The Science Thing

I like science. Science is good. We could not heat our homes, drive our cars, or cure diseases without it. So, yay science.

Yet science is also very rote, very basic. It's a shallow type of knowing. Science tells me that it is cold and windy in Detroit this morning. Well, duh. 

What's my point? Simply that while science can be useful all it really does is give facts which are by themselves rather banal. It does not and cannot make any value judgments. It merely is. Why or whether we should heat our homes, drive our cars, and cure diseases, what we should do with our scientific knowledge, are questions behind science. 

This is where issues of good and bad come in. Those issues are not scientific. Even the judgments that science is useful and good are non scientific. They're not empirical but rational. They are above and beyond science.

Basically, don't tell me that science is the end all be all. It isn't, even on its own terms.

Chesterton on Science and Christmas

A little of Mr. G. K. Chesterton for you today. It may help you understand the punchline to know that he grew rather rotund as he aged.

I like how he, in that very British way, jibes the scientists for supposedly knowing more about what he was doing and why he did it than he did. He was simply looking for his lost coin, rescuing a cat, and celebrating Christmas.

"THERE is one very vile habit that the pedants have, and that is explaining to a man why he does a thing when the man himself can explain quite well — and quite differently.  If I go down on all-fours to find sixpence, it annoys me to be told by a passing biologist that I am really doing it because my remote ancestors were quadrupeds.  I concede that he knows all about biology, or even a great deal about my ancestors; but I know he is wrong, because he does not know about the sixpence.  If I climb a tree after a stray cat, I am unconvinced when a stray anthropologist tells me that I am doing it because I am essentially arboreal and barbaric.  I happen to know why I am doing it; and I know it is because I am amiable and somewhat over-civilised.  Scientists will talk to a man on general guess-work about things that they know no more about than about his pocket-money or his pet cat.  Religion is one of them, and all the festivals and formalities that are rooted in religion.  Thus a man will tell me that in keeping Christmas I am not keeping a Christmas feast, but a pagan feast.  This is exactly as if he told me that I was not feeling furiously angry, but only a little sad.  I know how I am feeling all right; and why I am feeling it.  I know this in the case of cats, sixpences, anger, and Christmas Day.  When a learned man tells me that on the 25th of December I am really astronomically worshipping the sun, I answer that I am not.  I am practicing a particular personal religion, the pleasures of which (right or wrong) are not in the least astronomical.  If he says that the cult of Christianity and the cult of Apollo are the same, I answer that they are utterly different; and I ought to know for I have held both of them.  I believed in Apollo when I was quite little; and I believe in Christmas now that I am very, very big.

~Illustrated London News, Jan. 1, 1910.

Practical Poison

I'm not sure how I got on their radar, but my Facebook feed will occasionally offer me posts from a group called Science and Atheism. They tend to post short videos defending atheism and knocking religion. Where exactly science comes into this is beyond me, seeing as science and religion are quite compatible while the arguments for or against God are ultimately philosophical. But that's a question for another time.

Occasionally I will take a moment and watch their short videos. You really never know what you might learn, and you should know your enemy, right? This particular one asserted that believers invented God as an explanation for things. To be fair, that's a plausible philosophic argument. But it strikes me as hollow: it dismisses talk of God without actually considering any of the arguments that He exists. But that too is for another time. 

My point today is this: don't the folks who preach to us (and it is a form of preaching as it tends to take on a kind of religious quality) that we must follow science urge us to do so because we need answers to our questions? Don't they assert (rather strongly) that if we would all just become scientists we would eventually have all the answers? 

The trouble is science can't have all the answers, for science is ultimately very rote and therefore a comparatively low form of knowledge. Science can tell us that injecting a body with poison will kill it...but it does not, it cannot, answer the question of whether we ought to inject a body with poison. This morning I simply want to point out that such scientists as the one I gave two minutes of my life to this morning are speaking with a bit of a forked tongue. Don't go to religion to find explanations, come to us, they say. Come to Science. Left to itself, that's really saying nothing more than 'Don't do things his way, do them my way' and all shall be well. 

I will deign to say, that hardly strikes me as scientific.

Science: the lowest level of knowledge

Note: this is in response to a You Tube video sent me by a friend. The video, featuring Carl Sagan, Bill Nye and others, purports that science and scientific knowledge is the end all be all of our existence. This is my reply.

-Charles Martin Cosgriff

Well, I agree that the beauty of the universe is not in the atoms which make things up. But I must point out that such an idea is not a scientific judgment. It is in fact a philosophic judgment.

