Science or Religion?

It's quite a question, isn't it? It rears its head in the school systems all the time, and it gets screen time in the scientific community as well. Should Creationism, or even Intelligent Design, be ruled out of education or theories because they have religious background?
Let me define some terms here so we're all on the same page. There is a difference between Creationism and Intelligent Design. The premise of Creationism is that the universe was created by some god or another. Intelligent Design includes, but is not limited to, Creationism. ID is based on the premise that some intelligent being created the universe, but it doesn't have to be a deity. Could be aliens, other high life forms, etc. Creationism has a religious connotation, whereas ID could be religious or philisophical. Evolution, likewise, is based on the premise that life happened by random chance and that simple life forms have evolved into more and more complex being, each better than the previous, because of natural selection. It exludes the influence of a higher power in creation. Evolution, then, would be philosophically based.
With that out of the way, let's get down to the thick stuff.
The argument for keeping Creationism and/or ID out of the schools and science is that they have a basis in religion. Science, they argue, should be science, not religion. Religion should stay in religion class, not be taught in the labs. They define science as the explanation of phenomenon through natural processes.
Now wait just a second.
Evolution, Creationism, and ID do have one thing in common: they are philosophies. They are not based on something that can be proved, but something that is believed. None of these are based on pure, unadulterated science. Science itself must be based on an unprovable premise. So it's not so much a science versus religion question, it's more of a philosophy versus religion question.
By keeping Creationism and/or ID out of schools and science, the scientific community is in fact limiting science. If the evidence says there is a creator (or creators), so be it. Scientists ought to go where the evidence takes them, not set up road blocks with definitions.
This impacts more than just the scientific community. It hits the school systems too. By ruling out Creationism and ID from standard curriculum and/or refusing to allow teachers to discuss these theories with their students, they are, perhaps unintentionally, brainwashing the students. If all you ever heard was evolution, and all that "religion stuff" had nothing to do with science, you'd never even consider the possibilities of Creationism or ID.
The question shouldn't be, "Does this theory/philosophy have religous connotations?" The issue, rather, should be, "Which theory/philosophy best fits the scientific evidence?"

It's All Connected? No Way!

Being a Senior this year, I’m going through the usual headache of college applications and open houses. While it is rather irritating to sit for hours in a crowded auditorium listening to professors go on and on about why I should invest four years of my life and thousands of dollars attending their university, there are amusing moments as well.
One such moment of humor occurred while I was attending an open house a couple weekends ago. A good natured lady-professor with a Scottish accent was explaining the merits of a particular program her college offers. The one point she kept returning to was the unique system of learning they use in teaching their students. Unlike other universities, she said, they teach their students that everything is connected. She went on to explain how History is connected to Literature, and how Philosophy and Religion are connected to them both. No other college, she insisted, teaches students the connections between things.
At that point, my eyes grew very wide. And suppressing the urge to laugh out loud, I turned to my Mom (sitting beside me) and gave her a knowing look. You see, as a home-school student, I have been taught from the time I was in elementary school that everything is connected. That concept was nothing new to me. It seemed ludicrous to try to understand the world any other way.
Although I joked with my mom about it on the way home, it also made me think. I realized with a sort of slow shock, that this fundamental principle of connection that I take so much as a matter of fact is totally foreign to most people. There are two theories about the nature of reality floating around right now: The first, as I have already mentioned, is the “Everything is Connected” Theory. The Second, and by far the more popular, is the Compartmentalization Theory.
The Compartmentalization Theory says that things are not connected. Everything is isolated and separate from everything else. So, according to this theory, History and Literature are not connected, because they are categorized under different subjects in school. In the same way, the Secular and the Sacred are supposed to be unconnected because one deals with the natural realm and the other with the supernatural realm. Essentially, Compartmentalization says you have a bunch of boxes in your brain, and none of those boxes touch any of the other boxes.
The only problem with this theory is that it does not reflect reality.
Let me illustrate with an example. Take two sciences: Chemistry and Biology. At first glance this seems a perfect example of Compartmentalization. Chemistry is the science that deals with non-living matter, and Biology is the science that deals with living matter. Pretty simple. But wait a moment, what happens when you take biology down to the cellular level? Eventually what you get is living matter (cells) composed of nonliving matter (proteins, amino acids, lipids, etc.). Is this biology or chemistry? Actually it’s both. It’s called Biochemistry, and it is where biology and chemistry overlap.
You see why Compartmentalization, while a nice way of organizing information, is not really consistent with the way reality works. Nothing is totally isolated from everything else. There is always some connecting point, some overlap. This is because we live in a wholistic universe. That is, when God created the cosmos, he designed it to function according to natural laws that govern every area of life. The universe we live in is a unified whole, not a bunch of disconnected boxes. So instead of boxes, your brains actually look more like a light spectrum where each color flows into the next.
This principle of connection has implications not only for the sciences, but also for the fundamental questions of life. What we believe about God (theology) will affect what we believe is real (philosophy), and what we believe is right and wrong (ethics). In turn, what we believe about these areas will inform what we value and how we live. If we connect the dots, we see that what we believe about one area of life has repercussions for every other area of life. This is why it doesn’t work to try to separate the Secular and the Sacred, because ultimately, what we believe about God will determine how we live our lives.
Although this blog is nominally a science ethics blog, you will notice that we talk about a wide variety of issues ranging from theology to politics. I hope this understanding everything is connected will help you follow along and make connections yourself.

