Hokum-Balderdash Assay

Looks like OTC cough syrups may just be a waste of money:

Over-the-counter cough syrups generally contain drugs in too low a dose to be effective, or contain combinations of drugs that have never been proven to treat coughs, said Dr. Richard Irwin, chairman of a cough guidelines committee for the American College of Chest Physicians.

...

'[T]he best studies that we have to date would suggest there's not a lot of justification for using these medications because they haven't been shown to work," said Irwin, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass.

I'd offer my personal anecdotes to vouch for that, but critical thinkers out there would lynch me. Yes, yes, yes. Confirmation bias, selective recall, lack of controls, etc., etc.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a trade group for makers of over-the-counter medications, disputed the guidelines and said over-the-counter cough medicines provide relief to millions of people each year.

I sure hope they have good studies to support that claim. I'd like to know how much more effective these various cough relief medications are over sugar syrup (strawberry-flavored please).

Dextromethorphan is in Robitussin, a top-selling over-the-counter cough syrup. It is among Robitussin ingredients that the Food and Drug Administration has found to be safe and effective, said Francis Sullivan, a spokesman for Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, which makes Robitussin.

Sullivan said Robitussin “wouldn't be a top brand if people didn't feel it was efficacious.”

Oh! So this is the way Wyeth determines the efficacy of their OTCs--compare sales figures. Well, while they're at it, why not use testimonials as a gauge as well.

I don't hear Sullivan stating, much less emphasizing, that the level of dextromethorphan in Robitussin has been found to be effective. Can he please address that issue? Of course, Wyeth can, instead, highlight the "safe" part. How about reducing the amount of the active ingredient so they can claim it to be safer than ever? Are those homeopaths I hear in the distance?

As a college student some 15 years ago Lauren Becker worked during summers as a ranger in a state park in the Bible Belt. During the guided tours she would take the hikers down to the base of a 256-foot waterfall--the main attraction of the park. She would then tell them, among other things, that the rocks they were standing on are 300 million years old.

Although Lauren had heard that there were people who believed the earth is only 6,000 years old, she'd never actually met any. It was during her stint at the park that she finally came face-to-face with young earth creationists. And not a few of them. For instance, whenever she would talk of the age of the rocks, some mothers would try to prevent their children from hearing about the facts. During one hike a man actually argued that the rocks were only a few thousand years old and the only reason we think they're millions of years old is that the Devil made them look that way to make humans turn away from God!

You can listen to Lauren Becker's story by downloading the December 30 2005 Point of Inquiry podcast. It is a most enjoyable piece and I highly recommend it. (The MP3 file is around 38Mb. Becker's segment is around 10 minutes long, while the entire podcast runs 55 minutes.)

Here are excerpts:

A 300-million-year old rock is the answer resulting from decades of observation, research, field study, laboratory testing, comparative studies, and critical thinking. A 6,000-year old rock is the answer because God said so.

...

The lack of a deity is not an opening for chaos; it is a call for responsibility.... Our species has continuously found meaning, purpose, and comfort in the idea of God or gods. Unfortunately, if we want to know what is actually going on--and our survival depends on understanding reality--religion is utterly bereft of explanatory power....

The discovery that a rock is 300 million years old is the result of lots of questions by lots of people who devise lots of different ways to ask the earth about itself. Much to our delight she is talking. Science is how we listen and the scientific method is how we understand what she says. To deny that a rock is 300 million years old is to deny the process that got us to that understanding. Since this process of inquiry is our best tool for succeeding in the world its denial is a grave threat to our future prosperity. Far from making us stronger faith cripples us because it takes away our greatest advantage--our ability to question, to learn, to adapt, and therefore to live.

(Lauren Becker is a Point of Inquiry contributor and Assistant Public Relations Director for CSICOP.)


Science leads to reliable knowledge because it does not claim to possess absolute knowledge of the world, is based on systematic observation of the world and rigorous testing of claims/hypotheses, and is self-correcting. Unlike religion, science does not delude itself about the understanding it gleans and possesses. This is one of its greatest strength. This is one reason it has been so successful.

