But in another sense, mountains are indeed more complex than they seem. They are made of molecules, which are, in turn, made of atoms. When we see a big block of rock, it is easy to think that it was simple to build. When you understand the amazing complexity of its components, its simple existence is startling.

The simplest material in a waterfall is water, and a water molecule is amazingly dynamic. We can see that it is in motion and are not surprised that it is made of dynamic components. It is astonishing to consider that the rock-solid material in the mountain consists of equally dynamic atoms and molecules. Everything in and around us follows the same rules. Our solid bones and our sweat are both made of molecules containing rotating atoms.

Those who insist on using evolution to explain everything must start with the absence of living things on Earth. Mountains and water, but no life forms. A Greek named Parmenides described the problem with this argument centuries ago. Whether you are considering the beginning of the universe or the development of life on Earth,

“Nothing comes from nothing” (Latin: ex nihilo nihil fit) is a philosophical concept first argued by Parmenides and intertwined with ancient Greek cosmology. This concept suggests that there is no transition from a non-existent world to an existent one, as creation cannot originate from nothingness.

I spent my career in the computer industry studying how they work, so I could develop tools to manage tasks and make life easier for people to use them. Everything in computers, and now cell phones, is the result of sophisticated development, cooperation, and standardization. There had to be agreement on the bit pattern for the letter “A” before it could be sent out on one company’s computer and read in by someone else.

I participated in stage plays as a child and saw what was needed to put on a play. That was also more complicated than it looks.

I go through all that to say that nothing is easy to produce or happens accidentally. Even if we ignore that everything consists of atoms and molecules, there is still significant effort, planning, and coordination required to produce even the simplest things.

I get to brag here about a brand-new granddaughter. There’s the old spiritual that says, “Every time I hear a newborn baby cry, I believe.” We tracked the miracle of a baby’s development. When my daughter first told us the news, she was talking about a sonogram picture of a creature the size of a peanut. That was our name for the child for a while. We asked, “How’s Peanut doing?” Now she has all the pieces she needs.

Many years ago, I studied how a computer went from empty and doing nothing to fully capable and operational. That was exciting. It is trivial compared to what is needed to go from one cell to an infant ready for the world.

To take one part of it, look at the diagram of the spine.

Each vertebra has a bone, a cushioning disc, and space for nerves to pass through, connecting the brain to parts of the body. The structure grows and changes through our lives. It also differs between a chimpanzee and a giraffe.

This complex system is amazing, but it supports connections to other things that are even more amazing. It allows communication between the brain and your eyes, heart, lungs, arms, digestive system, legs, and even your little toe. All those systems have their own complexities, and the dialogue between each of them and the brain is a system that had to be developed.

There are times when we are working on a technical problem, and it seems to solve itself. When that happens, we joke that sometimes “dumb luck beats pure skill.” But when you start to understand the development of a human being from a single cell, the sophisticated systems and the interactions of those systems, and the fact that the creatures and the environment fit together, it isn’t “dumb luck.”

Complex systems like IBM’s System 360, Microsoft Windows, Boeing aircraft, grocery store chains, people, animals, and universes don’t just happen. They are the result of development, planning, and continuous hard work.

Those who don’t understand it, or don’t want to, will refuse to credit the designers and builders who created what benefits them, but that doesn’t change the facts. It just didn’t happen. It was planned and designed.

After World War II and its experiences with Weimar and Hitler, Germany was determined to be fiscally conservative and politically moderate. The Germans were noted for diligence and their mechanical skills. The positive aspect of having their country destroyed was that they had to rebuild from scratch. They knew how to do things. The replacement factories were clean, fresh, and efficient.

Immigration

Germans shared a worldview and a way of being. They agreed on how to take care of their homes and yards. The homogeneity of society and its shared experiences let people get along naturally.

For fifteen years, from 1991 to 2005, Germany’s foreign-born population stayed in the 6.5 to 7.5 million range. During Merkel’s sixteen years in office, the foreign-born population increased to 11.82 million. In 2015 alone, more than one million migrants entered Germany.

