Evolution: science or scientism

This is a follow up of a post on my regular blog, where a newspaper article mentioned 450 churches were celebrating Darwin day...I pointed out that that left 299,560 churches that did NOT celebrate Darwin day.

I usually don't get involved in the "evolution vs intelligent design" arguments, because they are both wrong, and both not seeing the ideas behind their argument.

One assumes darwin's philosophy behind his evolutionary theory is TRUTH, the other assumes a "deus ex machina" idea of evolution that is scientific nonsense, and theologically unnecessary...

In college, I had to take the usual philosophy courses...I don't remember a thing about two of those courses (I am just starting to learn a little basic philosophy now...back then, I just learned enough to get a C average, because I spent most of my time studying physics and chemistry),

But one of the courses, the Philosophy of Science, WAS interesting.

Like most semi trained scientists, I assumed science was TRUE...something written on stone tablets, that one could not question....

Actually, science is merely saying that nature runs by rules, and that if we observe something, and describe it, another person somewhere else should be able do to the same experiment and observe the same thing...

But HOW we describe the ideas behind what we observe is actually quite creative...

Nature has rules, and it also has beauty...the discoverers of DNA realized that their proposed model was true because it was pretty, it was simple, and it explained many of the observations of what people had seen in genetics...

Now, a Christian would say: The reason it follows rules, and the reason we see design and beauty in nature is that God was the designer...but a scientist only observes. He can't say if there is a designer or not...that is not science's job...

Similarly, Darwin observed the beauty and the simplicity of the idea that things evolve with the environment, and so things change to fit the environment, and the things best suited to the environment are the ones that survive...

Now, there are afew "scientific" problems with his idea (for example, offspring do NOT inherit acquired characteristics, so how do these things change?)...but as a whole, it is a nice, simple picture of how things are, and that things change...

In evolution, God could be nudging the changes, or God could be behind the innate ability of biological objects to follow laws that allow these changes...or maybe not...again, science does not make this judgement.

But Darwin, and/or many of his followers, WANTED to find a way to explain how life came into being in order to affirm their own athiestic beliefs...so the argument was that evolution WAS BLIND and the implication was that God did not exist...and since many of them used this philosophical idea to bash non scientific believers, the Darwin wars started...

Did Darwin devise his theory in a way to confirm atheism? Some say yes (Peter Singer's books say he did). Others say no, he was just observing. I haven't read any of Darwin's books, so I can't say...

But the observation of evolutionary changes in biological systems is NOT the same as the theory that evolution is blind...or that evolution denies that there is a God...

For this, we have to go back to basic Philosophy...

Science is a way to observe the truth...but it makes no assumption on the reality of things outside it's sphere...

But the philosophy (dare one say the "religion") of scientism says that ONLY science and scientific experimentation can discover truth...and therefore the beliefs of religion (and the beliefs of philosophy) can not be explained using experiments, therefore they are not true...

But one cannot say that, scientifically...perhaps we just haven't found the right machine or experiment to prove God's existence...

It is philosophy and religion that explains WHY it is things exist, why nature has a pattern and a beauty innate in it's existence...it is religion and philosophy that explore the questions: Why do things evolve and change? Why does nature follow laws? Why do things evolve into complexity when entropy suggests they should not?

Secondly, there are many realities outside of scientific theory...Love, justice, greed, evil...again, science has little to say in discussing the major questions of life: Why is there evil? What is Beauty? Why do the good suffer? Why do we hope? What is the meaning of life?

Science is a way to find the truth of material things...but it is limited in what it explains...

Or as one cynic explained: they know the price of everything, but the value of nothing...

That is why the Pope backs evolution while insisting that scientism is not true: Yes, the scientific way of examing the world around us is good...but it is merely one way of seeing Truth....