On the other hand, rather than being founded on the principle of tentativeness of understanding¹, the search for better and more detailed understanding, and self-correction, most religions are absolutist and dogmatic in character. And as for their supernatural beliefs/explanations, they are untestable. Hence, they can only remain unverified and unverifiable extraordinary claims. Moreover, since the supernatural by definition is not constrained by natural laws people can make the most ludicrious of appeals to the supernatural, people can attribute anything that they cannot understand (even things that they believe are impossible in this world) to the supernatural and make the supernatural cause practically anything they fancy (An aside: Can deities make a round square? Or create married bachelors? Or commit suicide? Can a deity create entities that supersede itself in all aspects, thus creating beings greater than itself? If not then what does omnipotence mean exactly? If God is constrained by, for instance, logic, then there are limitations to a deity's powers. But what then are the implications of the existence of such restrictions?).

If an explanation is valid/correct, then it has the power to predict. Scientific explanations provide deterministic and stochastic predictions. Indeed scientific theories would be useless (and untestable) if they had no predictive power. Supernatural explanations, on the other hand, cannot be tested and don't predict anything. Becker rightly declares that supernaturalism is "bereft of explanatory power." Pat Robertson can declare that if the Christian deity gets pissed with some person--as in Ariel Sharon--then He will in his infiinte wisdom gift him with a stroke or heart attack. Problem is, how can you predict (and test) this if we have no way of knowing God's emotional state or whether the supernatural exists in the first place? What use is the explanation that person K was cured because supplications had been answered by the supernatural, when failure to get well despite a barrage of prayers are explained away with the rationalization that God sometimes refuses to accede to our prayers because he knows what's best? With all bases covered the claim that prayer works is nonfalsifiable.

One of the worst and yet common pitfalls in supernaturalistic thinking is that of producing ad hoc explanations--rationalizations that cannot be tested/falsified. Thus, during the short-lived elation over the supposed survival of 12 American miners a number of people attributed their survival to the supernatural. How did they know that? They didn't; they merely believed. For in order to know one must have good evidence/reasons to support one's belief. I am actually tempted to go all the way and declare that all supernatural explanations are ad hoc explanations.

In the world we live in supernaturalistic explanations are completely devoid of utility in understanding and predicting processes and events. They are merely superstitious beliefs or palliatives that provide a false sense of understanding--and it is false because those who propose and believe them have no way of confirming whether these explanations are in fact right or wrong.

Notes:

1. Michael Ruse, "Creation-Science Is Not Science," Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, ed. Martin Curd & J.A. Cover, NY: W.W. Norton, 1998, p. 40

If you haven't been tuning in to Point of Inquiry yet maybe you should. The MP3 files take forever to download with dial-up but certainly worth the wait.

Skeptico asks, "Why does science exclude the supernatural?" As he rightly points out one very important reason is the nontestable/nonfalsifiable character of supernatural claims. We have already heard philosopher Barbara Forrest comment on this matter:

Any claim that depends on the supernatural ... is not falsifiable. [I]n science whatever claim you make has to be grounded in empirical evidence and you have to at least in principle know what kind of disconfirmation would show your theory to be wrong.... And so any position that's grounded in faith and the supernatural is one that by definition not falsifiable.

Geologist Arthur Strahler explains why the supernatural is outside the purview of science:

Religious tenets, which usually involve belief in supernatural entities, are ... beyond the limits of scientific appraisal.

[S]upernatural forces, if they can be said to exist, cannot be observed, measured, or recorded by the procedures of science--that's simply what the word "supernatural" means. There can be no limit to the kinds and shapes of supernatural forces and forms the human mind is capable of conjuring up "from nowhere." Scientists therefore have no alternative but to ignore the claims of the existence of supernatural forces and causes. This exclusion is a basic position that must be stoutly adhered to by scientists or their entire system of evaluating and processing information will collapse. (Arthur N. Strahler, Understanding Science: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992, p. 13-14)

To get technical about it, science must exclude the supernatural because at its very foundation "science is committed to methodological naturalism (MN)," a position which "does not deny the existence of supernatural entities per se" but "simply assumes for the purpose of inquiry that they do not exist." In the same essay philosopher Michael Martin concludes that science's commitment to MN is warranted because it does not block inquiry, it is not a science-stopper unlike supernatural explanations. (Justifying Methodological Naturalism) 

Coincidentally, Unscrewing the Inscrutable has cogent things to say about MN:

The reason that scientists use MN when they are performing science is quite simply because it works. MN assumes that the natural world is all there is, then observes it and constructs hypotheses and theories that attempt to describe how a given naturally-observed phenomenon works. This is not to say that since MN presupposes a natural world, that there is no supernatural world. The question of whether or not a supernatural world exists just isn't ever addressed by MN. It can't be. That's why it's called "methodological naturalism" and not "methodological supernaturalism".

