All-Fiction Field, Inc. - Popular Publications / Lawrence Sterne Stevens, public domain.
Joel Kontinen
You can hear Mike Keas now on a new episode of ID the Future, with host Andrew McDiarmid . Keas, a historian of science, turns from the past to the future.He speaks about his new book Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion.
Despite some notable exceptions, especially C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, “modern day atheism is becoming more and more indistinguishable from the occult, and science fiction is a part of that,” Keas tells us.
And who are the gods of the new occult – they are space aliens? That atheism has learnt to take the creation story to the skies, believing that we are the sons of aliens.
George Herbert Wells was probably the one who brought Scientism into literature.
Most atheists and readers of sci-fly think that religion is an addition of facts, so they will cope for spirituality, instead. But that spirituality is infused with the occult.
Source:
Evolution News, 2019. Mike Keas: Modern-Day Atheism Meets the Occult. (26 February).
As an idea, AI is not a recent invention. Image courtesy of Sybil Tawse, from Stories of Gods and Heroes (1920) by Thomas Bulfinch. Public Domain.
Joel Kontinen
Elon Musk used to team up with Stephen Hawking to warn of the dangers of artificial intelligence that might turn into a disaster for humans.
Not so long ago he said that AI was a bigger threat than North Korea.
Musk shares his fears in a new AI documentary called Do You Trust This Computer?
He is afraid that in contrast to human dictators – who will eventually die – it would be practically impossible to get rid of an AI dictator:
"At least when there's an evil dictator, that human is going to die,” Live Science quotes Musk as saying, "But for an AI there would be no death. It would live forever, and then you'd have an immortal dictator, from which we could never escape."
However, the second law of thermodynamics practically guarantees that nothing we make will last forever, but it will break down – sooner or later.
The only thing that remains is the Bible, the Word of God. And it definitely rules out an immortal AI dictator.
Source:
Specktor, Brandon. 2018. Elon Musk Worries That AI Research Will Create an 'Immortal Dictator'. Live Science (8 April).
It used to be known as Earth Day. The United Nations has gone a step further and re-named it The International Mother Earth Day.
The green ideology behind this move could hardly have been more obvious.
Some would even say that the mushroom is our brother.
Some others want to give apes and rivers the same rights we have.
The post-Christian world wants its share of holy days, such as Darwin Day and Earth Day.
It is probably no coincidence that the March for Science takes place on 22nd April or (Mother) Earth Day.
To mark the day, we have a celebrity scientist (Neil deGrasse Tyson) warning of the dangers “science denial”.
If this sounds like the newspeak introduced by George Orwell, the most likely explanation is that it indeed is.
By this he means being sceptical of consensus science, i.e. Darwinian evolution and human-induced climate change.
It seems that most of the marchers are leaning left politically. Some of them are probably worried about the war on science, which, as we know, is another illustration of Orwellian newspeak.
We should not forget that while we have a mandate to care for Earth, we should certainly not worship it – that would be idolatry.
Sources:
International Mother Earth Day
Staedter,Tracy. 2017. Neil deGrasse Tyson Warns Science Denial Could 'Dismantle' Democracy. Live Science (20 April).
Charles Darwin’s ideas might not be good for objective science reporting.
Joel Kontinen
Science publications have recently made a big issue of fake news and the post-truth world. They were very outspoken in whom they thought should be the better president in the recent US elections.
And it seems that they haven’t yet recovered from their big disappointment.
Writing on the website of American Council on Science and Health, Dr. Alex Berezow brings a touch of very welcome sanity into the matter of what science journalism is about (but shouldn’t be).
He mentions two disturbing trends:
1.”Too many science journalists don't actually possess a well-rounded knowledge of science. In many cases, regular reporters are asked to cover complex science and health stories.”
2. “Science journalists are every bit as biased as their more traditional counterparts, perhaps even more so. They routinely hold double standards in regard to analyzing science policies. They conflate scientific evidence with science policy, immediately labeling anyone "anti-science" if he or she disagrees with their cultural beliefs. Worse, science journalists feel no inhibition whatsoever to cheerlead openly for their favorite politicians and to heap scorn upon those they dislike.”
