Less than half of all scientists are atheist

Posted by Sarah Salviander

The first rule of dealing with argumentative atheists is to fact-check everything they say, because if it isn’t an outright lie, it’s a half-truth or a manipulation.

Take, for instance, the oft-repeated statistic that “93% of scientists are atheist.” This is a half-truth — more accurately a tenth-of-a-percent truth. The 93% number applies to the membership of the National Academy of Sciences, which represents only 0.1% of scientists in the U.S. It’s a very elite group of 2,200 members out of millions of scientists employed in the U.S., and is far from representative of the entire scientific community.

So, what’s the real number? According to a Pew survey of scientists in the U.S., the number is about 41% non-believers vs. 51% who believe in God or some other higher power (7% didn’t respond on the survey).

If you look at these survey results in detail, you notice some interesting things. For instance, younger scientists are more likely to be believers than older scientists. That’s why I laugh when atheists tell me the remaining 7% of NAS scientists will eventually become 0% as people become more enlightened by science. It’s nothing more than wishful thinking. The most unbelieving age group of scientists is 65 and older, and this is reflected in the NAS statistic. The NAS is comprised of very distinguished scientists, most of whom tend to be “old” for obvious reasons — it takes a long time to carry out the sort of work that gets you noticed by and elected to the Academy. If the nomination and election process is even somewhat fair, then we expect the % of NAS scientists who are atheist to go down, not up, as these more spiritual younger scientists mature and distinguish themselves in their careers.

Now that we know the truth, that fewer than half of all scientists in the U.S. are non-believers, we can ask questions. Forty-one percent non-believing is still rather high given that only 4% of the general U.S. population identifies that way, so what’s going on? Given the atheist propaganda that religion and science are at war with each other, you might be tempted to think it’s because of science. However, once you dig into the reasons for non-belief, it turns out to have less to do with science than you might think. Elaine Howard Ecklund, a professor of sociology at Rice University, interviewed several scientists at elite research universities to determine why they lacked belief in God. She details her findings in her book, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think:

For some, not believing has everything to do with learning more about science. For others, science itself had little influence on their decision not to believe. In fact, for the majority of scientists I interviewed, it is not the engagement with science itself that leads them away from religion. Rather their reasons for unbelief mirror the circumstances in which other Americans find themselves: they were not raised in a religious home; they have had bad experiences with religion; they disapprove of God or see God as too changeable. For others, religion is simply irrelevant to their life’s passion of science.

She goes on to explore each of these reasons in more depth and provides anecdotes from her interviews with individual scientists. I found it particularly interesting that those who were raised in religious homes found that their parents and church mentors were unable to answer their questions about religion. This response leads me to believe that many of them are open to believing in God, but these naturally very curious people are not getting satisfactory answers to big questions. (Fellow Christians, do you see an opportunity here?)

Here’s what you should take away from all this. Never, ever, ever take anything an argumentative atheist tells you at face value. That goes doubly for atheists on social media; they are bored, frustrated, socially-atypical people who live to stir things up with Christians. They are almost always lying, bending, twisting, or otherwise manipulating the facts. Always check for yourself, and let the truth set you free.

Letter to a young psychologist

Posted by Surak

Dear Joshua,

In regard to the 24 July 2013 New Scientist article, “Fixing broken brains: a new understanding of depression,” I was disturbed by it for a number of reasons. The author admits that not only are drug treatments for depression not working as well as we would like, they are not working nearly as well as they’ve been advertised — there’s been some serious misrepresentation by researchers and drug companies.

The author also acknowledges that it appears the hypothesis that depression is caused by lower than normal serotonin levels in the brain was treated as established theory for decades before it was effectively tested at all. In particular, she admits the following:

Current drug therapies have been used for the past fifty years
A 2006 NIHM study found that antidepressants completely failed to help at least 40% of depressed subjects
A 2007 study showed that serotonin levels in untreated depressed subjects were double the level of those in non-depressed subjects

It took a half century for researchers to get around to testing their theory and its results, and they found that the theory is false and doesn’t work. This lack of scientific rigor is the hallmark of a very immature field of study. In other words, the article demonstrates that the study of human behavior is not yet a true science. Researchers and clinicians in the social and behavioral fields are making rookie scientific mistakes, because they have a goal other than discovering the truth — they are in a rush to help people find relief from their pain.

