How do we approach science properly speaking and not just its devolution into cult?

August 25, 2022 Rachel M. Coleman Essay, Opinion 31 Print

It has become fairly common in these post-Covid times to distinguish very carefully between science and scientism, or between science and The ScienceTM. The distinction generally goes something like this: Science is a method for gaining objective, observable knowledge about the world through devising experiments with repeatable results, accruing over time, and supposed to be self-correcting as our knowledge and understanding of the observable world grows more detailed.

Scientism, or The ScienceTM, on the other hand is more like a cult: one blindly follows what one is told is true, one may not question the narrative of the leaders (the lab-coat wearers), and one must even have some kind of an outward signifier of participation (in the case of Covid: masks, vaccination cards, and boosters).

To be sure, scientism is dangerous and can devolve into the absurd, such as when Anthony Fauci declared that attacks on himself were attacks on science (one wonders what the reaction would be if any pontiff proclaimed that to attack himself would be to attack God), and it is good and fair that these distinctions be articulated, and criticisms of the cult-like actions of those that claim to follow The ScienceTM are being made. There is, however, a subtler problem, one with which we as a Church have been dealing for at least the past three centuries and one which I think has yet to be resolved. That is, how do we approach science properly speaking and not just its devolution into cult?

Much of the commentary I have read over the past two years critical of the way we have been handling this pandemic has been prefaced with something along the lines of “I am vaccinated, but…” or “I believe the science, however…”; that is to say, there is always some deference paid to the reigning scientific regime—a regime, I might add, may have unleashed this pandemic on the world in the first place. But this kind of offering at the altar of science before any attempt to criticize pre-existed Covid. Any theoretical, philosophical, or theological criticism of science as a method seems as if it must also be accompanied by a qualification along the lines of the author acknowledging that he quite enjoys his car, or artificial light, or the benefits of modern medicine. The toll has to be paid before moving ahead.

This kind of obligation needs to stop. Living in an order shaped by modern science and the technology that has resulted therefrom does not mean we cannot criticize or even outright condemn that very order. The deference showed to the modern scientific and resulting technological regime betrays a much deeper problem that I believe infects the entire world. But I will limit myself here to the Church: we have ceded judgment about reality to the modern scientific method, and in so doing imply that we do not actually or fully believe what the Church has to say about reality.

Criticisms of the modern scientific method have more or less been co-terminus with its existence. Goethe is notable as one who saw with great insight that isolating a part in order to know more about the whole will always produce a distorted understanding of both, thus his emphasis in studying wholes in nature.1 There was already resistance to Descartes’s splitting of the world into res cogitans and res extensa even as he proposed it. But in the West in particular, Enlightenment ideas of what it means to know something took over what it means to know anything at all. And such that knowledge effectively became what it means to make something perform a certain action, whether that meant melting down celluloid to produce what we now call plastic, capturing nitrogen to put into our soil so that we can grow things, or knowing which inputs will get the desired output from human immune systems so that we can fend off disease.

This shift from knowledge as understanding to knowledge as making has been traced and analyzed with great insight many times (not least in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity). Indeed, on some level, we know the problem with the radical shift that takes place in the Enlightenment and therefore of what it means to know something: the isolation of anything apart from its greater environment may convey a certain kind of mechanical knowledge about that thing to me, but apart from its community I do not actually know that much about the thing.

For example: it is true that if we artificially isolate nitrogen and introduce it into our soil that our plants will likely grow more fully and rapidly—under laboratory conditions. But it is also true that if we introduce nitrogen into our soil year after year in the form of fertilizer, our crops grow weaker—their roots do not go down as far in search of the nutrients they need, and so we end up producing weaker crops that are more dependent on human intervention and thus a bad cycle of intervention-dependent fragile crops feeds into itself (and, handily, into the coffers of companies such as Monsanto). It is in a lab that we figured out nitrogen is a key component for healthy crops, but the necessary spatio- and temporal isolation in that same lab prevents us from seeing the full picture, which would include the fact that plants grow in an environment rather than simply as a result of human inputs.

