The battle fronts have been the same for hundreds of years, each side wrongly claiming the beliefs of the other to be heresy and seeking any means other than reason to defeat them. Juries, federal court, ballot boxes, kings, mass propaganda, even punishment have been used to try to wipe out the dissenting opinions, yet they continue. For the purpose of this article, we'll define true faith and true science, apply those definitions to the current battle lines of evolution and environment, and discuss the possibility of a reasonable consensus... all in one article. First, we must dispose of fake faith and fake science to remove the noise and confusion of extremism from the issues. In doing so, I run the risk of offending religious people and scientists, alike.
Real Faith-vs-Fake Faith: For the purpose of this article, real faith is pursuit of the truth through belief in a God, superior to humans, who created us and the universe, who is the repository of all truth and knowledge and who gave us the rights and responsibility to care for the Earth. Real faith is expressed when we seek the truth from our Creator, love and help each other, and conserve and protect our environment. Jesus Christ defined real faith when He said that the whole law of God is summed up in two rules...Love God...Love your neighbor as yourself. Fake faith is when we use the mantle of faith, with our titles, robes and political influence to promote extremist views and to condemn and punish others who don't agree with those views. Great recent examples of fake faith are the Inquisition, Islamic extremism and religious leaders like those claiming earthquakes, terrorist attacks and hurricanes are all God's punishment for our "sin." When real faith is combined with extremism, it becomes fake faith. Real faith treats with love and patience, those who disagree. Fake faith tries to shut them up before the truth becomes obvious.
Real Science-vs-Fake Science: For the purpose of this article, real science is the pursuit of knowledge through a system of empirical investigation and testing. Real science is expressed when we seek to prove every theory by exhaustively attempting and failing to disprove it. Fake science is a lot like fake faith. That's when we use the mantle of science, with it's letters, lab coats and political influence to promote extremist views and to condemn and punish others who don't agree with those views. Some great recent examples of fake science are the court battles to prevent the teaching of any theory but evolution in schools and the massive worldwide effort generally described as global warming.
As an example of what I've been told is typical among the academic class, Dr Robert Lee, published in the Australian Rationalist number 70, an 11 page article containing about 4 pages of his scientific specialty, 1 page of footnotes, and 6 pages of heavily biased political opinion. At one point he says "No reasonable person these days can deny the truth of global warming or that it is the result of human activities." As good as I assume he is in his specialty, his statement is fake science because it seeks to shut up those who disagree by calling them unreasonable. This is how fake science is similar to fake faith, it seeks to quiet dissent before the truth becomes obvious. Real science welcomes opposing theory because it provides a new opportunity to advance knowledge.
Evolution In Light Of Faith And Science: Evolution is one of those theories who's detractors got shouted down over a couple hundred years of history until it is now accepted as fact. Yet, real science will tell you we have absolutely no empirical data that proves evolution or disproves it's chief competing theory, called "Intelligent Design." First, we have no reliable dating method beyond 10,000 years because there were no records kept. For those who say the fact that we can see stars millions of light-years away is proof of our age, I would ask when we measured the distance? Let's say the stars are that far, though, who has proven the Universe wasn't created in motion with all the light waves in place? You know...a pump has to be primed with water before it can pump anything. Maybe that's the way light works. Where is the empirical evidence of intermediate species? I know now we're altering species through genetic manipulation, but, have we created an atom out of nothing? Have we taken a mixture of amino acids and created a new single-celled organism that lives and reproduces? How can we say with any seriousness that we know how it happened, then? I'm not trying to disprove the theory of evolution, just to say that it has not been proven by the rules of real science.
Those of us who believe that we and the Universe were created by God are acting in faith. The surprise is, those who believe in evolution are acting in faith, as well. One places their faith in the intelligence, power and inerrancy of God. The other places the same faith in humans. Given your knowledge of human events, past and present, where do you feel we should place our faith...in humans or in God?
Environment In Light Of Faith And Science: Considering that 40 years ago the climate experts were worried about a catastrophic event called global cooling and predicting a new ice age, it's amazing to me that the global warming advocates get anything beyond a sympathetic pat on the head. Still, this theory is gaining worldwide acceptance as fact and as the basis of policies to massively restructure the world economy. Again, I'm not going to try to disprove the theory, just to show that the theory has not been proven according to the tenets of real science. The question of warming is unproven scientifically, because of unreliable temperature data beyond 100 years ago, coupled with biased data on ice caps and sea level. North pole shrinkage has not been balanced in the data with the increase in size of the Antarctic continent. There were no historical sea level measurements taken to support the "rising" sea level claim. Even if it were rising, the data doesn't account for other possible causes, like wave erosion and sub-sea geological events.
But, let's assume the world is warming and the sea is rising as they say. No empirical data exists to prove this is anything more than a normal fluctuation of our environment. The factors involved in this are vast. The sun's radiation, volcano's, space dust, the total bio balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen and many other factors are interrelated and interact with each other as they fluctuate. To say we understand how all of this works is a gross exaggeration...we can't even measure most of it. To say humans caused it...well...you can draw your own conclusions. I don't recall the source, but one global warming expert I recently read, stated that we know so little about how all these factors interact that any "solutions" we adopt now could cause the very global warming we're trying to prevent. The whole ethanol issue serves to demonstrate his point. After science insisted for decades on the environmental benefits of ethanol, laws were passed to force us to retrofit our energy, automotive and agricultural industries to use it. Now, further studies, considering the whole production and shipping process empirically prove that fossil fuels are less environmentally harmful and less costly. Global warming is well worth a serious investment in study...but just study...until we're doing more than guessing.
This doesn't mean things can't be done for the environment. Most of what the global warming extremists claim to want are just good conservation practices. True faith and true science have absolutely no disagreement on the ideals of conserving resources, reducing pollution, finding alternative and renewable energy resources, etc. These are goals we share! People of faith have a great sense of responsibility for the environment and everything in it...we believe we were given that responsibility by God. In fact, introducing a fake science issue like global warming into the discussion makes it more difficult to work together to solve the real problems. There really isn't a battle between true faith and true science...we just have to get past the extremism.
Finding Knowledge And Truth: Both faith and science have their "boys who cried wolf." Their rants serve no purpose but to destroy the credibility of those they claim to represent. Unfortunately, when there really is a wolf, no one will believe it. As our two issues point out, if scientists stick to true science and the faithful, true faith, we can find much in common. All the background political noise of fake science and fake faith are removed and we're left with the pursuits of knowledge and truth...which are the same thing.
Truth without knowledge is useless. Knowledge without truth is delusion.
Jesus said, "if we continue in His teaching we will know the truth and the truth will free us." We must know the truth before it can free us. We must continue to pursue the truth to ever have a hope of knowing it. The faithful pursues truth from a spiritual perspective and the scientist, from the physical, but we both seek to grow in our knowledge of the truth. In this pursuit, by resisting the distractions of extremism, we can learn and grow and work together in trust, to build a very promising future for all of us.
