The Arrogance of Science Pisses Me Off

The other evening I watched a PBS program about the deep-space Hubble and the mysteries of the universe it has helped expose and solve.  In this program a noted astrophysicist proclaimed that with the Hubble telescope, and other highly sensitive radio telescopes, we have now been able to “see the beginnings of the universe.” Then he stated that, “We now know the universe is 13 billion years old.”

Poppycock.

The program went on to describe how the “Big Bang” theory came to be and how, with the Hubble’s deep-space images, it is now a proved theory, a "fact."

Balderdash.

Then, the program contradicted itself by explaining that many of the worlds astrophysicists now believe that the universe’s expansion appears to be slowing and they postulate that it has begun to contract and that the reverse of the big bang will see the universe shrinking back into itself, contracting to what, they don’t know.

Bingo. They don’t know.

When it gets right down to it, they don’t know diddly, much less Bo Diddly. Nearly every scientific “fact” that I was taught in high-school has since been disproven. And not just astronomy, but every other area of human scientific endeavor as well. To wit:

From the journal Physical Review Letters: A team of Russian and American scientists has discovered a new element that has long stood as a missing link among the heaviest bits of atomic matter ever produced. The element, still nameless, appears to point the way toward a brew of still more massive elements with chemical properties no one can predict.

And, of course: CRADLE OF HUMANKIND, South Africa — Nine-year-old Matthew Berger dashed after his dog, Tau, into the high grass here one sunny morning, tripped over a log and stumbled onto a major archaeological discovery. Scientists announced Thursday that he had found the bones of a new hominid species that lived almost two million years ago during the fateful, still mysterious period spanning the emergence of the human family.

Here’s the rub. It isn’t the continuing and evolving discoveries and scientific theories that troubles me. In fact, I love it and regularly scan the Science sections of the great newspapers to check out the latest and greatest. A visit to the Hubble website is a regular entertainment for me. Absolutely astounding.

It isn’t even so much that each new theory is treated as “fact” when, in fact, they are just “theories”, mostly based on other theories. The accumulated knowledge of mankind is nothing more than a house of cards that can come tumbling down any time a new bedrock “fact” is discovered, re: Galileo, the radio telescope, the Hubble, the neutron telescope, etc., etc. The list and examples go on and on.

No, what troubles me is the arrogance with which scientific “facts” are presented and are elevated to nearly unassailable, religious status by their followers.

A recent bru-ha-ha here in Baja Georgia pitting Evolutionists against Creationists brought the matter to a head for me and galvanized my position on the side of the Creationists.

I’m not on the side of the Creationists because I believe in Creationism over Evolution, I don’t. It’s the arrogance with which the Evolutionists present their case that pisses me off. Not only do they deride Creationism as “mystical superstition” while presenting their foundation of mud as “fact”, but they won’t even allow the other school of thought into the classroom to be studied and discussed.

Not allowing the study of religion and the hypothesis of Creationism into the classroom is not only narrow-minded and wrong, it’s just plain stupid.

What on earth has shaped our cultures, our values, our humanism, more than religion?

Whether you are a believer or not doesn’t matter. It exists. It’s real. And, understanding and accepting each other’s beliefs is far more important to the harmony and growth of mankind than any so-called scientific “fact”, including Evolution.