Do You "Believe" in Science?

Well, I don't. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. I believe in God the Son. I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the holy catholic Church.

But science? Heck, no - asking someone to believe in science is like asking someone to believe in the existence of the United States. It is a fact, an empirically observable fact. Believe in it? Heck, I've been there! No need to believe in it; it just is a scientific fact. To demand "belief" in science is a category mistake.

So why do some people go around in pairs knocking on doors handing out "Believe in science or be doomed forever" tracts? Beats me, but it happened the other day in New Hampshire to Rick Perry. Here he was minding his own business campaigning for president of the United States when one of these secularist fanatics ambushed him using her child as a prop. (See video from ABC News here.)

Eric Kleefeld summarizes what happened:

Rick Perry is sure about a lot of things. But the theory of evolution, or even how old the planet Earth is, are not on that list.

A woman who will probably not be supporting the Texas governor brought her young son along to a campaign event in New Hampshire on Thursday, and had the boy ask Perry his views about science. "How old do you think the earth is?" the boy asked. This was an apparent allusion to how fundamentalist Christians often insist that Earth -- and indeed, the whole universe -- is about 6,000 years old.

"How old do I think the earth is? You know what, I don't have any idea," Perry responded. "I know it's pretty old. So it goes back a long, long ways. I'm not sure -- I'm not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely hold the earth is.

Perry then steered the conversation to some questions the boy's mother had been asking him, about evolution.

. . .

"Here your mom was asking about evolution. And you know, it's a theory that is out there -- it's got some gaps in it. In Texas we teach both creationism and evolution in our public schools. Because I figure--"

The mother cut back in: "Ask him why he doesn't believe in science."

Perry continued: "Because I figure you're smart enough to figure out which one is right."

Rick Perry, open-minded skeptic, meets "True Believer."

As Ben Smith at Politico points out, this was a trap. She hoped to get a quote out of Perry to make him look ridiculous to New England secular materialists. She is probably a Democratic Party supporter.

As Kevin Williamson points out, the questioner is not at all interested in science; the question is blatantly political and rooted in the issue of worldview.

The broader question, however, is: Why would anybody ask a politician about his views on a scientific question? Nobody ever asks what Sarah Palin thinks about dark matter, or what John Boehner thinks about quantum entanglement. (For that matter, I’ve never heard Keith Ellison pressed for his views on evolution.) There are lots of good reasons not to wonder what Rick Perry thinks about scientific questions, foremost amongst them that there are probably fewer than 10,000 people in the United States whose views on disputed questions regarding evolution are worth consulting, and they are not politicians; they are scientists. In reality, of course, the progressive types who want to know politicians’ views on evolution are not asking a scientific question; they are asking a religious and political question, demanding a profession of faith in a particular materialist-secularist worldview.

This is exactly right. The issue has to do with a materialist-secular worldview that claims to be based on science, but actually is not. It could not be based on science because science is limited to empirical questions of fact and cannot tell us answers to metaphysical or religious questions. The materialist-secular worldview gives answers to such questions, which is why it is something other than science.

There is a particular kind of voter (probably no more than 20% of the American electorate) for whom adherence to the materialist-secular worldview is all-important. These people have worked hard for a century to establish this new (actually as old as Epicureanism) religion as the de facto "State Religion" of America. In Europe their co-religionists have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in establishing the materialist-secular religion as the official religion of Europe instead of Christianity. But America is proving to be a tougher nut to crack.

This kind of question is not about science and people who accept the validity of natural selection as an efficient cause of evolutionary diversity can be on both sides of the worldview question. What divides Christians from materialist-secularists is the question of whether the universe is fundamentally personal and intelligently designed by a God or not. For the materialist-secular worldview, the denial of a Creator is essential to its project of human liberation from natural law, morality, traditional marriage and the sanctity of human life, with its limitations on the freedom of individuals to do anything they want up to and including aborting their babies and euthanizing their parents.

If God exists, then evolution or no evolution, the materialist-secular worldview is a dangerous delusion. Since evolution is denied by many Christians, the secularists think that by demanding that everyone accept evolution as "scientific" they can bludgeon believers into giving up faith in God. Of course, they are making numerous logical mistakes here. Evolution could be an accurate scientific theory and could be guided by Divine Providence in such a way as to maintain the sovereignty of God. Or, alternatively, evolution could be a mistake and simply the only conclusion one can come to if one begins by rejecting the existence of God.

But the real issue is which religion, going forward, will influence public policy decision on abortion, the sexual revolution, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, capital punishment, just war, religious freedom etc.

Clearly, the secular-materialist establishment is spooked by Rick Perry. He represents a challenge to their hegemony and they hate him. It is going to be a long, hate-filled, dirty campaign precisely because there are two different worldviews on offer here. Unlike the recent UK elections where the choice was between secular socialist and even more secular socialist, this election is a choice between the Judeo-Christian religion that built Western civilization and the materialist-secular worldview that is tearing it apart.