The issue, put somewhat oversimply, is that the modern scientific method has no other way of understanding the world than through the lens of human input and therefore necessarily cannot see the larger whole, which of course includes the fact that there is always much more outside of human control than inside of it. This then becomes a problem that we must solve through technology: we try to place more and more of the world under our control, so we can predict the outputs. This a losing game, and always will be, as should now be evident to anyone paying attention for, apparently, in trying to “get ahead” of the next pandemic in a lab in Wuhan, we actually unleashed it on the world.

Again, a good deal of this has already been articulated by others more insightful than I am. But notice what I just outlined above is not a result of scientism, but rather of what we call science. Science and technology as we know them change the whole world into what Heidegger called “standing reserve”: material there for human input and desired output, with no intrinsic order or nature of its own—no “self” for humans to know and come to understand, rather just “stuff” for humans to use. And because there is no intrinsic order, because there is no whole in which man participates (perhaps in a particularly wonderful way, but in which he participates nonetheless), man then has no choice but to try and order (read: control) the chaos in which he thinks he finds himself.

A narrow and distorted worldview

This is the vision of reality the modern scientific method bestows on us, and it is to this vision we give deference every time we pay tribute to the regime of science by tempering our critiques with choruses of “but I am not criticizing the lightbulb.” Maybe I am indeed criticizing the lightbulb, as it has reordered our vision of reality such that we no longer pay heed to the sun, and therefore to natural human rhythms, and has allowed us to believe that second and third shifts are perfectly normal, and therefore induced many of our fellow human beings to work long hours in factories or fulfillment warehouses at night, and led us to thinking this is not only normal but right. Perhaps the lightbulb was a mistake: we should be able to discuss this freely in order to understand just how distorted our worldview has become, rather than being constantly afraid of not being taken seriously by a worldview that does not in fact take the given world and order in which we live seriously.

This does seem to be what is at the root of the tribute-making—the desire to be taken seriously. We think that in order to be a part of adult conversations about the world and what goes on in it that we must tip our hat, so to speak, in one way or another to the techno-scientific paradigm dictating for so long what it means to have so-called adult conversations. Sure, we can have our metaphysical and theological conversations, but when we get down to brass tacks—if we want people to pay attention to what we have to say—we must at least lay down some coin on the altar of the Enlightenment vision of the world, at the very least to say how much we enjoy the products of that narrow and distorted worldview.

The problem, of course, is that it is a worldview. Science as we understand it today is not a neutral method by which to observe the world (as it is so often painted), but rather most fundamentally a way of seeing and understanding the world and its order (or lack thereof) that then determines our actions. Make no mistake: what we understand something to be determines how we act on or toward it. If the whole world really is standing reserve for us to do with as we will, then there are no natural guides or limits on what we should do to or with anything in it—indeed, there really is no such thing as the natural at all, for the word “nature” indicates an order which precedes and exceeds man (natura: the character or constitution of thing, from the Latin natus: born).

If we, however, do understand that nature—that is, a given order—exists, then the implicit directive in that knowledge is we must pay attention and give heed to that order precisely because it precedes and exceeds us. Again, to put this somewhat oversimply, there are two competing worldviews here: man controls everything because there is no order in the world unless and until he wills it, or man stands and participates in an already given order which he ignores at his peril.

Stopping the erosion of nature

What, the reader may ask, does this have to do with the Church? What I have just laid out above shows that what we are dealing with is not a method of study of the world that at times happens to produce some unexpectedly poor results, but rather an entirely different vision of reality than the one the Church holds and knows to be true. Many of the Enlightenment thinkers were in large part self-conscious about this: they wanted to break with tradition (Tradition) and conceive an entirely new way of looking at and dealing with the world—one in which man gives and controls its order. But the Church holds that the world is given by God and therefore the order of nature is not something to be made but an infinitely fruitful gift that man has been given to know, understand, and, yes, have dominion over—but this last directive only in and through the first two.

The Christian worldview is not the only one to recognize that nature has an order which we must know and understand before we are able to work with its ends for our benefit. But it is the worldview that recognizes this truth most radically, since the Church recognizes the source of the natural order: God himself. And it seems the Church may also be the last and strongest groyne preventing the complete erosion of nature by the techno-scientific paradigm.

