Why you Can’t Have Science Without God

Let me help my readers understand a critical fact: Without God, specifically the Judeo-Christian God, science would not exist.

Why God, or rather that God? Because the God of the Bible is a God of law and order. He is the one who stretched out the heavens. He is the one who gives law to all matter within the universe. There is no randomness where God’s laws apply. The apply fully and completely in every moment of time and in every corner of the universe.

This alone is not enough. Even if animals believed in such a God, they would not develop science because they can not think like God. Only man is set a little lower than the angels. We are created in the image of God. We are promised that we can become like God if we adhere to the doctrines that God teaches. This potential to become like God includes the potential to understand the laws that govern the universe. It is the Christian faith that teaches us to reach up and pluck the fruit of understanding from the tree of life, rather than accept life as an animal, without understanding.

This still, is not enough. One more core ingredient is necessary to develop science. With the above two qualities, a sort of science can emerge, but it would be a science of revelation, dependent solely upon man’s ability to understand God’s revelation. There is no judge except God, and he has only promised to judge mankind in the final judgment.

The last and final critical ingredient is the experiment. In the experiment, we try out our ideas against the universe itself. Since we believe that God ordered the universe, since we believe Man is capable of understanding those laws, and since we believe that God is no deceiver of men, then when we interrogate reality itself, we expect to get solid, reproducible answers that do not contradict what God has done.

This is, in short, the principle of faith that Christ and the prophets taught. Take what little understanding you have, and try it out. If it is good, then it will produce good. If it is not, then it will not.

Modern science simply cannot exist without these three assumptions.

Atheists like Dawkins and Bill Nye would have you believe that starting with those three assumptions makes one stupid or uneducated. I don’t know why they have this idea, except to blame it on the great deceiver of all mankind who would sift us and bring us down to his level.

Without God, what foundation of science could there be? Why should simply staring at the heavens be enough to drive someone to begin experiments with the idea that they will be reproducible, or to apply logic and reason to the universe with the idea that it should apply? Whatever reason you come up with should explain why, in all of recorded history, modern science was not invented until Christians who had rediscovered the sacred volumes of literature we call the Bible took the reigns of scientific thought in the world.

Response to Bill Nye

Bill Nye posted this recently.

If you don’t want to watch it, I don’t blame you. It’s a completely vacuous argument against creationism. His arguments are roughly:

1. There’s too much evidence for evolution.
2. We need your kids.

Honestly, I can form a retort to him that would look the same, using the same words, but substituting Creationism for evolution.

Let me reiterate why a God-less universe is not only illogical, but impossible.

First, you cannot disprove the existence of anything without examining all of the universe. Since we don’t have space ships or sensor arrays that can peer around corners of the galaxy and universe, we can no more disprove God than we can disprove that someone named Schmortz lives on the planet Fooble.

Second, supposing the technology, time, and energy exist, and someone actually does survey the universe. Not only can they disprove that Schmortz lives on Fooble, they could disprove that there is a God in this universe—but only a God who is confined to natural laws. We don’t believe in such a God, so such a survey would be pointless.

You can, however, prove a positive. If you sincerely want to know whether God exists, and what kind of a being he is, and what he wants you to do with your life, you can find out for yourself through sincere prayer and devotion to his commandments as found in scripture.

Which religion is true? You can investigate the claims of each until you find one that actually preaches a consistent and verifiable religion. I believe the LDS religion is such a religion,. No, I know it is. I have long ago left the realm of belief because what I have seen is enough to prove to anyone that what I know is true.

Now, the second point I want to talk about is how the universe cannot exist without God. See, God is the one that orders the elements, IE, provides the framework for the natural laws. Without him, the natural laws don’t exist. Everything is chaos and nothing would make sense. We know this because for the many millenia that man believed that God or the gods acted arbitrarily, rather than acting in accordance to universal laws that do not vary over space and time. It was this modern Christian concept of the marriage of religion and logic and the universe around us (accepting things as they are rather than as they ought to be) that lead to the foundations of modern science. Our universe simply wouldn’t be the way it is without those laws in place from the sub-atomic level to the inter-galactic level.

Some would argue the anthropic principle here. The universe exists, we exist, and therefore, the universe must be governed by laws and parameters that allow us to exist. The weakness of this argument is that it can be used to justify any explanation for the universe, if the explanation allows for the possibility of it at all. It is sort of the opposite to Occam’s Razor, a favorite theory that is often abused.

I, instead, argue that the laws must come from somewhere. There must be a reason that this universe exists of all universes, despite the improbability of it all. And that reason, that organizing and stabilizing force, is God. Can it be anything else? Luck or chance cannot explain it, or rather, if we relied on luck or chance to explain it we would be in a sorry state. IE, we would be forced to accept the anthropic principle and all the lunacy attendant to that. Instead, if we accept that there is a God that orders the universe, modern science survives intact.

This might seem like odd reasoning to many who aren’t used to reasoning. Without X, things don’t make sense. With X, things do make sense. Therefore, to preserve sense, we must assume X. Physicists have been doing this all along. Somehow, it’s acceptable to use things like Electrodynamics for X, or the General Theory of Relativity, or the Standard Model, but God? Without God, the universe doesn’t make sense. With God, it does.

Bill Nye’s final appeal is for us to sacrifice our children to meet his desires. This is a thought process that bewilders me. Why should I sacrifice my self-interests for Bill Nye’s self-interest? I am as offended as he should be if I demanded he teach his children according to what I thought was best, so that I could benefit the most.