Desperate to help their charges, some frustrated clinicians began to look for new therapies.

It is admirable whenever people sincerely want to help others, but that can never be the goal of true science. Any goal other than the pure search for knowledge — no matter how commendable, necessary or noble — corrupts science. In their desire to help people suffering from depression, researchers have utterly failed to accomplish the three necessary stages all genuine sciences have gone through: an initial paradigm shift, the total commitment to empiricism over every other goal, and the discovery of natural laws. That is why the fields of psychology and psychiatry do not yet have their version of Copernicus, Galileo, or Newton. I hope you won’t be offended if I observe that psychology is the undisciplined brat in the family of sciences that thinks it knows better than its elders.

The author makes a telling statement at the end of the article:

Whatever the future holds, glutamate, and the new possibilities it has raised, has at least enabled us to start thinking about depression in a different way. That is rare in the troubled waters of psychiatry. [emphasis added]

It is indeed troubling that researchers in the study of human behavior find it difficult to think in “different ways.” The reason for this lack of creative thought is that the field is hopelessly stuck in old ways of thinking. That’s why a paradigm shift is always the starting point of any true science, as Thomas Kuhn points out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Researchers have obviously responded to the failure of drug therapy to cure depression by doubling down on their old failed paradigm. The article makes it clear that they’ve decide that since their current drug therapies have failed, what is needed is a newer and more powerful drug. I don’t object to someone proposing this alternative hypothesis; what bothers me is that the overall response is so severely limited to this one possibility. In the father of all sciences, the field of astrophysics, when a hypothesis fails as spectacularly as the serotonin hypothesis has failed, there is a period of magnificently creative chaos where all kinds of alternatives are offered and considered.

There are some obvious alternatives to the current theory about depression that even a layman such as myself can think of. For example, the findings by the noted psychologist Hans Eysenck that two-thirds of all people who suffer from some sort of mental/emotional disorder spontaneously recover within two years without any professional help raises three important possibilities:

That the 60% of cases in which drug therapy for depression appears to help are really just instances where people would have recovered spontaneously even without the drugs. The forty percent of subjects that do not appear to be helped by drug therapy represent the one-third of people who don’t recover spontaneous plus a significant number of people who are actually harmed by drug therapy.
That what we think of as the undesirable state called ‘depression’ is actually a necessary part of the natural healing process people have to go through when they become mentally/emotionally unbalanced in the same way that drug addicts have to feel terrible when they come off their drugs.
That depression cannot be ‘cured’ by drug therapies.

Psychologists are incapable of entertaining such radically different ideas, because they are prisoners to their unrecognized assumptions and slaves to their unchallenged paradigm. As a result, the study of depression is rushing off to repeat the same mistakes that led to the current failure. Researchers and clinicians are once again leaping straight from pure speculation to accepted theory without the smallest effort to address the systemic problems the author recognizes in the study of chronic depression:

Money and profits are distorting the science around drug therapy for chronic depression.
The way drugs therapies for depression are tested is deeply flawed.
Clinicians are using new drug treatments before they have been tested adequately in a rush to satisfy their patients’ demands for relief from depression.

The article shows some of the telltale signs of phony science. If you review the article, you will see a lot of ‘we think’,’ may’, ‘could’, ‘might’, and ‘suggests’. Whenever I find people depending on this kind of language, I know things have slipped away from the realm of science and into the primordial human tendency to magical thinking. Science takes mental and moral discipline, which the fields of psychology and psychiatry are sorely lacking. People who call and think of themselves as scientists are actually in the business of magic potions.

From the first moment I realized that knowledge was important to you, I have always had great respect for your capacity to feel frustration about not knowing something. You have a real desire for truth, which means you have the capacity for real science. To be true to yourself and the pursuit of knowledge, you must resist all of the anti-scientific forces in your field. As I have said several times before, I think that you and others like you can and must transform psychology into a true science from its current alchemistic state — what else can you call it when the author suggests that depressed patients simply be given a powerful animal tranquilizer like ketamine to see if it works in lieu of an actual diagnostic test.

