Evidence · Case 05 · Relativism
The germ theory of disease
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Sources
“Germ theory of disease,” EBSCO Research Starters, Biology.
Objections & responses
- Doesn’t this analogy backfire? Science corrected miasma theory because it has a method for testing claims against reality. Morality has no such method, which is why some conclude moral claims can’t be true or false at all.
The analogy is meant to make one narrow point: that widespread agreement can be wrong, and that true means matches reality, not currently believed. It does not show that morality has a reality to match; that argument is made separately under the claim about a moral source beyond human beings. The disanalogy is also smaller than it first looks. Moral reasoning does have methods (consistency, testing principles against cases, reflective equilibrium), even if they are not laboratory methods, and people use them to change their minds about slavery, torture, and the treatment of children.
- Pointing out that scientific consensus has been wrong is a move creationists and vaccine skeptics use. Isn’t that inconsistent on a site that elsewhere respects scientific consensus?
The warning is fair, and the point being made here is the opposite of the anti-science one. Science corrected itself because it is answerable to evidence, which is exactly why consensus in science is trustworthy in a way consensus in fashion is not. The lesson drawn is that reality is discovered, not voted on, and that is a compliment to science, not an attack. Miasma theory also got the correlation right (filth and disease go together) and the mechanism wrong, which is why some of its remedies worked. A theory can produce good results and still be false, and it was evidence that showed it.