One Thing is Certain...

...There’s no such thing as certainty.

Any good scientist will tell you that, scientifically speaking, nothing is ever proved. There is nothing in the universe that can be predicted with 100% certainty. My favorite example: we cannot say for sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. We just can’t. And that’s not because of a semantic nit-picking over the fact that the sun doesn’t actually rise, it’s because we can’t be altogether certain that our sun won’t go and explode on us without warning, in which case we’ve all been vaporized and no one will ever see a morning again, ever.

But what we can say is that the probability of the sun rising tomorrow is extremely high. So high that I think it’s safe to say we’re all pretty damn confident that this morning’s sunrise will be followed by another one tomorrow.

So when we talk about something as being proved, what we’re really talking about is probability. The likelihood that, based on a great deal of consistent observation, something will behave as it has behaved in the past. The earth will probably continue to rotate and the sun will probably continue to blaze forth way up there, and there’s no point in worrying about something so unlikely as a supernova.

Which is exactly why proof, or the demand for it, can be used as a lie.

The fossil record is incomplete, therefore evolution is a flawed theory and shouldn’t be taught in schools, or at least should be taught alongside other similarly-unproveable theories like, say, creationism. But this is a conflation of two entirely different standards of proof: a scientific standard, based on the slow but constant growth of a fossil record that goes back millions of years, and a religious standard that can only be based on faith.

The same can be said for the climate change debate. Give somebody an unusually cold day and they’ll say “But how can there be global warming when it’s this cold?” (There’s a typical example of this kind of thinking here.) Climate change is “only a theory,” the detractors say, therefore unproven and therefore flawed and therefore we should throw out all the evidence and keep burning fossil fuels because it’s easy and we like it and whattaya mean there are consequences? Nonsense! Just a theory!

Well then, here’s one for all the deniers out there. I’m going to share something with you, so lean close. You know that thing they say, about how staring at the sun will make you go blind? It’s just a theory. There’s no actual proof. Really, I’ve heard that from, y’know, somewhere. So go on, you know you want to. Step outside. Stare into the glory of God’s brilliant creation.

And lemme know how that goes, okay? Okay.