As the materialist-secular experiment in Europe continues to implode, it behooves Americans to be extremely skeptical about the wild-eyed fanatics who want to misuse science as a crutch for their irrational, immoral, anti-humanistic political agenda. They want us to "believe in science" but I think I'll stick with believing in God the Father Almighty.

From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany: A Review

From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) by University of California historian Richard Weikart is a book which raises uncomfortable questions for anyone who wishes to reconcile Darwinism and humanism, let alone Darwinism and Christianity.

Let us set aside for the moment the question of whether and how Darwinian evolution might be compatible with the Genesis account of creation or the historical Christian doctrine of creation as it has developed over the centuries. This book does not deal with that question but it does deal with one that must be addressed before it is even worth discussing the question of whether evolution can be reconciled with the Christian doctrine of creation.

This book takes up the question of the compatibility of Darwinism with a humanistic ethic of respect for human life and compassion for the weak. This ethic of humanistic compassion (as exemplified in the liberal German theologian/physician Albert Schweitzer or in the life of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, for example) is common both to conservative and liberal Christianity and also to the Western humanism inspired by it, as in, for example, the secular organizations Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Cross and the Save the Children Fund. The issue this book raises is whether or not Darwinism is compatible with any of full-fledged Christianity (eg. Mother Theresa), liberal Christianity (eg. Albert Schweitzer) or secular humanitarianism (eg. the Red Cross). Or are all of these types of humanitarianism undermined and ultimately destroyed by Darwinism.

The book is an intellectual history and it focuses primarily on Germany in the period from the 1870s to the 1920s. The final chapter then discusses what influence the widespread and somewhat diverse interpretations of Darwin's work in Germany during the late 19th and early 20th centuries might have had on Hitler himself. It follows recent Hitler scholarship (such as Ian Kershaw's massive biography) in viewing Hitler not as an amoral monster (which makes him so unlike us that we can use him as a stick with which to beat our debating opponents without ever taking him seriously), but as a man with a consistent ethic that he and many of the people around him had good reason to regard as "scientific" given the science of the time.

But if Hitler was not an amoral, nihilistic monster, but rather a rational, consistent, scientific thinker who implemented an ethic which (1) was legitimately derived from or at least strongly influenced by Darwinism and which (2) was shared by many leading scientists and academics of the day, the consequences are radical and far-reaching. It means that either Darwinism is wrong and, in fact, evil or it means that Darwinism is true and that we must give up humanitarianism as silly sentimentalism that must give way to a truly "scientific" outlook on life.

Of course, at this point, the obvious response will be to distinguish between "Darwinian evolution" on the one hand and "Social Darwinism" on the other and to assert that one can believe in the former without accepting the latter. While it is a fact that many individual thinkers have in fact made this distinction, the question raised by this book is whether or not this distinction is based on anything more solid than wish fulfillment. It is well and fine to accept Darwinism and reject Social Darwinism, but is this anything more than an inconsistent move made by thinkers who refuse to face up to the inherent logic of their position?

The contribution of this book is to show that during the period under consideration the anthropologists, biologists, politicians, activists, etc. who believed that the Christian ethic must be overturned and replaced with Darwinian ideas in order for society to progress did not distinguish between Darwinism and Social Darwinism. This first, logical, naive impulse is likely more honest and more realistic about the long term impact of Darwinism on society.

The second half of the 19th century was characterized by a widespread belief in progress by both Christians and secularists. Science, meaning technological science, was seen as the engine of progress and it was understood that science had emerged out of a Christian, not an Oriental or other worldview. The effect of Darwinism was to break the link between Christianity and science and to associate in the minds of many people science and progress with atheistic materialism. Prior to Darwin, atheism and materialism were pre-Christian errors that Western civilization has progressed beyond - particularly as a result of the union of Greek rationalism with Biblical revelation. The Bible presented the world as a contingent effect of a rational decision of God to create - by His Word - and Greek rationalism offered a disciplined method of rational inquiry that seemed to match up perfectly with the Biblical picture of a God who speaks the world into being by His Word and then upholds its laws by His gracious Providence. This gives us an incentive to explore the contingent creation by means of human reason and makes the idea of progress as a result of discovering nature's laws perfectly reasonable. To the extent that nature's laws depend on nature's God, science and progress are both inextricably linked to (and dependent upon) God. This was the link that Darwinism was perceived as breaking, in particular by means of the theory of natural selection, which explains how nature's laws can exist without nature's God.

