Why is there opposition to evolution and Darwinism?

Many people still oppose the Darwinian theory of evolution despite its fertility and the many confirmations given to it. Why is this happening? Sometimes it is about a lack of understanding of the theory, and of course sometimes it is about people who believe that the theory goes against their faith. And perhaps part of the explanation stems from the mental laziness of many who are looking for absolute truth

By: Yosef Neuman

The full article, as published in Issue No. 10 of the magazine A Place for Thought - in the cover. The full article is published here courtesy of Allied Scientific Press and Beshaar Association.
Summary of the article:

1. What is objectionable is that Darwinism is based on a naturalistic and materialistic view, without intention and purpose
2. How is it that nature 'knows' how to be engineered in such a perfect and amazing and wonderful way
3. Since the publication of "The Origin of Species" in 1859, Darwin's theory has been strengthened and expanded even today
4. The wrong idea, that the "strongest" is the survivor, led in the second half of the 19th century to one of the distorted and corrupting interpretations of Darwinism called "social Darwinism".
5. People hold different beliefs because they want to believe in them. They yearn to receive simple and immediate answers, which will answer their questions and troubles
6. There is no doubt that besides the great benefit that technology has brought to humanity, it has devastating side effects
7. The existential problems of man as an individual and as a society are complicated and difficult, therefore we must use any source of knowledge, and Darwinism is one of the most important sources

The article in its entirety
According to the conventional account, the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 sparked a series of heated polemics that ended in a crushing victory for science over the Church, prejudice, and the Dark Ages. If, before the publication, philosophers, theologians, scientists and most educated people believed that the species of creatures living today were created at the same time as they are, that the world is several thousand years old, that man was created in the image of God, that he is the center of the universe and that everything was created for him, then after the publication of The Origin of Species, All this has become a thing of the past. This is the accepted description, but the reality is different. The controversy is not over, it arises from time to time, and sometimes quite dramatically, as in the famous monkey trial in the 20s (of the last century) in the USA. Religious fundamentalists, who see the Bible as divine revelation, deny evolution altogether. However, even among those who accept its existence, there are those who oppose the Darwinian explanation. From time to time we witness sensational publications, which exploit and inflate specific theoretical disputes that naturally arise at the forefront of research, and use them as evidence for the collapse of Darwin's entire enterprise. To such news about the "death" of Darwin, Stephen J. responded. Gould, quoting Mark Twain - "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
The reasons for opposing Darwinism are various. What is objectionable is that Darwinism is based on a naturalistic and materialistic view, without intention and purpose, and that it outlines a new methodological approach to the study of man in all its aspects. The opposition comes from those with different and even opposing ideologies. The left claims that Darwinism fosters conservatism and sanctifies the status quo, because it overestimates the biological factors in shaping society, compared to the environmental and social factors ("biological determinism"). On the right, Darwinism is accused of destroying the authority of traditional and moral values. In recent years, the evolutionists and Darwinists can draw encouragement from the loud anti-scientific trend that has become fashionable and advocates "multiculturalism".
The dispute with religious fundamentalists (Christians or Jews) is far from being a purely theoretical dispute. It concerns fundamental questions of freedom of thought and criticism, and of the status of science, compared to the authority of religious orders and dogmas. The polemic rages on the question of man's origin - was he created in the image of God or did he develop from the ape (more precisely - from a common evolutionary father to him and the ape). Taking a position on this question has consequences for many areas of life - education, family planning, understanding the factors that drive the individual and society and even existential political decisions. As we know, significant parts of the religious public in Israel do not participate in rational debate and critical thinking. In many schools (financed by the state), the teaching of science is far from central, and the Darwinian theory and evolution are barely mentioned in some religious schools.

Even in our places articles against evolution and Darwinism are occasionally published. One of them appeared, without mentioning the author's name, as a paid ad! And about two years ago, on the occasion of the new publication in Hebrew of the Origin of Species, a polemical article appeared, to the greatest surprise, from an unexpected direction. The literary critic and poet Menachem Ben credited us with an article entitled - "Darwin's Darwin" ("Yediot Ahronoth", "Tel-Aviv" supplement, "Literature" section, 23.4.98/XNUMX/XNUMX).