Worse than the sheer numbers were the way the newcomers were treated. They were not held to the same behavioral standards as the German citizens. This was especially true when it came to the way immigrant men were treated. New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne was the night that made it impossible to ignore the problem.

Deutsche Welle is a major news organization in Germany. They explained:

Nearly 1,000 men of North African and Arab origin are reported to have divided themselves into smaller groups and robbed and sexually harassed women at Cologne’s central station on New Year’s Eve. Similar incidents occurred on a far smaller scale in Hamburg and Stuttgart.

Five years after the event, Ralf Bosen wrote a long piece in that paper describing the event and the consequences.

Because what happened in Cologne brought fundamental sociopolitical issues to the fore, it triggered a worldwide media response.
During his US presidential election campaign, Donald Trump portrayed the attacks as a cautionary tale from a misguided refugee policy.
In Germany itself, the long-running debate about migration policy and how to live together in a pluralistic society flared up.

He also noted that the media and the police “were accused of being too hesitant to report on the foreign citizenship of the suspects.”

Energy

Her energy policies were even more disastrous. There are many YouTube videos on the subject, but I’ll recommend this one. The video starts by showing how Germany was a leading industrial power at the start of the century. It had skilled, industrious people. But it also had cheap, plentiful energy. Vast amounts of energy are required to produce steel, chemicals, automobiles, and other products. Energy moves people to and from work, powers farm equipment, and keeps hospitals running. When Germany was strong, it had ample, comparatively inexpensive energy from multiple sources, including nuclear.

In 2011, Germany adopted a plan called the Energiewende or Energy transition. They were going to spend five hundred billion Euros to move to completely clean, renewable power. Solar and wind would replace nuclear and petrochemical energy. The video explained:

Solar panels produce no electricity at night and very little on cloudy days. Wind turbines produce no electricity when the wind is not blowing. Germany has a word for periods of low wind and low sunlight. Dunkelflaute, dark doldrums.

When the country is in the “dark doldrums,” other energy sources are needed. That means wind and solar can’t replace anything. The traditional sources must be maintained and ready to operate when the renewable sources can’t do the job. But Merkel and Germany failed to do that. The Energiewende called for the elimination of all nuclear power. To make things worse, Merkel rushed the closing for political reasons.

When the Fukushima nuclear disaster happened in Japan in March 2011, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a decision that will be studied in economics and policy schools for generations. Within 4 days of Fukushima, she announced that Germany would shut down all of its nuclear power plants. Not gradually, not carefully, not after building replacement capacity. Shut them all down by 2022.

Without nuclear, coal and natural gas were the backups in the doldrums. Coal is a major pollutant. Russia was their primary source of natural gas. Many people, including American President Donald Trump, warned them that this would make them vulnerable to Vladimir Putin. They scoffed and closed the nuclear plants. They cooperated with Russia to build the Nord Stream pipeline to receive more natural gas from Putin.

Parliamentary government can give a small but significant party a role in successive governments by joining whichever party needs a few more members to form a majority. Germany’s Green Party has used its size to make up part of the majority for years. It has been the driving force behind the major party in the governing coalition in adopting stricter environmental policies. There has also been pressure from the European headquarters in Brussels.

Even so, Merkel’s failure to protect Germany from insane energy policies has been disastrous. Major companies are moving production out of Germany because they can’t compete when their energy inputs are four times more expensive than their competitors’. BASF, the world’s largest chemical company and one of Germany’s most important employers, began shifting investment out of Germany in 2022. Volkswagen had its first plant closure in the company’s 87-year history.

Even worse, the cost of auto fuel and heating a living space in wintry weather has also risen fourfold. The German people are suffering. The most basic thing German Chancellor Friedrich Merz could do would be to work to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the related sanctions and get Russian natural gas flowing back into Germany. He is not doing that. He wants to punish Russia at any cost, no matter the harm to his own people.

Time for a change?

Given the dreadful changes in German life in the last twenty years or so, the public is ready to try something different. A political party has risen, calling itself an alternative for Germany. (Alternative für Deutschland - AfD) You would think the leadership would understand the public’s reaction, but they don’t. Instead of reading this as a need for change, they are trying to ban the AfD by labeling it as extremists.