I am not arguing that the Church and all who wish to think with and in her move to some kind of Amish-like existence, foregoing anything that results from the techno-scientific worldview (though perhaps we might at least seriously consider the wisdom in rejecting any product of such a worldview). For it seems to me she is never called simply to remove herself from the world—this we have been taught since her birth, and has been affirmed throughout the Tradition.

What I am arguing, however, is that the Church cease engaging uncritically with this alternative worldview and all that has resulted therefrom, and certainly to stop being embarrassed about her critique. Yes, we need to deal with in and in the world, for the Church was born for the world’s salvation. But we need not be embarrassed by what the Church knows to be true.

Any time that tribute, as I have been calling it, is paid to the techno-scientific worldview, it subtly undermines the vision of reality the Church has been given. It is not simply scientism or The ScienceTM that we must criticize, but science itself—that is, this method of obtaining information about the world that allows us to think things with natures are just parts for our disposal. Because it is science that has recast our vision of the world as something that can be picked apart, toyed with, and reassembled at our will. This is, to repeat, antithetical to the Christian vision of reality as an order given by God for man to work with and in order ultimately come to know God himself (Rom. 1:20).

Most of all we need, I think, not just to be critical of this vision of the world and recognize it as such, but what is more necessary as a Church is for us to remember and be confident in the knowledge that the Church indeed does have final and fullest word on reality precisely because it has been bestowed on her by her Bridegroom. This does not, of course, mean that the Lord has given his Bride instructions for the best agricultural practices in every climate on earth. Rather, the Church has been given the certain knowledge that everything in the physical world has a metaphysical nature created by God himself and is therefore something which we must respect and to which we must pay attention in order to know the world at all (and in so doing, we can then figure out the best agricultural practices for each climate).

This means that while engaging in critiques of science or its products to remember that it is not necessary to justify the Church’s full understanding of reality—a reality she knows is made up of more than just the immediately visible and otherwise sensible, a reality that is saturated with the metaphysical, which both grounds and bears upon the physical—to the incomplete techno-scientific model of reality.

The framework for reality on which modern science relies is far too narrow—far too small for what reality actually is—and the Church is probably one of the only places (and persons) left on earth that knows this and carries it in living memory. As such, it is her duty to speak this truth, not by reducing what she knows to fit into an insufficient framework (for this is what we do when we attempt to make arguments, e.g., about the inviolability of life based only on biology), but by proclaiming and arguing it based on her full vision of reality.

I am always struck, when I read Church Fathers, such as St. Athanasius: he did not try to fit the Incarnation and Resurrection into the framework of his time. Rather, he showed that the framework of the time was totally insufficient to reality itself; he showed that reality is far more than we thought it was—that indeed the physical world could not just come into contact with, but welcome what is truly divine—and that is what was and continues to be compelling.

The Church has a science a problem—and that is not what she gives too little heed to modern science, but perhaps that she pays it too much. Of course it is her duty to engage with and understand the world better than it knows itself, which includes understanding modern science from within—indeed in some sense the Church must become the “expert” on modern science precisely because she “sees more” (to quote from Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Epilogue) than modern science. She can see behind and beyond the modern scientific method and its judgments about reality, and she understand it better than it understands itself because she sees the whole that it, by its very nature, cannot.

The Church has a duty to show the world the truth of reality, which is always much more than our ideas about it, or our attempts to control it. And her duty, it seems to me, includes the full proclamation and confidence that her vision and understanding of reality as a gift from the Creator, in its full metaphysical and theological depth, is the final judgment on what is right and just, not the scientific and medical experts.

Science is not a neutral method of observing reality, but rather a way of viewing the world, and as such, like any worldview, it can easily slide into believing it and only it sees the world truly. It is vulnerable, like any other worldview, to its own ism-ification. Only the Church is immune to this (and only because she is born from the side of Christ). We cede too much ground if and when we try to fit the Church’s vision of reality into an insufficient framework in order to be taken seriously.