The prevailing tendency of professionals and academics is to be content with shaking their heads and treating such things as curiosities. As a general rule, scientists and researchers usually present their findings and research to colleagues and students engaged in the same field, who have the knowledge to evaluate and criticize their work, and have neither the drive nor the experience to flirt with literary critics. The result is that the general public is easy prey for those with "good news" who take advantage of their ignorance and do not shy away from using a wide variety of tricks and demagogic methods to win their hearts. For this reason, in my opinion, it is appropriate to respond to the mentioned article, what is more, that the attacks on science and the marketing of ignorance are now given an honorable status in the name of "multiculturalism", which according to one interpretation of it, science is, so to speak, one way to understand the world and nature, but not the way the only one, and not necessarily the preferred one; The expansion of the anti-scientific approach is also reflected in the flourishing of "New Age" literature.

The literary critic explains the "fragility" of evolution

The following is Menachem Ben's short article with slight omissions: "The reader may wonder what I, a literary critic, have to do with scientific theory, which has been engaged in for about 140 years by senior scientists from the fields of biology and botany, zoology and geology? And the answer is simple: to understand how stupid the Darwinist theory is - the main points of which we all know - you don't need to be a scientist. It's enough to open your eyes and observe the world, and also think a little, really think, about everything anew, something that most scientists these days probably aren't really used to (since everyone deals, as we know, in one tiny scientific segment, and therefore we don't begin to see the whole picture). But really, in order to stand up to the full stupidity of Darwin's theory, one has to stop arguing with the countless endless hypotheses in countless botanical, zoological and biological matters (and as mentioned, these are only theoretical hypotheses, according to the author's admission, Darwin himself). One should simply observe the world itself, the divine beauty of the world, the marvelous engineering of every cell in the material world. How can you believe that all this was created by itself, in a blind gradual process?... How is it that nature 'knows'... to be engineered in such a perfect and amazing and wonderful way. .. How is it that so many people swallow such a foolish theory? One of the answers: for those who do not believe in God, there is no other answer" (emphasis mine).
The article is written in a blunt and defiant style and it reveals a basic lack of understanding, not only about evolution and biology but also about the nature of science and the complicated question of the relationship between science and faith. It would be too short to detail all the mistakes and failures that appear in it, so I will point out only those elementary concepts that characterize many of the fallacies of evolution and Darwinism.
Since Menachem Ben thinks "that you don't need to be a scientist to understand how stupid the Darwinian theory is" - it is no wonder that he is not aware that his main claim - how is it possible that "something so complex [an organism] was created by itself", is a cycle of a very old claim. This claim was presented about 200 years ago in a much more sophisticated way by the religious priest and philosopher William Fally, and it is known as the parable of the clock. A man walks in a field and sees stones scattered around him. Where are the stones from? His answer - they were always there. Then lo and behold, he finds a watch. When he examines its structure, he discovers within it a complex array of gears, levers and delicate springs. And all these parts are coordinated with maximum precision, to perform its function, which is the telling of time. Is there any reason to doubt that there is a watchmaker who created the watch according to a plan and for a specific purpose? This certainty will increase a thousand times when it turns out that the watch is capable of creating a copy like it! And if this is the case with an artifact like a watch, let alone a biological organism, which is infinitely more complex than a watch? And Pali concludes - in the face of such convincing arguments, if someone can claim that there is no need for the existence of a creator, then he is making an absurd claim, a claim of the atheists. This argument of Pali's is precisely the one that was refuted with a number of convincing reasons by Darwin in his book "The Origin of Species by Natural Investigation" published in 1859.
Since its publication, Darwin's theory has been strengthened and expanded even today. The important discoveries that were added include, among others, Mendel's laws of inheritance, the discovery of the process of cell division and the role of chromosomes in inheritance, the formulation of the mathematical theory of population genetics and the decoding of the structure of DNA and the genetic code; as well as important discoveries in the study of fossils, including fossils that constitute the "missing intermediate links" between the monkey and man. It is also important to note that to date no real alternative theory to Darwinism has been proposed.