I went into computers after I graduated in 1968. At that time, they were massive boxes in big, air-conditioned rooms. The public knew about them because bills came in punch cards. Home PCs arrived a decade later with the introduction of the Apple II in 1977.

Computers were magical boxes, and evolution was a semi-magical process of random change that somehow made everything work out. When I learned the details about the first half of that statement, I could no longer believe the other half.

I had the challenge and opportunity to work with the software at the deepest level on our site’s computer. We had a Univac 1108 with the Exec 8 Operating System (OS). These were both excellent products for their time. I was studying and making changes inside the OS. I was also taking graduate school classes and adding research to my efforts.

There were two features in the code that made computers usable for normal people. The earliest computers didn’t have them, and the utility was severely limited. Amazingly, I can describe them in ways you’ll understand.

Phone calls, alarm clocks, and children yelling are all interruptions. Human beings routinely experience and handle these. How would you know to answer the phone if there were no way for even the old wall phone to interrupt you by ringing? Your cell phone needs to manage an interruption and ring.

In the earliest days of computers, the computer told the printer to print and waited for it to finish. Then it did another task and got to a point where it had to wait. The development of an “interrupt mechanism” allows the computer to order a task, put it on a list, and continue doing something else until the task is completed.

Anything mechanical was terribly slow compared to the electrical. Human thinking and typing are ponderous compared to modern computers. This is why a computer system can support many users simultaneously. A cell phone can have several apps open at the same time.

The hardware and software needed to manage this are very elegant and sophisticated. People have a difficult day when they are overwhelmed by interruptions. Many operating system crashes result from the same kind of thing. When too many events happen too fast, it reveals the slightest imperfection in the code.

The other issue is like dealing with two children arguing about who goes first, but it is more serious.

With multiple apps or students running at the same time, there are fundamental questions about who goes first for a task or request. There are requests for memory, file access, and other permissions that must be processed serially to avoid chaos. If two apps are doing the same thing in the same space at the same time, it is a disaster.

Univac has a hardware instruction that grants you access if you are first and delays you if not. When the object becomes available, the OS is interrupted so you can continue. From the programmer’s point of view, it is amazingly easy to use. The hardware and software do all the complicated work.

The keyword in Darwinism is random. I was told to make a change resembling one of the “random” evolutionary changes, and I never saw the word “random” the same way again. My assignment was to make a change, which, in theory, was something like upgrading vision. We were using terminals called Uniscopes to enter data into the system. We wanted to allow a more sophisticated form of data entry, like color vs. black-and-white. I had to modify the operating system code to make that happen.

It was frustrating and challenging, but not random. It took a while to understand the requirements of the existing equipment on both sides to make the exact changes needed. It took research, testing, and a lot of thought and planning to get it done.

Ironically, the only random factor in the exercise almost blocked the solution. The computer hardware started exhibiting errors when executing a particular instruction. Even though my code looked right, it wasn’t working.

Therefore, “random” didn’t help; it was a problem.

Computer capacity was tiny by today’s standards. That machine had one megabyte, where each bit was a small iron core strung together with copper wires. It was still possible to have a reasonable understanding of products like the OS, but they were still the result of years of discussion, effort, testing, and development.

There had been errors and the need to go back and try something different, but it wasn’t random. Standards Committees developed specifications for code sets, printers, and other devices, enabling their use on computers from various manufacturers. An incredible amount of planning and thought had gone into it.

Modern Operating systems and major programs are huge. Mac OS X Tiger has an estimated eighty-five million lines of code. Obviously, that didn’t happen by randomly rolling dice. A lot of people have spent a lot of time producing that. Load it into the appropriate hardware, and some neat things happen.

Now let’s look at humans. The human genome has 3 billion nucleotide base pairs of two complementary DNA nucleotide bases. I can’t quite convert lines of code to bytes, but three billion nucleotides, each represented by two bits, is 750 megabytes. That’s a big Human OS. It must be.

I know that all the complex computer code took immense planning, effort, and forethought. In contrast, we are supposed to believe the human genome, which is at least as complex and produces the wondrous capabilities of the human body, came together through millions of years of random chance.

I don’t think so!