Logic and reasoning are not the strong points in the Atheist world view. To be an Atheist, you must be what you claim your enemies are: ignorant of the universe around us.

Let me help you understand why, using evolution. In no case have I seen such a relationship between science as in geology and evolution. Geology assumes an ancient earth, not because there is evidence that supports this (which there isn’t, unless you assume all geological processes occur at a constant rate, which is absurd), but because they find so-called ancient animals in the strata they observe. On the other hand, evolutionists claim as evidence that their fossils are old that they are discovered in ancient rocks. One relies on the other, and the other on the one. Why does no one talk about this?

Bill Nye mentions radiation. I remember, growing up, how firm a foundation carbon dating was, and yet, how absurd a concept it was when you examined it in any detail. It assumes things we cannot assume. One, that at the time the animal or plant was covered, the ratio of carbon isotopes was similar as it is today. Two, that carbon, like all elements, decay at a constant rate, that is, no outside influence can change the decay rate of any substance. The former has been thoroughly debunked, so much so that carbon dating is only accurate within timescales of written human history,and that only because we have documents with dates on them. The latter is being questioned today, as two independent physicists have discovered that decay rates seem to change over time. What conclusions this has, no one knows exactly, except to say our assumptions were worth as much as the paper they were written on.

Any historical science suffers from the same critical flaw: We cannot rewind the clock to see what happened in ancient history. The “mists of time” obscure the past so thoroughly and so quickly we have a hard time figuring out when, exactly, a body was killed, and what exactly killed it, unless we have a fresh corpse. As time marches on and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics imposes its toll, we know less and less about what happened, until we can known nothing at all, even if there was a body to begin with. There simply isn’t enough data and there isn’t enough certainty to rewind the clock more than a few years in the past, at best. Those who claim they know what happened thousands, millions, and billions of years ago are lunatic. At best, we can guess, and even then, it is likely wrong.

Bill Nye is a prophet of the pseudo-scientists Atheists wish was taught in our schools. I say, good luck imposing that religion via the power of the state on the rest of us. I would rather live in a world where people are free to choose what they believe is right and wrong, rather than a world where our ideas are constrained by the ideas of others.

Circular Reasoning in Fossil Dating?

I found this gem on Wikipedia:

The occurrence of species of animal that became extinct at ~1.5 Ma indicate the deposit is not younger than 1.5 Ma.

This isn’t science, logic, or reasoning. This is mythology. Just make up a date, pronounce species to be dead after such a date, and voila! You’ve got ancient fossils everywhere.

Science Assumes Nothing?

I often read self-proclaimed scientists who deny the existence of a god or gods write that science assume nothing. The default scientific position, they claim, is nothing. That means until they see evidence of something, they do not consider it to be real.

I don’t know where people get this idea from. Science, after all, assumes a great deal.

The first assumption science makes is that the universe is ordered and logically consistent. Where is the evidence for that? Our ancestors who lived in the world believed the most sensible explanation for things was that random gods acted randomly in their realm. Storms, floods, and earthquakes were caused by angry gods. A couple that falls in love was caused by the god of love. Crops grew because the fertility gods favored men. So on and so forth.

The first time someone assumed the universe was ordered and logically consistent was a pious fellow by the name of Socrates. Christian philosophers such as Sir Isaac Newton expanded on this and assumed that not only was the universe generally ordered, but exactly ordered, in the minutest of detail, so much so that math was a perfect description of the motions of the planets and stars, as well as apples falling from trees here on earth.

This is an assumption that is such a large leap from what you see around you that it should never be assumed lightly. When you probe into statistical mechanics (which gives us entropy) or quantum mechanics (which uncovers the wave function and its probabilistic interpretation), you see a universe that is not ordered the way Isaac Newton assumed. His assumptions of a mechanical, predictable universe were simply wrong. He was correct, however, that the universe was logically consistent and followed universal laws. At least, as far as we can determine from experiments.

Where did we get this assumption from? Who gave us this idea, before people knew it was a very good assumption? The answer lies in religion.

The next assumption is one that is not to be treated lightly. It is the assumption that the human mind is capable of not only comprehending the laws that govern the universe, but to reason about them and deduce new laws. If we look at the world around us, we see animals that behave mindlessly. At best, the most intelligent animals are comparable to human babies. Even within the human world, we see humans who prioritize learning about the universe around them very low compared to baser desires. What is it that compels someone to abandon the traditional pursuits of a “normal” person and dedicate himself to the pursuit of science? Once again, the answer lies in religion. Something stirs within us and tells us that we must, of necessity, pursue knowledge, and abandon the mortal trappings of the world around us.

When you ponder the assumptions of science, you see that religion and science are not at odds at all. In fact, science is a subset of religion. It is religion that gave us science, and religion that maintains us.

I see a similar argument that goes something like this. “Religion is illogical. The universe is logical. Therefore, religion is not true.” At best, the conclusion can simply be drawn that “religion is not part of the universe”, not that it isn’t true. After all, when you start with the assumption that something is logical, you can’t use logic to explain why it is so. Religion is, and must ever be, illogical. You can only explain the logical nature of the universe with non-logic, because any logical explanation assumes the conclusion, which thus gives us circular reasoning. (At best, you can only show that logic is logically consistent, nothing more.)

The GOP and Science

I can’t speak for all members of the GOP, but I can speak for myself. As for myself, my trust in scientific institutions is at an all-time low, but my trust in legitimate and honest science is at an all-time high.

