Cafeteria Scientism

Follow the science, insist our liberal friends. I might be more amenable to that if they were. 

What grates me as much as anything else is the rank hypocrisy involved. We're expected to follow the science when they like it on things such as COVID protocols and climate change. Yet in areas where the science is far greater settled, such as gender identity and human sexual relations, they are noticeably reluctant to follow its conclusions. This is really nothing more than a cafeteria approach to science, accepting it when you like what it teaches (or might be trying to teach, arguably) and ignoring it when you don't.

That simply won't wash. If you expect me to follow the science no matter where it leads or what it says then I have the right to expect that of you. Otherwise, you have virtually a zero chance of convincing me you're right about the questions you deem critical. It is nothing less than selfishly polemical to insist on devotion to a principle which you yourself will not respect.

If I must follow the science on climate issues and COVID then you certainly must follow it on the questions of gender identity and human sexuality. Anything less is intellectual dishonesty. On that ground alone I see no obligation to listen to your arguments on what amount to pop scientism rather than honest fact.

Is Science based on Religious Justifications?

They say the Universe is constantly expanding. But if it is, what is it expanding into?

- Ferb Fletcher

Yes, that is a (reasonably accurate) quote from a cartoon character. And yes, too, it was said for the joke value. But as the best jokes have some truth to them, the idea behind the quip seems too good to leave alone.

What is one of the primary criticisms of the existence of God? Simply put, that the agnostic or atheist cannot accept that some being has just been around for all eternity. They cannot get a grasp on the infinite. Yet here we find a twofold example of science expecting that the believer accept pretty much the same thing, don't you think?

To begin away from young Mr. Fletcher's witticism, popular science (which we wonder might actually and only be a straw man used by atheists and Stephen Hawking to support their worldview) denies God by asking what was there before Him? Yet the corollary question, what was there before the ball of matter from which we had the Big Bang, appears unfair. It was just there, of course. But in those same minds, God could not have been 'just there' as philosophy (not religion, we feel compelled to add) may dictate.

Now Ferb's inquiry comes directly into play. If that ball of matter was just there, merely hanging around, what was it hanging around in? And if the Universe is constantly expanding, what is being displaced by the expansion? The obvious answer is that it can't be displacing anything. But then, where is space expanding, and how?

We did find the scientific answer, by the way, and it's almost quaint: it's just expanding. You can read a bit about that here: http://www.universetoday.com/1455/podcast-what-is-the-universe-expanding-into/ But we will say, at the risk of prejudicing you, that we think that author's assertion little but a mind game. The balloon/raisin bread analogy strikes us as weak; there is still something outside of the balloon or the bread which the areas of the balloon and the bread are displacing. Even the idea of understanding the expanding universe better if we were 4 dimensional beings feels lame. It sounds rather like attempting to justify a preexisting belief, quite frankly. And it profoundly fails to address the question of eternal being anyway.

However you view it, we are wont to believe that quite a lot of modern science is predicated upon exactly the same philosophic ideas as those behind the existence of God. When coming from purveyors of science, we're supposed to accept that things just are. When those same folks aim those same ideas at philosophy or religion, they're childish delusions.

We can't help wonder who is truly delusional.

Life on Earth against Life Elsewhere

Ah, science. It wants so much. One of those things it lusts after is one live cell, any kind of cell, on another world. That would prove so very much, wouldn't it?

Ah, the western world. It wants so much. One of those things it lusts after is one live cell, any kind of cell, on another world. That would surely put religion to shame, wouldn't it? It would show that we aren't alone in the universe, and put all those religious zealots to shame, wouldn't it? Just one cell is all it would take.

The rabble in the west and the vaunted pseudoscientific community have something in common then: they each want to find life somewhere else but on Earth. One cell, one wee tiny microscopic organism, and that would put to an end all the egotism of so many tiny Earthlings. One cell of life would mean that much to them.

But the importance of two cells, well, hold on a minute, mister. Two cells within a woman's womb here on Earth, and the game changes. Dramatically. Two such cells, and they must be destroyed, if the woman, one lone person, says so. Life somewhere else, life which is also little more than abstraction (at least right now) would be of infinite value. This means, what? A second extraterrestrial cell would hold no inherent value at all? Add a second cell here on our own planet, where the only life we really know to exist exists, and all that infinite grace is gone if the individual wills it. Would it be gone if found somewhere else, even, horrors, in a bit of two celled life on some other planet inconveniently found in an alien organism? Should that not, at one person's insistence, be destroyed?

