In Science and the Religious Right, biophysicist John Jagger discusses false scientific and social positions of the Religious Right, including the ideas that the earth is only six thousand years old, evolution never occurred, and the United States was founded as a Christian nation. At best, such stances of the Religious Right have produced extensive political turmoil; they undermine true understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. Many Americans know little science and are thus easily confused by such positions of religious fundamentalists. Jagger begins with a scientific primer for the intelligent and curious nonscientist, with simple explanations of such highly successful theories as relativity and evolution. He then discusses religion, explaining why many scientists become freethinkers after the models of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who did not believe in a personal God. He shows that, while mainstream religion largely accepts modern science, the Religious Right holds anti-science and anti-intellectual ideas that have great social and political consequence-they want to replace teaching of evolution in our public schools with creationist ideas that are totally unsupported by science. Science and the Religious Right shows why knowledge of some basic science, as well as of correct religious history, is essential for understanding false stances of the Religious Right that threaten American values and scientific truth.

Science and the Religious Right: What Americans Should Know about Both

By John Jagger

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 John Jagger
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-3541-9

Contents

Introduction............................................xi1. The Search for Truth.................................1I. Physical Science.....................................132. The World of Newton..................................193. The World of Einstein................................254. Radiometric Dating...................................35II. Biological Science..................................395. Evolution............................................456. Vitalism.............................................617. Brain and Mind.......................................678. What Science Does Not Know...........................83III. From Science to Secularism.........................899. What Is Secularism?..................................9110. A Personal God......................................9711. God the Creator.....................................10112. The Sources of Ethics...............................109IV. Religion............................................11713. World Religions.....................................11914. Religious Ethics....................................12715. Facts and Myths.....................................13516. Positive Aspects of Religion........................147V. The Religious Right..................................15117. Intelligent Design..................................15318. Literal Reading of the Bible........................16719. Science, Religion, and Politics.....................173VI. A New Century.......................................19320. The Future of Religion..............................19521. The Future of Secularism............................21122. Concordance.........................................231Acknowledgments.........................................235Glossary................................................237Recommended Books.......................................247Bibliography............................................255Notes...................................................259

Chapter One

The Search for Truth

This chapter describes and characterizes several different approaches to truth, with emphasis on science.

Truth is not easily defined. People have been making stabs at it since the ancient Greeks coined the term philosophy, meaning "love of wisdom." Philosophy includes the study of fundamental problems such as the nature of existence, knowledge, mind, ethics, and justice. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing such matters, such as mysticism and mythology, by its critical and systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument.

Science used to be a branch of philosophy, but today it is usually considered a separate activity. Before 1800, it was called natural philosophy, a term applied to the study of nature and the physical Universe. Science has now become much broader, studying some problems previously felt to be solely in the realm of philosophy, such as the nature of the mind. Philosophy is largely concerned with unsolved problems, so as science progresses, especially in areas of the human brain and human behavior, knowledge tends to move from philosophy into science.

Science comprises all the subjects we consider to be hard science, with known laws and well-established explanations, such as most of physics, chemistry, biology, and cosmology (study of the Universe). Much of the knowledge found in the "softer" sciences—such as archeology, paleontology, and psychology, which deal more with facts than explanations-also falls under the umbrella of science, since conclusions are based upon reasoned argument.

Modern science requires some study, but it is so pervasive in our daily lives that failure to understand at least the elements of science can lead to false conclusions and a lack of appreciation for what science has truly accomplished for humanity. I try to explain here what science is and how it works and then to look briefly at other approaches to truth.

Scientific Truth

Most of what we call "well-established science" concerns physical reality, and much of that may be considered fact, such as that the Moon orbits the Earth, or that matter is composed of atoms. But some scientific knowledge can be less certain, such as the idea that the Sun rises in the morning and sets at night, which we once thought was true, but now know is false—it is the Earth that rotates, while the Sun is stationary relative to the Earth. Another less certain idea is that humans are the primary cause of global warming.

The goal of science is knowledge of the truth. This goal is never actually reached, but much scientific knowledge is sufficiently certain that it has enabled us to build our modern civilization. In short, science works. Its truths may change as science progresses, but it will not change basically. There may be additions to what we know, or even whole new conceptions of reality (as with the theory of relativity), but the original science will still be tremendously useful because it will still be correct for the ordinary aspects of the world (as with Newton's laws of motion).

Science is noted for its extensive use of experimentation, which sets it apart from most other approaches to truth. Science also is noted for its attempts to explain many related facts by a broad intellectual structure called a scientific theory. Scientific research includes both experiments and theories, and it follows certain procedures, loosely called scientific method, that have become well developed over the past five hundred years. This approach ensures that science does not make serious errors. It is a self-correcting method.

One way scientists ensure that they don't make mistakes is to publish their findings openly. Scientists do not take claims of new knowledge seriously until the findings are reviewed by experts in the process of publication in reputable scientific journals. After publication, others can see what that scientist has done, and can put the experiments or ideas to the test. If such tests reveal a weakness in the findings, other scientists will publish the contradictory results, and then we have a debate. Until the matter is cleared up, it is not accepted as new knowledge (an example is cold fusion of atomic nuclei). Creationists, who believe in a young Earth, are not taken seriously by science because they do not publish findings in this open fashion. Creationists do not in fact have new findings, but only new interpretations of existing facts.

I give here some simple definitions of scientific fact and scientific theory:

Scientific fact — something known to be true, from actual experience and observation or from clear results of experiments.

Scientific theory — a description or explanation of a wide variety of facts or observations by a broad conceptual structure that makes predictions about future observations.

As an example, we all know that the Earth is round (spherical). Many educated people believed this five hundred years ago, when Columbus sailed, but, in fact, the ancient Greeks also knew this, and they even estimated the circumference of the Earth. But how do we know the Earth is round? Where I live in northern Texas, it looks pretty flat. Our knowledge of the shape of the Earth was derived from a general idea that the Earth is round. This idea was really...