I know this is hard for many people to understand, but scientists are not gods. They are not even remotely perfect. The best physicists that graced the face of the earth were not much smarter than you or I.

Putting your trust in any scientific institution is insane. The people who run these unions are just as susceptible to corruption as any other institution. That means that they can be influenced by money or prestige to falsify results. That means they will intentionally manipulate the peer-review process to obtain results they think are favorable to their interests. That also means they are likely to engage in conflict among each other, and set their professionalism aside to destroy the careers of the people around them.

Putting your trust in science is wise, as long as your definition of science is the true definition of science. Science is the pursuit of knowledge through the exposition of error. It is based on infallible logic and reason, and has no motives or intent. It is a mute, dumb beast. Scientific advances come over time spans of decades, not weeks, months, or years. New scientific thought is instantly questioned and subjected to an unending series of challenges. Scientists who work in true science do not think that our current understanding of science (which is different than true science) is correct, and are busily engaged in finding out why we are wrong.

Putting your trust into the things scientists say is not a good idea either. The current understanding of science, as you should see above, is not true science. It is wrong in many ways, and in surprising ways. In physics, we do not accept mere theory as fact. We only accept actual observation as fact. Theories seem to be pretty good at explaining why we see the things we see, but none of them are perfect. It is in the discrepancy between observation and theory that physicists spend their time. If you are a physicist, yes, you do have to understand what physicists currently believe is correct science, but you must also simultaneously reject it as incorrect. If you believed current science outright, then there would be no motivation to look for better or more accurate theories.

I know this is hard to accept for many people. You have been told to believe in the Big Bang Theory, in Evolution, in Climate Science, and all of these things, because groups of people with PhD’s after their names and who sit on important-sounding boards and councils say so. That is not science. That is religion. Think about it. The only reason why religion exists is because some man with an important title such as Prophet or Apostle or Priest said you should believe something.

Instead, you should treat every scientific article and discovery with deep skepticism. Until you can follow the logic and explain every step with solid, unshakable reasoning, you should treat it the same way you would treat your horoscope. And even then, you should be looking for where your logic and reason went wrong, and be actively pursuing every shred of evidence that seems to contradict any part of your reasoning.

Do me a favor. If you encounter a scientist that asks you, the non-scientist, to simply trust them, in particular with matters conce, can you do me a favor and treat them the same way you would treat a con-man?

Why I Believe in Creationism

I’ve taken some time to once again, research the broad topic of evolution. I’ve, once again, confirmed my belief that it is incorrect, and that the best explanation is found in Genesis for how we got to where we are today.

Evolution is really three topics wrapped up in most people’s minds.

1. Micro-evolution, or rather, diversity within populations.
2. Macro-evolution, or apes-to-humans evolution.
3. Abiogenesis, or life from nothing.

These are listed in their easiness to convince people.

Micro-evolution is something everyone understands. If you have a bunch of redheads living in a town, and they intermarry, then you’ll have even more redheads, and so on. We see this among the animals, plants, and humans across the world. In fact, It’s obviously explained in the biblical passages. People who belong in one branch of the human family are more similar to their branch than other branches.

Micro-evolution depends on the following ideas, all of which are obviously true, and I don’t know anyone that doubts:

1. Children inherit traits from their parents, whether it is animals, plants, or humans.
2. Sometimes, children are mutants—that is, they have inherited corrupted traits from their parents.
3. Traits which favor reproductive viability among a population, over time, become over-expressed. Traits which do not favor reproductive viability tend to diminish.
4. Occasionally, mutations will become common among a population due to 2 and 3 combined.

We know all of this simply by looking at dogs. Purebred dogs are bred in a particular way to keep the offspring as close to the ideal animal as possible. Some of the offspring simply don’t represent a large enough set of traits, and are eliminated from the gene pool. Others demonstrate very positive traits and are kept for breeding.

What has happened over time is the dogs have been passing around mutations. We know that purebreds are generally dumber than mutts, and the reason is rather obvious. In emphasizing certain traits, other traits fall to the wayside because they are not important. Add in random mutations, and we have purebred varieties that are all but facing extinction because they are so weak.

One of the reasons I believe America is doing so well is because of our genetic diversity. We have people breeding with each other in our country from places all over the earth. We are the ultimate mutt-race, and that means we are breeding based mostly on reproductive viability, which makes us a more reproductive nation.

Macro-evolution is where evolution “jumps the shark.” The thought is that micro-evolution is the only explanation we need for why we have the variety of animals and plants on the earth. The problem with this is really fundamental, and I think a healthy understanding of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics will mean you can see why it’s nonsense.

In thermodynamics, you have tiny particles that move randomly about. While you can’t predict what any one particle is going to do at any one moment, you do know the net behavior of all the particles acting in total. One of the most noteworthy conclusions is that over time, things become more and more disorganized. That is, you start off with everything in perfect order, and then over time, you get garbage. In thermodynamics, you lose energy to entropy, and it can never, ever be reclaimed. Thus, the talk about the heat-death of the universe.