I hope that you will not misunderstand or become tired of my efforts to encourage you in that direction. As the article demonstrates, it has always been so easy for even the best people to be corrupted by money, ambition, and feelings of urgency. I know you well enough to be certain that you would never be content with being part of a grandiose failure.

Sincerely,
Surak

Photo credit: Gary Waters/Getty Images

Physicists must defend the integrity of science

Posted by Surak

** Written by “Surak” **

German climate scientist, Lennart Bengtsson, is speaking out about the overwhelming pressure he experienced after joining a group skeptical of climate change:

News that Lennart Bengtsson, the respected former director of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, had joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), sent shockwaves through the climate research community. GWPF is most notable for its skepticism about climate change and its efforts to undermine the position of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The tremors his decision sent through the scientific community shocked Bengtsson.

The scientist said colleagues placed so much pressure on him after joining GWPF that he withdrew from the group out of fear for his own health. Bengtsson added that his treatment had been reminiscent of the persecution of suspected Communists in the United States during the era of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

It is time for physicists around the world to wake up to what is happening to science. They cannot sit back and do nothing as their colleagues in climate science are being harassed, having their jobs threatened, and being denied the opportunity to publish their works for political reasons. Physicists have to feel and express outrage whenever politicians make nakedly self-serving pronouncements that the scientific debate on climate change is over. Physicists know better than anyone else that’s not how science works. How often during the centuries from Aristarchus to Copernicus to Lemaître have physicists witnessed the lone individual prevail in the search for truth over the mistakes and objections of the multitude?

The threat to science is not confined to the study of climate change. Consider the field of biology, which, since the time of Thomas Huxley, has been dominated by the flawed theory of Darwin. What true scientist could accept the near deification of another scientist or the effective canonization of his works? Physicists certainly venerate the pioneers of astronomy and physics, but they do so even as they attempt to fulfill their scientific responsibility to do everything they can to prove those great scientists wrong. Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton did much for humankind, but physicists don’t try to shield them from criticism. They fully accept and honestly proclaim that these great luminaries were often wrong. By contrast, try getting any biologist to publicly admit the truth that Darwin was seriously wrong about evolution. They don’t dare.

And then there are the behavioral and social sciences—the benighted drudges of left-wing political ideology for so many generations. Take a few moments to investigate the latest pronouncements from the professional associations that represent the mainstream of psychology, anthropology, sociology and all the other behavioral disciplines; you will quickly understand the anti-science they truly represent. Psychologist, William James, was correct when he wrote about the study of human behavior over one hundred years ago, “This is no science … ,” but he was tragically wrong when he continued, “… it is only the hope of a science.”

There is no hope of science in these fields, because in them there is none of the overriding desire for or genuine commitment to truth that can defeat the human failings that physics took two millennia to overcome. That is why the social and behavioral studies have failed to accomplish the paradigm shift, the empirical conversion, and the discovery of natural laws which are the necessary steps to true science. Instead of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and the light of truth, these fields have give humankind nothing more than scientific abominations such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.

Physicists must understand the terrible and dangerous imbalance in human knowledge their lack of leadership is allowing to occur. Physics and the other physical sciences have given humankind an incredible power over the forces of nature. We can harness nuclear energy, create a multitude of new chemicals, manipulate the building blocks of matter, reshape the surface of the Earth, and change the atmosphere. But, because we do not understand or have any power over the inner forces that cause human behavior, we are like little children handling loaded weapons.

It took 1800 years before Copernicus realized the truth of what Aristarchus said about the structure of our solar system and took the first step toward true science. We can’t wait another 1800 years to develop a true science of human behavior. We won’t last that long. All sciences have to be put back on the path to truth. That’s why physicists must find the courage and determination to act as the keepers of the scientific flame and light the way for the others.

Physicists must shine a scientific light on all of the pretenses, the dishonesty, and the abuses that pass for science in other disciplines. Physicists must turn their love of science into a rage against all efforts to bend science away from the search for truth. Physicists must react with intellectual fury against all attempts to subvert science into the service of greed (yes, I’m talking about you, Al Gore) and the lust for political power (yes, I’m talking about you, IPCC).