We do not ever need to justify ourselves or our understanding to the techno-scientific model of reality, rather we need to justify our knowledge to reality itself—that is the only measure by which knowledge and understanding can be judged, and the Church first and foremost performs this judgment best because it is she who sees the whole.

1 Goethe is also worth mentioning because his thought has generated a way of observing nature—which we may call science—that has continued to this day, though has been significantly outpaced by more Darwinian-influenced strains of observation and theory. For more on a Goethean-inspired science of wholes, see the work of the brilliant biologists at The Nature Institute in Ghent, NY.

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In a letter to his friend Solovine, written four years before his own death, Albert Einstein explained:

“It cannot be helped . . .The strange thing is that we have to be satisfied with recognizing the ‘miracle’ without having any legitimate way of getting any further [rejection of metaphysics?]. I have to add the last point explicitly, in case you think that I am so weakened by age that I have fallen into the hands of the priests” (Letter of March 30, 1952, cited in Stanley L. Jaki, “The Absolute Beneath the Relative, and Other Essays,” Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1988).

Einstein believed in God, but not a personal God.

My sense is that (theologically speaking) he was a Monist, thinking finally that the miracle of an ever-more rational physical universe, and God, are one and the same “thing.” How, then, to re-establish what the Church means when we say in (one of the four forms of) the Mass: “in all things, AND above all things?” That the ultimate reality of God is not another “thing” at all.

Perhaps one link is by pointing to the “miracle” of the historical and absolutely unique Incarnation, which is not replicable as needed under the experimental scientific method (only a “method”)? While the best of modern science can never actually prove the authenticity of the image on the Shroud, following its own method of negation, the scientific method cannot disprove the event of Christ, either.

Christ in the consecrated host, “fallen into the hands of the priests!”

I’ve commented previously on my conversion from a young pro-life atheist and physicist to a man of faith, however flawed. It is hard to honestly examine the physical universe and not discover majestic intelligence in its order. God rest the soul of the great Monsignor William Smith and his great apologetics for pro-life values on popular TV talk shows decades ago, which began my process of considering that there were Catholics with coherent arguments. The third part of my conversion was meeting my future wife, whose kindheartedness reinforced my understanding that truth flows from a purity of heart, not the many corruptions of intellect.

Everyone is a sinner, and every sinner resists what God is trying to tell us from time to time, well, maybe frequently. Not to pick on one of my scientific idols, but Einstein was no different. Not that I assume my being a better man, but when I detect order in nature, it suggests to me the likelihood of a personal God. A perfect intelligence would also have to be personal. We often turn to abstraction and seek to remain in abstraction to avoid the personal. We avoid the personal to avoid shame, often struggling to sustain this avoidance. We have a need to avoid shame because we earned our shame and have no way out of it without taking the final step to the personal God we spend so much effort in life keeping lonely and imposing the same on ourselves in the process.

Great article that reminded me of Augusto Del Noce’s The Age of Secularization. I am not sure about Rachel’s definition of “scientism,” though, which I think is too narrow. I believe the accepted meaning of scientism would include her separate analysis of science.

“And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

Tolkien, J. R. R.. The Lord of the Rings (p. 259). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

A brilliant essay. Let’s have more entries from this thinker.

The final paragraph spells out the truth clearly. “We do not ever need to justify ourselves or our understanding to the techno-scientific model of reality, rather we need to justify our knowledge to reality itself—that is the only measure by which knowledge and understanding can be judged, and the Church first and foremost performs this judgment best because it is she who sees the whole.”

Now, please, send this essay off to Pontiff Francis as he clearly was in the dark about Covid and its salvific vaccines.

One recent thinker and writer of note who challenges the autonomy of the scientific method is Walker Percy. Trained as a medical doctor and widely read in philosophy and semiotics, he, like Dr. Coleman, made the distinction between science and scientism. The former is the real deal; the latter is a tendentious, ideologically driven perversion of it. See, for example, Percy’s “Culture: The Antinomy of the Scientific Method” in The Message in the Bottle and “The Fateful Rift: The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Mind,” in Signposts in a Stange Land.

The Church has no problem with science. We all, however, have a problem with scientism.

