To the editor:
Prof. Krishtalka (Journal-World, May 1) tells us that it is a sad thing that a majority of Americans don’t believe the universe began with a big bang 13.8 billion years ago, in evolution, in climate change and the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Anyone who disbelieves those things, he says, is losing touch with science. He thinks this is willfully choosing ignorance.
Perhaps science (Krishtalka) is losing touch with reality. When did science become the ultimate arbiter of all truth and the “divine” standard of knowledge? Is there a science apart from scientists? Scientists are human and, as such, are subject to fallibility, prejudices, limitations and desires that influence decisions. Science is based on presuppositions that cannot be proven by science (interesting), which means that in many ways science operates upon unproven suppositions. For example, since the supernatural cannot be proven by science it is simply denied.
It is also a problem that human beings have limited ability to gain knowledge, so why do they think they know is truth? There is no time to discuss the presuppositions that man’s rationality is the standard of all things and that man has evolved with accurate belief-producing abilities. Can science answer the basic cry in each human being for meaning, purpose and morality? Perhaps it is more rational to be skeptical about the conclusions of science when it claims to know things that we could not have evolved to know. That is choosing ignorance which is not respect for science or knowledge.