Biologist PZ Myers' thoughts on science and religion:

It is self-evident that scientists are not necessarily derisive of religion, and also that science as an abstract concept can't be derisive at all. However, I do think that the processes of science are antithetical to the processes of religion-—personal revelation and dogma are not accepted forms of evidence in the sciences-—and that people can encompass both clashing ideas is nothing but a testimony to the flexibility of the human mind, which has no problem partitioning and embracing many contradictions. There are also many scientists who are capable of suspending disbelief and reading fantasy novels with pleasure; that doesn't mean that magic is a valid way of manipulating the world.

I really think we (not me, of course, but the general "we" of all of us ladies and gentlemen fighting creationism) go too far in trying to present science as compatible and even friendly to religion. It's not. The whole philosophy of critical thinking and demanding reproducible evidence arms its proponents with a wicked sharp knife that is all too easily applied to religious beliefs, which rely entirely on credulity. While individuals may be happy to sheathe that knife during the church service, filling the pews with ranks of critical individuals while preaching absurdities is a risky business. Why do you think I can't go to church? It's because I'm sitting there with a demanding and hair-trigger critical faculty, thinking "baloney!" at almost every platitude from the preacher, struggling against the urge to stand up and shout "Show me the evidence!" at the pulpit. Even if I keep that urge in control, it's not a comfortable time. The religious know that a well-educated populace with a good background in science would mean church attendance would fade away, especially for the more stridently evangelical/fundamentalist (AKA "insane") sects.

Myers' points are well taken. On the matter of critical thinking and religion, however, I will split hairs and instead of "religion" I would further focus the critique by saying that what really does not and has not stood up to critical/skeptical inquiry is supernaturalism/theism. Societies throughout history have posited deities and imagined various types of realms beyond the natural world, but there has not, through the millennia, been any evidence for these claims. Though hundreds/thousands of supernatural entities and any number of supernatural scenarios have been proferred various peoples through the entire history of humanity, the evidence that will vindicate the religionists--those who believe their claims are indeed factual--has not been presented nor discovered. Moreover, the supernatural (as with Flying Macaroni Beasties) is an extraordinary claim, something that is so removed from what we (scientifically) know of the universe we live in that it is reasonable to doubt it and to demand evidence for its reality.

Some people may be swayed by the argument that something must've caused the universe to exist and therefore there must've been a deity to cause it. That sounds like a pretty solid argument. However, the logic therein is impeccably flawed. That the universe must have been caused does not imply that it must have come into existence via supernatural means. The conclusion does not by necessity follow from the premiss. Empirically, since all phenomena whose causes are known have causes which are natural--there is not one phenomenon which is incontroveribly known to be supernaturally caused--we are forced to assign an exceedingly low probability to the claim/hypothesis that some phenomenon X is supernaturally caused. Because all known causes at work in the cosmos are natural, it is way saner and safer to bet that what gave birth to our universe was also a natural event.

There is no evidence to support the anthropomorphic characteristics which various religions attribute to their deities. Nor is there evidence for the theologies these religions posit. Why then believe in any of them? One may find comfort in believing that some paternal/maternal superfigure is watching over us and that our loved ones are not truly gone forever, that we will all be reunited somehow in some preternatural paradise. But as with the comforting and narcissistic thought that no calamity nor accident will befall us and our loved ones, reality does not abide by our beliefs. Imagining and believing our fantasies and wishes may attenuate our anxieties about living and dying, but they will not change reality one bit.

Given the above, there continues to be no reason for a critical thinker to believe in supernatural claims; there are good reasons to be very skeptical of them. In the fact-fiction scale, until that day supernaturalists can provide support, then shelving their claims in the mythology section somewhere between Apollo and Zeus is a sensible thing to do.

It is indeed mind boggling how something that is so farfetched and devoid of evidence could possess the minds of so many so tenaciously, while something for which there is an avalanche of empirical support--evolution for instance--would elicit doubt and disdain. Sapience is not the most striking characteristic of Homo sapiens, is it?

In this week's Swift, James Randi informs us that many years ago he conducted an informal test on his students. It elicited what psychologists call the Forer effect.

 

 

 

I took copies of these readings to a class I was then teaching at a local community college in New Jersey. There were three women in the class who were particularly strong in their acceptance of psychic powers and particularly of “readings” they’d had. I – falsely – represented these documents to be genuine psychic readings individually made for those three members of the class. After reading them over, the students gave them scores of 10, 10, and 9 (out of 10) in reference to how well they applied to them. Remember, these were readings given for three other women, of different ages, in another city, at another time – yet the believers were able to find this strong correlation to their own lives!

