Dogma

I learned a lot today. A while ago, back in about December, there was something going on in a courthouse in Pennsylvania. Turns out some kids in a small town were being taught that evolution isn't the only possible explanation for how us apes got so damn clever. People didn't like this idea too much; they liked evolution. So this group of people did what any reasonable, upstanding group of people might do when they're unhappy about something. They sued. In the meantime, there was something like what you might call a democratic election in that same town. Eight guys on their school board lost and were replaced. There was one more guy who didn't lose any elections, but that's because it ended up being the end of his term. Now they have nine guys who like evolution. Sorry, ten. Ten guys: nine on the school board, and one more with a gavel. He said something about science in the science classroom. I think he's right. He had a lot to say, wrote something like a novel. Now everybody'd better like evolution.

After I finished talking about Pennsylvania, I went to hear another man, whose name was Mr. John Keber, talk about evolution. I liked him too. Then a man who once taught me (he was there to hear Mr. Keber talk too), he had some things to say about perspectives. He talked about paradigms, how they're a problem sometimes with religion, but science's got them too. When this man taught me, he taught me a lot. Seems he wasn't finished. I learned that the fundamental difference between biology and theology is the up front confession of science to it's own fallibility. This isn't necessarily so. Science might say that their theories and things can, theoretically, be proven false. But what about their logic, their rationale, their (scientific) method? These are untouchable, undeniable, infallible. The paradigm in which they are trapped, and so the fundamental hypocracy of all science. How can you prove the rightness of logic as a path to truth? Is it untestable? Then it isn't science. Now maybe you don't have to like evolution, and you don't have to like religion dressed in a lab coat, but everybody'd better like the art of reason, even in Pennsylvania.