What evolutionist must explain is why random variations in the genetic code (mutations) would ever lead to an advantage over a pure, unadulterated copy of the genetic code. That is, how is it possible that you can get a more-ordered thing from a less-ordered thing? The argument evolutionists use is “survival of the fittest”, among other things. To be honest, I don’t buy it. I mean, maybe, with some random, chance occurrence, a mutation occurs that actually doesn’t lead to some negative consequence. And then, by a remarkable stroke of luck, it turns out that the mutation is exactly what is needed to improve the reproductive viability of the subject, and it gets introduced into the population and it dominates. What you’re asking for is such an improbable event, that if we ever found it happening in nature, we would need to immediately stop the presses and talk about how such a fascinating improbable event as that happened.

Now, evolutionists wave their hands, and say, “But we have millions—BILLIONS—of years to work with!” Well, let’s do the math. The chance of getting a positive mutation, a mutation that would survive, is, let’s say, one in a billion. (I’m being extremely generous here.) If you have a million animals, then at best, you get one positive change every thousand years. Divide a billion by a thousand, and you have a million. So, from the beginning of life on earth, I’m supposed to believe that we’ve had about a million positive changes that lead to all the creatures we see around us? Keep in mind, I’m being very generous with the estimate of 1-in-a-billion chance. If we used something I’m more comfortable with, then the number of times we’d see a positive change can probably be counted by a 1st Grader.

Billions of years are not enough. You need trillions, quadrillions, numbers so large that it truly becomes ridiculous. Keep in mind, that in the age when the age of the earth was introduced as billions of years, people though it was only 6,000 years old. To them, 6,000 years was enough for the entire fossil record to be generated, so saying billions of years meant anything was possible.

If you’re going to run with billions, then the chance of a positive mutation occurring would need to be much, much higher. I think someone said that there are about a million differences between apes and humans. Well, if that’s the case, then we’re talking about maybe trillions of changes globally since the beginning of time. (Keep in mind, not every change lasted. The variety of living things alive today are a fraction of what used to be alive.) So, in billion years, you need trillions of changes, meaning every year you have 1,000+ positive changes. Certainly, in the time that the concept of evolution was introduced, we could have captured a tiny number of these changes, and we should have a library full of them. At the very least, we should have hard evidence on 100+ positive mutations.

But we don’t. We have what may be three or four, and even then, it’s not really apparent that it’s significant.

But that’s not the end of it, or rather, even the beginning. You need to show that, over time, everything ends up as a net positive. After all, over time, creatures grew more complicated, right? I don’t think the mathematics behind the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics will agree with that, even with “survival of the fittest”. I don’t hear evolutionists explaining why they don’t have to solve the same equations I had to when I proved that heat always flows from hot to cold (without energy inputted.)

I believe that over time, our genetic quality is decreasing. Eventually, without any outside force, the entire planet will become extinct, because not enough creatures are reproductively viable anymore. That’s certainly what the fossil record says. The earth used to be full of diversity. What we have today is a comparative desert.

With point 2 under such heavy doubt, and with such an insurmountable mountain to climb, I think evolution is beat. But it gets better.

See, what you need is a beginning: a first life, so to speak. And you need it to have, at minimum, certain characteristics so that evolution is even possible (forget the probabilities.)  Where did this come from? We are told that primordial goo was the origin of life on earth. No one dare say how exactly this would have happened. But let’s suppose that someone works out an exact model that could describe the possibility of chemicals coming together in a particular arrangement, even in the most favorable circumstances. Here’s the rub: I bet that the actual probability of the events that need to happen at the same time, actually happening at the same time, are astronomically small. So small that a billion universes with trillions of earths exactly like ours would never see it happen in a quadrillion years.

In other words, it not only didn’t happen, it could never happen.

I think the appeal to evolution is done without any sound ideas of what the general probabilities or time frames are. There is a curious lack of any numbers, any logical reasoning beyond, “Things COULD HAVE occurred this way.” That’s fun and interesting, but it doesn’t do anything to tell us what actually happened. Using the Anthropic Principle (no matter how unlikely the events are that give rise to intelligent life, since only intelligent life could have comprehended them, then they must have happened to intelligent life) you can prove any possibility, so it’s garbage.

One thing that grates me is evolutionists who bring up falsifiability. That is, that any good theory will open itself up to contradiction by observed reality. Well, the original theory of evolution was falsified. It’s garbage, a historical footnote to the annals of bad science. What you have today is something that resembles the original theory in name only. It doesn’t even give a good rule of thumb, since hardly anything we see in nature agrees with its ideas. The rare, rare, cases that seem to agree with it are so few and far between, the fact that they are so hard to find is a testament to how wrong it all is. But that doesn’t stop the dedicated evolutionist. No, it’s not the theory that’s wrong, it’s reality.

Evolution is right up there with Global Warming, or any number of sciences that people really, really wished were true but simply aren’t and never can be. It’s a scam, it’s a fad, it’s outright war against logic and reason and observation and reproducibility of results. It’s worse than ignorance. It’s the polar opposite of science. It actually makes people more stupid than they were to begin with. It’s the kind of thinking that if we allow to persist, we’ll be right back to worshiping dumb idols the way our ancestors did.

But showing why one theory is wrong isn’t the same as showing why my theory is right.

Why do I believe in Creationism? Note the key word here: “believe”. I believe in Creation because I trust God more than I do myself and my five senses and my reasoning. He’s proven himself to me everytime I’ve had an opportunity to test him. I have confidence that when he says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” he knows what he’s talking about. To me, science is a pursuit to understand God, not to live independent of him. That’s why I love physics. We actually go out there, measure reality, and then point out how stupid we all are and how foolish we have been since the beginning of time. It’s the ultimate humbling experience to have a philosophical discussion with a physicist who has hard evidence, complete with verified probabilities, showing you why your perception of reality is not only wrong, but a menace to society, and why you are an idiot and will be forever.