Other societies had experienced similar flowerings. One example was the Arab world. Hillel Ofek discusses what once was:

To anyone familiar with this Golden Age, roughly spanning the eighth through the thirteenth centuries a.d., the disparity between the intellectual achievements of the Middle East then and now — particularly relative to the rest of the world — is staggering indeed. In his 2002 book What Went Wrong?, historian Bernard Lewis notes that “for many centuries the world of Islam was in the forefront of human civilization and achievement.” “Nothing in Europe,” notes Jamil Ragep, a professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma, “could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600.” Algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alcohol, alkali, nadir, zenith, coffee, and lemon: these words all derive from Arabic, reflecting Islam’s contribution to the West.

But Ofek goes on to explain what happened in that culture, why their Golden Age ended, and the almost complete lack of publishing and research in that society today. He then explains the rise of European science. His explanation is fair. James Hannam does a better job in The Genesis of Science.

The Arab world, at its peak, and Western Europe had freedom of communication, a common language (Arabic or Latin), and a worldview that allowed them to seek facts and reality. In the Christian view, God was a rational being who created an ordered universe that followed His rules. Some philosophers used the term “watchmaker god” to describe the precision of that creation. The scientist was to understand the “Mind of God” by determining those parameters.

It is important to understand that we received the Protestant version of the propaganda war going on between Northern European Protestants and Southern European Roman Catholics. We therefore have a one-sided view of the Catholic Church at that time.

One example is the story of Galileo. A general rule applies whenever someone is funding your work. Don’t be an ass. The church was funding Galileo’s work. Today, the federal government funds a good deal of research. If you want more funding, don’t irritate Senators and Presidents. Galileo continuously annoyed the Pope. He wrote a piece where he put the Pope’s argument in the mouth of a character named Simplicio. If you’re a jerk and you annoy the person with significant control over your life, you can expect trouble. He was, indeed, sentenced to life in prison. He served it in his own house with his daughter, a nun, close enough to care for him.

Two things are essential for science to continue to prosper. Facts and truth must continue to matter, and participants should be selected on merit, not favoritism.

Sometimes it is difficult to displace old ideas. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions describes the human nature involved in organizations when new results or theories threaten long-held ideas.

Totalitarian societies hurt themselves, crippling their research by insisting that “truth” supports their goals. A classic case was the issue of genetics in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Gregor Mendel argued that acquired characteristics were not inherited. The Soviets wanted to encourage comrades to work hard and “pass” their improved traits to their offspring. Trofim Lysenko argued that acquired characteristics were inherited. This became true “Socialist Science.”

Hitler’s Germany also set its own rules for science and may well have lost the war as a result. First, it expelled all Jewish scientists and deemed their work unworthy and “non-Aryan.” They devoted considerable effort to their science, which aimed to prove the excellence of the Aryans. Through the 1920s, Germany had been a worldwide leader in science. “Aryan science” was not praiseworthy. Some of the scientists expelled from Germany helped the Allies win the war.

Now it is time to discuss our society. Ofek wrote about the Arab world in the Winter of 2011.

[I]t is important to keep in mind that the decline of scientific activity is the rule, not the exception, of civilizations. While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing.

But are we going to sustain it? We no longer live in a world of truth and facts. There are more critical things than actual scientific reality. Given that, Western science is in serious trouble.

James B. Meigs described the problem in an article entitled Unscientific American in the Spring 2024 issue of City Journal. Michael Shermer had been writing for the Scientific American (SciAm) for 18 years when he started to have his columns rejected. Meigs noted that:

In the twenty-first century, however, American scientific media, including Scientific American, began to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs. Suddenly, certain orthodoxies—especially concerning race, gender, or climate—couldn’t be questioned.

Shermer noticed he was being “nudged away from certain topics.” SciAm discovered racism in Mathematics based on a low percentage of Black people and women with Doctorates.

We no longer have clean, neutral science. Our science is in serious trouble because its “truths” are subject to the whims of fashion and those who control our “reality.” Ofek is right. Most scientific societies end. Ours is not an exception.

