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Townhall...
Have a Little Faith
By Ken Connor
“We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But
that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it
can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s
true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to
believe.” from “The Truth Wears Off,” The New Yorker, December 2010.
Over the last few centuries, our society has come to believe that there
exists a fundamental incompatibility between faith and science. Fueled
by the works of polemics like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins,
and Bill Maher (the proud Unholy Trinity) there now reigns an
assumption that people who believe in God are intellectually primitive,
knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who have failed to evolve beyond the
superstitions of the past. Faith, the substance of things hoped for, is
pitted against science, the substance of things measured, tested, and
proven.
The dogma of the Unholy Trinity maintains that religious faith
represents more than mere ignorance; it is a grave threat to civilized
society. With its medieval notions of divine providence, original sin,
and moral absolutes, religion stymies social progress and threatens to
undermine the liberation of the human spirit from the oppressive bonds
of the past. Religious leaders aren’t merely misguided, they are a
dangerous influence on society. Apart from being so heavenly minded
that they are of no earthly good, the Shepherds of the Sheep are
peddlers of lies and hatred. They lead their bleating followers in
pursuit of what can best be described as a “diabolical” agenda (a
purely metaphorical term, of course, since el Diablo doesn’t really
exist) and they toil endlessly to shape public policy to reflect their
pernicious world view.
Scientists, on the other hand, are defined by their objective
dedication to the pursuit of truth and an uncompromising adherence to
The Method. Their motives are pure and their integrity unimpeachable.
They are the trailblazers of progress, the torchbearers of
enlightenment, and the representatives of mankind’s continual
evolution. In short, they have the best interests of humanity at heart.
Unfortunately for Science and its disciples, this paradigm is beginning
to crumble. As it turns out, scientists are just as fallible and flawed
as the rest of humanity, and this fallibility impacts their work. The
New Yorker addressed this emerging phenomenon in December 2010 article:
“The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern
research. Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It’s a
safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists
know what results they want, and that can influence the results they
get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can
correct for these flaws.
But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have
started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were
losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are
suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name,
but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to
ecology. . . . For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling
because of what it exposes about the scientific process. If replication
is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of
pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings
that can no longer be proved? Which results should we believe?”
Which results should we believe? Which theories should we place our
faith in? These are not questions that the scientific community likes
to wrestle with publicly. Uncertainty tends to undermine authority,
after all. Perhaps this is why some scientists go to such extreme
lengths to preserve the integrity of their pet theories, even to the
point of manipulating or falsifying data or suppressing information
that doesn’t support their desired conclusion (remember Climategate?).
What this reveals is that the “scientific” world view is a rather
fragile one, in which there is little room for debate outside the
accepted parameters of prevailing scientific dogmas. Those scientists
with the courage to challenge these dogmas quickly find themselves
blacklisted – relegated to the fringes of the profession, unable to
secure prestigious positions in the community and unlikely to get their
work published in prominent journals. This is hardly conduct befitting
a field of study that prides itself on the objective pursuit of truth.
Interestingly, it is the theistic world view that offers the most
cogent explanation for the current scandals besetting the scientific
community. In setting up a false choice between faith and science, the
Disciples of Science have created a world without grace – they have
displaced God and made themselves the measure of all things. Instead of
being free to inquire – secure in God’s providence and humbled by their
own limitations – scientists are left to literally live and die by the
popular embrace of their theories. Not surprisingly, this makes for a
very paranoid, very competitive working environment.
It’s good to see that the zeitgeist that drives scientific
investigation has begun slowly to “evolve,” and that we may be moving
towards a time when once again science and faith are understood as
complementary and intertwining components of a larger conception of the
world. There was a time when theology was considered the queen of the
sciences, the raison d’etre for all other systematic pursuits of
knowledge. Early scientists were confident that there was an order in
the universe imposed by its Creator and that this order was
intelligible. It was this understanding that guided them as they
embarked on groundbreaking courses of discovery. A love of knowledge
and a desire to explore God’s creation through the discipline of
science need not alienate us from our Creator; on the contrary, it
should draw us closer to Him.
After centuries of hegemony in an increasingly secular world, it is
ironic that faith – faith in the right thing – may be the only thing
that can restore credibility to the world of science.
Read it at Townhall
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