"Professing Themselves To Be Wise, They Became Fools", part 5 of 5

Concluding Musings

I ended the previous post making the following point, "…generally speaking, once secularism removes undesired theistic authoritarianism and superstitious ignorance from the realm of science they somehow manage to end up with many of the same scientific conclusions as theists (I mean hard science and not speculation and interpretation of evidence)." Now, let me offer a few of these points of agreement. I will specifically comment with regard to the Judeo-Christian Bible:

According to the Bible, the universe had a beginning.
Millennia after the Bible's statement, science has discovered this fact.
According to the Bible, the universe expands.
Millennia after the Bible's statement, science has discovered this fact.
According to the Bible, the universe consists of time, space, and matter.
Millennia after the Bible's statement, science has discovered this fact.
According to the Bible, the universe functions under the rule of laws.
Millennia after the Bible's statement, science has discovered this fact.
According to the Bible, no new energy is being created.
Millennia after the Bible's statement, science has discovered this fact.
According to the Bible, the Earth is spherical.
Millennia after the Bible's statement, science has discovered this fact.
According to the Bible, the Earth "hangs on nothing."
Millennia after the Bible's statement, science has discovered this fact.
According to the Bible, the Earth has a hydrological cycle.
Millennia after the Bible's statement, science has discovered this fact.
According to the Bible, disease can be controlled by quarantine.
Millennia after the Bible's statement, science has discovered this fact.
Etc., etc., etc.

I have commented on some of these issue further in an essay responding to an assertion made by Prof. Richard Dawkins, "In the Beginning…": the Lucky Guess.

When, in the 20th century, scientists declared that they had discovered that the universe had a beginning Judeo-Christianity yawned and said, "Thanks for catching up." And yet, Christians are faulted for not instantly jumping on the latest scientific bandwagon.

Regarding the scientific discovery that the universe had a beginning, agnostic Astronomer Robert Jastrow wrote:

"Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind-supposedly a very objective mind-when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases….some prominent scientists began to feel the same irritation over the expanding Universe that Einstein had expressed earlier. Eddington [English astronomer Arthur Eddington] wrote in 1931, 'I have no axe to grind in this discussion,' but 'the notion of a beginning is repugnant to me…I simply do not believe that the present order of things started off with a bang…the expanding Universe is preposterous…incredible…it leaves me cold.' The German chemist, Walter Nernst, wrote, 'To deny the infinite duration of time would be to betray the very foundation of science.' More recently, Phillip Morrison of MIT said in a BBC film on cosmology, 'I find it hard to accept the Big Bang theory; I would like to reject it.' And Allan Sandage of Palomar Observatory, who established the uniformity of the expansion of the Universe out to nearly ten billion light years, said, 'It is such a strange conclusion…it cannot really be true'…Einstein wrote, 'The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.' This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized."1 [bold added, italics in original]

Robert Jastrow further stated:

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries….the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy. Some scientists are unhappy with the idea that the world began in this way. Until recently [this was written in 1978] many of my colleagues preferred the Steady State theory, which holds that the Universe had no beginning and is eternal. But the latest evidence makes is almost certain that the Big Bang really did occur."2 [bold added]

The Freedom From Religion Foundation mention Bertrand Russell as an example of a motivator of modern social and moral progress. It is Bertrand Russell whom we have to thank for the erudite elucidation about the universe in which we live, he expounded, "The universe is just there, and that's all."3 We have written about Bertrand Russell in our essay Sam Harris and Bertrand Russell: The Dynamic Duo of Demonstrably Deleterious Delusion. Ultimately, all of secularism's explanations for anything and everything from morality, to life to the universe itself is to appeal to the brute fact-it just is.

I have also written about how secularists generally take two point of view regarding cosmology, in particular the issue of the origin of the universe. They either avoid the pre Big Bang scenario at all cost or they concoct their own scientifically unverifiable mythology by appealing to the sci-fi concept of a multi-verse. Gregory Koukl has made a very telling and succinct statement, "the point of evolution: mother nature without father God."4

Please understand that in the secularist view it is ignorant superstition to believe that God made everything out of nothing but it is scientifically enlightened to believe that nothing made everything out of nothing. It is ignorant superstition to believe that God could exist without having a cause but it is scientifically enlightened to believe that the universe could exist without having a cause. It is ignorant superstition to believe that God is eternal but it is scientifically enlightened to believe that matter is eternal.

It was once scientifically verifiable that human embryos have gill slits, this was proof of ontology recapitulating phylogeny from fish to human (our development retracing our evolutionary genealogy). Now it is scientifically verifiable that human embryos do not have gill slits, and still this is proof of ontology recapitulates phylogeny. But how? Because now the argument is that human embryos do not have gill slits-but they used to. But how do we know that they used to? Because they do not have them anymore, but there are little line where they used to be (they are actually folds in the pharyngeal region, which develop into the thymus glands, parathyroid glands, and eustachian tubes). Apparently, this is when lack of evidence becomes evidence. In secular cooption of science instead of the evidence informing, augmenting, the theory, it is the theory that augments, interprets the evidence. There are scientific cenobites whose authority is such that they make proclamations regarding scientific discoveries based on schools of thought, worldviews, desired outcomes, professional rivalries, emotionalism, assumptions, anti-theistic motivations, etc.

Some scientists, such as Nobel Laureate, Dr. Steven Weinberg, actually hope to use (their redefinition of) science to dismiss theism as mere ignorant superstition as he wonders:

"whether the course of rationalism and humanitarianism is going to continue, and religion will gradually dwindle into something much less important."

