Science Has Its Beliefs Too
It’s just that, unlike religious beliefs, they’re rational
“Evolution is just a theory!”
How many times have I seen that said on Twitter? A lot. The irony of the assertion has to do with the writer not realizing that theory has two meanings: in the everyday world of average people where the colloquial use of the word means belief or opinion, and the specialized use of the word within science to mean an explanation of something. It’s a fact that certain germs cause disease, and the germ theory of disease explains that fact. No physician “believes in” tuberculosis; no astronomer “believes” Earth orbits the sun; no evolutionary biologist “believes in” evolution.
Science proceeds with hypotheses, often based on a set of disparate clues, that have been put together into a cohesive whole even if some information may still be missing. Nobody knows how life started, though some people believe life began on Mars, while others hold to a hot springs hypothesis as a possible originating point for life. Neither belief is outlandish so long as some elements are in place that give the hypothesis some credibility.
Some “beliefs” are understandably stated as blanket assertions: “Alligators don’t live at the North Pole.” No one needs to visit the North Pole to confirm this fact. All you have to do is piece together two established facts to understand why the assertion is true: the nature of the environment at the North Pole and the nature of an alligator’s habitat. (Hint: There are no swamps or freshwater rivers at the North Pole.)
And then there is the scientific belief that sounds like sheer imagination: “I believe life exists elsewhere in the universe.” In lieu of evidence to back up this statement, is there any good reason for asserting it? Yes, there is: the existence of carbon. Or to quote National Geographic: “Carbon is an essential element for all life forms on Earth. Whether these life forms take in carbon to help manufacture food or release carbon as part of respiration, the intake and output of carbon is a component of all plant and animal life.” So when a scientist says life may exist elsewhere, the belief is grounded in an acceptable syllogism: carbon is a necessary element for life; carbon exists in abundance in the known universe; therefore, life may exist elsewhere. It’s not a reach. It’s about arriving at a provisional conclusion that results from connecting limited pieces of information. (Percival Lowell, on the other hand, had extremely limited information when he asserted that life existed on Mars, a belief based on what he thought were canals that he detected with his telescope. He was mistaken. These “canals” turned out to be nothing more than natural erosion.)
“I believe each human being has a soul.” That’s swell. But this belief doesn’t point to any truth about the nature of human existence. The belief isn’t grounded in anything. What evidence is there to show that an Ethereal Entity was planted in me by an Omniscient Deity at the moment I was conceived? No such evidence exists. That some religious traditions will say the soul enters later during gestation is beside the point, which is that a belief in the existence of souls is just a pure idea of the mind bereft of any evidence to support the belief. But “I believe life exists elsewhere in the universe” is a belief that’s at least partially grounded in our awareness of the abundance of carbon in the universe and the implications of that fact.
It’s easy to believe a religious something because religious beliefs — and I’m referring to assertions about the world that religions make: that angels exist, that “holy” water exists, that Heaven and Hell exist — amount to nothing more than wishful thinking. (As for “holy” water, I have to ask: How is differential diagnosis achieved? That is, how is understanding the alleged essential difference between ordinary water and “holy” water determined?)
By contrast, it takes work to nail down a fact in science. I like what Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True, has to say: “Truths about the world can be established only be science, or by what I call ‘science broadly construed’ — the toolkit of doubt, experimentation, observation, testing, falsifiability, and consensus that characterizes the work of not only professional scientists, but also those like historians, archaeologists, and plumbers who are trying to find out what’s true about our universe — including where our pipes are leaking.” A plumber who figures out the problem doesn’t “believe” the leak is coming from an apartment above you. He eventually knows for a fact, after careful investigation, that the water is coming from the floor directly above.
Feel free to believe whatever you want, but unless you have indisputable evidence for the thing you believe, whether it’s for the story of a guy who spent a weekend inside the guts of an aquatic creature, or for the belief that a worldwide flood wiped out civilization (this would be news to the Chinese), then all you have is a fanciful idea. But if your unusual belief has some carbon in it, so to speak, I might be interested to hear more.
Barry Lyons is a freelance writer living in New York. For anyone who believes obesity is a disease, I’m here to tell you that it is not. Here you go.