Your article brings needed attention to science vs “the science” and especially the conundrum facing Church leadership. However, you risk the credibility of the entire article when you wandered away from your expertise. The comments on the nitrogen cycle as related to plant use is not accurate and reference to Monsanto shows you have swallowed the entire false narrative of the greeenies. Tom Koranek Certified Professional Agronomist with 50 years of practical hands on field experience.

I am sorry, but while I agree with most of what has been written, I believe that the Church has a bigger problem. That is cowardice. The Church hierarchy has decided that all decisions must flow from one central authority, and that authority, the Pope, lacks the courage to stand up for religious principles. The Vatican is not run by stupid people, and most know exactly what the scientific method requires. They know that the secular governments that closed down churches and trampled over the rights of individuals had nothing to support the claims that the jabs (note that the mRNA jabs did not fit the definition of vaccine, so it was changed by the CDC) were needed or wise.

Perhaps Catholics need to read Michael Bulgakov or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. As Bulgakov writes in his great book, The Master and Margarita, truth does matter, and cowardice is the greatest sin.

Science; is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. So, evolution theory relates to the physical and is testable. Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge.

Man is more than a physical being; he possesses a soul. The soul is not part of evolution, rather it is the unchanging image of God, born anew in each newly created individual and possesses a divine spark, waiting to be ignited by the Holy Spirit (Truth). We are all born with the ability to discern the good or bad within our own life-given situations.

Recently I posted a post under the link below that relates to what the ancients including the early Greeks and Egyptians understood of the soul/divine spark in relation to dreams and visions. Here is some further information that conveys an understanding of *Cerberus who in Greek Mythology is a monstrous watchdog with three (or in some accounts fifty) heads, which guarded the entrance to Hade. Whom I had interpreted as The Otra (signifying other or others) in my post vi the link below which should be read before continuing.

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/08/02/on-musk-markets-and-man/#comment-325730

On another site, Timothy Fries says “I do remember flying dreams as a young man when I was starting graduate school, in particular,

Dream Structure (DS) holds the consciousness in place within a dream. In young adults, this structure has not been fully formed although in reality it is never fully formed as the consciousness/soul is motile within DS.

Flying dreams occur when DS structure is being breached and relates to a release of ‘adrenalin which is a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, especially in conditions of stress or possibly ‘in this case one of flying an increase in the ‘alertness (Arousal) of the mind creating a gentle pleasurable surge. I say this because this occurs when one consciously participates in a dream.

While similar occurrences originate from being aroused in relation to the Male and Female sexual function as in erections or orgasms by creating adrenalin that is reflected in a feeling of flying (Of different intensity) with given imagery relating to our own perception of flying in the physical world. While the Otra attempts to still/quieten one’s consciousness within the dream state, often to no avail as one would normally awaken rather than continue within the dream as ‘in this case ‘ The Otra knowingly accepts that it can no longer maintain this allusion within a gradually awakening (Increasing alertness of mind). So flying dreams appear to be driven by arousal.

A comparable dream that many have, relates to fear as in one of trying to control a runaway car, bike, horse, etc, usually on a straight road, pathway etc, often with a downward incline with barriers to either side as in Walls, fences, houses, trees etc.

When the brakes don’t work or pulling on the reins has no effect etc, anxiety then drives fear which in turn increases levels of adrenaline creating an impression of increasing speed within the dream. (In a structured/controlled dream, the brakes and reins would have an effect.) The Otra has to regain control but in this instance, it is most difficult to achieve nevertheless the Otra via a subservient (Lesser) entity creates an obstacle at the bottom end of the road, a house, level crossing gates, wall etc; just as the dreamer is about to hit the obstacle another twined conjoined subservient entity (Known as *Cerberus* in Greek Mythology-) unseen by the dreamer creates an unrealistic opportunistic opening (Road, etc), for the Dreamer to turn into.

In this given instance he does so and in doing so creates three possible outcomes that interrelate with the dreamer’s unseen body position and his action and personal perception within the dream. If he hits the barrier (Hot spot) full on so to say he will awaken with a very sharp jolt accompanied by a feeling /state of Shock. Alternatively, the dreamer will lose control of the ‘vehicle’ which will create a tumbling effect in his consciousness while his adrenaline level will lessen slightly but not sufficiently to avoid contact with the Barrier HS which will be reflected in the intensity of the awakening jolt.