This is why we cannot respect popular science. This is why we treat so much of the western world with derision. They are of dual personalities and at war within themselves. And why? Because of one lone cell projected to be out 'there' 'somewhere'. One theoretical cell that means more to them than life on Earth, indeed means more to them than any real multicelluar life right here, right now. Real known life means nothing to them. Life in their imagination, though, means everything.

Ah, science. How many cells at work came up with this paradox?

Using Science as a Scare Tactic

This just in: mass extinctions could threaten life as we know it. At least, such is the belief of one John Alroy of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His findings, after a study of fossil collections, concludes that when there are significant numbers of species extinctions there may be significant changes to the ecosystem. Indeed, it may alter the question of who is or is not the dominant species in any giving environmental arena.

The best initial reaction to this should not be shock. There are no grounds for panic here, despite the fact that it seems the world of science (meant here with the small 's') and the media want to use this as an example of how we humans are mucking up the planet. We are so smug, we humans, that we aren't even considering the possibility that we may advance ourselves from the top spot on the ecological pyramid. We may fall from the predator to the prey, if we aren't careful.

But to the point. It is not, in any way, an earth shattering conclusion that if some things change dramatically other areas may be altered as well. If you remove the key pitchers and batters from our own Detroit Tigers, you would likely have other teams competing for the American League lead in their division. Surely a look into the fossilized remains of 100,000 extinct species, which is what Dr. Alroy and his minions studied, was not necessary to realize that. In fact, it was almost surely overkill for an argument more philosophical than scientific, even if based on scientific data. It was not needed to found a conclusion based more on common sense than as a particularly scientific insight.

So, does this mean that humanity is doomed? No. Especially when the researchers and media types sprinkle their statements with all sorts of vague words and phrases. When we hear viewpoints such as, "Today's rate of extinction may be as great as 100 times the historic norm," as claimed by the people at Life Science, we wonder at what exactly is the threat made by the words may be as great. This followed by the rather astounding assertion of extinction rates 100 times the historic norm.

The columnist George Will famously says that, "If the data don't jibe with common sense, doubt the data." Or at the least, don't overstate its merely potential importance. For indeed that's all we have here: data which may, or may not, mean that we good folks are killing the Earth and ourselves in the process. Yes, of course we should be aware of it and serious consider the prospects to which it may lead. Yet that does not mean we are invariably bound for destruction. For two can play the what if game: what if it means that we are merely increasing our dominance? It may be that we are improving rather than destroying; our actions may be creating a better, and not worse, environment.

In the end, this is only so much more environmentalist fear mongering. If that's all they can bring to the debate, then we should not worry over their worries. It is far more disheartening to see how we hurt one another as people than as how we might, or might not, be affecting the lower species.

Science and Goodness

One of the great debates between the Christian and the scientist is the degree to which we are animal or spiritual. Many scientists wish us to be wholly scientific in our approach to humanity and understanding of ourselves. It is really a rather shallow outlook on human nature or, even, the necessary consequences of a purely scientific view of who we are.

Science has apparently discovered the part of our brain which helps us to recognize justice. It asserts, at least in some quarters, that goodness is innate within us physically. Yet it ignores the very real point that whether good occurs in us naturally is an entirely different question from the judgment of 'what is good?' or the expectation that people will do good.

How do we know what is good except to be able to judge it in our individual and societal actions? Or are our scientifically minded friends suggesting that we just 'do things' and they happen to be good? Either way, any judgment about good, any assertion that 'this is good' cannot come wholly or entirely from within ourselves; there are too many of us with too many of our own nuanced ideas of good and bad.

Or are you saying that everyone from childhood, without guidance of any kind (parental, societal, or spiritual) will necessarily elect to do good? No Lord of the Flies scenarios possible? It begs the question of why people (and it should be obvious that all people do bad things sometimes regardless of physical construction) do bad things. Why does the thief steal, if he knows in his heart and head that it's wrong? Further, what's free will, if we are born with, say, no choice but to do good?

It should surprise no one that we are hard wired to recognize justice; we are, at the end of the day, physical as well as spiritual creatures. It should not be shocking news that a just and all knowing God in the very act of creation would make our physical selves able to recognize spiritual, eternal, and absolute truths, truths outside our own will, thus enabling us to see (so to speak) justice. That science has discovered as much enhances rather than detracts from our knowledge of God. It strengthens, not weakens, our relationship with Him. It makes our spiritual side and our physical side properly complimentary. It raises us from the mere animal into a higher plane of existence.