[P]rogressive activists today begin with their preferred policy outcomes or ideological conclusions and then try to force scientists and journalists to fall in line. Their worldview insists that, rather than challenging the progressive orthodoxy, science must serve as its handmaiden.

Stanford epidemiologist and economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has been named to lead the National Institutes of Health. At the peak of the Covid problem in 2020, his views were contrary to those held by the leadership at NIH. The debate was held in an inelegant and unprofessional manner. That may not be the fault of the scientists. Politicians and journalists had much to gain by adding emotion to the situation. But the public’s view of scientists, politicians, and journalists took a hit.

The biggest frustration of the public during Trump’s term was watching the media’s refusal to believe that Trump could be right about anything. Also, when he seemed to take advice from legitimate, qualified sources, those people were demeaned or canceled, at least in the minds of the fashionable. This is why we don’t believe them anymore.

There were two possible approaches to the Covid problem. Doctors wanted a different approach in part because they had different specialties. Infectious Disease specialists and Epidemiologists saw the problem differently.

Both groups agreed the elderly and those at medical risk needed to stay isolated because they could not cope with the impact of being sick with COVID-19. For the record, my wife and I were in this group. So, from a personal standpoint, both groups agreed about how we should be treated. We lost nothing by staying at home. We did not need to leave the house to earn money.

Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIH is known for his work in Infectious Diseases. He aimed to limit the spread of the disease by limiting the number of possible contacts by any means possible. In his view, anyone who came into contact was at risk. We’ll call this the “Cautious” approach.

Epidemiologists took a different view. They tried to end the problem as soon as possible. They felt that since most of the population suffered no significant harm when they caught COVID-19, it would be better to let most people get exposed, suffer mild symptoms, and build immunity. When most people were exposed, “herd immunity’ would reduce the danger of the disease. Let’s call this the “Active” approach.

Dr. Bhattacharya and others compiled an online document called the Great Barrington Declaration.

As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.

Let’s be clear. The President is not the Surgeon General. He is the Chief Executive. Article 2 of the Constitution specifies the duties of the President and begins with,

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

Trump is a manager. He made a comment that was ridiculed, but I understood it immediately. “Let’s not make the cure worse than the problem.” I spent my career in the computer field. Every so often, a computer problem would shut down the systems used by the company’s clerical staff to interact with their customers. It was easy to define a cautious approach that would perfectly fix the computers and an active approach that would engage the customers and clerical people again. The managers always said, “I don’t want it perfect; I want it yesterday!

As the chief executive and a manager, Trump obviously would side with the active approach. Many doctors from respected hospitals and multiple specialties signed the Barrington Declaration. He had no real reason to doubt their qualifications or beliefs.

Then why couldn’t or didn’t he implement that approach? The problem was the environment and the tone of the discussion.

Bhattacharya noted that “science can’t do its job in an environment where anyone who challenges the status quo gets shut down or canceled.” There was no rational scientific discussion or debate. One and only one approach was acceptable. That was the response to anything offered that might ease the impact of COVID-19. Alternatives to lockdowns, prophylactics like Ivermectin, and even going out for fresh air and sunshine were all considered life-threatening and/or political statements.

However, support for the lockdowns was always weak. The costs were uneven and hurt hourly, non-government people the most. Anyone who had to report for work to earn their pay had a problem. Business owners had to pay rent even if they couldn’t open their businesses.

Officials urged citizens to report violations by their neighbors. We came to see how close we can come to a dictatorial state. We kept our eyes wide open for hypocrisy on the part of our leaders and had no trouble finding it.

When average citizens protested lockdowns, they were a threat to civilization. When Black Lives Matter started their “mostly peaceful” demonstrations,” all the rules changed. They had the right to express their opinions. Again, anything is OK if the approved people are doing it.

The main thing the lockdown approach taught us is simple. We can’t trust our leaders. They manipulate anything they can use for their purposes. “Journalists” are simply advocates for one side of the political spectrum. They are not a source of balanced information. We can’t “trust the science” because, as it is selectively presented to the public, it is merely a justification for whatever the leadership wants.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all is the cooperation of many of our neighbors in enforcing the lockdown. Many years ago, I read about Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and even dystopias like 1984. I was disturbed by everyone going along and reporting their neighbors to their authorities. I’ve heard of that in HOAs, but I hoped it wouldn’t be that bad in the broader community.

