FOSTERING OPEN COMMUNICATION WITH THE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY BY AVOIDING SCIENTIFIC DOGMA

dogma: a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

In earth sciences, because the bulk of what we are studying occurred in prehistoric time, we are not able to rely on direct observation of the processes that formed the Earth. To insure intellectual honesty in scientific discourse, therefore, we need to make a clear distinction between observation (eg. faunal succession in the fossil record), logical conclusion (eg. superposition of successive strata represents sequential deposition), hypotheses strongly supported by much data (eg. age of the Earth), plausible but untested hypotheses (eg. evolution of feathers before wings), and untestable hypotheses (eg. ideas about the evolutionary origin of aesthetics).

However, popular scientific writing and introductory educational texts many times state hypotheses as facts. This is what I call scientific dogma. I believe that open communication with the religious community is critically hampered by such statements, because they create an artificially strong confrontation between those who agree with the hypotheses and those who do not. Furthermore, scientific dogma is antithetical to the scientific process that demands continual questioning and refinement of all hypotheses, and teaching scientific dogma has led to teaching bad science.

I suggest that popular scientific writing and introductory texts that state hypotheses as such, and lay out the supporting observations and logical conclusions, provides a much better basis for communicating with the religious community, because it provides a platform for honest disagreement and debate whereupon we can say, “this is what we believe and this is why,” and then ask the same of the religious community. I also suggest that educational writing that avoids scientific dogma will blunt pressure to include religious alternatives in science curriculum.