By James Wilson
A
famous line from the original of, The Day the Earth Stood Still, is uttered by
Professor Barnhart, the scientist and voice of human reason. “We scientists are not always listened to.” Scientists ought to be respected and obeyed
when they function as scientists and ignored when they function as clergy. This is the difference between science and
the religion called scientism. One deals
with facts and realities; the other simply worships false gods.
Facts
and realities are what they are. Mankind
does not navigate to the moon, or circumnavigate the globe in ships, or cure
diseases and build roads and bridges, without the blessing of hard
science. There is this thing called the
Scientific Method – invented by people of Christian faith – that sets
parameters for accurate and reliable perception of scientific truth. When scientists follow their own rules the
rest of us are blessed. When they step
outside their own structure out of a need to believe this or that the rest of
us are assaulted with mythology at best and harmful practice at worst.
The
dichotomy is not between science and faith, but between science and the false
faith of scientism. The Bible is not a
science textbook, but when it speaks in opposition to scientism it has never
been wrong. For example, the secular
community first posited a flat earth and wall front patterns of terrestrial
winds – the one until the 15th Century and the other into the mid 19th
Century. (The Church, to its discredit,
bought these myths for a time.) But the
Bible describes a round world and a cyclonic pattern of wind action that
actually cleanses the atmosphere; a view now universally accepted because it’s
true. Facts are facts. Reality is reality – whatever the source.
There
has been tremendous controversy in California over allegations from scientists
that pumping water from the Sacramento River into thirsty Central Valley
farmlands threatens the delta smelt.
Reality is that non-native striped bass are the biggest killer of the
smelt, and even the courts see this now.
Environmentalists and scientists got it wrong when they attacked and
permanently crippled the NorCal logging industry to protect the spotted owl, a non-native
species – versus the native barn owl – and which the clergy of scientism now
want to attack directly because they see its resurgence as a threat to their
spotted owl. And the medical orthodoxy
of the forties and fifties was that a scientific formula was better for infants
than mothers’ milk until they actually analyzed human breast milk and found it
exponentially healthier for human babies.
Who knew?
We
can see the same disastrous consequences from faithful adherence to the
mythical promises of embryonic stem cell research as literally billions of
dollars were diverted from the actual promise of adult stem cells – which even
now boast some one hundred different successful therapies against zero for the
embryonic prophets. One can only
speculate how much farther along real science might be if facts governed
decisions from the beginning.
The front page
news a few weeks ago was about climate scientists’ efforts to convince an
increasingly skeptical world that climate change is a reality – and man-caused
– in the face of no rise in temperature for over a decade. Of course the politically correct line is
that this is a wrinkle in a trend known since 1951, but the really inconvenient
truth is that the climate community was predicting a new ice age from the fifties
into the nineties. Even more
inconvenient is the fact that Greenland was a good deal warmer just a thousand
years ago than it is today. Climate –
like wind – operates in cycles that have nothing to do with human
activity. One can only speculate about
how much human life could have been improved in the past two decades if
scientists spent their time doing science instead of seeking grant money and
power through prophesying climate hysteria and punishing their colleagues who
dissented from it.
But the real responsibility
does belong to the Body of Christ. For
too many decades we have gone along in order to get along. We have resisted accountability to God and to
His Word ourselves. We have pursued our
own private concerns and programs rather than risk ridicule and opposition in
the public square. We have called our
faith a private affair – finding God only in politically correct gaps in
so-called knowledge – which is just what the practitioners of scientism
demand. God’s call to repentance is
indeed about the positive re-focus of our attention on Him. But we have an urgent need to clear our own
decks before re-setting our course toward His Kingdom.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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