Abandoning Science (At Our Peril)

Apparently the quest for truth in nature has always been at odds with the belief in spirituality. Until this year, we could all see one notorious example in the Scopes Monkey Trial, where some brave educators butted heads with some real narrow-minded legislators about the teaching of the Theory of Evolution.  Now it appears that our current political climate in America dictates that we abandon all scientific inquiry because somehow one small part of it regarding our changing climate has been deemed a hoax.

As if that notion was not toxic on its own, we should note that many deniers have more faith in God then they do with science.  Don’t get me wrong: faith in something, deity or not, is good.  However, there is no reason to think that a belief in science is automatically a war against religious beliefs.  The relationship is more symbiotic than we think.

So let’s just pretend for a moment that you are one of these science deniers, not just climate change deniers, but one who totally rejects the accumulated knowledge which man has gained in this discipline.  You behave and conduct yourselves as if you have no use for science. Indeed, the current American regime seems hell bent on turning back the clock of human progress just so they can save a few bucks.   

Scientists are being dismissed from the Environmental Protection Agency and a group of medical consultants resigned from a task force on HIV and AIDS because the current leadership just doesn’t give a damn about the issue.

If you are truly one who believes that science is a hoax, then may I suggest that you strip off all your clothes and move to the nearest open field where all of the advantages of science cannot possibly touch your narrow-minded ideas of living.  There in the open it will be just you and your…beliefs.

After all, science allowed mankind to identify problems,  formulate hypothesis to solve the problem,  conduct research to confirm a solution to the problem, and finally implement the solution to overcome the problem.

For example, that clothing I suggested that you take off and discard.  Why do we wear clothing? Because someone in our past realized that clothing would keep us warm and protect us from nature.  Man saw a problem, figured out that we could keep ourselves warm and protected using the same furs that lower life forms use for protection.  Then later man used science to figure out how to fashion cloth from animal fur or even from a substance that comes out their anus.  Or later when man figured out how to use chemicals to make synthetic cloth for our clothes.

Or how about another facet of human survival: nutrition and nourishment.  Man figured out many of the same animals could satisfy our hunger with the meat from their bodies and use fire to warm the meat for easier digestion.  Or even formulated a way to grow crops which we realized we needed to supplement our diets.   And what if water was not readily available to nourish ourselves and our crops?  We figured out the problem of irrigation and the movement of mass quantities of water to ourselves and to our crops. 

Or what about the problem of moving the food to where we lived?  We realized the concept of motion with the invention of the wheel.  From there it was just a short step of a millennium (or a dozen millennia) to develop more ways to transport our food, ourselves and other commodities which we deemed necessary for survival.  

Then we transported ideas, those products of our own imagination, great distances so they could be used by other homo sapiens so they too could survive and prosper.   We did this with the harnessing of electricity, storing it in batteries so we could move more people, more food, and more ideas.

Or how about shelter?  What about the roof over our heads that is supported by four walls to further protect us from the elements?  Yes, science enabled us to figure all of that out, too.

This could go on for a long time with an endless supply of examples, but the point is we were able to do all this using the discipline of science.  And how did we think of science and all the fascinating inventions we use to make our lives sustainable?   We, mankind, did it because we have a highly developed brain.  And where did we get this highly developed brain?

God. 

The same God many people believe is being destroyed by the science they fear.  People, God cannot be destroyed.  Your beliefs can be challenged certainly, but if you fear science will defeat God, your God, then you don’t really know as much about a supreme deity as you may think!

Many of us are now of the mind that people who are at war with science are, oh to put this diplomatically, dim-witted.   Or as my late father might have said, “If they had a brain they’d be dangerous.”

Think about it.  Why would God give us a highly-developed brain just so we can use it to destroy Him?  It wouldn’t make sense.  Besides, we’ve been taught that God would see through our measly attempts to end his existence long before we could carry out the devious plot any way.

So, go forth and abandon science.  Just let me know if you do strip off your clothes to live exposed to all the elements.  I will want to seek you out and I will bring my camera.

(Thank you for reading.   Just sayin’….)