Confirmation bias led these individuals to evaluate the psychic readings which were described to them as having been specifically made for them as very accurate, even if the readings had been for other people. (Using one generic reading for all three individuals--of course without these three knowing they were receiving the same reading--would've have produced a similar assessment of "very accurate.")

Astrologers and psychics, wittingly or unwittingly, take advantage of this psychological phenomenon to continue gypping the public and peddling their nonsense, and even deluding themselves that they in fact have special powers.

 

From a December 23 2005 interview with Barbara Forrest by Science Friday :

People who support creationism and other issues on the religious right tend not to be influenced by the court rulings....

[Y]ou also have to recognize that the creationism issue is not based on evidence, it isn't based on reason. It's based on an uncritical acceptance of certain religious doctrines that are not very thoughtfully held. And so when you [have] a position that is not based on evidence and rational appeals you get people who are going to ignore court rulings because they are motivated by religious zeal.

...

[Answering a graduate student's phone-in question about creationism and the principle of falsifiability, Forrest, in part, replies:]

Any claim that depends on the supernatural, of course, is not falsifiable. [I]n science whatever claim you make has to be grounded in empirical evidence and you have to at least in principle know what kind of disconfirmation would show your theory to be wrong. And that's what you don't get from creationists. Any so any position that's grounded in faith and the supernatural is one that by definition not falsifiable. But the creationists of course don't like to admit this.

 

That last paragraph is music to my ears.

(Barbara Forrest is Professor of Philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University, is co-author of Creationism's Trojan Horse, and was an expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial.)

Today Skeptico underscores the pseudoscientist et al.'s misuse of the current limitations of scientific understanding to bolster hope for their position.

Possibilities are endless--possibility can only take on a binary value, something is either possible or impossible. But the relevant concept/value here is probability. And the probability of a certain phenomenon being an empirical reality is predicated upon, among other things, reasons and evidence for the idea/claim, and coherence with known phenomena and "laws of nature." We are not warranted in using the argument that "science is still making discoveries" to shore up just any idea or claim.

As Skeptico rightly emphasizes there must be positive evidence for a claim, not a lack of evidence by the other party--in this case science. The burden of proof is upon those making the (extraordinary) claim. They must produce the necessary evidence.

It should be mentioned the fact that our scientific/naturalistic knowledge is incomplete cuts both ways. It is used by pseudoscientific quarters to smuggle in their ideas to an uncritical public. But the same is also a valid rationale in certain cases. That we, for example, have not scientifically/naturalistically explained and understood various miracles revered (or even flaunted) by religionists or various phenomena that paranormalists say are evidence for their pet claims, does not mean that these explanations are indeed correct. Just because scientific explanations (and concommittant evidence for them) currently do not exist doesn't mean that these phenomena are supernatural or paranormal.

As we've seen even the Vatican acknowledges that a declared miracle may in fact not be so:

What seems like a miracle now may not be one in a hundred years. Such are the advances of science. Declarations of miracles are not infallible teachings.

The reason why this is so? The claim that X is a miracle is firmly founded upon a fallacy, an appeal to inexplicability, sheer ignorance, and/or incredulity, i.e., if we cannot find an explanation for X, if we don't know what X is, if X is mind-boggling, if we are awestruck by X, then it must be supernatural. This is such an out-and-out fallacy that it is most baffling how the Catholic Church--which allies itself with philosophy and has such a long history of philosophical thinking--could immortalize and promote a rudimentary fallacy as this.

The best that can be said of something that currently defies our understanding and scrutiny is that "X may be supernatural." The supernatural is one hypothesis. But as the Vatican knows only too well, current lack of naturalistic explanation does not and will never "prove" that X is supernatural. Only if humans were to become omniscient of the natural world and all its processes can such an appeal to inexplicability become nonfallacious.

Nothing new in what follows below. Just picking out some meaty bits from Judge Jones' decision. Had partially read some of the expert witness testimonies back when the trial was ongoing. I'm too lazy right now to go back to them and get it straight from the horses' mouths. So I'm just filching from Judge Jones' great summary.