Any time you claim something is beautiful you cannot rightly be said to be talking science, because your have made a value judgment in calling it beautiful. Value judgments, opinions expressed about the innate quality of any given thing, are based on reason, or what the classical philosophers called Right Reason, things so obviously correct that they are Truth Itself and over which no rational being could disagree.

Science as science ignores this. Indeed popular science (for that is basically what is espoused by the Carl Sagans of our history) isn't actually science at all: it is an expression of their philosophical beliefs about what ultimate truth is. Therefore, scientists who say they are making statements about science which are in all actuality laced with value are not themselves being scientific at all. They have stepped into the realm of philosophy.

There's nothing wrong with that, but call it what it is. The trouble is that science is all about empiricism: hard factual evidence easily reproducible and recognizable over and over again. Carl Sagan has in fact gone beyond what he claims as his expertise.

I can use the same evidence about the complexity of the universe and make a better philosophic claim that it signifies design, that it must have come about via a conscious act: an act of will. An Act of God. Complexity in and of itself is merely a complexity. When we begin to ask ourselves: Why is it complex? How did it become this way? we have begun to become truly human. We stop looking at the merely scientific explanation of an object, which is at the end of the day simply raw data. The meaning of it is philosophical, and then eventually religious.

In short, science answers the 'how' questions. That gives us much good and necessary knowledge. But it is only rote knowledge; no matter how important, it is the least valuable type of knowledge. How we interpret and apply it means so much more, and those issues are not addressed by science at all. The 'why' questions have more meaning because they explain how we ought to be and how we have came about being here. They are addressed by our philosophic and theological outlook, and necessarily imply a God of some sort.

Science is not spiritual. It is not philosophical. It is not religious. But it isn't supposed to be. When it pretends to speak for what it is not, it is wearing the Emperor's New Clothes. It is out of its league.

Praying at the altar of science

We overvalue science in our modern world. We truly do. Oh, this isn't to belittle the great engineering feats which science has made possible, nor the advances in medicine which make our lives longer and healthier, nor even things such as television or the Internet which offer the possibility of making our mental lives better, even when they merely entertain. All of that is well and good, so far as they go. The trouble lies in the attitude that science makes us better simply because it's science. We act as though science has value, or gives virtue.

Not necessarily, if at all, can science do that. It may offer the opportunity to be a better, more virtuous people. But it does only that, and we are speaking somewhat anthropormorphically in attributing that much to it really.

Can science define or defend the value of a human life? Can it teach us that stealing is wrong; indeed, can it define theft? Can it say anything about our responsibility towards the environment or, more importantly, one another?

Obviously not. To be sure, it may tell us that if we continue on such and such a road we might drive ourselves into extinction. But that's all it can do. Whether we ought to do such and such else so that we will not become extinct is a question of value. Science only tells us what will happen should we construct a building without the proper strengths, or perhaps even what may happen if we continue on a certain course with no variation. It does not, will not, and cannot tell us what we should do with the information it supplies.

People make those judgments, and they are not argued in the realm of science. They're argued in the realm of philosophy, the realm where we might actually be able, by conscious debate and a reasoned consideration of who we are rather than merely that we are, conclude what are and are not good things to do. Science provides facts; however useful they may be, they are ultimately very rote and, by themselves, without meaning. We provide value and virtue. We are above science.

Science by itself lacks virtue. Those who pray at its altar pray to a valueless void.

The truth is out there

And looking out on high I saw Aristotle, the Master of Those Who Know, ringed by the great souls of philosophy.
-Dante, The Inferno

The exact translation of the line I paraphrase above seems in some dispute; what Dante is saying precisely is beyond my poor academic powers to determine. But the gist is reasonably accurate: the poet was speaking of Aristotle, and Aristotle was being commended for seeking and holding and teaching real knowledge.

Not, of course, that Aristotle's knowledge was perfect; no one's is. The overriding point is that we can know; we can hold a real knowledge of and appreciation for persons, things, and events.

Many thinkers today do not accept this preposition. My professors of education (I will not call them teachers) were very open in that they did not believe that there were any things true for all time and all places. In that light, should we be surprised that so many schools do such a poor job of education?

Questions of religion are tossed off as little more than personally interpretive systems which, at best, only help individuals cope with the traumas of this world. Could this be a reason that reverence for anything beyond the person involved has paled lately?

In politics, issues are little more than vague platitudes which help people get elected. Perhaps that is why men and women of depth and understanding eschew elective offices, for they understand that real things are at stake and are too busy actually dealing with them in real time?

