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| Virginia Heffernan's creationism is wrong but makes good sense | |
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| A US writer, Virginia Heffernan, has just outed herself as a creationist. As she is currently earning a living writing on technology for Yahoo! News, this is a brave thing to do and has been greeted with obloquy, bemusement, and patronising explanations about the difference between facts and stories. Now of course evolution is true. Evolution is a fact: it happens. It's also a predictive theory: it explains why things happen and have happened in ways that allow us to find out more about the world. It is something that I find fascinating, but there are lots of things that fascinate me, from fly fishing to philosophy, which I don't expect the rest of the world to take an interest in. | A US writer, Virginia Heffernan, has just outed herself as a creationist. As she is currently earning a living writing on technology for Yahoo! News, this is a brave thing to do and has been greeted with obloquy, bemusement, and patronising explanations about the difference between facts and stories. Now of course evolution is true. Evolution is a fact: it happens. It's also a predictive theory: it explains why things happen and have happened in ways that allow us to find out more about the world. It is something that I find fascinating, but there are lots of things that fascinate me, from fly fishing to philosophy, which I don't expect the rest of the world to take an interest in. |
| In that respect, evolution is different. It has come to mean an explanation for everything, including all sorts of questions which were once, and rightly, treated as philosophical or ethical. Even more, it has come to be taken up as a banner in the American culture wars. In that context it is unattractive. If you want to know why an educated American might decide evolution is untrue, spend some time at the website Why evolution is true, run by the Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne. The science there is great, but the tone of voice is something else: hectoring arrogant mansplaining with sputtering outbursts of extraordinary viciousness. If you don't much care whether the science is true, this would convince you that there must be something wrong with it. | In that respect, evolution is different. It has come to mean an explanation for everything, including all sorts of questions which were once, and rightly, treated as philosophical or ethical. Even more, it has come to be taken up as a banner in the American culture wars. In that context it is unattractive. If you want to know why an educated American might decide evolution is untrue, spend some time at the website Why evolution is true, run by the Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne. The science there is great, but the tone of voice is something else: hectoring arrogant mansplaining with sputtering outbursts of extraordinary viciousness. If you don't much care whether the science is true, this would convince you that there must be something wrong with it. |
| And, actually, it's a bit hard to explain why anyone should care about the truth of evolutionary theory. It doesn't make any practical difference in the life of a creationist that they are wrong. Modern civilisation is designed to be idiot-proof and only needs a few specialists to understand deeply what they are doing. We all rely on quantum physics every time we use a computer and almost all of us are bound to be badly wrong in our understanding of it. That's fine, so long as the engineers who design the chips know what they're doing. | And, actually, it's a bit hard to explain why anyone should care about the truth of evolutionary theory. It doesn't make any practical difference in the life of a creationist that they are wrong. Modern civilisation is designed to be idiot-proof and only needs a few specialists to understand deeply what they are doing. We all rely on quantum physics every time we use a computer and almost all of us are bound to be badly wrong in our understanding of it. That's fine, so long as the engineers who design the chips know what they're doing. |
| To point this out goes against our self-image, and our belief that we ought to be generally curious about the world. But even if it's granted that we ought to be omnivorously curious– certainly, I wanted my children to grow up like that – it's humanly impossible to be equally curious about all of it. Life's too short. And the question of what things we ought to care about most is not a scientific one and wouldn't be even if it had a single answer. | To point this out goes against our self-image, and our belief that we ought to be generally curious about the world. But even if it's granted that we ought to be omnivorously curious– certainly, I wanted my children to grow up like that – it's humanly impossible to be equally curious about all of it. Life's too short. And the question of what things we ought to care about most is not a scientific one and wouldn't be even if it had a single answer. |
| One way in which the Heffernan argument has been framed is that it is one of facts versus stories. That is certainly the implication of Heffernan's own piece – that she is under no obligation to prefer facts to stories. It is also the theme of some perfectly reasonable rebuttals, like Tom Chivers' in the Daily Telegraph. | One way in which the Heffernan argument has been framed is that it is one of facts versus stories. That is certainly the implication of Heffernan's own piece – that she is under no obligation to prefer facts to stories. It is also the theme of some perfectly reasonable rebuttals, like Tom Chivers' in the Daily Telegraph. |
| But both sides are missing an important point here. In popular culture, arguments about evolution are not clashes of facts against stories. They are the clash of two competing stories. And, in fact, this is what almost all arguments in society come down to. It's perfectly possibly for facts to smash up stories. But it's rare. And if it happens in argument, it requires a considerable social moral and intellectual effort to arrange. | But both sides are missing an important point here. In popular culture, arguments about evolution are not clashes of facts against stories. They are the clash of two competing stories. And, in fact, this is what almost all arguments in society come down to. It's perfectly possibly for facts to smash up stories. But it's rare. And if it happens in argument, it requires a considerable social moral and intellectual effort to arrange. |
| The classic modern example is a scientific experiment, where you can prove or disprove a theory based on observations of fact. But the formulation of the theory and the choice of observation are neither simple nor straightforward. The great scientist is often one who can design wonderful experiments, rather than the drone who carries them out. Lots of things aren't susceptible to that sort of experimental investigation at all. The disciplines then required to work out what is a fact and which stories it can test are then rather different – think of historical inquiry; the idea that there are large social clashes with all the facts on one side and all the stories on the other is not itself factual. It is a story which derives most of its power from the way that believers suppose that it is true. But it is profoundly unconvincing to anyone not taken in. | The classic modern example is a scientific experiment, where you can prove or disprove a theory based on observations of fact. But the formulation of the theory and the choice of observation are neither simple nor straightforward. The great scientist is often one who can design wonderful experiments, rather than the drone who carries them out. Lots of things aren't susceptible to that sort of experimental investigation at all. The disciplines then required to work out what is a fact and which stories it can test are then rather different – think of historical inquiry; the idea that there are large social clashes with all the facts on one side and all the stories on the other is not itself factual. It is a story which derives most of its power from the way that believers suppose that it is true. But it is profoundly unconvincing to anyone not taken in. |
| One response to that dilemma is to maintain that the scientific story is better, more wonderful, more uplifting, and so on, than all the others. This is the one taken by Professor Voldemort (who must not be named) and his followers. But of course it's all balls. Does any adult really want to believe in a meaningless universe which is given sense only by our own heroic efforts? Love, courage, and all the other virtues actually exist. They change the world around them. How are they then not part of the universe, and how could a universe that contains them be called meaningless? | One response to that dilemma is to maintain that the scientific story is better, more wonderful, more uplifting, and so on, than all the others. This is the one taken by Professor Voldemort (who must not be named) and his followers. But of course it's all balls. Does any adult really want to believe in a meaningless universe which is given sense only by our own heroic efforts? Love, courage, and all the other virtues actually exist. They change the world around them. How are they then not part of the universe, and how could a universe that contains them be called meaningless? |
| Heffernan seems confused by what she calls "creationism". She is certainly not a young-earth creationist or someone who takes the biblical account literally. But she wants stories where people find hope and courage in the events of the world around them, and she finds them in religion, not in science. | Heffernan seems confused by what she calls "creationism". She is certainly not a young-earth creationist or someone who takes the biblical account literally. But she wants stories where people find hope and courage in the events of the world around them, and she finds them in religion, not in science. |