Physics is the father and mother of all science. Physicists must act like the loving but determined parents of a hoard of unruly children who, instead of working hard to become real scientists, spend their time playing at and pretending to be scientists in the fields of biology, climate change, and human behavior. Physicists must guide and instruct those who are willing to learn from the magnificent successes of the physical sciences. They must relentlessly call out, scold, and discipline those who aren’t. If physicists lack the foresight or are simply too wimpy to take charge and lead the way, science will fail. Only God can help humanity if that happens, because we won’t be able to help ourselves.

Zombie science

Posted by Surak

There’s a simple reason for the corruption of biology and the social sciences: these studies are not based on Christian beliefs and faith the way science originally was and must always be. Modern science developed in only one place—Christian Europe. If you look up the great pioneers of physics and astronomy, you will find that they were almost all devout Christians, from Copernicus to Galileo to Newton to Maxwell to Planck to Lemaître.

The one glaring exception was Einstein, but even he famously said, “I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.” Even though Einstein was not Christian, he was the product of the Christian European culture that gave birth to science, and he was a willing participant in a process based on Christian principles:

But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. (Albert Einstein, 1941)

The prime motivation of Einstein and so many other great figures in science was to uncover divine truth and know the mind of God. People who feel they are doing God’s work are far less likely to succumb to human frailties and engage in activities that corrupt the search for truth. That tradition remains strong in physics, the original science. That is why the field of astrophysics was able to resist the degenerative effects of an increasingly atheist society. When the devout Lemaître conceived of the primeval atom (aka big bang theory) and demonstrated that the Genesis account of a universe with a beginning was scientifically sound, the stubborn resistance of scientists with a hatred for the idea of God was quickly overcome by the evidence.

The other branches of science have not fared as well. Atheists stole science from Christians in the mid and late 19th century with the false social science of Marx and behavioral science of Freud as well as the misuse of Darwin’s theory of evolution and the gross misrepresentation of Christian scripture. Over the last century and a half, secular humanists have successfully alienated Christians from the scientific method the faithful created and taken over most of its areas of study. Physics still has a substantial minority of Christians (and people with a general belief in God), and much good work is still being done. The social and behavior studies, on the other hand, are the tools of secular humanism and the zombies of the scientific world—active but not alive. Biology was bitten long ago and is gradually succumbing to the humanist infection. There is an easy way to tell a zombie biologist from a true biological scientist; ask him to say the following words, “Darwin was seriously wrong about some important things.” If he can’t bring himself to say this, you are speaking with one of the walking dead. Climate change ‘scientists’ are just garden-variety corrupt hacks who have sold out for money, prestige, and political favors. Bundle up for the coming ice age or thank the polluters for preventing it.

The lesson here is that the further any area of study is from the Christian foundations of true science, the more corrupt it is. The United States has been the source of a great deal of the productive science done in the 20th and early 21st centuries. It is also the most Christian of all developed countries. If atheists succeed in turning the United States into anything similar to what the formerly Christian European nations now are, science will die and humankind will experience a dark age.

Replay: When philosophy dominates science

Posted by Surak

Traffic’s up after the informal announcement of the publication of our Astronomy and Astrophysics curriculum, so in the coming weeks we’re going to replay some of our more important posts from the archives for our new readers.

** Written by “Surak” **

Dr. Robb Wilson, who blogs at The Scholar Redeemer, commented on my article “Separating philosophy from science,” and made the following important points:

“good science is NOT aphilosophical”

“a blanket statement that philosophy corrupts science is misleading … there is a philosophy at the root of methodological naturalism as well.”

In light of his excellent comment, I would like to take another shot at what I intended to say.

Ancient Greek philosophy was indeed the solid and necessary foundation on which the first scientific efforts took place, and it was the Judeo-Christian worldview that made modern science possible. I fully accept that whenever and wherever the dominant philosophy/religion of the day acted as a rational foundation on which something higher and broader could be constructed, science flourished. But sometimes the dominant worldview has included beliefs that act like confining walls and a low ceiling on science. The most obvious example is the ancient belief that the Earth was the center of the universe, which helped delay modern science by about 1,800 years.

