Tuesday, January 7, 2020

A Bad Day for "Science" Worshipers

I love science, that is why I taught it in public school for twelve years. I love it for what it is, not for what it isn't. Science is a process by which we discover things about the natural universe. It operates by assuming that all events have natural causes. This is called "methodological naturalism". This doesn't mean that all events are really explainable by natural causes, this is just the only kind of cause that the Scientific Method can investigate regarding phenomena in the natural universe.

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Update and disclaimer - I don't mind offending those who are actively resisting the knowledge of God, because they need to come out of it and if directly confronting them on what they are doing will accomplish that then I will take the abuse necessary in the role of "bad cop." But I am not writing this to offend honest scientists whom I greatly respect. Most of the people I say are "hiding" behind science" are not themselves professional scientists. They may not even really love science, except in concept as the excuse to avoid the knowledge of God. That is why this scene works as "art". And to clarify my position on the science, while the reversal on the Dark Matter evidence discussed below is shocking, there is something out there preventing gravity from collapsing the universe, and maybe it is dark energy in a much smaller quantity than they thought. Or maybe it is just light pressure, or maybe gravity has a maximum range. Doesn't change the point of the article, which is not aimed at professional scientists but layman using "science" as an excuse to hide from the knowledge of God.
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Some people I've interacted with have turned a methodology into a philosophy. Philosophical naturalism proposes that only natural phenomena exist and that there is nothing outside of nature. They frequently speak in the name of "Science", even though what they say doesn't make a lot of sense. For example, science can neither prove or disprove the existence of God, since science is only capable by definition of discovering things about the natural universe. It can find the laws, but it can't determine by itself the existence of the Lawgiver. You have to think beyond the tool you are using to determine that. So elevating the method of naturalism into a philosophy is problematic.

Anyway, yesterday, January 6th, in the Year of Our Lord 2020, was a bad day for those hiding from the knowledge of God behind claims of "Science".  It was a day reports came out which illustrated that we don't know nearly as much as we claim we do about the natural universe. This report came out that shows the main evidence supporting the idea that our universe is mostly a mysterious thing called "dark energy" is in error. This overturns decades of scientific belief about the ultimate nature, structure, and perhaps even fate, of our universe. It turns out the galaxies may not be flying away from each other at increasingly fantastic speeds after all. Therefore there is no need to postulate that most of the universe is composed of an energy which is propelling them against the pull of gravity at those fantastical speeds.

I've had to listen to a couple of unbelievers recently earnestly insist that arguments for the fine-tuning of our universe to support beings like us (the Anthropic Principle) is not really evidence for the existence of God. Their support for this claim is the alleged existence of a vast array of other universes which some esoteric mathematical models predict could exist. IOW, the fine-tuning of our universe is an illusion because if enough universes are out there by chance one of them could happen to have the right balance of forces necessary for the structure we see- even if the odds of it happening in any one universe are mindbogglingly remote.

Well, excuse me if I don't have a lot of confidence in your appeals to a vast number of supposed universes we can't see based on some hypothetical mathematical model. Especially when the same scientific community can make such a titanic mistake for so long when it comes to measuring the properties of the one universe we can in fact detect. It sounds to me like you are resorting to desperate escapism to avoid the knowledge of God. Your belief that these universes exist is on pretty shaky ground- and the existence of multiple universes in itself doesn't rule out the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God anyway, those universes would also have to have certain properties and not others). If we can't detect God scientifically at least we have evidence of His existence by other means, which is not the case with your hypothetical other universes!

It is small-potatoes next to the Dark Energy May Be Wrong story, but last month it was discovered that a supposed ground-breaking fossil of a spider with evolutionary traits which made it a missing link with other arthropods was in fact a badly preserved crayfish with legs painted on it by forgers! And the original finding was in a journal, so the fraud passed peer-review with flying colors!

Meanwhile most papers can't even get looked at, particularly ones with politically incorrect conclusions. That's one reason why many, including many scientists, are suggesting that the peer-review process is broken. Check that, it works great for preserving the status quo. If your paper supports the existing paradigm, it can get peer reviewed even if your underlying evidence is painted-on-"crab"-legs. But papers that challenge the status quo languish. They simply don't make it through the gauntlet. This PC gate-keeping is impeding our progress in understanding the natural world- IE science. I've seen plenty of science people even in informal settings decline to discuss or evaluate papers with controversial conclusions even from well-qualified researchers on the basis that it hasn't been peer-reviewed yet. It has become more of an excuse to hide behind than a successful sorting mechanism.

But it gets worse for science-worshippers. It turns out that most scientists can't replicate studies by their peers. This goes to the very heart of why scientific finding should be accepted as true. If they can't be replicated, then claims should be evaluated on the same basis as claims that information was received by Divine Revelation! Whether this lack of replication is due to poor documentation of methods, deliberate fraud, or a falling standard of professionalism in those attempting to replicate findings, it's a problem which threatens to undermine the rational basis on which we give heed to scientific truth claims.

I have warned in my book about the danger to science when it becomes captured operationally by the state. A premium is put on conclusions which support the state's objectives, not on those which are sound or repeatable. Thus glorious science is demoted to mere propaganda. The state definitely has a history of trying this with theistic religion too, not just the "religion" of science. So we should be cautious. We should love science for what it is, and be wary of those people and forces who would try to make it into something that it is not.

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