Science defines reality: A hugely popular dumb idea
Science defines reality: A hugely popular dumb idea

Science defines reality: A hugely popular dumb idea

“We don’t believe in God, we believe in science”, said the couple. Many people today consider it uneducated to believe in God. This misunderstanding comes from two basic problems: not realizing the limits of science, and relegating the rest of human experience to superstition. “According to the scientific naturalist version of cosmic history, nature is a permanently closed system of material effects that can never be influenced by something from outside – like God, for example.” (Phillip Johnson). Jacquest Monod says, “The scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity – that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe.” But this basic premise undermines science. “If we’ve defined science such that it cannot get to the true answer; we’ve got a pretty lame definition of science.” (Douglas Axe) “The theory of evolution… will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has.” –Malcolm Muggeridge

In the Scientific American, “Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method” Marcelo Gleiser, a 60-year-old Brazil-born theoretical physicist says there are big differences between “science” and “scientism”, a belief that science can explain all of life. He points out that Atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. It is a belief in the absence of deities, a categorical statement without convincing evidence. The scientific method teaches us to develop a hypothesis and then to test this with evidence to discover whether it fits the facts.

Fact #1 – Our universe exists and supports life. Why?

C.S. Lewis, the author of the Narnia series, writes, “If there ever was a time when nothing existed, nothing would exist now.” Logical. “Why is there something instead of nothing?” asks Anthony Flew. Obviously, our own planet is full of life, others are not. This fact really bothers some scientists to the point that millions of dollars are spent each year in search of life elsewhere in the universe. Even our universe seems precisely tuned to support life. “Things like the force of gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, the ratio of the mass of the proton and the electron, and many other factors have just the right value needed to make life possible. If any of these critical numbers were changed even slightly, the universe could not sustain any form of life.” To avoid the conclusion of design some cosmologists propose that there may be multiple universes besides our own. This is of course pure speculation. The only reason for proposing such a far-fetched idea is that it makes our universe seem a little less like a freak improbability. One New York Times author calls it miraculous. “These mysterious numbers… are like the knobs on God’s control console, and they seem almost miraculously tuned to allow life.” (Dennis Overbye, “Zillions of Universes? Or Did Ours Get Lucky?” New York Times, October 28, 2003 quoted by Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes, 2015)

Fact #2 – Biological life requires encoded information. 

DNA is a genetic database containing instructions on how to build an organism. In all of human experience the source of encoded information is an intelligent agent. Science is supposed to be based on experience, not speculation. “The notion that… the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial soup here on earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.” –Fred Hoyle

Fact #3 – Humans are personal agents

A personal being has the capacity to think, feel, act. Logic tells us that humans originated not from something, with lower functionality than ourselves, but from someone at least of the same level of cognitive ability. The cause must be capable of producing the effect. “He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see?” (Psalm 94:9). Scientists have discovered that children in every culture have a concept of God. According to studies made by Psychologist Paul Bloom at Yale University and others: “When children are directly asked about the origin of animals and people, they tend to prefer explanations that involve an intentional creator, even if the adults who raise them do not.” (Pearcey, pp. 30-31). It seems we have to unlearn that natural response.

Fact #4 – We are conscious

This may seem a bit obvious, but it isn’t easy to explain. “Our starting assumption as scientists ought to be that on some level consciousness has to be an illusion,” says Cambridge psychologist Nicholas Humphrey. “The reason is obvious: If nothing in the physical world can have the features that consciousness seems to have, then consciousness cannot exist as a thing in the physical world.” Humphrey is not alone. Daniel Wegner of Harvard, author of The Illusion of Conscious Will, says that free will is “a very persistent illusion; it keeps coming back. Even though you know it’s a trick, you get fooled every time. The feelings just don’t go away.” So why are we conscious? According to eliminative materialism we are not. This contradiction leads to cognitive dissonance with our common experience. Some philosophers hold tightly to the theory while others like Evan Fales admit it’s a mystery. “Darwinian evolution implies that humans emerged through the blind operation of natural forces. It is mysterious how such forces could generate something nonphysical.” In the words of philosopher Galen Strawson, to deny consciousness “is surely the strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought…the deepest irrationality of the human mind….(showing) that the power of human credulity is unlimited, that the capacity of human minds to be gripped by theory, by faith, is truly unbounded.” (Pearcey, pp.109-110) Wow! What a sharp, yet accurate critique, to recognize the role of faith and unlimited credulity to hold to a theory despite common experience.

Fact #5 – Humans are different, very different than any other creature

Raymond Tallis, a medical doctor, a proud atheist, and author of Aping Mankind points out the irony. “How did a mindless process create beings with minds? How did a purposeless process create beings with purpose? How did an undesigned process produce a species that creates designs?”

Science Promoted as Religion

Notice that these five facts don’t fit the worldview of Scientism, which holds that science is the sole source of truth. But Bertrand Russell said, “What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.” Such a statement is a metaphysical assumption of what counts as knowledge, an arbitrary definition, not something science could possibly establish.”

For many the theory of evolution is held with religious fervor. In the 1965 introduction to Darwin’s Origin of Species, W.R. Thompson observed that many biologists hold organic evolution as “an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle.” 

On the one hand the theory of evolution postulates that life adapts to fit its environment to survive. But we run into problems when we look at our own existence. We realize that many of our needs and longings don’t match our environment. We don’t fit. Like discovering a fish in the desert, life does not make sense.

We find ourselves in an accidental, random universe, yet we long for order and meaning. We seem to live in an impersonal universe, yet we are personal beings. We live in an irrational, loveless universe yet we long for reason and love. We live in an amoral universe, yet we are moral beings. Our fundamental personhood doesn’t fit the facts as we understand them. Where do these longings come from? There must be something out there that answers those needs. We can not be just the products of nature. If nature is the final reality none of this makes any sense. Our very existence is supernatural.

“What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:19-20)

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