I was wrong.

Formal religious inquiry starts with dogmatic statements about the nature of God and humanity. In the classic Catholic Baltimore Catechism, children were taught:

• God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things.

• Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to      the image and likeness of God.

• God made me to know Him,      to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever      in heaven.

This view of God’s nature and ours dominated European thought in the middle Ages. James Hannam is one of the historians, mostly British, reconsidering the relationship of the faith, the Catholic Church and the development of science in that era. The subtitle of his book – The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution makes his position clear.

The universities of the middle Ages and early Renaissance were institutions of the church. The church served the role of modern governments in funding training and research. Many of the leading scientists were members of the clergy and Latin was the shared language of the educated people of the day.

But the most essential underpinning was a belief in a rational god who wanted to be known directly and through his works. This helps explain why science developed in Christian Europe and not elsewhere.

Historian Daniel J. Boorstin argues that the creativity of Muslims was limited precisely because of their understanding of God. In The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination he quotes from the Koran (Surah 51:56): “And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me.” Boorstin writes, “For a believing Muslim, to create is a rash and dangerous act.”

It is an axiom of modern science, even if not explicitly stated, that the universe is rational and can be understood. This historically derives from the Christian dogma that the creator of the universe is rational and wants His works to be understood. What happens to science if the general belief in the rationality of God or the Universe starts to be questioned?

An increasingly popular argument is being made that societies progress independently of their beliefs. This view seeks not only to debunk the “great man” theory of history but downplays virtually all aspects of a society’s beliefs and habits. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is an example. Is the development of a scientific mindset really independent of the beliefs in the society?

There was a time when the delight of science was in what we didn’t know or in what was suddenly brought into question. Science is becoming increasingly politicized. Now, for many, the prevailing view is that science has somehow become a democracy.

In  the “global warming” debates, we are constantly told that “a consensus of the scientists” has formed. Nobel Prize winners resign from organizations using words like “incontrovertible”.  But the layman who doubts the consensus is considered unenlightened and ineligible to participate in a conversation with his self-described betters.

The popular understanding of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity may have led many to believe that relativism is a good thing and good for science. On the contrary, science rests on a method of inquiry and the underlying belief there is a truth to be found.

Marcello Pera, an atheist Italian philosopher and former Italian Senate President, joined Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) as co-author of   Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam. They argue that Western civilization is losing the anchor of truth. As Pera puts it, “belief in the true no longer exists: the mission of the true is considered Fundamentalism, and the very affirmation of the true creates or raises fears” (Italics in the original).

Those who are concerned with what we see as a moral decline in the West are often frustrated by our inability to persuade others of the importance of the existence of truth. While we see a need for a stable platform for morality in society many of our fellow citizens are seemingly not that concerned.

Perhaps our focus has been too narrow. The loss of a belief in truth may be felt first when it comes to morality and the willingness of a society to stand up for its beliefs. But if there is no truth, is there any basis for science?

What happens to science in a world without truth? Can relativism’s impact be limited to the moral sphere? Is a society capable of continued scientific, or even technological, breakthroughs when the potential scientists no longer believe in possibility of searching for truth?

Science fiction is replete with stories of societies living off the knowledge of the past. A crisis occurs when they get to the point where they cannot maintain or repair the machines they depend on. Do we face that risk if we become a society with no coherent view of the creation, the creator and the nature and purpose of humanity?

David Berlinski does just that in The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. And, most notably he does it with a remarkable sense of humor.

He is writing in response to a recent series of books and writings by what could be called “militant” or “devout” atheists. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and others are not content to merely disbelieve in the existence of God. They are determined to change the minds of those who do believe. Berlinski notes:

Religious men and women, having long accommodated the village idiot, have long accommodated the village atheist.  The order of battle is now different. It has been the scientists … who have undertaken a wide-ranging attack on religious belief and sentiment.[1]

Ironically, Berlinski argues that this activist science vs. religion approach is, at least in part, not a reaction to Christians, but a “lurid but natural reaction … to the violence of the Islamic world.[2]”

We are now faced with a group of scientists who are militantly atheist and willing to accept the result of any scientific experiment which does not point to the existence of God. The cult-like nature of this group shows up whenever a paper or experiment produces a “wrong” answer.