The point I wanted to make in my original article is that there is today a philosophy that dominates most Western centers of learning, and elements of that philosophy threaten to delay desperately-needed scientific advances in fields such as biology, medicine, psychology, and social behavior. My fears seem to be confirmed by an article published in the February 7, 2011 online edition of the New York Times, titled “Social Scientist Sees Bias Within” by John Tierney. The article quotes Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, regarding what he describes as a liberal bias in his field:

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

While Tierney and Haidt appear to see the problem largely in political terms as part of a liberal vs. conservative struggle, the root of the problem for this branch of science is really philosophical because the “sacred values” cited by Dr. Haidt are those of humanism. Our original article on ‘transcranial magnetic stimulation’ was an attempt to demonstrate that a similar philosophical problem exists in biology.

There is also evidence that humanist dominance is causing severe problems in the field of anthropology, for example, the controversial decision last year by the American Anthropological Association to remove the word “science” from an official statement of its long-range plan. The problem extends to general psychology, as well. In their 2005 book, Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm, Rogers H. Wright and Nicholas A. Cummings identify some distressing developments in behavioral science. In the preface they include the following statements:

Why, after decades of fighting to establish the rightful role of professionalism in psychology, do we now question the validity and integrity of some of the prevalent practices in our profession? The answer is simple: psychology and mental health have veered away from scientific integrity and open inquiry, as well as from compassionate practice in which the welfare of the patient is paramount.

These taboo topics typically unleash a silencing array of unwarranted charges ranging from political incorrectness, insensitivity, and lack of compassion to (in the extreme) bigotry. We are troubled that disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, and social work, which pride themselves on diversity, scientific inquiry, intellectual openness, and compassion for those who need help, have created an atmosphere in which honest, albeit controversial, points of view are squelched.

We decry the extremism on the right, but we do not address it in this volume because that is not the problem within organized mental health today. Psychology, psychiatry, and social work have been captured by an ultraliberal agenda, much of which we agree with as citizens. However, we are alarmed with the damaging effect it is having on our science, our practice, and our credibility.

It [American Psychological Association] is no longer perceived as an authority that presents scientific evidence and professional facts. The APA has chosen ideology over science, and thus diminished its influence on the decision makers in our society.

Within the profession of psychology there is currently debate over treatment techniques and interventions that have not been scientifically validated.

It is obvious that we need a greater diversity of ideas and a counterbalance to the prevailing ideologies within mental health circles today. … We must broaden the debated by reducing the ridicule and intimidation of ideas contrary to the thinking of the establishment in the field of psychology.

Once again, the ultra-liberalism identified by the authors is best understood as the political manifestation of a relatively new philosophical orthodoxy, and the indisputable truth is that humanism is the philosophy that dominates many if not most universities and colleges in America today. I believe a strong case can be made that some humanists are guilty of many of the same transgressions against science that Christians have long been accused of, including

Attempting to establish a new orthodoxy verging on dogma
Stifling of descent
Condemning and purging those with non-humanist views
Corrupting science for political, social and economic goals

If psychology and the social ‘sciences’ continue to be dominated by a philosophy hostile to the free exploration and exchange of ideas, how will they ever develop desperately needed casual understanding about the human condition? A delay in the behavioral sciences similar to the delay in the physical sciences that occurred between Aristarchus and Copernicus would be more than a scientific tragedy; it would be a disaster for humankind. Our hope has to be that the study of human behavior will somehow break through the confining walls of humanism, undergo a cathartic paradigm shift, and become true science.

Where is the scientific evidence for “white privilege”?

Posted by Surak

A “White Privilege Conference” was held on March 25 to 29 at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison, Wisconsin. This conference has been held for 15 years, it is funded in part by tax dollars, and it is geared toward educating the state’s teachers on how to help destroy white peoples’ undeserved privilege, overcome the oppression of minorities, and work toward a more equitable world. At least some news reporters were denied access, but one found a way in and reported the following.

An individual named Kim Radersma lead a breakout session entitled “Stories from the Front Lines of Education: Confessions of a White, High School English Teacher.” Ms. Radersma is currently working toward her Ph.D. in “critical whiteness studies” (presumably in the Sociology department) at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. During her session she told the participating teachers that white people are like “alcoholics” with their racism. They will never be cured of it but will always be racists at heart.