Moral virtue is now all too often seen as a myth; should we wonder why there is so little respect for people and institutions?

All of this and far greater errors are based on the idea that we cannot really know anything. The fact is, if that false axiom should prove right, if there is no universal knowledge which we can all, if we wish, understand, then there is no meaning in the world or to life.

Do not fear. That cannot be the case. Aristotle and all the dead white guys, and a great many others of varying races and creeds (for truth is eternal and thus widely recognized across cultures and peoples) have shown us that we can know. Forget the liberal academics who have no respect for that tenet; it shows only their ignorance. Ignore the science trumps religion tribes; they will not accept that knowledge has different tests in different areas. In science, the test of truth is empirical. In philosophy, the test is Reason. With Theology, the standard of evidence is Faith. In the end, all knowledge compliments itself across these three major branches of her, that goddess we call Wisdom.

We can know. Therefore we can act. We can act for the greater good of ourselves and our world. We can do what we must with the clarity that truth is with us, that it dwells among us and at all levels. In the end, that is why we will win and the secular elements across the spectrum will lose. We have something to stand on. They have a bedrock of air.

Science and Value

Science is fascinating, ian't it? And there are so many fields of endeavor within it that it isn't likely our appetite will ever be sated. One would think so, anyway.

After all the flap about the expanding universe which we raised the other day we now find ourselves enthralled with questions empirical. Today our subject is, we think, biochemistry. At the least, what we are considering are the notions of whether our physical makeup controls us.

Must we think what we think and if we must, how honestly responsible are we for our actions? There are those out there who believe, to paraphrase Mr. C. S. Lewis, that human thought is nothing more than cerebral biochemistry. If that's all it is, how can we argue for personal responsibility, indeed of any real ownership of our lives and ourselves?

Can we usefully speak of freedom and liberty if we cannot help who we are? Why bother with discussions of any sort if all we are is whatever nature drives us to be? What actually is the value of even such noble callings as scientific inquiry under such circumstance? Such a scientist after all must really only be thinking what he must think. If science were ever to prove that thought is only physical, wouldn't that include the value of science along with whatever morals or values we may deem to be true?

And that's our issue with so much of modern science. It attempts to argue that all is empirical when not everything is. Or, if it is, then everything is meaningless. For value is not empirical, and there is no value whatsoever to thinking what we cannot help but think and believing what we cannot help but believe.

In short, if science is correct and empiricism is king, then all human action is pointless. Even science itself.

There Should Be no War between Science and Religion

There is a war going on, a war for the collective mind which is society. Some term it a war on science; others, a war on religion. But must there be a war between then?

Huffpost Politics offers today an interesting piece featuring a man both seriously scientific and seriously religious. You may find it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/25/francis-collins-davos_n_4635338.html?ir=Politics&ref=topbar The article is centered on one Dr. Francis Collins, a devout Christian and, believe it or not, geneticist. His science is so respected that no less than Pope Benedict XVI appointed him to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Collins in Huffpost this morning says simply, "...you know, if you are a believer in God, it's hard to imagine that God would somehow put this incontrovertible evidence in front of us about our relationship to other living organisms and expect us to disbelieve it." We may argue about exactly how incontrovertible the evidence might be, as much of it appears mere conjecture. Still, if the Almighty deigned to create through an evolutionary process, who are we to argue? Are we special because of our physical appearances or due to our sentience?

We believe the latter. If we are made in the image of God, then surely that image is more like retrospection than rock. It is thought which makes us more real than any given liquid, solid, or gas. If God is Spirit, them form and matter are not, or are, at least, less so. We are more like God because we can think and consider and not because we might have the tensile strength to hold a suspension bridge up. True, knowing tensile strength is important, especially if we want the bridge to be safe for others like us. We should want that knowledge.

Science and religion do not contradict one another. Or, if we are truly interested in all which God commands, we must accept knowledge in all its forms, facts, and minutiae. This means that science must respect religion. It means as well that any serious religion must accept good science too.

An old military maxim states that you should not fight battles you cannot win. Religion should not fight science because it cannot win. Neither, then, shall science defeat religion. Why should it be expected to? It was created by the same God.

The Meaning of Life isn't Scientific

What is there about discovering our collective roots? We aren't talking about compiling family trees; that's the sort of thing which has an immediate effect on us, seeing exactly where we came from, and who our grandparents and great-grandparents were and what their homelands looked like and so forth. Yet when we extrapolate beyond that, when we grope at issues such as evolution and the formation of the Universe, well, what are we really in search of?