Richard Dawkins is one contemporary thinker who stresses the degree to which Chance replaces God in Darwinism. If Chance can be seen to perform the work God used to be required to do, then we can have a scientific universe without God and a perpetually-progressing society without God. In this scenario, man stands supreme at the top of the evolutionary ladder God-like in his understanding and, especially, in his technological mastery of matter that enables him to create new things and eventually the New Man out of the raw material thrown up by evolution. This is why the story of eugenics was so inter-woven with the rise of Darwinian thinking and evolutionary ethics. Creating a New Humanity is the task of the Creator Man who fills the vacuum left by the disappearance of the old Christian God, who has now been rendered superfluous - not proven to not exist, just rendered superfluous as in the famous quip of Laplace "I have no need of that hypothesis."

The value of Weikart's book is its intensely detailed and fair-minded chronicling of the writings of German scientists, ethicists, activists and politicians between Darwin and the period of chaos after World War I in which Darwinism was absorbed into the bloodstream of the German scientific mind. It does not answer or explicitly raise the question of why Darwinism became so popular and persuasive to so many people so quickly, but this is an important question to consider. Was it so persuasive because it had so much explanatory power that the old paradigm did not have? Or was it so persuasive because it reinforced the spirit of the age and offered a Faustian bargain by which modern man could gain the god-like power to destroy and create?

In the case of Hitler, it would seem that we have a man who attempted to seize this god-like power and by so doing unleashed great evil and destruction upon the world. Have we rejected Hitler while accepting Hitler's worldview? And, if so, is our sentimental humanitarianism a vestigal survival of a worldview that has been permanently discredited for us? And, if that is true, how long before the relentless, iron logic of destroying in order to re-create in our own image tempts us into the kind of madness that characterized Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s? Does Western civilization teeter on the precipice of self-destruction because of its acceptance of Darwinism in place of the Christian doctrine of creation?

These are the questions raised by this excellent book. I highly recommend it.

A Creation Myth for Young Materialistic Atheists - by Joe Carter

Joe Carter at First Things has an excellent little creation story for young materialistic atheists at the First Thoughts Blog. It shows how nihilism comes from nothing.

"In the beginning was Nothing and Nothing created Everything. When Nothing decided to create Everything, she filled a tiny dot with Time, Chance, and Everything and had it explode. The explosion spread Everything into Everywhere carrying Time and Chance with it to keep it company. The three stretched out together leaving bits of themselves wherever they went. One of those places was the planet Earth.

For no particular Reason—for Reason is rarely particular—Time and Chance took a liking to this wet little blue rock and so decided to stick around and see what adventures they might have. The pair thought the Earth was intriguing and pretty, but also rather dull and static. They fixed upon an idea to change Everything (just a little) by creating a special Something. Time and Chance roamed the planet, splashing through the oceans and scampering through the mud, in search of materials. But though they looked Everywhere there was a Missing Ingredient that they needed in order to make a Something that could create more of the same Somethings.

They called to their friend Everything to help. Since Everything had been Everywhere she would no doubt be able to find the Missing Ingredient. And indeed she did, hidden away in a small alcove called Somewhere, Everything found what Time and Chance had needed all along: Information. Everything put the Information on a piece of ice and rock that happened to be passing by the former planet Pluto and sent it back to her friends on Earth.

Now that they had Information, Time and Chance were finally able to create a self-replicating Something which they called Life. Once they created the Life they found that it not only became more Somethings it began to become Otherthings too! The Somethings and the Otherthings began to fill all the Earth— from the bottom of the oceans to the top of the sky. Their creation, which began as a single Something eventually became millions of Otherthings.

Time and Chance, though, where the bickering sort and were constantly feuding over which of them was the most powerful. One day they began to argue over who had been most responsible for creating Life. Everything (who was constantly eavesdropping) overheard the spat and suggested that they settle the debate by putting their creative skills to work on a new creature called Man. They all thought is was a splendid plan—for Man was a dull, hairy beast who would indeed provide a suitable challenge—and began to boast about who could create an ability, which they called Consciousness, that would allow Man to be aware of Chance, Time, Everything, and Nothing.

Chance, who had always been a bit of a dawdler, got off to a slow start so it was Time, who never rested, that was able to complete the task first. Time rushed around, filling the gooey matter inside each Man’s head with Consciousness. But as he was gloating over his victory he noticed a strange reaction. When Man could see that Everything had been created by Time, Chance, and Nothing, his Consciousness would fill with Despair.

Chance immediately saw a solution to the problem and used the remaining materials she was using to make Consciousness to create Beliefs. When Chance mixed Beliefs into the gray goo, Man stopped filling with Despair and started creating Illusions. These Illusions took various forms—God, Purpose, Meaning—but they were almost always effective in preventing Man from filling up with Despair.

Nothing, who tended to be rather forgetful, remembered her creation and decided to take a look around Everything. When she saw what Time and Chance had done on planet Earth she was mildly amused but forbid them to fill any more creatures with Consciousness or Beliefs (which is why Man is the only Something that has both). But Nothing took a fancy to Man and told Time and Chance that when each one’s Life ran out that she would take him or her and make them into Nothing too.

