A great deal of investigation and scholarly debate has been invested in establishing the origins of science and the scientific method. First, to begin with, science did not come out of ancient societies, despite whatever breakthroughs thinkers like Aristotle or Ptolemy had. Instead, modern science arose in post-Reformation Europe. Second, according to Margaret C. Jacob in
The Scientific Revolution, A Brief History with Documents, it was the religious tumult occurring after the Reformation which allowed room for new ways of thinking about nature to advance.
Third, one of the surprises of the rise of modern science is that it was closely tied to the 17
th century Christian culture, according to John Henry in
The Scientific Revolution and the Origin of Modern Science. For example, mankind's first scientific club--the Royal Society--is known to have had an unusually high percentage of Puritans. Further, Henry argues that religion generally created a culture sympathetic to the creation of science, and specifically it was Protestantism and Puritanism which are seen as crucial to science's development.
Fourth, according to Peter Harrison in
The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, it was Christians scientists, looking for a rediscovery of Adam's knowledge of nature from the Garden, which truly spurred the creation of the scientific method. And the more Reformed was the scientist, the more he insisted upon the rigors of the real scientific method.
Moreover, almost every important figure from the advent of modern science was Christian in his beliefs and world view. For example, Robert Boyle was interested in developing science to reveal the glory of God in His creation. Or, consider the case of Isaac Newton, arguably history's greatest scientific mind and most influential practitioner. Newton's most passionate study was not science, but the Bible. According to an exhibit organized by the Jewish National and University Library, called "
Newton's Secrets," the famed scientist wrote three million words on biblical exegesis and prophecy.
It is certain that mankind's powers and riches in the modern world are greatly derived from science and technology. And despite the Christian foundation of modern science, it is somewhat ironic that the new method itself gave rise to a new generation of atheists who used science to argue against God.
So, the development of a scientific culture went hand in hand with Christian thinking and religion.
II. Science and the Crisis of Modern Credibility
To be efficient, science can be defined here as the "scientific method," although there is an entire culture which has arisen around this method. But it is the proper use of the method which has lavished power and riches upon mankind the last three centuries. So what is the "scientific method"? The
Oxford Dictionary defines it as:
A method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
Barry Gower, in
Scientific Method: A Historical and Philosophical Introduction, traces the minds behind the scientific method as Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton, amongst other Europeans.
There have been incredible breakthroughs in the sciences over the last 300 years which bettered the lives of all Europeans and many others across the globe. Some examples include the disease theory, which helped revolutionize healthcare around the world, and greatly increase lifespans. Add to this all the medical breakthroughs involving surgeries, medicines and pharmacological inventions. Or consider the use of the combustion engine, which has made inconceivably large increases in human's ability to travel and build. And imagine the world today without the computer and internet, more technological marvels which have abundantly increased the average person's ability to communicate and research.
So who could possibly fault-find with modern science and all of its miracles? In fact, the problem in today's society has nothing to do with the scientific method, but with the misuse of the name of science in the pursuit of power, control, and even madness. Science is removed as a great creative and cleansing agent, and replaced with a grotesque imposter--science as the god, and science as a hoax or mirage. Science becomes simply a rubber stamp by which any number of unacceptable premises are claimed as simple "facts," inevitable outcomes.
Some obvious examples of the misuse of the name of science include the famed
Lysenko experiments used by the Russians, Hitler's Aryan theory, a pseudoscience of genetic claims, or Marx's boasts of his works being scientifically produced.
III. Four Examples of Failed Science
A. Anthropogenic Global Warming--AGW
In addressing the claims of misused science, no subject is more readily apparent than Global Warming. To suggest that AGW has been designed to punish more advanced nations and force them to disgorge wealth to the developing world is certainly true. Moreover, that the ideology is transparently Marxist in origin is obvious to the nth degree.
The employment of "science" in the support of AGW has been so far over the top as to beggar belief.
Despite the announcement that the globe has not increased in temperature for several decades, and
scientists were asked to cover this up, it has become a weekly event for some group or person to claim that the earth is on the verge of baking, melting, drowning, or somehow dying.
Real scientific fraud was exposed when the East Anglia emails revealed bias, bullying and retribution against any who dared disagree with the consensus. Yet, today after record-breaking cold-spells in the US, and with the climate community having changed the name of AGW to "climate change," progressives refuse to give up.
It would be impossible to count the number of experts who have weighed in on AGW, claiming the earth is on the verge of catastrophe. Most recently we were informed that there was
500 days before climate disaster. Another headline claimed that the ocean would rise 10 feet, wiping out coastal cities around the world:
This Ice Sheet Will Unleash a Global Superstorm Sandy That Never Ends. Despite these wild claims, no evidence of rising oceans has ever been established, with the UK Telegraph claiming:
Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'.
Meanwhile, AGW doubters are termed "deniers," evoking holocaust insults. Not surprisingly, the computer models which produce the predictions of disaster, were off x4, meaning
AGW only increased by 25% of the predictions.
