Diametrically opposite models

I still can’t believe it’s 2004 and I’m devoting this much time to reading about religiously-based arguments against evolution. Sigh.

There’s a nice round-up of evolution vs. “intelligent design” stories over at Orcinus. (I should add a filter so that any comment that includes “intelligent design” without the scare quotes would be instantly deleted. )

Even more important than the story summaries, though, is the analysis.

First bit:

Science and fundamentalism are natural enemies, because they represent diametrically opposite models for understanding the world.

Fundamentalism begins with articles of faith, gleaned from Scripture, for which it then goes in search of evidence as support — ignoring, along the way, all contravening evidence.

Science begins with the gathering of evidence and data, which are then assembled into an explanatory model through a combintation of hypothesis and further testing. This model must take into account all available facts, including contradictory evidence.

They are, in other words, 180 degrees removed from each other in how they affect our understanding of the world. One is based in logic, the other in faith. As methodologies go, they are simply irreconcilable.

Second, really important bit:

The key piece of illogic is one that has especially lodged itself in the media in recent years: The notion that a demonstrably true fact can be properly countered by a demonstrably false one — and that the two, placed side by side, represent a kind of “balance” in the national discourse. This is the Foxcist model of Newspeak, in which “fair and balanced” comes to mean its exact opposite.

[Linnaeus points out in comments that the logical fallacy at work here is the argumentum ad temperantiam: “If two groups are locked in argument, one maintaining that 2+2=4, and the other claiming that 2+2=6, sure enough, an Englishman will walk in and settle on 2+2=5, denouncing both groups as extremists.”]

I think I’m going to refer to that as the Stewart Media Fallacy, since that’s the thing Jon’s been trying to point out for a long time. Or does that make it sound like it’s his fault?

This ridiculous notion that “fair and balanced” means “reporting both sides as equally valid without any objective analysis” has poisoned the political discourse in America, and now the same fallacy is being used to attempt to make science suit the pre-conceived notions of The People That Time Forgot.

Oh, Karl Popper, why hast we forsaken thou?