
Atlantis doesn't exist.
A couple years ago I was watching the History Channel (a channel that is, these days, showing all sorts of programs that have little or nothing to do with history). They were showing something about Atlantis, as they are wont to do (usually around the same time they show stuff on Nostradamus and “What really happened to Jimmy Hoffa?”). They showed a couple “archaeologists” (I don’t know the names now, forgive me), who were in Bermuda, looking for evidence to support their theory that Atlantis was in Bermuda.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the wonderful world of pseudoscience and its bastard cousins, pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology!
As the “pseudo-” prefix implies, these aren’t actually science, history or archaeology, just something that looks similar when viewed from a distance. Sometimes it can be used to create interesting works of fiction (The Da Vinci Code
, for example), but sometimes people mistake it for reality (The Da Vinci Code, for example), and that’s when the trouble begins.
Here’s an example of how real science works: a trained professional takes a look at all the evidence available and forms a theory that is supported by that evidence (this is a gross simplifaction, mind you). That theory is then tested and retested to see if it works. If it doesn’t, the scientist in question goes back to the drawing board and comes up with a new theory that will, hopefully, work better. It’s what’s referred to as the scientific method.
This is, in fact, that exact opposite of what the people I mentioned at the start of the article were doing. They were working backwards. They formulated a theory (Atlantis was in the area of Bermuda), and then went looking for evidence to support that theory (ignoring the fact that all the available evidence points to the notion that Plato simply made Atlantis up as a teaching tool, the same thing I believe is the case with Jesus, by the way).
The scientific method is very important. It means that once a conclusion is reached, it’s done so through a great deal of verification and evidence. Things like the Theory of Gravity, the Theory of a Heliocentric Solar System (both still classed as “theories”, by the way, which means something different in science than you might expect), the Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Relativity aren’t regarded as true simply because people say they are; they’re regarded as true because they’ve been tested, verified and found accurate.
Contrast this now to pseudoscience, examples of which abound. One of my personal favorites is ghost hunting, which I always refer to as “Hey, gang! Let’s go play scientist!”. Astrology, creation “science” and cryptozoology are also wonder examples.
As for pseudoarchaeology, let’s take the specific example of Atlantis. There is no evidence that it ever existed. It doesn’t appear in the historical record until Plato talked about it. It’s quite clear he made it up, and the fact that he made it up so long ago is part of why people believe it must be true. It makes me wonder if in two-thousand years from now we’ll have people believing Oz, Grand Fenwick, Tomania, Xanth and Middle-Earth were all real places.
Pseudohistory is a little less widely known, but still a problem. Afrocentrism (particularly the parts that claim the Greeks learned everything they knew from black Africans), the belief that Zheng He visited the New World
, as well as all forms of Holocaust Denial are all forms of pseudohistory. Some are mostly harmless, like the Zheng He notion, but others, like Holocaust Denial, can be quite damaging.
This brings us to the question of what to do about pseudoscience, as well as pseudoarchaeology and pseudohistory. They are based fundamentally on ignorance, of course, and the only cure for ignorance is knowledge. Only by teaching solid science, history and archaeology will we be able to overcome this kind of fundamentally wrong nonsense.
Naturally, religion completely fails any tests involving the scientific method, and while there’s archaeological evidence for the existence of, say, Pilate, there isn’t any for Noah’s Ark. Many theists out there seem to take pride in this, talking about how wonderful and noble it is to believe in something despite all the evidence to the contrary. They will tell you at length about how science and archaeology don’t matter, but you know that if science were to ever prove the existence of God, they’d pounce on that like there was no tomorrow (well, provided it was their god, and not some other).
For this reason it is vital that we don’t teach intelligent design in our schools. It’s nothing but pseudoscience, pure and simple. It doesn’t even remotely pass muster as far as the scientific method goes, and pretending it does is an insult to rational minded people everywhere. You can’t even slip by saying, “Teach the controversy!” because there isn’t really any controversy at all in the scientific community. Of course all this is moot, given that intelligent design, in addition to being bad science, is religiously-based, and so can’t be taught in public schools anyhow.
Only by fighting back against pseudo-anything can we hope for real science, real history, real archaeology and rational thought to prevail. If we don’t fight back, we deserve to live in a world where people believe in Atlantis, intelligent design and other such nonsense.
Kind of like we do now… oh, dear.