Describing herself, it is reported she said, “being a white person who does anti-racist work is like being an alcoholic … I will never be recovered by my alcoholism … I am so deeply imbedded with racist thoughts and notions and actions in my body that I have to choose everyday (sic) to do anti-racist work and think in an anti-racist way.”

As a person who is committed to the preservation of human rights and devoted to science, I am deeply disturbed by this. The above accusation appears to be that white people are inherently racist for the same reason they have white skin—racism is part of their DNA. This would make white people racially inferior to all the other ethnic groups around the world who do not suffer from “white privilege.”

This is a scientifically testable hypothesis. So, as an advocate of science, I have to ask Ms Radersma and the organizers of the conference, where is the evidence for this? This question must be answered, because, if this grave assessment of the nature of white people was made without scientific evidence, then it is nothing more than an expression of vile racism against white people. I fear that is the case and that the organizers of the conference knew this charge against white people could not be rationally defended, which is why the conference was closed to public scrutiny.

I challenge the future Dr. Radersma to defend her hypothesis in public. I challenge her to expose her accusations against the white men, women, and children of America to the illuminating and purifying light of scientific examination. If she is not willing to do this, the inevitably conclusion must be that she is a racist fraud and her belief is just one of those foul things that grow in the dark.

Self-correction in science

Posted by Surak

A common claim about the superiority of science over other ways of knowing is that science is self-correcting; science may take wrong turns from time to time, but it eventually finds its way back on the right road. As a supporter of science, I believe in the power of the scientific method; and generally speaking, it’s true that science self-corrects. However, it’s important to understand how human limitations—scientists are human, after all—sometimes undermine the process of self-correction.

Science will never give full understanding of anything. All that we can hope for are useful approximations of the objective reality we hope is out there. Under ideal circumstances, science is certainly self-correcting in the sense that it provides a process for arriving at consistently closer approximations. But, in too many instances the self-correcting potential of ideal science cannot overcome common human frailties. The most famous example from the field of astronomy will illustrate this.

Physics, like all of the sciences, started out as ‘natural philosophy,’ which functioned as an integrated branch of the whole philosophy/religion of the ancient Greeks. Science in its rudimentary form was thus shackled to the Greek worldview that placed humans forever at the center of the universe and effectively limited scientific thought to what would become Ptolemaic theory. This geocentric view of mankind’s place in the universe also prevailed because it conformed nicely to what the ancients observed with their limited senses, and because it had a powerful appeal to human emotions that subsequent theories could never have.

It is testimony to the power of the human mind and the potential of science that at least one individual was able to overcome all of this and figure out a closer approximation of the truth. An ancient Greek astronomer named Aristarchus proposed a heliocentric universe in the 3rd century B.C. Unfortunately his hypothesis was quickly squashed by contemporaries who condemned his idea as impious and foolish—in other words, it didn’t conform to the dominant philosophy/religion of the day. The Copernican revolution did finally take place, 1,800 years later, but those who have faith that science is the best way (or only way) to know things shouldn’t take much comfort from this example. Yes, the scientific method was eventually successful, but the self-correction was at best tragically slow.

This example has some scary implications, because the weak sister of modern science, the study of human behavior, is currently at a stage comparable to physics 2,000 years ago and shows no signs of correcting itself. With all of the social and behavioral problems facing an increasingly complex and technological world, it is possible that modern society cannot survive another 2,000 years without viable theories of individual and group behavior. So, it is important that all of us who depend on science to solve (or at least mitigate) the world’s problems understand how the three major things that prevented physics from correcting itself for about 2,000 years—the debilitating effects of ideology, the limiting nature of human perspective, and the immense power of emotions to mislead—are still at work today preventing the newer branches of science from correcting themselves.