Menachem Ben claims that Darwin himself called his work a "theoretical hypothesis" and is therefore untrustworthy. He is wrong. The existence of evolution is a fact, and in contrast, Darwin's explanation that the force driving the process is natural selection, or "natural selection", is a theory.
It should also be noted that the word theory has a different meaning in different contexts; Starting from the everyday use as in the phrase - "I have a theory about life", meaning I have a certain opinion about life, to hypotheses with varying degrees of certainty, in scientific research. The function of a scientific theory is to organize the facts - some proven and some proven with one or another degree of certainty - into a coherent and structured research system. Understanding how such a system works is a much greater achievement than knowing a few isolated facts. The existence of evolution is a proven fact beyond any reasonable doubt (which is the most we can expect from any scientific statement), while the operation of natural explanation is a theory that explains its occurrence.

Evolution and the forces driving it
How will we convince the fools of evolution? We do not have a single piece of evidence that says "evolution". The Greek philosopher Archilochus, who lived in the seventh century BC, is credited with the saying "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one great thing". Two thousand five hundred years later in the 19th century, the British philosopher William Whewell characterized science as the use of "foxish" methods to reach a "hedgehog" conclusion. When it turns out that data, models and theories from different and unrelated fields lead to the same conclusion, our confidence in its correctness is strengthened. We know that evolution happened not because of the finding of one fossil, but as a result of thousands of pieces of evidence from different and independent fields that lead to the same conclusion. Paleontology, geology, comparative anatomy, comparative physiology, molecular genetics, population genetics, zoology, botany, biochemistry - all testify to the evolutionary history of life on Earth; And the universality of the genetic code of DNA testifies to the evolutionary sequence of the entire world of organisms - animal and plant. Whoever denies evolution also denies major chapters of cosmology, physics, geology, paleontology, archeology and large parts of human history.
Darwin was not the first to claim that species are not stable and that they have changed over time (as Menachem Ben Bazul writes), and this is true. But he was the first to propose a convincing mechanism for its existence. He provided for the first time an explanation for the formation of structural complexity through natural processes, without the need for the intervention of a higher power. His explanation is based on a series of observations and conclusions derived from them. The cultural capacity of living beings that exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment, the existence of hereditary differences in the traits of individuals that contribute to survival and culture,
And the culture is relatively large for those individuals that are more adapted to the environmental conditions and the way of life - the combination of the activity of these factors is called natural clarification. In a gradual process lasting billions of years, all the vast diversity of living organisms on Earth was created through this mechanism, and as a result of changes in the environment (and other factors). For the first time it was possible to explain the formation of wonderful and sophisticated biological mechanisms and their activity - the eye and the brain, the digestive and respiratory system, the pigeon's wing and the fish's fin, through natural processes and without relying on a higher power.

Randomness is only one factor

One of the common reasons for the rejection of the mechanism of evolution (natural explanation) by laymen is that the theory is "too simple". It is inconceivable that such simple reasons and natural, "normal" processes would lead to such miraculous and impressive results. As it were, it goes without saying that there must be symmetry between cause and effect. Thomas Huxley, a great researcher of human anatomy, and a polemical rabbi who passionately dealt with church people (and who is known as "Darwin's watchdog"), passed away after finishing the reading of the origin of species - "How stupid that I didn't think of it myself!".
Another factor that raises objections to the Darwinian explanation is the role of randomness in the process, in the creation of the hereditary differences, the mutations, the vast majority of which have no adaptive-survival value (and randomness also exists in the creation of the gametes in the mating process and more). As an example, we can mention Henry Morris, one of the main people in the organization of evolutionists, in the USA, known as the "Creation Scientists" organization. Morris is an engineer and structural designer. Sitting in his office, he observed the butterflies that entered his room and began to investigate their structure. Based on his calculations, he came to the conclusion that the probability that such a structure would be created randomly is zero, which is true. The natural clarification is not a random process, it is a common mistake. The first stage is indeed the formation of random mutations, but the clarification process operates on them, which is a deliberate and non-random process. In addition to this, each complex structure is created in a gradual process, over many generations, with each generation showing the organisms with the slightest advantage in perfecting the structure. Astronomer Fred Hoyle compared the theory of natural inquiry in terms of its improbability to a hurricane passing by a junkyard and shaking the contents, so that the parts add up to a complete Boeing 747. This analogy is very dubious, as the English biologist R. Dawkins in his excellent book - The Blind Watchmaker.