That’s what science should be: the ultimate pursuit of truth through debilitating humility.

A Fundamental Misunderstanding in the Greenhouse Effect

I’ve been searching the past few days for something, anything, that would hint at why people ignore basic thermodynamics in favor of the more complicated radiation models. I think I have finally stumbled upon it.

See, in space, a good way to determine how hot something is is to look at its radiation output. This spectrum can give you a sense of the total power output of the object, as well as its temperature.

In a simple model we can consider the earth in space as an object where the sunlight incident on the earth is either reflected or absorbed. If absorbed, we can assume radiative balance. However, you have to measure the complete spectrum of both the incident sunlight and the earth’s emissions. The two should balance because energy in should equal energy out (unless there is a source or a sink of energy in the earth.)

Of course, this isn’t precisely accurate. Some of the energy could go to plastic deformations of the planet, or a change in the chemical properties of the planet, such as melting or freezing snow. Some of the energy could be leaked to outer space through evaporation. Some of the energy could manifest itself in the changing magnetic field, or a change in velocity or position. There are an infinite number of ways the earth could hide energy from radiation detectors. Assuming earth doesn’t, or doesn’t do it very much, is why we can use radiation balance as a rule of thumb in the first place.

And this is where climatologists go wrong. They forget that this is only a rule of thumb that is useful when you have vast vacuums between the two objects. Climatologists stretch the above simple model into a complicated model of the earth and the layers of atmosphere between them. Then they have to pretend that the layers of atmosphere can only interact through radiation. Of course, this is completely wrong; the layers of atmosphere interact with each other through convection and conduction and mass transfer. In addition, the ground interacts with the air through conduction.

Trying to map all of these interactions is nigh impossible. I know a lot of people have done tremendous work to try and figure out how much radiation goes where, and things like that. Some people even seem to have answers that seem to match what we see in nature.

Of course, in thermodynamics, the type of interaction is irrelevant. You can just measure how well the material transfers heat (via all heat transfer methods), and then have the number you were looking for all along.

I propose this simple experiment: Measure the heat conductivity of air and air with CO2 doubled or even trebled. If you think radiation is so important, then control for that, or use a really big room, or a long tube. The numbers you measure under controlled circumstances in a laboratory will give you much greater precision than anything you can measure in the wild. Show me how different air and air with more CO2 behaves, then we can start a discussion. As far as I can tell, no one has performed an experiment like that that shows the Greenhouse Effect. In fact, all measurements point to “NO.” Theory and measurements are in agreement here: there is no measurable Greenhouse Effect.

Tyndall and others did measure how radiation and various gasses interact, which is supremely interesting. But he had to isolate every other heat transfer method before making his measurements, because the interactions were nigh undetectable otherwise. Thus, his work is irrelevant in determining how well CO2 conducts heat from the surface of the earth. If anything, it is testimony to how irrelevant considering the radiation alone is.

Climate Science has a long way to go before clearing the bar that would cause me to give up my “addiction” to oil or skepticism towards climate science. It’s not an impossible road to travel, but involves scientific integrity, something which simply does not exist in the climate sciences. It has been revealed far too many times that the actors involved are not acting with any sort of scientific integrity. The fact that they do not release the data they are using is a sign that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Unlike climate scientists, I don’t shift the goalposts every time something new is found. I simply want scientific integrity, accuracy, and sound logic and reasoning.

Open Letter to TheNoize

A commenter on Digg called TheNoize asks:

I would assume religious freaks would WANT to see the christian cross broken and turned upside down – after all, it’s the torture device where Jesus was nailed and brutally killed. Why would anyone use that as a symbol of their love for Jesus? It’s completely nonsensical.

I reply:

You need to listen more to what Christians really believe.

Hint: Christ’s suffering is what makes our redemption possible. Why would we want to ignore that?

(Of course, my comment was buried because I didn’t represent the groupthink there, but that’s a different issue.)

In the interest of actually answering the sincere questions I believe TheNoize was asking, let me try to continue the conversation here.

There are several points of argument.

First, TheNoize asserts that Christianity is crazy.

Maybe you need to listen more to the clear indicators that christianity is coocoo and makes no sense in a world where science has figured out a lot more about the Universe than all religions put together.

My rebuttal is that if he thinks Christianity is crazy, then he doesn’t understand Christianity. Billions of people believe in Christianity, and they can’t all be insane. (Assuming, of course, that sane people tend not to believe insane things.)

He doubts my figures; very well, let me show them. The current best estimate is about 2.1 billion Christians. This is likely a lower figure than the actual number, because of the strictness of the data set. (reference: http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html)

He tries to assert that I used argumentum ad populum, which would be the case if I asserted that Christianity were true because billions of people say so. That wasn’t my assertion. My assertion was that it’s unlikely something is crazy is billions of people believe it, since the population who believes in it is likely not crazy.

I figure this matter is closed, unless he wants to continue discussing it. It’s up to him to show how Christianity can be considered crazy despite the fact that billions of people believe in it. His assertion that billions of people have been wrong is a good start, but there is still more work to do.