1. As has been cited by others one of the logical fallacies promoted by Intelligent Design creationism is false dichotomy. Judge Jones explains:

ID is at bottom premised upon a false dichotomy, namely, that to the extent evolutionary theory is discredited, ID is confirmed. (5:41 (Pennock)). This argument is not brought to this Court anew, and in fact, the same argument, termed “contrived dualism” in McLean, was employed by creationists in the 1980's to support “creation science.” The court in McLean noted the “fallacious pedagogy of the two model approach” and that “in efforts to establish ‘evidence’ in support of creation science, the defendants relied upon the same false premise as the two model approach . . . all evidence which criticized evolutionary theory was proof in support of creation science.” McLean, 529 F. Supp. at 1267, 1269. We do not find this false dichotomy any more availing to justify ID today than it was to justify creation science two decades ago.

2. Among the concepts in ID creationism is Michael Behe's irreducible complexity, wherein Behe contends that some biological structures/processes, such as bacterial flagella, could not have evolved but must have appeared in its entirety all at once, thus necessitating some special creation by an Intelligent Designer.

Vis-a-vis irreducible complexity Judge Jones concluded that it is "a negative argument against evolution, not proof of design, a point conceded by defense expert Professor Minnich." Moreover, "irreducible complexity additionally fails to make a positive scientific case for ID."

As we have said elsewhere irreducible complexity is an argument from vacuity/incredulity: Person B cannot figure out or cannot believe that X had naturalistic causes or came into existence naturalistically. B therefore concludes that X must have been supernaturally caused. This is fallacious reasoning.

The National Academy of Sciences has this to say about irreducible complexity:

[S]tructures and processes that are claimed to be ‘irreducibly’ complex typically are not on closer inspection. For example, it is incorrect to assume that a complex structure or biochemical process can function only if all its components are present and functioning as we see them today. Complex biochemical systems can be built up from simpler systems through natural selection. Thus, the ‘history’ of a protein can be traced through simpler organisms . . . The evolution of complex molecular systems can occur in several ways. Natural selection can bring together parts of a system for one function at one time and then, at a later time, recombine those parts with other systems of components to produce a system that has a different function. Genes can be duplicated, altered, and then amplified through natural selection. The complex biochemical cascade resulting in blood clotting has been explained in this fashion.

Thus Behe's (argument from) ignorance and incredulity has won him only derision from the scientific community.

To add to Behe's troubles all three of his examples--bacterial flagellum, blood clot cascade, and immune system have been addressed by the scientific community (see p. 76-78). In the coming years it will not be surprising if all three (and then some) will be even more fully understood and explained naturalistically by biologists/biochemists. The expert witnesses say this much:

Expert testimony revealed that just because scientists cannot explain today how biological systems evolved does not mean that they cannot, and will not, be able to explain them tomorrow. As Dr. Padian aptly noted, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” (17:45 (Padian)). To that end, expert testimony from Drs. Miller and Padian provided multiple examples where Of Pandas and People [(an ID reference book)] asserted that no natural explanations exist, and in some cases that none could exist, and yet natural explanations have been identified in the intervening years.

Hence, Behe and Of Pandas and People are case studies of how it is fallacious (and ultimately embarrassing) to assert, explicitly or implicitly, or to even entertain the notion that no naturalistic explanation will ever be found for some phenomenon X, however complex or bewildering or inscrutable X may seem to us.

3. The criterion of testability/falsifiability is one of the hallmarks of science. The National Academy of Sciences sees ID as failing to meet this and therefore cannot be considered science:

Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science. These claims subordinate observed data to statements based on authority, revelation, or religious belief. Documentation offered in support of these claims is typically limited to the special publications of their advocates. These publications do not offer hypotheses subject to change in light of new data, new interpretations, or demonstration of error. This contrasts with science, where any hypothesis or theory always remains subject to the possibility of rejection or modification in the light of new knowledge.

Biologist Kenneth Miller (as with philosopher Michael Martin) rightly advises that allowing supernatural explanations into science is a science and inquiry stopper.

This rigorous attachment to “natural” explanations is an essential attribute to science by definition and by convention. (1:63 (Miller); 5:29-31 (Pennock)). We are in agreement with Plaintiffs’ lead expert Dr. Miller, that from a practical perspective, attributing unsolved problems about nature to causes and forces that lie outside the natural world is a “science stopper.” (3:14-15 (Miller)). As Dr. Miller explained, once you attribute a cause to an untestable supernatural force, a proposition that cannot be disproven, there is no reason to continue seeking natural explanations as we have our answer.

Positing that supernatural entity or force Z caused X blocks any further inquiry since supernatural hypotheses cannot be tested, and hence cannot be confirmed nor disconfirmed. Neither the one proposing the claim/hypothesis nor anyone skeptical of it can ever discover the veracity or falsity of the claim since it cannot be tested.