After dealing with “the contingencies of life-getting food, getting by, getting laid[3]” humanity has sought answers to two basic questions: How did everything, including humans, get here, and why? Religion, philosophy and science have long sought answers to these questions. Until recently, these quests were considered complimentary.

But science has now become, for many, a religion of its own. This shows up in two major discussions in science.

The first deals with the origins of the universe and what is called the “”Big Bang” theory.  Berlinski shows the development of the theory and how many scientific measures point to the belief that the entire universe started at one moment. However, if science is to replace religion, a belief which corresponds to the biblical statement “And God said, ‘Let there be light’” cannot be allowed to stand.

They have thus made every effort to find an alternative.
Did you imagine that science was a disinterested pursuit of the truth?
Well, you were wrong.[4]

It is amusing to see “scientists” who won’t accept what their research shows them about the origin of one universe devise all kinds of complex mathematics to show there must, in fact, be multiple universes. How the first of all these started is left unanswered. 

To further complicate the question, the universe we inhabit has a group of characteristic properties to which science can only assign a value without knowing why those values are what they are. They include the strength of various forces, such as gravity and magnetism, and characteristics of water and other compounds. These values “happen” to be exactly the right number needed to support life, at least on Earth. Rather than accept the idea that God might have made the universe that way, “scientists” have come up with all kinds of probabilistic “multi-verse” scenarios where it was inevitable that one of them would have the right values for life. Yeah, Right.

The other major question is “How did humans get here?” Berlinski starts by saying:

Together with Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace created the modern theory of evolution. He has been unjustly neglected by history, perhaps because shortly after conceiving his theory, he came to doubt its provenance.[5]

In an 1869 paper, Wallace “outlined his sense that evolution was inadequate to explain certain obvious features of the human race.[6]” Berlinski comments:

Suspicions about Darwin’s theory arise for two reasons. The first: the theory makes little sense. The second: it is supported by little evidence.[7]

The veracity of Darwinian evolution can be measured by the accuracy of Berlinski’s observation that although Darwinian biologists may claim “that evolution is a well established as gravity, very few physicists have been heard observing that gravity is as well established as evolution. They know better and they are not stupid.[8]”

Why then the determination to force acceptance of a theory with obvious difficulties. Berlinski cites an evolutionary biologist:

Whatever the degree to which Darwin may have “misled science into a dead end,” the biologist Shi V. Liu observed …, “we may still appreciate the role of Darwin in helping scientists [win an] upper hand in fighting against the creationists.[9]

But for most of us, the question is not between creation in seven days and science. We are more than willing to accept the enlarged time frame of the universe and the development of life on earth. We are also clearly willing to accept the benefits of science and the technological progress it allows.

Berlinski and many of his readers, including this writer, refuse to accept that science has the authority to speak outside of its realm. It can tell us what is there and how it works. When those who lay claim to special knowledge of science try to tell us what we can or cannot believe about why we here we have the right to refuse to listen.

Even more, when they ask us to believe what the evidence does not support, or seek complicating or obfuscating theories when the obvious theory supports a theory of creation they oppose, they have clearly moved science out of the realm of objective measurement and observation.

Science is a noble pursuit and a lousy religion. Those who practice it, particularly those who would use its findings to influence public decisions need to know that science will only be influential if it is seen as objective.

The “Climate-gate” controversy about efforts to “influence” the peer-review process makes science seem more political and less objective. The “pre-Cambrian explosion” period of rapid species change could at least raise questions about the validity of the Darwinian Theory. The public has the right to expect a serious discussion of those issues instead of being talked down to.

Most of us are willing to look to science for an explanation of what is here and how it works. When we ask why we are here, we look elsewhere.

[1] Berlinski – Page 3

[2] Page 5

[3] Page 165

[4] Page 112

[5] Page 157

[6] Ibid

[7] Page 187

[8] Page 191

[9] Page 197