Second, he asserts that Christians “are the least educated people in physics, astronomy, chemistry and biology.” My rebuttal was that I have a BS in Physics, minor in Math, and consider myself a Christian. (Thus refuting that the “least educated” are Christians. I am certainly not the least educated person.) I figure this topic is closed, unless he wants to try and defend the assertion that “generally, Christians are less educated than non-Christians.” I’d be happy to take that topic on. I believe atheism is a religion for the intellectually lazy, so it would be a fun debate.

The next section deals with some of the ideas I have about Christianity and science and how they complement each other. I think he missed some of the ideas I have, and I owe it to him to see that he has a correct understanding of what I believe.

Point one: The fundamental assumptions of science.

Me: “Point one: The universe is ordered and logical because God said so. There can be no other reason, because then you have circular reasoning. Using logic and reason to prove logic and reason is circular reasoning. (The same applies in so many other sciences: you start with a basic assumption and then run with it. The correct set of assumptions are the assumptions God gives us.)”

TheNoize: The universe is by no means ordered and logical, according to science. It’s actually mind-blowingly chaotic, in ways no human can understand (our brains are structured to organize information in order to understand patterns, and use them to survive). It’s not by circular reasoning – it starts with no reasoning, just observation. “Seeing is believing”. But you’re right, religion departs from a dogma imposed by the church – science stars with objective observation, and then formulates theories, not according to a book – but according to measurable, observable reality. Doesn’t that sound more reliable to you?

There are really two kinds of chaos. One kind of chaos is the assumption that the universe is not governed by any logical laws. The other is the idea of logical chaos, ie, unpredictable and dramatically varying results based on minute changes to initial conditions.

I don’t believe that you believe that the universe follows no law. In fact I think you are arguing that what you observe does indeed reflect the nature of reality, and that experiments should be repeatable, with no time or space variance. (Meaning, the laws of nature don’t change based on your position in time or space.)

My original point is that science starts with the assumption that the universe follows laws, one of the first laws being that things must be logical, that we can observe reality, that our observations can be used to deduce the laws of nature. The predictions that science has made have been remarkably accurate, so much so that it is obvious to any observer that making these assumptions was a really, really good guess.

Note that this idea is new! Throughout history, mankind has not assumed that nature is a logical thing. Indeed, people have long assumed that violent, emotional gods governed the motions and processes of nature. It is only the religion of Christianity, which teaches that God follows logic, and that God rules the universe through logical laws, that modern science began. In other words, the assumptions that lead to science were directly from the teachings of Christianity.

In answer to TheNoize’s question, no, I don’t think what he believes in is more reliable.

Point Two: Science is the study of God.

Me: “Point two: Science is the study of the universe, or in other words, the study of God’s handiwork. By understanding the laws that God has set down and that govern the universe, you come to understand science. Hence, science is, originally, a uniquely Christian pursuit. All of the great founders of science were Christian who believed God wasn’t lying. I believe any scientist who is honestly pursuing truth, and willing to accept the truth no matter what it may be, is doing God’s work. (If only every scientist were an angel…)”

TheNoize: I partially agree, because a lot of scientists were religious in a time when almost everyone was.

If you’re trying to say that modern science developed in a time when men were generally Christian, not because of it, I will argue with you. The entire reason why science was developed into the form which we understand it today is because religious people, Christians, were trying to study and learn more about God and his Creation.

You can turn back the clock to many moments in history when science could have, and according to many atheists, should have, developed, but at each of those times it sputtered. Why? Well, you can invent one reason or another, but I believe it is because none of those cultures were dominated by a religion that not only believed in logic, but necessarily assumed that the universe conformed to this belief. In essence, without Christianity, modern science would never have been invented.

Point three: Science can only show facts, and cannot deliver absolute truth about explanations.

Me:“Point three: Science, at best, can only show facts. While we may invent explanations of those facts, we can never tell which explanation is true.”

TheNoize: Well, those facts are clarified by more facts. Explanations are based on facts – the more facts science discovers, the closer it gets to the real explanation, and therefore the universal reality.

Me: “Even if we recorded and documented every event in the history of the universe, we would never arrive at one obvious truth that describes everything.”

TheNoize: How do you know that?

I don’t disagree that more facts brings better explanations (by eliminating incorrect ones.) But I question where the end will be: At some future day will we possess all knowledge of the universe through observation and reason? I don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption. I’d challenge TheNoize to show why he thinks there is an end to knowledge, because as far as I can see, all signs point to infinite knowledge in the universe.

Imagine a sphere that represented all of human knowledge. The inside of the sphere is what we know, and the outside of the sphere what we don’t know. The surface of the sphere represents what we know we don’t know. As that sphere grows, will it ever envelop everything? No. We do know, however, as the sphere grows, our knowledge of what we don’t know yet increases.

I believe that knowledge is infinite, and that infinite knowledge can only be possessed by an infinite being, which we are not (in this mortal state.)

Me:“We use things like Occam’s Razor to prefer one explanation over another, but there is nothing that says that the simplest explanation must be the best.”

TheNoize: Occam’s razor only steps in when you’re truly confused about which explanation is more factual and makes more sense… That rarely happens in science. You usually have at least 1 theory that has been more supported – and historically, that theory is usually the one that ends up being true!

Unfortunately, I think some of your ignorance about scientific ignorance is showing. It is not the case that on the leading edge of science there is obviously one correct theory. As an example, can you count on one hand the number of perfectly reasonable GUTs? Not to count String Theory, with all of its variations.

Popular media would have you believe that evolution and the big bang are settled science, and that no reasonable person can disagree with these theories. If that’s the case, why are we still studying these things? There are countless variations on these theories alone, and any honest scientist who supports these theories knows this. Much of the details of these theories are known to be incorrect, and demand more understanding, theories, and experiments to clarify.

