Give Me That Ol' Time Science!

(Aren’t We All Fundamentalists?) 

By David Wood 

The history of the world is the history of our liberation from ignorance.  The people who came before us were trapped in darkness and enslaved by their adherence to juvenile traditions.  This blind devotion to dogma has spotted our history with injustice upon injustice, as bold defenders of Truth have stood up only to be beaten back down by the tyranny of their vacuous oppressors.  It is only in the modern world that we have finally emerged from our chains and stepped into the light of reason.  While the world is still filled with ignorance, we the intelligentsia have at last rid ourselves of every vestige of dogma. 

At least, that’s what many people in contemporary society would like to think.  It’s quite easy to view our predecessors as dreadfully ignorant, and to see ourselves as enlightened.  It is equally painless to condemn those who came before us for not being more open to criticism.  The difficulty arises when we gaze deeply into the mirror and realize that all of us (Christian, atheist, Muslim, agnostic, etc.) may be every bit as dogmatic as the most rabid fundamentalist.  Different people simply have different sets of fundamentals. 

In order to see ourselves more clearly, let us consider some of the charges that have been leveled against “the ignorant.”  Perhaps the strongest criticisms have been directed against the persecution of Galileo and the prosecution of John Scopes.  During the time of Galileo, the Church had a long-established worldview:  Everything travels around the Earth in perfect order and harmony.  The Church also had a system of proof and verification:  “Show us from the Bible or from the works of Aristotle.”  Then came Galileo with a device that, according to him, showed (1) that the popular worldview was wrong and (2) that there was a method of proof other than the words of Aristotle or the Word of God.  Not surprisingly, the Church (especially after Galileo mocked the Pope) didn’t heed Galileo’s findings, and Galileo had to stand before the Inquisition. 

Nearly four centuries later, Scopes stood before the Dayton Inquisition, for the State of Tennessee had declared Darwinism unfit for survival.  While Inherit the Wind’s chorus of “Give Me That Old Time Religion” muddles the actual events, the film nevertheless accurately portrays the popular perception of what happened in the Dayton courthouse.  Many are convinced that Scopes was burned in what amounted to a modern day witch-hunt, as the citizens of Dayton marched the streets with their torches, pitchforks, and Bibles. 

But what should they have done?  According to a “modern” thinker, the citizens of Dayton should have said, “You know, this theory goes against everything we believe, and it threatens the foundations of our town.  Nonetheless, we should be open to it, for it is the position of many scientists.  Even though the scientific worldview is new to us, we should be completely willing to level our entire way of thinking and to build upon a different foundation.”  Similarly, the Church in Galileo’s time should have said, “Galileo, we have a certain way of viewing the universe, and people have held this view for thousands of years.  But we understand that you’ve got a tube that you’d like us to look through.  Now if we look through that tube and see something that doesn’t fit our worldview, we will gladly give up our way of thinking and our method of determining what’s true, because that device of yours seems much more reliable than all the learning of humanity up to this point.”  

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that these people weren’t willing to throw down their arms.  Indeed, history shows that people—by nature, it seems—resist dramatic changes in their worldview.  The more striking the anticipated change, the more pointed the resistance.  Poincaré proclaimed his chaos theory, Einstein his relativity, and Freud his infamous Oedipus Complex, but these ideas weren’t as devastating to the public as the revolutions of Galileo and Darwin.  Galileo threatened our place in the universe, and Darwin threatened our place in the “Great Chain of Being.”  These changes couldn’t have been more fundamental to life and thought. 

Even so, we may still maintain that history’s persecutors and prosecutors should have been more open to new ideas.  But in order to avoid charges of hypocrisy, let us ponder our own biases.  The modern worldview is that the universe operates according to natural laws and that we learn by employing the scientific method.  Would we tolerate a challenge to this view?  True, we may not put the challenger on house arrest, but this is only because we have added legal tolerance to our system of belief.  This doesn’t mean we’re open-minded. 

To illustrate, consider the recent controversy over the possible incorporation of Intelligent Design (ID) into high school curricula.  The Reverend Barry Lynn, an opponent of ID, argues that it is a covert attempt to smuggle Christianity into public schools, that our children will fall behind if they are exposed to ID, and that it must be rejected at all costs.[1]  Interestingly, he then goes on to say that “it is unacceptable to introduce dogma into the science curriculum.”   

Apparently, Lynn doesn’t recognize the inconsistency in his thinking.  He has a certain view of ID, a view that many people oppose.  However, students must not be permitted to so much as hear the opposing view; instead, our schools shall only proclaim the “orthodox” position.  While Lynn is confident that his view is based on reason, it is just as dogmatic as any.  His argument is based on an appeal to authority (i.e. since there is a limited consensus in the scientific community, we should consider nothing else), but this is exactly what the Church did in the case of Galileo and what the Dayton Courthouse did in the case of Scopes.  The only difference is that there is a different source of authority.  Whether we hold to the Bible, to Aristotle, or to the consensus of scientists, few of us do all our thinking independent of authority.  Indeed, if we were to question a typical college student as to why he believes in evolution, he would most likely reply, “It’s what the scientists say.” 

Someone may respond, “But Einstein and others changed our worldview, and we accepted the changes.  Science, then, isn’t really dogmatic.”  This objection is flawed, however.  When Einstein came, we accepted changes within our scientific worldview.  Yet the system of verification, the scientific method, remained unchanged.  The response of the scientific community (while there was indeed a great deal of Newtonian dogmatism) was, in effect, “If you’d like us to believe your new scientific theories, you’d better be able to back it up with scientific data, which is the only sort of data we accept within our system.” 

While we may safely say that many of our predecessors were wrong, it may be hypocritical to say that they were too closed-minded.  What we really mean when we say that others should be open to change is that they should be open to what we believe, because our beliefs are correct.  We fail to realize that one day, perhaps not too long from now, another view may come along—something different from the current scientific view.  Would we receive it with open arms, casting aside everything we’ve held dear for hundreds of years?  Or, would we cover our ears in horror, singing at the tops of our voices, “Give me that old time science!  It was good enough for Darwin, and it’s good enough for me!”?   

Of course, we don’t need to wait to hear this chorus.  We can hear it echoing in the background every time the question of Intelligent Design comes up.