"Common sense" is not enough

Contrary to what Menachem Ben writes, to understand the biological world it is not enough to "open your eyes and observe a little and also think a little". One of the important contributions of the pioneers of the scientific revolution - Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, was the insight that you cannot trust "what you see", "common sense", and intuitions. The world that the evolutionists and Darwin and his successors opened before us is a strange and "unthinkable" world. A world of complex chemical molecules that are capable of replicating, a world of time measured in billions of years, a world of "competition" between genes, and of processes that resulted after four billion years in the same species known as Homo sapiens, that is us. All of this is the result of research over the past hundreds of years based on complex and sophisticated knowledge that requires a lot of mental effort. If we turn to the theories of modern physics we will find ourselves in an even more awkward situation. Here it is certainly not enough to "think a little".
The theories of modern physics (the quantum theory, the theory of relativity and the cosmological theories) are based on assertions that are contrary not only to common sense but also to the basic concepts with which we are accustomed to think. Nevertheless, observations, experiments and logic impose them on physicists.

The biological world is not perfect
Menachem Ben writes: "How is it that nature 'knows' how to be perfect"? This is also a common mistake. Unfortunately the biological world is not perfect. He is not perfect because he was not created by an omniscient, benevolent and omnipotent God. It was not designed according to a pre-existing plan, but is the product of the operation of natural laws, external conditions and random events.

Every evolutionary change in an organism is the result of a change and addition to a previous organism, and it is carried out within a series of constraints (the type of mutations that occur, the available raw materials, etc.). Hence, many properties, although they rightly arouse our admiration in their marvelous complexity and in the exact execution of the processes for which they were created, are not perfect. Humans were also created and shaped as they are, not according to prior planning or forethought, but through the same mechanism that shaped the other organisms.
Man evolved under the influence of environmental factors (certain selection pressures) that acted on our evolutionary ancestors a few million years ago, in the place where they lived (on the African continent). And therefore the biological properties of man are also far from perfect. For example, anatomical limitations manifested in problems with the spine arise from the fact that man's origin is walking on all fours, and from the fact that his standing upright is a process that occurred not long ago on an evolutionary scale (about 4 million years ago); Even the cecum, a relic of the evolutionary past, which is an organ without a function today, indicates incompleteness. And even the eye, which is a highly sophisticated mechanism (Darwin wrote - that it stands in awe of its complexity) is not a mechanism without flaws, which led the great physiologist Helmholtz to remark - that "an optician was a fool in designing a device with such elementary defects". All these, and many other examples, clearly show, as the French biologist François Jacob wrote, that the world of organisms is the result of improvisation and not planning.

Who survives?
Another frequently heard argument - "The more developed and gifted survive, while the inferior and weaker disappear - how is it that the world is full of 'weak' creatures of all kinds - butterflies, snails, worms - alongside 'strong' and 'gifted' creatures, such as the lion, the monkey and the eagle?" This also stems from a basic lack of understanding. The Darwinian "war for existence" usually occurs between individuals of the same population, of the same species, and the more "gifted" is not necessarily the stronger or the bigger. The "winner", the one who survives and reproduces at a relatively greater rate, is that individual who is more adapted (relative to the other individuals in the population) to the environmental conditions and lifestyle.
The adaptation can be expressed in countless anatomical, physiological and behavioral features. The wrong idea, that the "strongest" survives, led in the second half of the 19th century to one of the distorted and corrupting interpretations of Darwinism called "social Darwinism". His followers relied on the "law of nature" of the "war of existence" and used it to justify the wild competition that characterized the capitalist regime, class exploitation and colonial slavery.

How to deal with the creationists?