Science does not tell us who we are in our entirety. It only sets us on that road. How far we trail along that path is ultimately up to us. And the questions we discover along that way will not be empirical.

Science and Religion

No good Christian would have any issue with good science. Indeed Christianity and science go rather well together, as better thinkers than myself have said in better ways than I for years. Yet there is a breed of science which will have no quarter with any ideals save its own. It is the realm of pop science, and its followers are legion.

Pop science is most noticeable in the area of global warming, but exists in many other forms. Environmentalists who see the Earth as better off without human beings and those who insist on evolution as the only acceptable theory on the origin of people and things are two other examples. We should of course be concerned with meteorological cycles and I will admit that we have not always used our resources wisely; further, we must allow that evolution may well be fact. All of this is, to one degree or another, open to reasoned debate. But what is truly galling about pop science is how it so readily dismisses religious belief when it is so nearly a religion itself.

You don’t think so? If not, why the presumption (for that is all it is; who out there has observed a world without us in order to rationally make such a judgment?) the earth would be better without humans? Science is the area of fact and observation; value judgments are beyond its scope. Likewise the assumption that short term warming is bad, or that all the matter in the Universe was once compacted into an object the size of a basketball which just happened to be around (while the possibility of God just being around is deemed fantasy). What do these beliefs sound like? What do they appear based upon?

The answer is obvious: faith. The pop culture, of which pop science is a part, believes what it believes simply on the faith. It is true because it is true; interesting how the seriously religious are accused of circular argument when they assert such things. Anyway, they believe because it is what their conclusions lead them to think. Which is not to say that, on a case by case basis, there may be no reason for their faith. It merely illustrates that their ideas emanate from what the religious readily admit about theirs: knowledge is ultimately built upon axioms, starting points which are simply accepted as true, truths so obvious as to be Reason Itself. We believe in God because without an uncreated Creator nothing makes sense. They believe in the big bang basketball because, well, matter had to start from somewhere, or that something simply had to be. It's no different that believing in a Creator.

So you see, much of today’s science and religion share an approach to their creeds. It is not unfair to say, in a very real sense, that science is religion.
Let’s see if the evolutionists and environmentalists can handle the rebound.

Science and Religion

No good Christian would have any issue with good science. Indeed Christianity and science go rather well together, as better thinkers than myself have said in better ways than I for years. Yet there is a breed of science which will have no quarter with any ideals save its own. It is the realm of pop science, and its followers are legion.

Pop science is most noticeable in the area of global warming, but exists in many other forms. Environmentalists who see the Earth as better off without human beings and those who insist on evolution as the only acceptable theory on the origin of people and things are two other examples. We should of course be concerned with meteorological cycles and I will admit that we have not always used our resources wisely; further, we must allow that evolution may well be fact. All of this is, to one degree or another, open to reasoned debate. But what is truly galling about pop science is how it so readily dismisses religious belief when it is so nearly a religion itself.

You don’t think so? If not, why the presumption (for that is all it is; who out there has observed a world without US in order to rationally make such a judgment?) the earth would be better without humans? Science is the area of fact and observation; value judgments are beyond its scope. Likewise the assumption that short term warming is bad, or that all the matter in the Universe was once compacted into an object the size of a basketball which just happened to be around (while the possibility of God just being around is deemed fantasy). What do these beliefs sound like? What do they appear based upon?

The answer is obvious: faith. The pop culture, of which pop science is a part, believes what it believes simply on the faith that it's true. They believe because it is what their conclusions lead them to think. Which is not to say that, on a case by case basis, there may be no reason for their faith. It purely illustrates that their ideas emanate from what the religious readily admit about theirs: knowledge is ultimately built upon axioms, starting points which are simply accepted as true. We believe in God because without an uncreated Creator nothing makes sense. They believe in the big bang basketball because, well, matter had to start from somewhere.

So you see, much of today’s science and religion share an approach to their creeds. It is not unfair to say, in a very real sense, that science is religion.

Let’s see if the evolutionists can handle the rebound.

Global Warming?

February 2011 was the third snowiest month in Detroit weather history. We all know what that means: global warming, your Grandma's blue hair.

To be sure, there's probably some pseudo-scientific explanation which will attempt to explain the fact away. Pop science is not a force which does not give up easily on its far out presumptions. This is, we might be assured, an anomaly. Global warming is really, truly happening.

Tell that your heat bill.