popular culture, academia and spheres of political power, especially if the scientific consensus only gelled after the dominant position had come to prominence in pop culture and the media. However, again one should also consider whether there are any mitigating factors, such as commercial applications or other scientific theories that depend on it.
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It would be interesting to see if one could populate a sample ‘continuum’ to illustrate good examples of various points along a continuum all the way from “no reasonable people contest this anymore” all the way to “this is still hotly contested - and appropriately so”.
If I was to begin to attempt such a list - a few of the major stepping stones along the way starting from “no reasonable people argue this anymore…”
Round earth
Deep time (billions of years)
Common ancestry
Climate change (that it’s happening, and anthropogenic)
Mechanisms of evolution & the nature of their interactivity
(these middle ones now being more ‘cutting edge’ and appropriately regarded as still unsettled or only bits and pieces becoming settled.)
Abiogenesis
Climate change (as in … what all should we do about it - and what does the future hold)
Anthropological sciences
Brain science
Social sciences & cultural studies
??? Other cutting edge fields … things far from settled or certain.
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Early Universe cosmology that is about things post-CMB should probably be just below mechanisms of evolution, and cosmology about things pre-CMB pretty close to abiogenesis.
Perhaps another way to state the parallel between science and theology in method is the need in both cases to be committed to learning and correcting one’s ideas from the evidence, rather than insisting that the science or theology needs to conform to my preferences. Both those loudly claiming to be biblical and those highly critical of relying on the Bible often have little interest in self-examination. Of course, what counts as evidence has to be established. The ASA Winter Symposium main speaker, Elaine Ecklund, discussed, in light of her sociological research, several shared values of science and faith that might be of interest to this discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoWdUImXbNY&list=PLFYFWTTOfSZHnURq9ube2jJdHp53rkYzG
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There is a surprising amount of Roman Catholic theology that has as its primary argument that “it is fitting” – just like it is fitting that Jesus had golden eyes.
I’ve encountered kids who say “boogerman”.
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This got me wondering if one reason I focus on the text so strongly is because linguistics is more objective than theology.
I once read a sci-fi novel that had the idea that peer review itself, not just “peer pressure [or] groupthink”, channeled human science into paths that closed off other options; the plot involved seriously searching for aliens who would have a wildly different perspective on things that might break the logjams human science was stuck in.
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One of the divides I see is the concept of where truth lies. Does truth lie within us, or outside of us. Post-modernism seems to support the idea that the truth is within us, so that what we see outside of ourselves needs to conform to our inner truth. I view it in the opposite direction. I’m a fallible human being moving towards the truth I find in the world, knowing that I will never reach the goal of knowing the full truth.
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Would make for a good Youtube tier list video. 
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What is the name of this novel…
I would like to hear more… channeled in what way? I think the main point of peer review is to make sure contributions hold to those ideals of honesty and objectivity without which it would not be science at all – as well as ensuring logical coherence and accuracy, without which it wouldn’t even be meaningful, or lack of evidence for claims where evidence would be expected to be seen already. So is the novel suggesting peer review adds something other than the adherence to these ideals and basic criterion? I mean if I were to guess… I would suspect a claim that peer review enforces an adherence to some kind of scientific dogmatism. But I doubt that is a universal flaw, certainly relevant and likely, but not one every peer reviewed journal would fail at. Too many would simply be thrilled at new ideas outside the box for that to be the case.
A more likely flaw is that we simply haven’t asked (or focused on ) the same questions. But I don’t see peer review contributing to this. When this has happed before, it isn’t the peer reviewed journal that is the obstacle but simply the lack of interest by others in the scientific community. Just because you publish doesn’t mean many scientists will read or take it seriously. People will always follow there own interests. Grad students are limited to the interests of the professors they work under. Now that is an important flaw in the way things are done in science.
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