And he hopes to have a part in it:

"I hope that this is something to which science can contribute and if it is, then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make."5

Of course, he is dealing with a convenient, benevolent, redefinition of science and a convenient, malevolent, redefinition of religion.

Now to the issue of basing ethics/morals upon science and the very foundation of this concept which is that we ought to accept only that which is scientifically verifiable.
Let us now learn from Charles Darwin himself where his theory can take us, from his work The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1882):

"Man is more courageous, pugnacious and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius. His brain is absolutely larger, but whether or not proportionately to his larger body, has not, I believe, been fully ascertained…Difference in the Mental Powers of the two Sexes-With respect to differences of this nature between man and woman, it is probable that sexual selection has played a highly important part. I am aware that some writers doubt whether there is any such inherent difference; but this is at least probable from the analogy of the lower animals which present other secondary sexual characters."

Here Darwin point out differences in temperament between the bull and cow, wild-boar and sow, stallion and mare and the males of the larger apes from the females. He then continues:

"The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman-whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands…if men are capable of a decided pre-eminence over women in many subjects, the average of mental power in man must be above that of woman…man has ultimately become superior to woman" [pp. 557, 563-565]

"many of the wilder races of man are apt to suffer much in health when subjected to changed conditions or habits of life…man can resist with impunity the greatest diversities of climate and other changes; but this is true only of the civilised races. Man in his wild condition seems to be in this respect almost as susceptible as his nearest allies, the anthropoid apes, which have never yet survived long, when removed from their native country" [p. 188]

Also, this from "Eugenics Revisited," Scientific American:

"The British scientist Francis Galton, cousin to Charles Darwin, first proposed that human society could be improved 'through better breeding, in 1865 in an article entitled 'Hereditary Talent and Character.' He coined the term 'eugenics,' from the Greek for 'good birth,' in 1883…eugenicists helped to persuade more than 20 U.S. states to authorize sterilization of man and women in prisons and mental, and they urged the federal government to restrict immigration of 'undesirable' races. No nation, of course, practiced eugenics as enthusiastically as Nazi Germany, whose program culminated in 'euthanasia' ('good death') of the mentally and physically disabled as well as Jews, Gypsies, Catholics and others. As revelations of these atrocities spread after World War II, popular support for eugenics programs waned in the U.S. and elsewhere."6

Karl Schleunes:

"Darwin's notion of struggle for survival was quickly appropriated by the racist…such a struggle, legitimized by the latest scientific views, justified the racists' conception of superior and inferior peoples…and validated the conflict between them."7

If we are to inform our ethics/morals with science then we ought to be racists and sexists. There is nothing in a materialistic worldview that would stop us from doing so, take it from Charles Darwin and what was subsequently made of his theory by Communists, Marxists, and Nazis. For example, Nazism was an concoction of social Darwinism, Aryan/Norse mythology, Nietzsche's philosophy, occultism, etc.

But surely, Charles Darwin was no hardened atheist. Perhaps not, but consider the words of Alfred Russel Wallace's statements and Charles Darwin's response (Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-inventor, along with Charles Darwin, of the theory of natural selection):

"'I fully accept Mr. Darwin's conclusion as to the essential identity of man's bodily structure with that of the higher mammalian, and his descent from some ancestral form common to man and the anthropoid apes,' he conceded. However, man's intellectual powers and moral sense, among other things, he said, 'could not have been developed by variation and natural selection alone, and…, therefore, some other influence, law, or agency is required to account for them.' Darwin was naturally upset by what Wallace called 'my little heresy,' and he wrote to Wallace in 1869 lamenting, 'I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child.'"8

In a chapter of his book Orthodoxy entitled The Suicide of Thought G. K. Chesterton's incomparable wit and quaint British style produces a very telling critique of secularism's fallacious worldview:

"But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything."9

With a worldview in which there is nothing but the material, in which we are nothing but glorified animals that are a mere byproduct of random mutations and natural selection, there is nothing to hinder the practice of racism and sexism. Prof. Richard Dawkins argues that we ought to rebel against Darwinism in this regards but never offers a reason why (see my essay Introducing the Dawkinsian Weltanschauung).

If we may offer a succinct and generalized conclusion: secularists do the very same things that they besmirch theists for doing. They believe in absolute materialism without proof. They believe in the absolute truth of the scientific method without proof. They believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong. They have been guilty of violence, oppression, racism and sexism on massive scales. They have justified themselves by appealing to self-serving definitions of what theists are and what it means to do science. In the end, they are illogical faith based believers that have set up authoritarian dogmatism.

1. 1. Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1978), pp. 16, 112-114
2. 2. Ibid, pp. 116, 14
3. 3. Bertrand Russell and F. C. Copleston, "The Existence of God," in The Existence of God, ed. and intro. by John Hick, Problems of Philosophy Series (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 175
4. 4. Gregory Koukl, Evolution - Philosophy, Not Science
5. 5. Nobel Laureate Dr. Steven Weinberg, Free People From Superstition
6. 6. John Horgan, "Eugenics Revisited," Scientific American, June 1993, p. 130
7. 7. Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road To Auchwitz (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1970), p. 30, also see J. Bergman, Eugenics and Nazi Racial Policy, p. 118
8. 8. Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention (New York, NY: A Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987), p. 310
9. 9. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)