Menachem Ben's article is not unusual. I dare to guess that if a survey were to be conducted, his words would receive considerable public support. He has many partners in the US (and elsewhere), after all, they are the people of "creation science" - a coalition of Christian fundamentalists, the "moral majority" and other conservative forces. It is not surprising that Menachem Ben and his ilk find an attentive ear among the general public. Humans hold different beliefs because they want to believe in them. They yearn to receive simple and immediate answers, which will answer their questions and troubles, whereas scientific explanations are complex and require a lot of effort. From the layman's point of view, the claims of scientists will often seem absurd, contrary to common sense, and potentially destructive to his conventional worldview. Don't we all tend to agree to assertions that confirm what we believe in anyway? Science is seen as cold, abstract, and the world it describes is a hostile and alien world that has no answer for a person searching for meaning. In contrast - the myths, magic, or religion offer immediate comfort, provide moral guidelines, promises of a better future and eternal life.
It is common to think that science removes prejudices and we would expect that with the development of science, belief in phenomena, such as demons and ghosts, would decrease. But this is a mistake. Historically speaking, the medieval madness of the witch hunter began precisely in the period when experimental science began to be established. Furthermore, science and myth have existed side by side since the beginning of science and philosophy in Greece, about two thousand five hundred years ago.
The basic mistake of the "creation scientists" who rely on the story of creation in the book of Genesis, is the absurd attempt to turn myth into science. Myths (in the sense of stories about the creation of the world or the creation of man, and not in the sense of lies) give us considerable emotional satisfaction. Humans love to tell stories and hear stories. The stories are not only about reality, they also shape reality. When science tries to disprove myths, its task is not easy.
How to deal with the evolutionists and creationists? If it were possible, it would be worthwhile to adopt Arthur Koestler's advice - "take these people and force them to read the appropriate literature for a year". In debates, it is common to negate their assertions by showing that their claims are unscientific. Science is known to have a lot of prestige (even those with different ideologies try to flaunt it; Marxism claimed to present a scientific economic and political theory, and Freud intended to establish a scientific psychology; in the USA there is an association known as Science Christian whose goal is to cure diseases through the Christian faith (with a complete disclaimer of medicine). Therefore It is not surprising that in recent years the hooligans of evolution, who present the "theory" of the story of creation according to the Book of Genesis in contrast to the Darwinian theory, call themselves "creation scientists". They have established in the USA an organization that imitates a scientific association (in terms of distributing journals, training lecturers, etc. ) known as "Creation Science" - Science Creation (this is, by the way, an organization of educated people, mainly engineers and chemists). In polemics with creationists, when they claim that creationism is not science, they usually rely on Popper's principle of refutation. According to this principle, only theories The possibility of empirical refutation can be imagined, they are scientific theories. However, the application of this principle in practice is problematic, and not all philosophers accept its validity either. It is not always easy to find a sharp criterion for distinguishing between science and non-science. There are also borderline cases. More than that , the possibility of refutation is a necessary condition for a scientific theory but not a sufficient condition. There are claims that are patently absurd. The claim that eating donuts increases mathematical ability is disprovable - does this make it scientific? A better way, in my opinion, in a polemic with the creationists, is, instead of claiming that they are "unscientific", to refute their claims one by one - to show that the world was not created 5760 years ago; that there was a flood a few thousand years ago that destroyed all the animals on earth; that the fossil age of various marine creatures is much earlier than the fossil age of our evolutionary ancestors; that the biological creatures and man are imperfect and so on.