To appreciate the ways in which science’s ability to self-correct can be thwarted, one has to be very clear about the basics of the scientific method. They can be outlined in rudimentary form in the following manner:

Preliminary observations of some natural phenomenon are made
A scientist brainstorms possible explanations of what is observed
A workable hypothesis is formed
An organized plan for additional observations and experiments is made and carried out
If additional evidence for the hypothesis is found, it advances to a level of confidence higher than that of a hypothesis but lower than that of a theory (we can call it a conjecture)
The newly elevated conjecture is then presented for the peer review process, in which some scientists will find evidence to support the conjecture and others will try to tear it apart
If the conjecture survives the peer review process and gains additional evidence and the support of a large number of scientists it will eventually become accepted as a viable theory

The two parts of this process that make self-correction possible are the brainstorming and peer review stages. Unfettered brainstorming makes it possible for scientists to consider all possibilities—that’s how we got Einstein and Georges Lemaître, the father of the big bang¹. If religion or philosophy makes some ideas unthinkable, the brainstorming stage will be inhibited, and ‘unpopular’ possibilities will be missed. The humanist philosophy that dominates the behavior and social sciences departments today is making the self-correction in those fields impossible just as much as the philosophy of the ancient Greeks made physics impossible.

The peer review process makes it possible to challenge popular but false notions. In modern times this stage has become highly susceptible to the negative influences of politics and government funding. The controversy over global warming / climate change is a good example. Regardless of a person’s views on climate change, it should be deeply disturbing that one side of what should be a scientific debate has been corrupted by government funding into political advocacy. When any scientist becomes an advocate of policy, he is no longer a scientist, because science can only serve one master—the search for truth. It is even more disturbing that those on the other side of the scientific debate have been tagged with the vicious label of ‘deniers.’ Those who use this label in such a pejorative manner are trying to preemptively shut down the peer review process and mandate scientific orthodoxy.

It is dangerous, therefore, to assume that science has an inherent ability to overcome human failings to the point that we can depend on it to be self-correcting. That it can effectively reach that goal is demonstrated by the fairly rapid acceptance of big bang theory in the mid-20th century over the strong objections of those who were philosophically opposed to it. But what has only recently become true of a branch of science that is over 450 years old, is not true of the newer sciences. Biology, psychology, and the social sciences are nowhere near the stage where self-correction is automatic.

Now, there is one assumption I’ve made in this discussion, that self-correction means we’re making better and better approximations of reality. But there is another issue: what if there isn’t always an objective truth that we can get closer to by self-correction? That’s an altogether different topic, but let me say that relativity and quantum mechanics do suggest that this might be true. This is a topic for another article.

[1] “Father” in more than one sense: Lemaître was also a priest.

Recommended reading:

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

Questions from Christian Students, Part 2

Posted by Surak

Sarah was recently invited, along with two other scientists, to take part in a panel discussion for a group of mostly Christian students. After the main discussion, students were invited to submit questions via text message; there was very little time to address them, so only a few were answered. The questions were quite good, so over the next few weeks, Surak and Sarah will answer most of them here. All of the questions are listed in the Intro to this series; Part 1 is here.

Was Adam the first man created or was he chosen from an already existing population?

The answers to this two-part question are ‘yes’ and ‘yes.’

There is indisputable archeological evidence for the existence of what are popularly known as Cro-Magnon people (scientists prefer the label ‘European early modern humans’) dating back at least 43,000 years. Christians cannot ignore or deny the evidence for these biological ancestors of humankind without appearing hopelessly un- or even anti-scientific. If Christians take this unscientific route in defense of the Bible, they will lose the hearts and minds of more and more young people. Fortunately there is no need to do that.

There is a false conflict between scripture and science implied in the wording of the question. It occurs because people often read the Bible hastily and fail to notice important clues. Israeli physicist and theologian, Gerald Schroeder, points out something that is almost always missed even by serious students of scripture. Genesis informs us that man was first ‘made’ (Gen. 1:26). After that, man was ‘created’ (Gen. 1:27). The difference between the two words is crucial to understanding what the Bible is telling us (unless you think God would be clumsy or haphazard with words).

A thing is made by taking something else that already exists and fashioning it into a different form. That is what happened in the making of the biological life form we think of as the human species. Genesis lists the major categories of life forms as they emerged; vegetation, animal life in the oceans, flying creatures (winged insects), great sea creatures, life forms that crawl on land, every species of winged creature, land animals which became livestock (mammals), and finally man. There is absolutely no conflict here between scripture and the basic notion of evolution. As a result, as Darwin pointed out, a person can believe in evolution and be a devout Christian.