Dr. Berezow goes on to say:
“Both cultural bias and thoughtless reportage severely erode the integrity of science journalism.”
He then gives some tips for detecting fake science news stories. He says, for instance, that if the article is sensational, or about evolutionary psychology, or fails to make a distinction between evidence and science policy, or does not mention the limitations of the study it is reporting, we have good reasons to be suspicious.
Source:
Berezow, Alex. 2017. How to Spot a Fake Science News Story. American Council on Science and Health. (31 January).
A virtual world? Image courtesy of Maurizio Pesce, Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0).
Joel Kontinen
Are atheists embracing religious belief? Writing in The Spectator, journalist Daniel Jackson thinks that they are.
But it is not a theistic faith they have accepted. They obviously believe that they can evolve into secular gods, with a little help from technology.
This approach is known as trans-humanism or post-humanism.
Billionaire businessman Elon Musk famously said that we might be living in a computer simulation.
This, of course, would necessitate belief in some sort of intelligent design, as a computer simulation does not just happen.
Some believe that given “the increasing pace of progress in computer technology, we will eventually be able to synthesise reality and consciousness.”
Mr. Musk’s beliefs prompted Jackson to write:
“It is a tired argument, but Atheists are increasingly behaving like members of a religious sect. There is factionalism and infighting amongst them. They have icons; Spinoza, Darwin, Dawkins (and something close to a martyr in Christopher Hitchens). And now they can choose to believe in a creator.”
Atheists can revere Charles Darwin, as he popularised a creation myth known to both ancient Indian and Greek philosophers, featuring descent with modification in which marine creatures crawl onto dry land and gradually change into terrestrial animals and some eventually into humans.
This, if anything, is a religious view but a version that knows nothing of sins committed against a transcendental Creator and their dire consequences.
Atheists want to have a say in how this assumed evolution will proceed in the coming days. While scientism seems to run the show, a better word might be wishful thinking.
The Spectator article describes it as bunkum.
Source:
Jackson, Daniel. 2016. Atheists are embracing Gods and creationism. The Spectator (8 June).
Yearning to transcend human limitations. Image courtesy of greyloch, Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Joel Kontinen
Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan thinks humans have a huge problem:
“Humans are handicapped by our biology. We operate tens of thousands of years behind evolution with our inherited instincts, which means our behavior is not suited towards its current environment.”
He seems to think that he has found a solution to our dilemma:
“Futurists like to say evolution is always late to the dinner party. We have instincts that apply to our biology in a world that existed ages ago; not a world of skyscrapers, cell phones, jet air travel, the Internet, and CRISPR gene editing technology. We must catch up to ourselves. We must evolve our thinking to adapt to where we are in the evolutionary ascent. We must force our evolution in the present day via our reasoning, inventiveness, and especially our scientific technolog. In short, we must embrace transhumanism -- the radical field of science that aims to turn humans into, for lack of a better word, gods.”
This has next to nothing to do with orthodox Darwinism that relies on random processes.
We already are wonderfully made, but we can never become gods, regardless of what we do. But we can become God’s children through faith in Christ.
“The transhumanist believes we should immediately work to improve ourselves via enhancing the human body and eliminating its weak points. This means ridding ourselves of flesh and bones, and upgrading to new cybernetic tissues, alloys, and other synthetic materials, including ones that make us cyborg-like and robotic. It also means further merging the human brain with the microchip and the impending digital frontier. Biology is for beasts, not future transhumanists.”
It seems that Mr. Istvan has read a bit more science fiction than is good for his health.
Transhumanists are by no means the first to think of superhumans. Friedrich Nietzsche toyed with the idea in the late 19th century, and Aldous Huxley envisioned his brave new world way back in 1931.
And then we heard about Superman and Batman and a big bunch of other comic book characters.
There is a tendency to see science as a secular saviour that can solve all our problems.
It might be good to remember that C. S. Lewis already warned of scientism.
Moreover, wishful thinking will not solve humanity’s basic problem that is sin.
Source:
Istvan, Zoltan. 2016. Transhumanism and Our Outdated Biology. The Huffington Post (21 April).
National Geographic sees a huge conspiracy against mainstream science.
