I’m not denigrating science, I’m marvelling at the awed and superstitious use of the term (and concept). We try to stifle debate and inquiry with the word now; we use “science” to give our opinions weight. Science has become a new god who must not be questioned. The problem is that science itself an ongoing debate.
The global warming issue is a pretty good example of this. Anyone questioning the inexorable melting of the planet was told “scientists agree” without much attempt to explain how we knew that Man was responsible for one centigrade degree over 100 years. Turns out there has been plenty of scientific opinion out there that humanity-caused climate change was probably hogwash, or at least overstated in powers of hundreds.
The pure science of the debate has, of course, been irreversibly tainted by politics, as policy decisions and government money have become dependent on a scientific issue that is far from decided. But now we have people in public debate claiming the banner of science as a preacher might have held forth a bible at the Scopes Trial.
I’m not arguing against scientific inquiry–I’m just laughing at how it has become a new god replacing the old one.
For my part, while knowing God IS, I neither accept the industrial ontology of science nor the improbability of the Christian story of God. Both are in the same boat, as far as I see. And you are right about politics ans science. As the Oakland Tribune revealed, during the Bush administration the bureau charged with transmitting scientific papers regarding climate change consisted of one man. He was a former Exxon executive who spent his time, as was shown by crates of evidence, removing or downplaying any sense of urgency or catastrophe from scientific papers before they were submitted to Congress for consideration. I won’t go into the litany of other such incidents where oil companies hired psudo scientists or formed alleged citizens groups to obfuscate anything that would impinge on their ability to turn a profit and outsource costs, including huge damages as are often reported in the news.
And all that is more a matter of moral housekeeping than science anyway, as the science simply indicates where the dirt is and how it gets there. You might also remember that the first reaction humans have to disaster is denial. The greater the disaster, the greater the denial, especially if money is involved.
But that is why it is necessary to re-vitalize religion and science together. Faithers are rightfully skeptical of anything that guts the world of its soul. And scientists are rightfully skeptical of anything that not measurable. But we live in a world that has both and inner aspect constituted of Meaning dependent on God, delved into by interpretation, and manifestation, also dependent on God, the workings of which are figured by measurement.
So we have the quantifiable as exteriors which the “Enlightenment” gave us as a gift for parsing the material world, but it forgot its Soul, and that is a huge mistake. And we have religion, which tends to reason from premises not universally accepted or proven even by experience. If they were, we’d have just one religion instead of cultural differences in faith. Actually, we do have that cross-cultural insight into Deity, but that is another story, one that rankles people of simple faith.
So yes, due to a kind of un-navigability posed by the astonishing number of religions available, there might be a tendency to take refuge in the reliability of surfaces, although it is not useful enriching beyond a point, even if it is praise of the laws of God as they manifest in dimensionality. But faith as well needs to adjust to a deeper Reality concerning its meaning and origins.