If we take a broader view, science has to exclude a ton of explanations because they are simply not testable. One explanation that science can’t work with is, “God wanted it that way.” If the universe were really ruled by the whims of an infinite being, then this could be the ultimate explanation. But science is powerless to determine if this is the case or not. How would you test to see if reality aligned with an infinite being’s whim of the day?

Me:“Explanations (theories) are either right or wrong, and that’s all we can really say. “Yes, it agrees with observations,” or, “No, it does not agree with observations.”

Isn’t that brilliant? That means you’ll only believe something if you have facts to back it up. How mentally sane and stable is that?

I don’t know how you made the jump from what I said to what you claimed I said. I’d need more explanation.

I would normally leave these kinds of arguments out of a reasonable discussion, but I want to help you understand why these kinds of remarks aren’t helpful, and certainly don’t reflect well on your attitudes to science. The word “polemic” is worth remembering. Normally, scientists immediately give up arguing the moment polemic enters the discussion. Be grateful I decided to continue the discussion despite your polemic.

Point Four: Science is not worthy of religious worship.

Me:“Point four: Science is an imperfect art, so the conclusions of science are no more worthy of worship than idols made of gold or stone. Only perfection (God) is worthy of our worship. Therefore, even if you could prove to me something that contradicted God’s word, I would say, “Yes, that’s what the evidence points to, but I still believe in God.” In other words, people who “believe” in science the same way I believe in God are worshiping dumb idols.”

TheNoize: Science is imperfect? How about religion? What’s more perfect? A castle solidly build out of facts, or a palace on a cloud of assumptions that were vaguely extracted from ancient, outdated scripture, that we have no evidence to be actually the word of a God?

(In response to point two, but really about this point.) But my question to you is: how do you cope when science finds things that are different than what religion found to be true? List of true discoveries that took a while (or are still taking) for religion to accept: round earth, earth not the center of the universe, earth orbiting the sun, bats not being birds, evolution and natural selection. I remind you that, before the church admitted their errors, it tortured and killed innocent people who defended the scientific truth, for hundreds of years. Doesn’t that make you sad? To be associated with such an institution?

A castle built on facts alone is a castle without a foundation. Why are facts a foundation? You cannot say with facts alone. You need something more to explain why facts are a valid building material.

Religion is not based on assumption. Or do you think Moses was assuming while God was conversing with him on the mount? Do you think Jesus was conjecturing when he spoke with authority and declared, “I only do that which the Father commands me to do.” Do you think I assumed that I knelt down in sincere prayer, and received a response from God?

Religion is based on simply believing what we are told by God, his book, and his prophets and messengers. If you believe, then you will act according to what you are taught. If the thing is truly from God, then it will be proved true, according to God’s word. If not, then you will know likewise.

When science teaches something contrary to religion, what do I do? I investigate what God’s word really says. I ask God what his opinion on the matter is. I put my trust in God, not my brains, not anyone else’s brains, or eyes, or machines, but God. I know that eventually, I will find a way to resolve the difference, either through a better understanding of who God really is, or a better understanding of what science really says. But my assumption starts with God, and ends with science, not the other way around.

It is possible for me, a person who believes evolution to be incorrect, to do scientific work in the realm of evolution. In a way, science is a game with rules. As long as you follow the rules (and worshiping the theories of science is not a rule!) you can play the game. Many scientists do this every day. In fact, I have seen scientists play both for and against their own theories.

Point Five: Science does not give me what my soul needs.

Me:“Point five: The parts of my life that are important are my soul, my happiness, and my eternal salvation. Science provides me no more comfort than a car or food. My soul hungers for the companionship of Deity, and science can never satisfy that.”

TheNoize: My soul finds awe and respect for the Universe in science, and that satisfies my spirituality. Spirituality and religion have been tied to the belief that YOUR beliefs are true and correct, eternally. What better, more fact-based faith can you have, besides science? The parts of my life that are important is my positive influence in the world, my happiness, and the people I love. You’re more focused on eternal salvation in your next life (that may or may not exist) than being a good man in this world? I don’t think that’s very positive, or moral, or ethical.

Here, you’re making the fallacy of what’s good enough for you is good enough for me. You also don’t understand what all my religion entails, so you can’t render a judgment on whether I need it or not.

Me:There is so much more to life than the universe around us. We are more than meatbags that happen to have interesting electrical patterns in our skulls. Science doesn’t tell me that.

TheNoize: Sure, there’s philosophy. Why are we here? What’s our purpose? Science seeks answers to answer, ultimately, those questions as well. We don’t know the answer yet, because we don’t have enough information. That doesn’t mean we have to assume it’s all in the good book, and stop caring for studying our universe. That would be insane. Meat bags? Sure, we’re meat bags – but isn’t it amazing how we evolved out of single cell organisms and protein chains that started replicating in the primordial seas? It doesn’t seem like it was god – it seems like it was the universe itself, and we’re merely a part of the way it works. Why? Nothing can tell you that, because no one knows the truth. Religion can pretend to give you the truth – and you can believe in it 100% – but that doesn’t mean it’s the truth! If you know history (and philosophy), you still have to include the possibility that you’re believing in lies.