Joel Kontinen
C. S. Lewis warned of the dangers of scientism. While science has mostly been a blessing for mankind, for instance, by eliminating many deadly diseases, it has also brought about suffering and misery. Just think of the experiments the Nazis did in the name of science in the 1930s and 1940s.
And the threat has by no means disappeared. Iran still wants the nuclear bomb, and here in the west many are advocating assisted suicide. Science has been and is being misused.
Unfortunately, this is often been explained away by using Orwellian newspeak, in which words mean something very different from what we would assume them to mean.
National Geography’s recent cover story is perhaps one of the most glaring illustrations of this tendency. It obviously sees a hideous conspiracy desiring to discredit all of science. The cover lists these evils:
· Climate Change Does Not Exist.
· Evolution Never Happened.
· The Moon Landing Was Faked.
· Vaccinations Can Lead to Autism.
· Genetically Modified Food Is Evil.
The cover story never explains what it means by science but it assumes that there is something called scientific knowledge:
“We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from climate change to vaccinations—faces furious opposition.”
However, it’s a long way from doubt to warfare. The article lumps together diverse unorthodox views that have little if anything in common and sees this all as a war on science.
It is entirely possible to believe in the historicity of the moon landing (or the benefits of vaccinations) and still doubt Darwinian evolution, for instance.
National Geographic mentions some past battles against what it sees as being waged against science. However, they might better be understood as myths. While the left-leaning media have made much of the assumed flat earth thinking, the Galileo case and the Scopes trial, they have grossly misrepresented each of them.
Some scientists should probably take a long hard look at themselves and their agendas. Many scientists are more than eager to give their opinion on each and every thing on this earth, even if the issue had nothing to do with their expertise. However, donning a white lab coat does not make anyone omniscient or all-knowing.
Source:
Achenbach, Joel. 2015. Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science? National Geography (March).
Edward Osborne Wilson. Image courtesy of Jim Harrison, PloS (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license).
Joel Kontinen
Known as the father of sociobiology, E. O. Wilson has been involved in verbal warfare on several fronts. He has, for instance, disagreed with Richard Dawkins on the mechanisms of evolution and dismissed him as a journalist.
But his real battle has been against religious faith.
In an interview in New Scientist, Wilson was asked why he wrote his recently published book The Meaning of Human Existence. This was his answer:
”I think it's time to be audacious. The central questions of religion and philosophy are three in number: where do we come from, what are we and where are we going? Usually these are just the beginnings of long discussions, but that's no longer the case. We now have a pretty good picture of how humanity arose in Africa, what intermediate forms existed, the rate at which these forms evolved and the circumstances in which they evolved.“
Professor Wilson avoids touching on controversies related to evolutionary icons such as Archaeopteryx, Lucy and Tiktaalik, for instance.
He thinks that the way to improve our welfare would be to get rid of religion:
“For the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths.”
What he fails to realise is that religion was officially eliminated in countries like the Soviet Union and its satellites, Albania, China, Cambodia and North Korea under communism.
Instead of the promised progress, most of the people actually suffered from deprivation and even persecution. In order to thrive, people need freedom.
The freedom I would advocate in the kind that only Jesus Christ offers:
“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8: 31–32, NIV).
Wilson might not like to admit it, but it was this very freedom that enabled the great pioneers of science, for instance Sir Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur, to make their discoveries. They believed in a rational God who created a world that observes natural laws that we could observe.
Without Christianity, there would be no science. C. S. Lewis warned of the dangers of scientism. It can only lead us to bondage and deprivation.
Source:
Sarchet, Penny. 2015. E. O. Wilson: Religious faith is dragging us down. New Scientist (27 January).
Dr. John G. West’s recently updated book looks at the danger of scientism.
Joel Kontinen
Darwin Day (12th February) is almost here, and the faithful are already making preparations for celebrating it with pomp and circumstance. In a naturalistic /materialistic worldview, it is the closest thing to Christmas.
It is obvious that they don’t like Christmas, especially if it includes the word Christ – and they don’t want you to like it, either.
But they want you to celebrate Evolution Sunday in church, which, of course, would be a form of idolatry. After all, Charles Darwin wanted to do away with God who reveals Himself in human history as Creator and Saviour.