But, the Bible does not repeat the word ‘make’ in Gen 1:27, because something very different and non-biological happened after the human body was formed. Man was then ‘created’ in the image of God. Since God is not of this world, the human soul is not ‘made’ of anything material, it is not made of anything that already existed in this world, it was brought into this world out of ‘nothing.’ This was as much an act of creation as the beginning of the universe out of nothing (a singularity, in science-speak) with the big bang.

The New Testament agrees with this view of the origins of humankind. In Corinthians 1 we learn:

15:46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.

15:47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.

15:48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

15:49 And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

On the scientific side of the hypothesis of a two-stage development of human beings, psychologist Julian Jaynes provided some important evidence of an amazing transformation in the human species that he believed took place relatively recently. In his remarkable book, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Jaynes argued that for most of their existence, humans were not conscious and functioned not as we do but as very smart animals. This change from smart animals to fully human evidently occurred only a few thousand years ago.

According to Jaynes, the sudden and mysterious emergence of the Hebrews and Greeks—two people remarkably different from all the other peoples who existed before them—marks the point when full-blown consciousness first flourishes enough to come to the attention of history. That consciousness, expressed in the human pursuit of philosophy, mathematics, science, the arts, spirituality, and human rights, quickly spread across the world and became dominant in the human domain. It is reasonable to conclude that consciousness may be just the most obvious result of people being endowed with a soul. There can be no doubt that conscious people have done what God told descendants of Adam to do:

Genesis 1:28: God said to them, ‘Be fertile and become many. Fill the land and conquer it. Dominate the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every beast that walks the land.’

In any case, it is telling that ancient and medieval Jewish scholars of the Old Testament decoded the clues in Genesis and had no problem with the existence of other biological human beings at the time of Adam and Eve. The great Jewish scholar and authority, Maimonides, called these beings “mere animal(s) in human shape and form” [The Guide for the Perplexed, Part I: Chapter VII]. If true, this would solve many mysteries, such as questions about who the children of Adam and Eve mated with. Once the two-stage development of Man described in Genesis 1 is understood, the original question posed above can be answered. Yes, Adam was the first man created, and yes, his biological life form was chosen from an already existing population.

When philosophy dominates science

Posted by Surak

** Written by “Surak” **

Dr. Robb Wilson, who blogs at The Scholar Redeemer, commented on my article “Separating philosophy from science,” and made the following important points:

“good science is NOT aphilosophical”

“a blanket statement that philosophy corrupts science is misleading … there is a philosophy at the root of methodological naturalism as well.”

In light of his excellent comment, I would like to take another shot at what I intended to say.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

Why, after decades of fighting to establish the rightful role of professionalism in psychology, do we now question the validity and integrity of some of the prevalent practices in our profession? The answer is simple: psychology and mental health have veered away from scientific integrity and open inquiry, as well as from compassionate practice in which the welfare of the patient is paramount.

These taboo topics typically unleash a silencing array of unwarranted charges ranging from political incorrectness, insensitivity, and lack of compassion to (in the extreme) bigotry. We are troubled that disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, and social work, which pride themselves on diversity, scientific inquiry, intellectual openness, and compassion for those who need help, have created an atmosphere in which honest, albeit controversial, points of view are squelched.

We decry the extremism on the right, but we do not address it in this volume because that is not the problem within organized mental health today. Psychology, psychiatry, and social work have been captured by an ultraliberal agenda, much of which we agree with as citizens. However, we are alarmed with the damaging effect it is having on our science, our practice, and our credibility.

It [American Psychological Association] is no longer perceived as an authority that presents scientific evidence and professional facts. The APA has chosen ideology over science, and thus diminished its influence on the decision makers in our society.

Within the profession of psychology there is currently debate over treatment techniques and interventions that have not been scientifically validated.

It is obvious that we need a greater diversity of ideas and a counterbalance to the prevailing ideologies within mental health circles today. … We must broaden the debated by reducing the ridicule and intimidation of ideas contrary to the thinking of the establishment in the field of psychology.

Attempting to establish a new orthodoxy verging on dogma
Stifling of descent
Condemning and purging those with non-humanist views
Corrupting science for political, social and economic goals

Continue reading →