“Science seeks answers to answer, ultimately, [the questions of why we are here and what is our purpose] as well.” Unfortunately, no, this is not in the realm of science. I challenge you to find a scientist who believes that science can answer these questions. I doubt you could even put these questions in scientific terms, as a testable hypothesis or theory.

“Isn’t it amazing how we evolved out of single cell organisms and protein chains that started replicating in the primordial seas?” Unfortunately, I do not share your belief that this is where we came from, and even if I did, what would be more “amazing” is the powers of the infinite that have created the universe moved to create mankind in his own image. The product of lifeless processes are not amazing. They just are.

“Nothing can tell you that, because no one knows the truth.” Here’s where you’re wrong. If you assume no one knows the truth, then why bother? We’re all wrong. I assume that there are people that know the truth, and they are the people who are able to gather the truth from God himself.

“Religion can pretend to give you the truth.” False religion can absolutely pretend to do anything, kind of like the science religion you preach. True religion is based on truth, and truth alone, and does not need to pretend to be anything.

“If you know history (and philosophy), you still have to include the possibility that you’re believing in lies.” You think I am ignorant of this? Honestly, who do you think you are talking to? One of the points I hope I inspired you to consider is that there are other people with different ideas who may be just as smart as you. I would hope someone of your intellectual capacity would realize that just as you are smarter than others, there are people smarter than you. And just as there are smart people who have different ideas, then there are smarter people who have different ideas.

But to answer your question, the very, very first doctrine any Christian must adopt is the doctrine that allows them to see truth from error (or lies.) What gives them the power to do this? Their connection to God, and his personal revelation to them through the Holy Ghost. If you spent more than a few moments reading what Jesus actually taught, and how his disciples actually learned, you would know this.

Now that I have thoroughly explained to you how a sane person can believe in Christianity and be a scientist, the ball is in your court. You can apologize for your polemic and grow up and acknowledge that there are people smarter than you who do not think the way you do, and you can begin attacking Christians on the things they actually believe, rather than the things you wished they believed. Or you can persist in ignorance, although I imagine you would think less of someone who did so.

Heat Can’t Hide

One of the most absurd things I’ve heard coming from recent global warming news is this idea that somehow the heat has been hiding in the ocean.

Folks, heat is not a substance that can be stored. It’s a substance that is transferred from one system to another, a hotter system to a colder one.

Any student of thermodynamics should laugh at this latest piece of balogna.

But this is par for the course. If the theory doesn’t fit, it’s not the theory that’s wrong. You just have to invent new theories to explain why reality doesn’t match what you wish it would match. See: the Big Bang.

Socrates’ Wisdom

One of the most profound statements that doesn’t come from the East is Socrates simple statement true wisdom is knowing how little we really know.

Randall Hoven at American Thinker beautifully explains how stupid he is. He is so stupid that he asks for evidence and data when it comes to the impossible theories we are being fed. If, at the same time so-called scientists demand no doubt, but we are faced with the reality that scientists know so little of what they are purported to know, one can see why science, at least, science as we have it today, is on the decline.

What should replace it? The science of Socrates, the science of Newton, of Einstein, of every great scientist who understood that to presume wisdom or knowledge is to obtain ignorance.

Rutherford is one of my all-time favorite scientists. Why? He was not exceptionally brilliant. Great scientists tend to be only slightly smarter than average. Rutherford was an experimental physicist. He tortured nature to obtain answers to those pesky questions that so-called scientists presumed were simply true of false.

As we come out of the standard model, with the understanding that the Higgs Boson is 95% likely not to exist, we should remind ourselves of how little we really know.

On to religion! The topics of science and religion are inseparable, not as polar opposites, but as two sides of the same coin. Religion is the realm of belief. There is no evidence in religion, or at least no evidence at the foundation. The foundation of science is the belief, and it is only a belief, that the universe is ordered and structured in such a way that pure logic and experimentation can be used to determine its structure. Do you see how beautifully these ideas combine?

I am awe-struck by the ignorance on the topic of religion just as much as many are awe-struck in scientific ignorance.

There is, of course, outright apathy, the idea that God does not want us to know, so we should not try to obtain knowledge. Or, the idea that knowing more about religion and God is not beneficial to us. This is, of course, when you think for a moment about it, absurdity. Is there any difference between such a person and someone who says the universe has no order and it’s pointless to try and find it?

Then there are those who claim that God is unknowable, so why try? But we know from what God has already showed us, both within scripture and in the universe around us, even the tiniest fraction of God’s knowledge is power, power to save (and power to damn.) If you were only to obtain a few slivers of knowledge and wisdom of God, happy are you! How is this any different from those who think science is “too hard” so they should just abandon it altogether?

Then there are those who suppose they understand things better than God. This is a rather easy trap to fall into, particularly for those who know a few things that are true about God. The thinking is simply this. Take a few points of knowledge, combine them with what you think to be logic, and then suppose that the logical conclusion is the real state of the universe. The problem is, just as in physics, we are incapable of doing anything but the most basic logical reasoning, and even then, we get a lot of it wrong. Show me a scientist who trusts in theories before experiments, and I’ll show you one who is barely a scientist at all. These are priests who do not practice, or preachers of supposition and fantasy.

Our quest, the purpose of our mortal life here on earth, is obviously to obtain knowledge. With that knowledge, we obtain power, the power to choose how to use that knowledge. We can fruitlessly try to invent our own knowledge, or we can turn to the source itself. Whether we obtain knowledge through divine revelation, or careful and methodical experimentation, we can obtain the knowledge we need for our lives.