This isn't to disparage such endeavors as academic exercises. If there are things to be discovered which may help us in the here and now, if even there are things whose discovery would cause us to appreciate the wonders of the earth and space around us, that's cool. But our fear isn't about any of that. Or fear is that too many of the folks who seek such things aren't seeking them for the sake of real and useful knowledge. We wonder if they are in fact following along a trail which will do nothing less than make humanity less special than it is.

Not that we seek an arrogant humanity either, as may happen should we being to think ourselves too special, too 'all that'. It strikes us that either extreme may be, well, a sin of some kind. We should want to know and understand who we are, with either approach.

Still, the one seems less critical. We are talking about the one which addresses more the flesh and bones humanity, the scientific approach which sees only empiricism. Aren't the abstractions, the philosophical ideals of who and what we are, and what we ought to be, more important?

Does the formation of planets, the study of evolution, nay, even the Big Bang, actually deal in those questions? The purveyors of science say yes. But we don't see how. To be sure, they appear to believe that if we should come to understand the start of the Universe, the developments within evolution, that we shall then understand creation and can dispense with tired concepts such as God. They are quite unwilling to consider whether such things may require a God of some sort. But why?

The only conclusion we can see is that it would take away from their being God. That's truly sad. Too many scientists or, at least, the pop scientists such as Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan, try to make us believe that creation is wonderful without a Creator. But what does that leave us with? Exactly this: two human beings, neither of whom can possibly be, in a scientific sense, any better than any given one of us. Because if all we are are products of an evolutionary environment, if we are wholly accidental and not guided by anything, then why are they and their thoughts so important? Their very own knowledge and 'understanding' is only incidental. If it's only incidental, as any knowledge thus must be, then it is valueless.

And that simply doesn't make sense. We don't mean scientific sense. We mean philosophic sense. Science is only, and will never be more than, flesh and blood and rock for it knows not what. Scientific knowledge will always be nothing more than rote. That doesn't mean it isn't important. But it does mean that science is only a tool for our use, and nothing more. It means science can only tell us what will happen with certain chemical reactions under such and such conditions. Yet it will never tell us why they must happen.

If all we are is material, atoms inadvertently coming together by nothing more than accident, then we are no better than inanimate objects. What good is a thought which we cannot help but think? But when we can judge, ah, our freedom becomes obvious. We can choose the right or the wrong, whether scientific or philosophic. We are more than muscle and sinew and electric reactions in the brain. We are human. And we can think for ourselves.

In that light, we find meaning. It is a much brighter light indeed.

Science Lacks Virtue

We overvalue science in our modern world. We truly do. Oh, this isn't to belittle the great engineering feats which science has made possible, nor the advances in medicine which make our lives longer and healthier, nor even things such as television or the Internet which offer the possibility of making our mental lives better, even when they merely entertain. All of that is well and good, so far as they go. The trouble lies in the attitude that science makes us better simply because it's science. We act as though science has value, or gives virtue.

Not necessarily, if at all, can science do that. It may offer the opportunity to be a better, more virtuous people. But it does only that, and we are speaking somewhat anthropormorphically in attributing that much to it really.

Can science define or defend the value of a human life? Can it teach us that stealing is wrong; indeed, can it define theft? Can it say anything about our responsibility towards the environment or, more importantly, one another?

Obviously not. To be sure, it may tell us that if we continue on such and such a road we might drive ourselves into extinction. But that's all it can do. Whether we ought to do such and such else so that we will not become extinct is a question of value. Science only tells us what will happen should we construct a building without the proper strengths, or perhaps even what may happen if we continue on a certain course with no variation. It does not, will not, and cannot tell us what we should do with the information it supplies.

People make those judgments, and they are not argued in the realm of science. They're argued in the realm of philosophy, the realm where we might actually be able, by conscious debate and a reasoned consideration of who we are rather than merely that we are, conclude what are and are not good things to do. Science provides facts; however useful they may be, they are ultimately very rote and, by themselves, without meaning. We provide value and virtue. We are above science.

Science by itself lacks virtue. Those who pray at its altar pray to a valueless void.

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.

Life as God Knows It.

Among the myriad life forms on planet Earth we now have discovered arsenic eating bacteria. Well, not exactly discovered: we have, under laboratory conditions, induced a strain of bacteria native to our world to survive and replicate using arsenic. Does the mean that the realms of science and religion, as some folks have since asserted, are now turned upside down?