Clearly, if no anti-AGW scientists are to be hired anywhere, and if record cold temperatures are becoming routine, and if no opposition is allowed for AGW publications, then the "scientific method"
has been canceled, and science no longer is allowed for AGW.
B. Evolution
Enormous problems with evolutionary theory have been known for decades. Yet the "scientific" community is utterly disinterested in addressing the holes in Evolution. The fact that evolutionary theory is based upon probability is not helpful because the numbers are so astronomically opposed to the outcomes. For example, Fred Hoyle calculated a single enzyme had a random chance of occurrence of 1x10
40000. This caused Hoyle, the 20
th century's most influential astronomer, to rule out the chance that life spontaneously erupted, saying in
The Intelligent Universe:
...as biochemists discover more and more about the awesome complexity of life, it is apparent that its chances of originating by accident are so minute that they can be completely ruled out. Life cannot have arisen by chance.
Stephen J. Gould, the most eminent paleontologist of the last 100 years considered it impossible for life to have evolved gradually, so he came up with a theory of saltation called Punctuated Equilibrium. This is covered in his
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. This is because the window of time for the development of life from non-life is now cut down from 5 million to 50 million years, instead of billions.
But the problems listed above are only part of the struggle for evolutionists. Jonathan Wells published a book which stated that all the most important proofs of evolution are either misstated or falsified. Wells lists in
Icons of Evolution, the following
failed examples:
- a laboratory flask containing a simulation of the earth's primitive atmosphere, in which electric sparks produce the chemical building-blocks of living cells;
- the evolutionary tree of life, reconstructed from a large and growing body of fossil and molecular evidence;
- similar bone structures in a bat's wing, a porpoise's flipper, a horse's leg, and a human hand that indicate their evolutionary origin in a common ancestor;
- pictures of similarities in early embryos showing that amphibians, reptiles, birds and human beings are all descended from a fish-like animal;
- Archaeopteryx, a fossil bird with teeth in its jaws and claws on its wings, the missing link between ancient reptiles and modern birds;
- peppered moths on tree trunks, showing how camouflage and predatory birds produced the most famous example of evolution by natural selection;
- Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands, thirteen separate species that diverged from one when natural selection produced differences in their beaks, and that inspired Darwin to formulate his theory of evolution;
- fruit flies with an extra pair of wings, showing that genetic mutations can provide the raw materials for evolution;
- a branching-tree pattern of horse fossils that refutes the old-fashioned idea that evolution was directed; and
- drawings of ape-like creatures evolving into humans, showing that we are just animals and that our existence is merely a by-product of purposeless natural causes.
Every one of these examples is incorrect. So the question is--if evolution really occurred, why do its supporters seem to have no real examples, but are always proposing fraudulent proof?
C. Psychiatry
It is a simple fact that anyone can verify with a little investigation, that today's psychiatry is filled with pseudoscience, and desperately missing the mark on treating the worst mentally ill patients. In fact, the model for American mental health care does not typically include therapy to examine the root of problems. Instead, it is designed to diagnose symptoms and then treat the systems with drugs, bypassing causation altogether.
Further, people coming to therapists for mental health issues are often prescribed drugs which end up creating more problems then the person originally had. For example,
90% of maniac shooters are said to have been on psychiatric medication, or coming off of it, and under the care of a therapist. This problem is explained by psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, M.D., in
Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide, and Crime.
Obviously, the model is broken, but the medical scientific community is not stepping up to the plate. We have a very dangerous crisis--while 20% of US population is on psych meds, almost 100% of the violent shooters are from this group. Clearly, either the medical community is not interested in dealing with these people from a behaviorist angle, or the money generated by big-pharma for these meds is corrupting the players. So where is real science when we need it?
D. Economics
One of the recurring tropes of modern economics is that socialism is not only "fairer," but it works better than capitalism, too--in some special karmic or natural law sense. But, despite this claim, successful examples of Marxism is hard to find in the real world. In fact, the two most Marxist countries in history--the USSR and communist China, both collapsed under the weight of failed economics.
But recently, a French rock star economist named Thomas Piketty wrote
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which claimed that inequality was being created in the new capitalist economy. (
review) Progressive academics, meaning most professors, and the media, were overjoyed by his results, which seemed to verify Karl Marx's works. Especially since Piketty cited much research, and claimed the book had unprecedented depth. In fact, the NY Times economist Paul Krugman claimed that economics would never be seen the same way again.
But the
Financial Times has done a deep fact-check of Pikkety's work and finds that the research he cites simply does not support his conclusions. But given the repeated failure of socialism in history, why would anyone have put faith in Pikkety's rickety work? Further, why does America's current government seem infatuated with socialist economic models, given past failures? Can science not save us here?
Conclusion
For science to be returned to its proper place as a tool, we must refuse to let it be used in propaganda. We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye towards the so-called scientific claims of others, especially when they are trying to sell us something--even saving the earth. Instead, we must continue to employ science to test and reform our human activities. In the meantime we must demand scientific analysis of all our most important and sacred undertakings. And science must be a foundation of this, but a science that always employs the scientific method--even when it's not convenient.