Another question is the question of what is the importance of these departments. As we mentioned, this is not just a theoretical dispute. It has wide implications. The existential problems of man as an individual and as a society are complicated and difficult, therefore we must use every source of knowledge, and Darwinism is one of the most important sources. As we know, the scientific infrastructure of medicine is based on anatomy, physiology and biochemistry and is closely related to evolution and Darwinism, as is of course all the progress related to genetic research. In recent years, evolutionary theory has also made an important contribution to psychology and sociology. With its help, we better understand phenomena such as selfishness, nepotism or xenophobia, and we also understand the tendency for aggression and conflicts - conflicts between ethnic groups, religions and nations, and conflicts between individuals - whether they are strangers, spouses, or even parents and children. One of the reasons for man's suffering is the fact that his traits were shaped over hundreds of thousands and millions of years to adapt to hunter-gatherer life in the savannahs, while since the agricultural revolution about ten thousand years ago (an evolutionary blink of an eye), his living conditions and way of life have changed at an increasing rate, without matching his biological traits.
The attacks on the status of science in society
The controversy regarding evolution is related to a broader controversy regarding the status of science in society (where the term "science" refers primarily to the natural sciences). The reference to science is a mixture of admiration and reluctance. The admiration and illusion that science is going to solve all human problems mainly characterized the 19th century, and it was especially due to the achievements of technology that led to improvement in almost all areas of life. On the other hand, the opposition to science also accompanies it from the beginning, in the 16th and 17th centuries. Certain thinkers claimed, and still claim, that science is materialistic, that it is inhuman and that it destroys the sense of beauty and wonder that nature inspires in us. He robbed us of our ability to admire the beauty of the rainbow and turned it into a collection of wavy fluctuations. This is a biased view. Understanding is not opposed to admiration, one can understand a certain phenomenon and continue to admire it, and one can continue to enjoy the beauty of the rainbow. By the way, you can also admire the beauty of a mathematical formula. As for technology, there is no doubt that besides the great benefit it has brought to humanity, it has devastating side effects, the most well-known of which are - the destruction of the environment, the danger of population explosion and the creation of weapons of mass destruction. However, it seems that the maximum responsibility regarding uncontrolled or harmful technological development lies with society, through its representatives and rulers, and not, or not primarily, with the scientists who developed the theoretical infrastructure on which these inventions are based.
Relativism and the philosophy of science in recent times with the prosperity of new age literature and postmodernism, science is attacked by cultural relativism. The main message of the postmodernists is negation and opposition to the Western philosophical tradition that relies on rationality and logic, without offering any substitute. There is no new doctrine here, but a kind of file of beliefs, terminologies and styles. The dominant motif is the rejection of the rational-scientific approach and the denial of the critical element in human culture. There is no more room for the claim: "Wrong", towards some kind of position or claim, and each position is presented as a legitimate position, the fruit of personal experience; And if it is a position that stems from personal experience, then it is immune to any criticism.
Some sociologists claim that there is not and cannot be objective knowledge. All knowledge, including science, is conditioned by the social conditions in which it is built, including the cognitive tradition and technical ability passed down from generation to generation. According to this concept, science is supported by institutions and authorities that control society, and serves political needs and positions of power. Those who go so far, even claim that the fact that there is a huge variety of opinions and beliefs indicates that there is no autonomous external world, or at least that we are unable to know such a world even if it does exist, and therefore evolutionary biology is nothing but one of these cultural models, and is itself a myth.
The dominance of the "new era" in our culture also helps in the loss of self-confidence of scientists, or more precisely of certain philosophers of science. Philosopher Karl Popper, who is considered one of the greatest philosophers, claimed that science is unable to provide certain knowledge because any theory, even a theory that has stood many empirical tests, may prove to be wrong. His determination stems both from a theoretical analysis, and from historical monitoring of the fate of scientific theories. On the other hand, Popper believes that although science cannot provide a certain knowledge of the knowledge of the world, it gradually brings us closer to this knowledge.
The main book that serves as fuel for relativism is the philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn's important book - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn analyzes the history and development of the physical sciences; He discusses the sociology of the scientific community and its influence on scientific practice. Relying on a detailed analysis of important scientific discoveries, Kuhn paints a different picture of science and the scientist than the "standard" picture. Kuhn refutes the conventional view of science progressing in revealing an objective truth about the world (thus his position differs from Popper's). According to his description, in every scientific field there are long periods of "normal science" - those periods in which the scientists in the particular field work within the framework of common approaches, assumptions and models - what he calls a paradigm. Over time, findings that contradict the dominant paradigm accumulate, and the common response at the beginning is to ignore rather than neglect the paradigm (and this is also contrary to Popper's idea, that one disproving fact, which is contrary to the theory, will necessarily lead to its neglect). However, over time, when the number of unusual findings and their importance grows, a process similar to a revolution takes place. In Kuhn's opinion, the two paradigms - the old and the new - are not comparable, and therefore the decision between them is not based on rational considerations (or not only based on rational considerations), but is the result of the influence of different social forces such as tradition, authority, or prestige. Here we approach relativism. If there is no rational way to choose between different paradigms, then it seems as if science is a social construction. If it were so, then science would be a reflection of social and cultural conditions that dominate each and every period. But this is a mistake. Social factors such as authority, fashion, tradition, prestige, or the use of rhetoric do indeed have an effect on science, but it is a mistake to claim that science is nothing but the result of these influences only. No amount of rhetoric or cultural fashion will convince scientists to accept a particular theory, it can, at most, make them take it seriously and test it. In the end, the theory will rise and fall on the basis of evidence, the ability to explain the phenomena it is supposed to explain, its internal coherence and to what extent it aligns with related fields. We can also ask the relativists, did we have different science in different historical and social conditions? Did we have physics that is not based on the forces we know? Is a biology possible that is not based on the cell as the basic unit of life and on DNA as the hereditary material? Most probably, the relativists will answer this in the affirmative, but they have the duty of seeing.