After a thorough examination of the evidence and expert testimonies from both the defendants and the plaintiffs, Judge Jones came to the conclusion that ID cannot be science based on criteria used by scientists themselves:

[W]e find that ID is not science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community. ID, as noted, is grounded in theology, not science.

Thus ID fails on three counts: lack of published papers in peer-reviewed journals, lack of research/experiments, and lack of acceptance by the scientific community. Rather than science with firm research programs replete with experiments to test its hypotheses, ID is a movement that seeks to promote a specific set of religious ideas.

In the same paragraph Judge Jones did not think too highly of the defendants' claim that introducing ID in the curriculum would foster critical thinking:

Accepting for the sake of argument its proponents’, as well as Defendants’ argument that to introduce ID to students will encourage critical thinking, it still has utterly no place in a science curriculum. Moreover, ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.

The agenda of ID is clear from the very writings of ID proponents and these have been documented by philosopher Barbara Forrest et al. (Forrest was an expert witness during the trial. She is co-author of Creationism's Trojan Horse)

4. Seems like an echo reverberating all over the world. Even Judge Jones is telling us ID is the latest mutation of creationism developed to smuggle fundamentalist Christianity into the public sector:

The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism.

I would think he's hardly happy about the subterfuge. Among others, the defendants' failure to name who the Intelligent Designer is when it has been obvious to everyone may have got his goat. Given the overwhelming legal precedents striking down any creationist effort to introduce its religious agenda into the public school system it was not unexpected that the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

It's Kansas again, the state wallowing somewhere between the 13th and 14th century (now, was that CE or BCE?). It's trying to make up its mind what the word "science" means:

The changes in the official state definition are subtle and lawyerly, and involve mainly the removal of two words: "natural explanations." But they are a red flag to scientists, who say the changes obliterate the distinction between the natural and the supernatural that goes back to Galileo and the foundations of science.

The old definition reads in part, "Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us." The new one calls science "a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena."

Adrian Melott, a physics professor at the University of Kansas who has long been fighting Darwin's opponents, said, "The only reason to take out 'natural explanations' is if you want to open the door to supernatural explanations."

Gerald Holton, a professor of the history of science at Harvard, said removing those two words and the framework they set means "anything goes."

...

The scientist's job description, said Steven Weinberg, a physicist and Nobel laureate at the University of Texas, is to search for natural explanations, just as a mechanic looks for mechanical reasons why a car won't run.

...

One thing scientists agree on ... is that the requirement of testability excludes supernatural explanations. The supernatural, by definition, does not have to follow any rules or regularities, so it cannot be tested. "The only claim regularly made by the pro-science side is that supernatural explanations are empty," Dr. [James Robert Brown, a philosopher of science at the University of Toronto,] said.

(Philosophers Notwithstanding, Kansas School Board Redefines Science)

And they are empty because they cannot be tested/falsified and therefore can neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed. When something cannot be dis/confirmed, then it is useless to furthering our understanding and knowledge--which is what science is all about. Supernatural explanations summarily put an end to further investigation--they're "science stoppers" (philosopher Michael Martin's term). When one claims, "God did it!" there is no way to test whether that is true or not. There is no condition for which it can be falsified, since various illicit ad hoc explanations can be posited ad infinitum to explain away any potential confuting results. Thus, it is an empty statement. At most "God did it" can merely be a belief--a lame one at that. If we were to accept that phenomenon Y was brought about supernaturally, then there is nothing more to investigate. There would be no science. And yet if humanity had accepted that explanation for lightning, the sun's heat, hurricanes, earthquakes, and anything else that was once mind-boggling, we would not have understood what these phenomena are. The search for natural explanations has been the most successful epistemic avenue for humanity. The supernaturalistic boulevard, around for thousands of years, has led nowhere epistemically. There is not a single supernatural premise that is known to be true (any supernatural belief is premised upon the existence of the supernatural--yet this root premise is not known to be true, it has not been empirically shown to be true; therefore, any conclusions derived from it cannot be known to be true)

As Holton above states, what the Kansas redefinition is foreshadowing, is an anything goes runaway train. And one heck of a sorry farce should it come to pass. This resurgence of creationism--which has evolved into the third of its species--is a blight that will be remembered by future Americans as yet another blackhole in their country's intellectual history.

 

Shoot! It just occured to me. I live on the corner of Kansas St.! Hmmm, I wonder how many years I'll spend in my new  address if I take down the street signs.