No. What we have, simply put, is a group of scientists who have more or less trained a tiny organism to live differently. While that may be an important scientific innovation, it does not, as critics such as the American Humanist Association claim, portend the end of religion.

Why should it? If the Almighty has elected that some form of life should live off arsenic, then so be it. He created all things; if He wants a diversity of life forms, even strains of life which feed off of things poisonous to us, He shall have it.

Yet such easily understandable logic seems unintelligible in some corners. "The polite thing to say is that discoveries such as this don't really impeach the credibility of established religion, but in truth of course they really do," David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association (AHA), a leading secularist organization, said of this week's revelations about the microbes discovered in Lake Mono in California.

"The fact that life can spring forth in this way from nature, taken in context with what else we've learned in recent centuries about space and time, surely makes it less plausible that the human animal is the specially favored creation of all-powerful, all-knowing divinity," Niose said. He goes on to say that development of the new organism must necessarily challenge the belief systems of those religious folks who think the world has only existed for about 6,000 years.

A-hem. At the risk of deepening the rift between Catholics and our Protestant brethren, it is fascinating to see how the anti-religious always trumpet the views of Protestant Evangelicals when tolling the bells for the death of religion. For it is almost solely within the evangelical clique where we find the insistence that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. The humanistic community draws their arguments from what is merely one segment of Christianity, and a minority at that, rather than from an honest examination of the views of Christianity as a whole.

Consider that a scientist at the Vatican Observatory, Brother Guy Consolmagno, wrote that the experiment, "...sounds like a nice piece of work; we'll see where it goes from here...But any scientific discovery that broadens our knowledge of creation, deepens our understanding of the Creator."

Or, as we stated above, God shall have life however He wants it. The 6,000 year history of the Earth is a Protestant construct used as a straw man by secular humanists since it fits their bill. Such shallow thought allows them to ignore the more mainstream western religious, who more rightly see this new bit of science as easily within the realm of Creation.

Religion is not dead; science will not kill it. Nor are the subjects contradictory or without common ground: would there be such a thing as a Vatican Observatory if that were truly the case? In the end, the arsenic eating bacteria is what it is, and nothing more: the result of a scientific experiment which may or may not help explain or expand our scientific knowledge. Only time will answer that question. Meanwhile, let us not bother ourselves about the state of our religious belief with regard to science. Let us, rather, be concerned with the truths of science and how they may apply to our lives. Our orchards will bear better fruit with that mentality at the center of our thoughts.

Can We Trust Science?

There has been for years a tremendous hue and cry from certain quarters about how science is the answer to all of our questions, and religion and philosophy are dying. Even the revered (perhaps overly revered) physicist Stephen Hawking has recently came out and said the the universe didn't need God for its creation. That is all very well; he is, after all, trying to sell a book, and it seems that whatever must be done for publicity is all right. That's hardly a reasonable approach to truth, however. Any truth, in fact: scientific, philosophical, or theological. Yet why should we stand on moral grounds when science and progress are all that matter?

Well, perhaps because what we need to do in this day and age is to take a step back and ask ourselves: can we indeed trust science?

It can be found that the scientific world is rife with scandal, should the media decide to take as a hard of a look at the world of science as they do with religion. Indeed, scientific fraud is at least as well represented within our history as scandal sometimes seems within things religious. The Piltdown Man comes to mind, or the Cardiff Giant. And before you begin grousing that those are old news stories made in times where we hadn't progressed enough scientifically to see they were frauds, let us remember two things: it was decades before science acknowledged the error of the Piltdown Man, and that science can be as rigorous in its unwillingness to bend as they accuse religion of being.

Piltdown Man was made of the jaw of an orangutan on the skull of a human. It is difficult to believe that anthropologists way back in 1912 could not have noticed that with little more than a cursory review of the evidence. Yet that did not happen. Why?

Could it be because the purveyors of science, and by that we mean the people who make money off of it, at the time were so married to the Theory of Evolution that they would not even think of it as a hoax because it seemed to blend so well into their pre-established arguments? It could be easily alleged that their desire for, ahem, orthodoxy, could not allow them to search for the actual truth, until it was so obvious that even the priests of science had to yield.

But it is not only the older hoaxes which call attention to the arrogance of what often passes as modern science. As recently as the late 1990's we had the fraudulent researches of Jan Hendrik Schön, who made up his research yet was hailed as a rising star among scientists. And there's Shinichi Fujimura, a Japanese archaeologist who buried his own artifacts to be dug up later. His fraud went on for almost 25 years before discovery.