What are the likely consequences of an ideology based on the belief that apart from nature, nothing else exists?
In 2007 Dr. John G. West’s book Darwin Day in America: Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science was published. Recently, World magazine printed an excerpt of the book’s updated edition.
Dr. West, Vice President of the Discovery Institute and Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture, says:
“Our culture is witnessing the rise of what could be called totalitarian science—science so totalistic in its outlook that its defenders claim the right to remake every sphere of human life, from public policy and education to ethics and religion. Science is a wonderful enterprise, but during the Obama era, it’s being twisted in ways that are unhealthy for both science and society.”
During Obama’s presidency, science has eroded freedom and secularists have sought to silence all dissenting views in the public arena. They want to remove Christian morality and replace it with a vague Darwinian ethics. This leads to a gross devaluation of human worth, including experimenting with humans, which smacks of what Josef Mengele did at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Dr. West says that Mr. Obama endorsed the Cosmos television series hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has not hidden his anti-Christian agenda under a bushel.
West also mentions Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer, who believes that “the life of a newborn baby is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.”
This is diametrically opposed to the Christian gospel, which sees mankind as special. After all, Jesus only became a human being. He only redeemed mankind, not animals.
Over half a century ago, C. S. Lewis warned of the dangers of scientism. This is something that all too many of today’s scientists have chosen to ignore.
Source:
West, John G. 2015. From science to scientism in the Obama era. World (February 7).
Sir Isaac Newton's portrait by Godfrey Kneller (1702). Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
A recent article in the journal Nature on the merits of scientific fame included an interesting admission:
“All scientists have unconscious biases,” Laura Piddock, a microbiologist at the University of Birmingham, UK, said.
Some people tend to think that wearing a white lab coat makes one sort of unbiased and infallible. This, of course, is by no means true. Scientists are real human beings with real hopes, aspirations and beliefs.
And biases.
Unfortunately, some scientists believe that nature is all that there is – that the supernatural sphere does not exist. For them science is not a search for the best explanation but it is a search for the best naturalistic explanation.
In contrast, the great pioneers of science, such as Sir Isaac Newton, were not biased in that way.
Science can be misused and elevated to the status of a religion.
Scientism is something that C. S. Lewis warned us about.
Source:
Woolston, Chris. 2014. Being a big name in science brings benefits. Nature (12 November).
Propaganda has thrived in many times and cultures. Ours is no exception. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
Steve Krstulovich, a particle physicist with Fermilab, had some interesting things to say at a recent faith and science conference at Evangel University in Missouri.
He spoke about particle physics and cosmology, for instance on string theory, gravitational waves, and black holes:
"At Harvard, string theory was called 'postmodern physics.' If there was to be no more reliance on experiment to check theories, and math sufficed to explore laws of nature, we had entered the period of postmodern science."
He went on to say:
“Some sociologists and those in the humanities have claimed that the scientific community is no more rational or objective than any other community of human beings. They argue that claims about how science works are mainly propaganda designed to intimidate people into giving them power, and they say that science is driven by the same political and sociological forces that drive people in other fields.”
Quite an admission. When it comes to Darwinian evolution, the use of propaganda is very obvious. Storytelling often trumps facts.
“Postmodern physics” seems to follow the trail that Darwin and his followers have blazed.
Source:
Faith and Science Conference: Genesis and Genetics. Evangel University, Springfield, Missouri June 23 – 25, 2014.
Aldous Huxley wrote his description of a scientific totalitarian society in 1932. Brave New World could be seen as a criticism of some trends in science and politics that were very evident in Huxley’s time, such as eugenics, which was a mostly Darwinian episode in world history.
Writing in Nature, Philip Ball does mention dystopian science fiction but he does not make the connection between eugenics and Darwinian evolution, which, as such is no wonder in a journal that was set up in the late 19th century for the very purpose to spread the word about evolution.
Brave New World shows that scientism can have its very dark side. When science and politics go together, the result is a totalitarian society that entirely lacks personal freedom.
Freedom, as we all know, is a blessing that comes from Christianity, so Huxley’s dystopian society is understandable – no Christianity, no freedom.