And that is why, my young friends, when Man loses his Life he goes from being a Something created by Time and Chance into becoming like his creator—Nothing."

Some Darwinists dislike having their religion exposed for what it is. They like to imply that something like the above is true and then brazenly claim that it is all based on empirically verifiable science.

I especially like the clear implication that nihilism is the logical outcome of believing in nothing.

Why Do Secularists Make a Such a Saint Out of Darwin?

British political journalist Dennis Sewell has a new book coming out and a review of it is available in Time online here. Sewell is a Darwin iconoclast who views Darwin's influence as including a great deal of social and political harm, as well as some scientific benefit. He apparently is not saying that he disbelieves in biological evolution; he is saying that the effects of this new knowledge have been utilized for many bad ends, such as racism and eugenics. So, for example, when asked if we should re-assess Darwin's legacy, he replies:

"Bicentennial celebrations have portrayed Darwin as a kindly old gentleman pottering around an English house and garden. What that misses is the way his ideas were abused in the 20th century and the way in which Darwin was wrong about certain key issues. He asserted that different races of mankind had traveled different distances along the evolutionary path — white Caucasians were at the top of the racial hierarchy, while black and brown people ranked below. [Racism] was a widespread prejudice in British society at the time, but he presented racial hierarchy as a matter of science. He also held that the poor were genetically second-rate — which inspired eugenics."

When asked if, "all things considered, do you believe Darwin was a great luminary in the path of human progress?" he replied:

"What has the theory of evolution done for the practical benefit of humanity? It's helped our understanding of ourselves, yet compared to, say, the discovery of penicillin or the invention of the World Wide Web, I wonder why Darwin occupies this position at the pinnacle of esteem. I can only imagine he has been put there by a vast public relations exercise."

That seems to be just about right to me.

The book is The Political Gene: How Darwin's Ideas Changed Politics but it does not seem to be listed on Amazon.ca yet.

Richard Dawkins and the Little Green Men

I watched Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" today (thanks to my daughter and son-in-law's suggestion) and it was much better than I expected. I suppose I had been brainwashed by the review of the "controversy" it had generated. (Sigh . . .) In fact it was very well done.

All the Christians were open to believing in both some form of biological evolution (at least to some extent) and also in design by an intelligent Creator, while the scientests generally held that one must accept naturalism (ancient Epicureanism) and reject Christianity in order to believe in science. Of course, the science establishment doesn't speak for all working scientests, many of whom are believers, but there is not doubt that the crusading atheists hold the high ground when it comes to funding and science education and are not prepared to cede an inch of it.

I find it funny that they constantly talk about "believing" in science. I never hear of anyone talking of "believing" that 2+2=4. They talk of "knowing" it. Many atheistic science educators seem obsessed with polls measuring how many people "believe in Darwinism." This is not healthy. It bespeaks a deepseated insecurity and a mania for a certain religious point of view that they wish to impose dogmatically on all of society in the name of truth and academic freedom. It is totalitarian and inimical to free thought.

Anyway, the most eye-opening moment for me came when Stein was talking to Dawkins and asked him the question of what he would say if in the course of his scientific investigations he came to the conclusion that life could not have gotten started by accident and that it appeared to have required an intelligent designer to get it going. Would that not constitute evidence for design? Dawkins' reply was competely unexpected. Instead of hewing to the party line, he suggested the hypothesis that perhaps a highly advanced race of aliens had visited earth and dropped off some "life" that they had created in their (highly advanced) labs. Now, I think it was clear that he was not joking, although that was my first thought.

Richard Dawkins is so determined to disbelieve in God that he is willing to entertain a hypothesis that space aliens created us? Is that what it has come to? Space aliens? It reminds me of the saying (was it by Chesterton?) that when modern man ceases to believe in God, he does not for long believe in nothing, but rather is willing to believe anything. The recent Baylor study that found that religious believers (including Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians) were less likely to be superstitious than atheists and agnostics is interesting in this regard. Christians were less likely to give credence to spiritism, astrology, etc. than the general population. Religion makes superstition less likely. Atheism does not.

But what can one say about poor Richard Dawkins? He has a hard time posing as a martyr in the train of Galileo. Here he has been given a prestigious chair at Oxford which demands nothing so hard as scientific research - all he has to do is spew out atheist propoganda full time. His books sell in the millions and he is lionized by the elite of Western culture for putting those dastardly Christians in their place. And all he has to offer us intellectually is little green men?

During the first Dark Ages it was the Church that kept the flame of reason and science alive and it appears that the Church had better gear up to do it again. The leading scientests have apparently gone mad en masse and have substituted wish fulfillment and juvenile rebellion for hard thinking and logic. Little green men - but no fairy tales. Really now!