“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not
ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.”
Consider
this question: before Mt. Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain
peak in the world? The answer of
course is Mt. Everest—it was still the highest peak, even though no one knew
it at the time.
There
is a reality that is separate from us, whether we believe it or not; we just
have to figure out what it is. We
don’t always agree upon it, and this causes a lot of conflict.
It’s the classic story of the four blind men and the elephant.
The first blind man, holding the trunk, believes an elephant is rather
like a boa constrictor; the second examining the ear believes it to be like a
great leaf; the third standing next to the leg compares it to a tree trunk; the
fourth grasping its tail is convinced the elephant is like a rope.
True, from any of the blind men’s vantage point, their claims were
accurate, but that was only because they were unwilling (or
unable)
to shift around and examine the
whole elephant.
Science
is supposed to be about logically and methodically examining the whole elephant.
I say ‘supposed to be’ because in practice it is far different.
Here is the problem. We all
have expectations of what we will find, and if we look and discover something we did not
anticipate, then we tend to be a little stubborn.
The blind man holding the trunk of the elephant was so sure it was like a boa constrictor
that when he reaches the leg, he doesn’t want to believe that it is still an
elephant. It makes him feel better
to learn that he was right, and when he learns he was wrong, he doesn’t want
to accept it. He is disillusioned,
and while disillusionment is always good, it is never fun.
It is good to have an accurate understanding of the subject, but it is
painful to reject what we believed, so some people simply refuse to do so, but
their 
objections are based in emotion, not evidence.
That
was very evident when the scientific community had to decide whether or not to
break away from the Ptolemaic view (Earth is the
center) of the universe in favor of the Copernican view (Earth
is not the center). It
was a long, difficult process, and many traditionalists went to their graves
devising complex contradictory sub theories that proved in their minds that the
Earth was the center of all things after all, even though the observable data
did not fit that position. I have
spoken with people who still believe the Earth is flat.
Oh, they have a whole lot of math to explain how you can sail around the
world in one direction without falling off the edge; they even explain the
pictures from space that suggest the Earth is round.
(A plate is round too, they say, but not
spherical.) I like the
way Gregg Easterbrook put it, “Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to
anything.”
Unfortunately,
we find ourselves in a similar situation today. The scientific community (principally
in the areas of education and media) is stubbornly clinging to a
nineteenth century paradigm that has quite frankly demonstrated itself to be
bankrupt at every turn. It is a
religious bias, or I should say a bias against the supernatural.
You see, at one time science was the pursuit of truth and it has since
become the pursuit of purely naturalistic explanations that exclude even the
consideration of a supernatural element. In
other words science is now defined as the justification of Darwinistic
Evolution.
New
evidence (and a lot of old evidence) has
challenged the veracity of this “theory”, and
the old school is not happy. Proponents
of this bias are strangely assuming the mannerisms of
Inquisition-like religious
zealots, often resorting to bullying, name calling and blacklisting.
They have been teaching the “theory”
as fact, and now there are infidels out there preaching blasphemy.
They were king of the hill and now their position is threatened.
Any challenge to their dogma is simply not tolerated, and the Intelligent
Design crowd must be purified by pain. What’s more, the masses must be shielded from this heresy.
Views that question Darwinism, no matter how scientifically valid are not
allowed to be brought to the attention of the public.
In the rare event that it is given ‘equal
time’, inevitably the most uneducated spokesperson is selected to
face a myriad of ‘real scientists’ who
chant their mantras until the dissident is sufficiently humbled.
This is accomplished by this elitist crowd using dialectic reason in lieu
of didactic reason.
Dialectic
reason holds the concept of Relative
Truth, that is to say that truth is not constant, not universal (even
though they hold to that principle absolutely).
In a practical sense, it is impossible to use the dialectic method and
arrive at truth, because the dialectic is only concerned with the appearance of
truth, not truth itself. Anyway,
they don’t believe in Absolute Truth, so
there is not a real destination to which they can arrive.
They can circumvent any problems of accuracy because agreement, not provability is the criteria. Instead of saying ‘gravity is a fact’, they say 'most scientists agree gravity is true'. It’s a handy emergency exit, because it doesn’t have to be true, and they will stretch any truth to ensure that God (the bane of Evolution) is out of the picture, very much like a defense attorney who distorts the facts to get a client acquitted, even if he knows him to be guilty. A tyrant needs deception to keep his position and enslave the masses. No one was ever enslaved by knowing the truth, and no lie ever set anyone free.
So which
is the superior approach, didactic or dialectic?
I suppose it depends upon what you want. If your purpose is to understand reality, then you should go
with the didactic method, but if your purpose is to ensure that you get your
way, then you would favor the dialectic. Your
answer to this issue will determine how well you can handle truth, but
regardless of your choice, truth will still go on being true.
Mt. Everest doesn’t care if you know how high it is; it got along fine
without you.
It’s like the saying goes: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can fool yourself any time you choose.
Darren Turney
23 May 05