Source:
Ball, Philip. 2013. In Retrospect: Brave New World. Nature 503 (7476): 338 -339.
When a well-known atheist (Michael Shermer) says that science is his saviour or when thousands celebrate the birthday of Charles Darwin, we might suspect that science is more than what we would at first glance suspect.
C.S. Lewis realised that in spite of all the good things modern science has given us, it also has its dark side. In his days, the almost universal use of eugenics, the scientific socialism in the Soviet Union and a racial policy inspired by Social Darwinism were perhaps three of the most glaring examples of the misuse of science.
Lewis saw that science and magic were like twins. They shared three major characteristics: (1) Like magic, science could be a religion. (2) It could cause credulity, so that most people believed everything proclaimed in the name of science. (3) It could be used to control both nature and other people.
C.S. Lewis was very sceptical of scientism, which can be likened to a religion. He was especially sceptical of the power of blind, undirected causes to magically produce all living beings.
The Magician's Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism is a just-released video exploring this aspect of C.S. Lewis’ thinking.
C. S. Lewis once said that science and magic are twins. A soon to be released book edited by Dr. John West will examine this issue.
The Magician's Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society (Discovery Institute Press, 2012) will be accompanied by a video documentary that will premiere on August 11 in Seattle.
Scientism can be defined as ”an exaggerated trust or belief in the power of scientific methods and knowledge” (The New Penguin English Dictionary). For some people, it seems to be a secular religion.
Arthur C. Clarke is known for this film. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
Arthur C. Clarke, who died on March 19 at age 90, was one of the most popular science fiction writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Its film version was directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Clarke served as a radar specialist during World War II and realised that geostationary satellites could be used in telecommunication. They are satellites that orbit almost directly above the equator and appear to be stationary to an observer on the ground. Clarke popularised the concept in a paper called "Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?"published in the magazine Wireless World in 1945.
Clarke had a great trust in the progress of human civilisation. However, at times his optimism bordered on scientism although some of his views were at odds with mainstream science. For instance, he toyed with the idea that an ancient alien civilisation might have produced the human race.
Writing in Skeptical Inquirer in 2001, Clarke outlined his religious beliefs. He called God a hypothetical entity and said, “early in the next millennium the rise of ‘statistical theology’ would prove that there is no supernatural intervention in human affairs. Nor does the ‘problem of evil’ exist; it is an inevitable consequence of the bell-shaped curve of normal distribution.”
Such views have nothing to do with science. Modern science was born and developed in the western world, thanks to a belief in a rational Creator God who designed natural laws. The great pioneers of modern science, such as Johann Kepler, Blaise Pascal and Sir Isaac Newton, were devout Christians.
Christians have not eschewed rocket science, either. Wernher von Braun, the “father” of the Apollo moon program, was a Christian who actually believed it was wrong to exclude the teaching of creation in science classes. The astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders who orbited the moon in December 1968 chose the opening verses of Genesis as their Christmas message to earth.
Clarke, however, had little respect for Christianity. He was a firm believer in extraterrestrial life. He supported the SETI@home community that tries to get proof of alien intelligence by monitoring messages they might send us.
It is strange that the SETI people spend billions of taxpayer dollars on listening to messages that might never come. At the same time, they ignore the message coded in our DNA that speaks volumes of intelligent design. But, as Ben Stein shows in his soon to be aired film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed most mainstream scientists do not tolerate any dissenting voices.
Science should be a quest for the truth but unfortunately staunch Darwinists have used their preconceived ideology of naturalism or the stance that nature is all that there is to exclude all views that deviate from theirs. Regrettably, Arthur C. Clarke, the great science fiction writer, chose the side of those who do not want to allow discussion or dissent.
I’m a translator and writer currently living in Finland. I have three academic degrees: a BA in Bible and Theology, an MA in Translation Studies, and an MA in Biblical Studies.
Olen koulutukseltani sekä filosofian maisteri (pääaine: englannin kielen kääntäminen ja tulkinta) että teologian maisteri (Uuden testamentin koulutusohjelma). Lisäksi olen suorittanut BA-tutkinnon (Raamattu ja teologia).
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