In the third scenario, The Dreamer turns skids while almost over turning but not quite this reduces the adrenaline giving the Otra the time to create a dampener as in shrubbery/bushes which will decrease the moving vehicle (Car/Horse) reflecting a lowering level of adrenaline, and at some point, the dreamer will return to the normal confines of DS in REM sleep or awaken gently while probably drifting back into the dream state (Not REM sleep although this may shortly follow)

This Jolt can be seen at times when we observe someone falling into stage two sleep while sitting in a chair but this Jolt is not related to a stressful/adrenalin-increasing situation rather the sleeper has touched a Hot Spot (Awakening spot) these HS relate to body position and cannot be seen by a by the dreamer, but they can be discerned by a conscience mind within a dream as body position can be deduced before awakening.

*In Greek mythology, *Cerberus* is often referred to as the hound of Hades and is often (But not always) depicted as a three-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving.

kevin your brother In Christ

And, in less than 913 words, your relevant point again is what?

Thank you for your comment ‘anonymous but legion’

‘Scientism tends to deeply depreciate the belief that knowledge can come from moral, aesthetic, and religious experience/insight and sources’ Which I have attempted to demonstrate otherwise. While the article gave me the opportunity to now complete my original post, given via the link in my post above.

kevin your brother In Christ

Good observation. Maybe the main point can be found in one of the links to other posts on other websites that contain posts with links to other posts with additional links and so on in an endless maze of confusion. It’s best not to look for clarity in the midst of deep confusion. It won’t be found there.

Kevin, I’ll need to read your in-depth post a few times to really appreciate it. What a wonderful contributor you are to CWR. Bless you always.

You have more than one jump! The lord has given you intellect and desire to know Him.

The subject matter is somewhat out of my purview so I didn’t want to comment, never the less, reply to someone else’s comments. God always puts matters into perspective:

Psalm 111:2 Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.

Job 38:4-30 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, …

Ecclesiastes 8:17 Then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.

Isaiah 40:12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?

Colossians 1:17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

Hebrews 3:4 (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.)

Psalm 104:5 He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.

Proverbs 14:15 The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.

Blessings and the peace that passes all understanding.

It’s been a while but what I remember from the agriculture-related classes I attended is that plants don’t really care where their nitrogen comes from as long as it’s present & accessible. Soil types, soil compaction, PH, organic material, & bacteria matter though. And plant roots need oxygen more than anything else. And what’s really cool is that lightning storms release nitrogen in a plant usable form: “Plants absorb nitrates in the soil and when we eat plants, we get the nitrogen in a form that our bodies can use. Plants also cannot make use of the nitrogen in the atmosphere so fertilizer is one way to add nitrogen to the soil.

Lightning is another natural way. Nitrogen in the atmosphere can be transformed into a plant-usable form, a process called nitrogen fixation, by lightning.

Each bolt of lightning carries electrical energy that is powerful enough to break the strong bonds of the nitrogen molecule in the atmosphere. Once split, the nitrogen atoms quickly bond to oxygen in the atmosphere, forming nitrogen dioxide.

Along with the lightning in the cloud are cloud droplets and raindrops. Nitrogen dioxide dissolves in water, creating nitric acid, which forms nitrates. The nitrates fall to the ground in raindrops and seep into the soil in a form that can be absorbed by plants.

Lightning does add nitrogen to the soil, as nitrates dissolve in precipitation. This helps plants, but microorganisms in the soil do the vast majority of nitrogen fixation.” https://wxguys.ssec.wisc.edu/2018/07/09/lightning/

You were an able student.