Kuhn, rightly, challenges the naive image of the scientist who is free of all human weaknesses, and who works tirelessly to reveal the truth in rational ways and on the basis of pure logic. The scientist is motivated by the desire to succeed, to achieve a premiere, to become famous, and sometimes (albeit rarely) he is even tempted to commit fraud. But in the end the theory will be severely tested through experiment, observation, and logic. When referring to the role of irrational factors in the scientist's work, it must be remembered that science is a collective enterprise.
Every researcher is a colleague in a scientific community, that group that works in the field of his research. Within this community, an intense and continuous dialogue takes place, the findings, experiments and observations, theories and reasonings are tested, while mutual examination and control. Scientific theories are always tentative, and if they do not stand the test of confirmation or refutation over time, they are abandoned. This is one of the great advantages of science which has a self-correcting mechanism built into it. On the other hand, assertions and theories that are the result of subjective experiences, personal revelation or faith, and that are not tested on an empirical and public scale, and are immune to refuting evidence, are not scientific theories.

Faith and science

Menachem Ben writes that he is amazed at how many people "swallow such a foolish theory" - and his answer: "For those who do not believe in God, there is no other answer." Whoever uses God to explain the existence of the world of organisms deserves to be reminded of Laplace's answer to Napoleon. When he remarked to Laplace that God's place was absent in his new theory about the solar system, Hela replied to him - "I have no need for this hypothesis".
Menachem Ben believes in the existence of God. I believe that there is no room for a rational and reasoned debate about a person's faith, whether his faith is the result of religious education, personal revelation or choice, whether it is the result of a search for comfort, a search for meaning in life, or from any other irrational reason. In contrast, one can disagree (and I disagree) on those who try to prove the existence of God with the help of rational reasoning and empirical data, as it is obtained from Ben's article. Indeed, sociological studies have shown that many people believe in the existence of God from cosmological reasoning, or what is known as "the argument from design". According to them, it is impossible to imagine the fact of the wonderful planning, beauty, complexity and perfection of the world without the existence of a supremely intelligent planner. This reasoning is also the result of the outdated concept regarding the centrality of the earth and man in the universe. In the question of the existence of God, I adopt the words of Protagoras, a Greek philosopher who lived in the 5th century BC - "As far as the gods are concerned, I cannot say anything certain about them, even if they exist or do not exist, because the subject is too difficult and human life is short" .

The relationship between science and faith is a very complex and controversial question that has been going on for hundreds of years. Some believe that it is not possible to bridge them, because religious belief by its nature is static and unchanging, while science is constantly evolving, and therefore the collision between them is inevitable. Historical examples are Galileo's trial and the famous debate on evolution that took place in 1860 in England between Wilberpress and Achsley. In the last century, the "Trial of the Monkeys" was widely publicized, in which the question of the authority of the Holy Scriptures against free and critical thinking was on the agenda.
Other thinkers, both theologians and scientists, believe that there is no conflict between religious belief and science because these are two different ways of examining the same reality. However, if you believe in God's power to influence the laws of nature, all science is invalid. Belief can be opposed to skepticism. Faith and skepticism are two modes of reference. The believer believes in one thing. The skeptic believes many things, and none of them are certain. The believer has discovered the truth and holds it, and the skeptic is looking for it and is also aware that any statement that is considered true is a temporary statement that may change. However, it is appropriate to be open-minded. Science is not a new religion and scientists do not have an omnipotent method. It is appropriate to distinguish between science and science (and scientism science). Science (when referring to the natural sciences), is not the only way in which man can know and understand all the phenomena in the world. There is also no justification for the assumption that because science has solved certain problems in the past, it will also solve all problems in the future.

Also in the issue "A place for thought-in the gate": Who am I - about the elusiveness of self-identity; between the reporter company and the screen company; The election campaign - a factual presentation or an advertising campaign; the manipulative language of advertising and propaganda; Heidegger Arendt and Jaspers: relationships in three.

*****