Then, in 1996, we had the Sokol Affair, where physicist Alan Sokol submitted and had published a paper in the journal Social Text which was totally fraudulent. He had announced on the day the article appeared later in Science Wars that his work was an experiment to “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.” The experiment was quite the success. Yet he was basically accused with a violation of academic ethics rather than hailed by exposing the lack of a healthy skepticism which is supposed to be so important to the scientist.

A similar incident occurred in 2006, known as the Rooter Paper, where a computer randomly generated a paper which was then submitted to and accepted as legitimate by a scientific conference.

This is not to say that all science and all scientists are bad. Yet it is interesting to note that the fraudulent scientists are viewed as outside of true science while the sins of religion are seen as inherent to religion. Is that good science, or bad philosophy?

The bottom line is that science, like religion, is practiced by human beings. Human beings who are as subject to lie and cheat if they feel sufficiently threatened as anyone else. Our lesson is not to take science at face value merely because it clothes itself in the garb of truth any more than we take religion as purveyors of truth without an honest review of their credentials. The biggest liars might just be wearing, not robes, but lab coats.

Hawking: Ignoring God is Senseless

Steven Hawking, the eminent physicist, has a new book coming out tomorrow which purports to say that God was not necessary for the creation of the universe. Indeed, that many other universes may exist. But does all of this, if true, actually do away with the role God would play in creation?

Hawking and his fellow author Leonard Mlodinow appear to be saying that science alone can explain creation. Yet the scientific view they are trying to espouse is very new, conflicting, already finding ridicule in some scientific quarters. Craig Callender, a philosopher of physics at the University of California, San Diego, says that what the authors are doing is ultimately merely imaginative. It cannot be proven, Dr. Callender says. This from a fellow scientist, it should be noted.

The string theories upon which Hawking and Mlodinow's assertions are based are far from conclusive, according to many in the world of science. Callender himself calls it the 'wild speculation' needed to attract the media. Still, the book apparently does not actually address why God is not needed. Hawking says that our universe began with 'spontaneous creation'. In short, it just happened. That isn't scientific. It's simply a guess.

Hawking argues that the discovery of many other planets in the galaxy makes it less impressive that one should have sentient life. "If there are untold numbers of planets in the galaxy, it's less remarkable that there's one with conditions for human life," he asserts. Why? It brings to mind the infinite monkeys theory, where we should expect that with an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters one would eventually pound out Shakespeare.

We wouldn't be awed that a random ape actually did it? We would not question why, of all the primates happy at their keyboards, one actually gave us writing which made sense? Really, now. So even if there were only one planet with conscious life among thousands of planets and universes, why shouldn't we be impressed by that? It should not be shocking that when no other life existed, it existed here?

To be fair, Mlodinow does say that they are not arguing that there is no God, but only that one isn't necessary to explain the creation of our own or the potentially other universes they say might be out there somewhere. Still, what they say does indeed reek of philosophy rather than science. I stand by what I have said so many times before: science only explains science, they how things work side of the equation. It cannot address the why questions of how it may all have come to be.

What Hawking and Mlodinow have produced is not science but philosophy. Their work is subject to logic, not empiricism. Perhaps they are right in their scientific theories. But as to their philosophy, it is really just the same wish fulfillment they typically claim is the basis for religious belief.

Teacher's Dirty Looks

President Barack Obama thinks that American schoolchildren need a longer school year. The essential reason for this seems to be that many other countries make their kids spend more time in school.

More is better isn't necessarily a good approach to any given thing, Mr. President. Particularly when the more may simply be more of the same: if we extend our school years yet offer no more than the self worth psychobabble which is ultimately responsible for our kids achievement rates dropping, we will see little academic improvement.

Further, it is simply not true that more school leads to better performance. AOL reports that kids in nations where math and science scores are consistently higher than ours have, at least in some cases, more than 100 fewer classroom hours per year than typical American schoolchildren. This includes places such as Japan and Hong Kong, places which are supposed to put more effort, in terms of raw time, into actual education. Why do their progeny learn and ours so often falter?

Could it be that those nations take the time they have more seriously? Could it be that the subjects are treated with respect as subjects rather than forums for self-enhancement exercises? To be sure, there are other factors involved. Poverty and poor home environments surely can't help certain students do better in life in general let alone merely in school. But on the surface, the more is better mantra sounds all too much like the typical liberal solution to so many things. Education is poor? Then we need more of it!

Hey, it's easier than actually getting to the root of a problem.

Science is 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.