http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZyzQ8U9Wgs&feature=watch_response
Let’s try a little experiment. Let’s approach some random person in a park or on the street and ask if he or she knows the fourth law of thermodynamics.
Odds are, he or she won’t. Does this prove that it doesn’t exist? Hardly.
What if we ask the same random person to name the fellow who was Japanese Emperor in the year 1647? Again, he or she might just happen to know, but probably not. Does this mean that it was no one? Of course not.
Most of us can make educated guesses about what sort of person is likely to be proficient in what sort of subject. Making it a point to try to argue something with that person on a totally different subject, in an effort to prove something on the basis of that subject is dishonest. It is an attempt at a sort of argument from the gaps.
“You don’t happen to know something, therefore I do.”
This is the sort of thing one sees certain creationists doing when they ask random people to name transitional forms on tape. They try to package this as providing evidence against evolution, but all they’re actually proving is that most non-paleontologists don’t understand a fundamental area of paleontology as well as the average paleontologist does.
Of course they don’t. There’s no reason for them to.
The average chemist or chemical engineer can probably name off the top of his or her head what element has atomic number 82. The average person on the street probably can’t, and there’s nothing surprising or worrisome about this. It is precisely what we ought to expect.
Now as I explained in my video about the ad populum fallacy, I have no reservations whatsoever about suggesting, considering, or concluding that, the vast majority of people in the world are mistaken. But I do have reservations about suggesting that the vast majority of scientists are mistaken. Why?
Because scientists make their careers by practicing the habit, and thereby developing the skill of expertly, meticulously, methodologically scrutinizing the claims they are given. The average person doesn’t. If a concept is widely accepted within the scientific community, I know it has already withstood much closer, more expert scrutiny than I am capable of on my best days.
Ah, but what if the scientific community is colluding to keep a new, revolutionary concept down?
Such is not how science works. “Don’t rock the boat” is a useful maxim for someone trying to gain prestige in business or religion; not science. In science, the maxim is “Rock the boat! Rock it! Rock the dickens out of that boat! Rock it with all you’ve got! Rock it for all you’re worth! Capsize the damn thing if you can!”
Your conclusions will be scrutinized for any aspects that don’t add up, but if you do your best to capsize the proverbial boat and you don’t succeed, then at least you will have confirmed the stability of that boat and improved your own understanding of the subject matter. If, on the other hand, you do succeed, then the scientific community will be set furiously, borderline-frenetically to work rethinking everything. In that case, we will have a scientific revolution on our hands and you will probably be awarded the Nobel Prize and a permanent place in the annals of Science. And of course, one really interesting thing about science is that one revolution has a way of opening the door for others, which means that other scientists, looking for the chance to blaze their own trails in this exciting new frontier, eager to make their own discoveries and find their own niches in those annals will be very quick to publically endorse your findings if they do indeed hold merit.
The whole scientific “establishment” is structured from the ground up to give scientists a vested interest in seeking out valid new ideas that might challenge the status quo. But consideration entails scrutiny; not just acceptance.
If you happen to have one body of astrophysical evidence of something, and another body of philosophical evidence, what’s the most appropriate thing to do with these two bodies of evidence? It can only be to present the body of astrophysical evidence to the astrophysical community for consideration, and the body of philosophical evidence to the philosophical community for consideration, and not the other way around. This would be a fallacy which I am compelled to call the End Run.
Now getting back to evolution, it’s a biological concept. If one indeed has evidence against it, the place to present that evidence is the biological community. If, instead, one insists on presenting it only to lawyers and politicians, or future lawyers and politicians, it only demonstrates that, not only does one’s case hold no scientific merit whatsoever, but that one knows it and doesn’t care; that one’s motives are political, not scientific. I’m looking at you, Way of the Mass Terd.
This is the fallacy committed when Christians and Muslims send me clips making claims to the effect of someone having found—for example—subatomic proof of the existence of a god, who by the way, must be the one they happen to believe in and couldn’t be any other. Although I understand a great deal more about subatomic physics than the average person, my understanding of this subject is relatively nonexistent compared to some people (no pun intended). That being the case, I’m hardly qualified to assess claims of this nature, and no one could have any honest reason to expect me to.
Now think about this for a moment. If God (Which one?) provides proof of His (or Her or Its) existence in a form that only subatomic physicists have the expertise to comprehend, that would mean that He (or She or It) only wants that particular group of people to believe. Either that, or He (or She or It) wants the subatomic physicists of the world to be His (or Her or Its) prophets.
But wait a minute. What are prophets? They are people who ask the rest of us to believe exclusively on the basis of eyewitness testimony while having no such constraint themselves; people who ask us to rely on a standard they don’t; who ask the rest of us to be content with something they themselves do not have to be content with. This very act is an open call to a double standard.
If He (or She or It) wants us all to believe, then why not present the proof in a way that we can all test rationally instead of appealing to prehistoric instinctive drives to evade such scrutiny?
Now I can be sure that, if this evidence did hold up under the proper scrutiny, the subatomic physicists of the world would be very quick to figure it out, and embrace it, and rush to explore this new frontier to see what other revolutionary discoveries lie in the wings waiting to be made. But what do we find instead? Instead, we find that, among subatomic physicists, god belief of any sort, in any way, shape, or form, is virtually nonexistent. If I, as a non-physicist, know this, what more do I need to know?
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