“Scientism is dangerous and can devolve into the absurd, such as when Anthony Fauci declared that attacks on himself were attacks on science”(R Coleman). The essayist theorizes we need to perceive a worldview that is reality itself. Depending on what we wish to convey, crafts our world view. Science and The Science are an antagonism of pure statistical data and adherence to the data. Fauci in a sense was correct, that [as he frequently reminded] we rely on the data available, and with a new field of study [Covid] there are incoming variables we discover en route. Mistakes and adjustments are necessary in advancing our scientific ability to best respond. In that sense he was right. Persons who criticized him actually assumed the mindset of Scientism, that all had to be perfect and adhered to absent of the learning curve. A world view of reality is complex. Physical science provides info that would modify religious views as did Galileo for the Church. Man as the center of the universe consequently did not hinge on Earth being the center of the cosmos, rather more emphatically man being created in God’s image. Religion and science collide at times Einstein Flummoxed by simultaneity of causal effect of two events [many] light years distant. Scary, he said. A realistic, relevant worldview would mesh both physical science and theological science. Unpredictable events were likely Einstein’s rationale for belief in an amorphous divinity. Galileo, who opened the mind to scientific research and discovery, was very religious.

“Man as the center of the universe consequently did not hinge on Earth being the center of the cosmos…”But, now we find, under the post-Copernican Theory of Relativity, that any point (!) in the cosmos (including the earth!) can be the center of an inertial frame of reference. Ptolemy was right!

And, culturally, every narcissist and de-spiritualized cranial mechanism can then decide that it, and it alone, is the center of the cosmos…Hence, the immortalized words of Ayatollah Anthony Kennedy in the Supreme Court ruling, Casey v Ferguson (1992): “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence [!], of meaning [!], of the universe [!], and of the mystery of human life [!].”

But, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization has at least removed the Constitutional veneer from this modern and narcissist mass hysteria. (Noting that in physics, “mass” is a quantitative measure of inertia, a fundamental property of all mere matter.)

Perhaps a best first premise, as a start for a realistic worldview would be what John Paul II had hoped would be developed, a Christian anthropology.

Scientism, Albert Einstein, “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it”, V.S., Science, Neils Bohr, “It is meaningless to assign Reality to the universe in the absence of observation; in the intervals between measurement, quantum systems truly exist as a fuzzy mixture of all possible properties.”

Did you know that decades ago, any science major college student, had to take a Scientism course on the philosophy of Albert Einstein, which taught that the universe still exists when man is not looking at it? Talk about teaching the exact opposite of what science is meant to be.

The debate between, Scientism Albert Einstein and Science Neils Bohr, has led to the most fierce, greatest, scientific research, experimentation and discussion ever, over the past century. Please watch the following Space Time PBS video on Albert Einstein V.S Niels Bohr. According to Space Time PBS, Niels Bohr, with his ‘Peek A Boo Universe’ a universe which does not exist when man is not looking at it, has pretty much obliterated Albert Einstein’s Scientism philosophical hopes that the universe does continue to exist when man is not looking at it.

https://youtu.be/tafGL02EUOA

As of 2019, MIT has accomplished dual realities in the lab. This scientific accomplishment mimics God’s, Miracle of the Sun, in which 60,000 people in Fatima experienced one reality, while the rest of the world experienced a different reality.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4IbOzuNlmE

Science itself shows us that our reality is more like tv picture, with God holding the remote control. God can show two different people, two different realities, or all the people on earth a unique reality all their own, using the same subatomic particles of the universe. Differing realities only collapse into one common reality, when observers (people) discuss with one another what they are experiencing. Wow!

For Christian Creationists, science telling us that the universe and conscious man cannot exist separately from one another, means that there is no universe before Adam opened his eyes to experience our universe. With the exception of God performing a six day miracle on the week Adam opened His eyes.

In the ‘double slit’ experiment, subatomic particles go back in physical time to create the past, present and future, which an observer will experience. If the observer is looking at a star billions of light years into our past, then subatomic particles, even billions of lightyears into our past, at that moment, make that past which becomes the observer’s reality. When a star is no longer being observed, then it, along with its past, no longer exists. Again, two, or many, different observers can observe two, or many, different, billions of years in our pasts, realities, using the same subatomic particles. Wow!

So how did subatomic particles ‘evolve’ to know how to do all this? They didn’t! Scientists are looking at the Omnificent Power of God when they observe the capabilities of subatomic particles in our realities.

Go Niels Bohr! Thank you for your persistence in simply accepting what the scientific data tells you. A big win for the world over the Cult who worships the Scientism philosophy of Albert Einstein.

Go God! Our Glorious, Magnificent Creator of all that Exists! Hallelujah! Thank you God, for our existence.

Great article. I’ll only add that the reason for much of this is fear of human respect. The desire to be respectable undermines Catholicism as surely as it kills conservatism.

Modern history has witnessed the replacement of religious dogma with scientific dogma. This is what many people have bought into so as to conform to the notion that one must be modern and scientifically minded in order to contribute towards human progress. Now scientific dogma needs an ideology to support it. Today that ideological term is called scientific anti realism. Scientific anti realism means that reality is anything that the scientist says it is based strictly on their experimental findings, models and theories. The world therefore becomes an object of scientific reduction and study to be known and understood strictly in scientific terms devised by the scientist. This way the thought loop of scientific anti realism is complete and scientific dogma is vindicated by it’s own interior logic. To be modern is to be scientific and to be scientific is to be modern! Congratulations you have now been scientifically dogmatized!

The scientific method in its most basic method is comprised of collection of data, a formulation of hypothesis, the testing of that hypothesis, and if that hypothesis fails it then needs to be refined or abandoned.

It’s a methodology that can be applied to any field of human inquiry and is certainly not limited to science. It is called the scientific method only because science embraced it first and made it the fundamental basis of its practice.

Science makes progress by accepting and learning from mistakes in it body of knowledge caused by either incorrect data or incomplete data. This became quite apparent to the public during the pandemic as new evidence was being accumulated medical scientists changed their advice. The most notable in this regard was the initial advice that masks weren’t necessary (as was the case in the SARS 2003 outbreak) but when evidence was accumulated that spread could occur asymptomatically then the advice to the public changed. While many people viewed this as great weakness in the science, I viewed it as evidence that science was working, and looking at the growing body of knowledge.

Dr. Fauci made recommendations based upon the best science he, and the CDC, had at that time. It wasn’t that he wanted people to mask, or wanted people to get vaccinated, it’s that the science showed that these actions worked. But people attacked him personally. In a way it’s no different than people attacking Darwin for evolution.

Also I’m puzzled by your use of the expression TheScienceTM. Does that mean something that I’m missing?

Fauci’s track record indicates that he was rarely driven by scientific data or commonsense. Quite the contrary.

John Paul II, writing in CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE, pointed out that the men of the Enlightenment followed the philosophy of thought, while turning their backs on the philosophy of existence (metaphysics) of Aquinas.

Great article. Thank you, Rachael.

Darwin stated that you would have to “shake the entire framework of the globe” in order for entire genera of fauna from the Pleistocene (Mammoth) age to have been destroyed. Yet he was beholden to the geologist gradualists, who could not concede that the Great Deluge actually destroyed the Mammoth age fauna, as a number of skilled paleontologists believed. Thus, Darwin could not explain what happened to the range of Pleistocene fauna that were destroyed. He probably didn’t want to be assigned to another voyage on the “Beagle.”

So we only hear of “climate change,” while Lev. 26.3-6 is relegated to the irrelevant. (Good agricultural weather is dependent on keeping the eternal covenant with God.) The “calming of the storm” has been turned into an almost mythological event by modern science.

The Shroud of Turin has the same blood stains on the head, and the same AB+ blood type as appear on the Sudarium of Oviedo, Spain. Even so, when articles appear concerning the question of the authenticity of the Shroud, this information is left out. Science?

And remember that AB+ is only 3% of the population…AND the “universal donor!”

I meant to type “geologic gradualists.”

The Mammoths discovered in northern Siberia were usually buried in gravel and loam — some in an apparent swimming position — and then very quickly frozen. (As reported by Sir Henry Howorth, in THE MAMMOTH AND THE FLOOD.) A hypothetical (as explained by Sir Henry in two volumes) ice age did not destroy the Pleistocene fauna. (And then, as he noted, spare the hummingbirds and orchids of Brazil.)

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