What is Ethical?

So, if you haven’t noticed yet, this blog is a blog of ethics. “Ethics” is defined as “a system of moral principles.” In order for this blog to make any sense to anybody, we have to have the same definition of “moral.” So, how are we defining morals? Where’s the line between right and wrong? This is where there is disagreement on the subject of ethics. Right and wrong are determined by what one considers to be the highest authority. Many people define right and wrong by the current laws, what they feel,or natural reason. As Christians, we believe that God is the ultimate rule-maker. The Bible is the word of God given to man and passed down through the centuries. Therefore, the Bible dictates what is right and what is wrong.

You'll notice as we move along that a whole lot of these posts end up being political. Politics and ethics are directly related. Politics are essentially laws or proposed laws. Laws are designed to promote what is good. So, when there is disagreement on a law or a bill, it is because people do not concur on the ethics behind the proposal.

As you read this blog, I believe you will notice how this esoteric idea of "ethics" impacts far more of the world than you would think.

Terrifying Consistency

Alright. Elizabeth is letting me do the honors of christening our blog with the first article. It's a bit longish. Posts should be shorter in future. Here it is:

It’s about 2 am Saturday night, or Sunday morning rather. The rest of the house is sound asleep, but there is a light on under my door. On the other side of that door, I lie wide awake in bed, unable to sleep. My emotions vibrate somewhere between horror stricken and shocked to confusion. I had just finished listening to the BBC radio drama of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. I was deeply troubled by what I had heard.

But before I continue, a brief summary of War of the Worlds is in order: The story begins with a British astronomer by the name of Henry Nickleson. Nickleson has a theory that life - and possibly life of intelligence far superior to that of man - has arisen on Mars by the same evolutionary process by which life is said to have evolved on earth. Adding to this the assumption that Mars is older than the earth and quickly cooling, he speculates that the Martian race must either go extinct or seek a younger, warmer planet to inhabit in the near future.

His theory is shown to be all too true when a Martian spacecraft makes landfall in the suburbs outside of London, and shortly thereafter creatures with huge yellow eyes, oily grey skin, and bulbous, many tentacled bodies begin to emerge from it. Both the superhuman intellect and the hostile intent of the Martians are quickly revealed when a team of scientists approach the spacecraft to welcome their extraterrestrial visitors and are instantly obliterated by a beam of heat radiation. The Martians are not on a pleasure tour; their aim is conquest.

From this point the plot spirals down into a nightmarish account of Nickleson’s struggle to survive, evade capture, and retain his sanity as the Martians transform England into a vivid earthly hell. Using their super-advanced war technology, the Martian invaders quickly stamp out all resistance. The British Army is defeated in a conflict that resembles a slaughter more than a battle. London is overrun. The countryside is blackened, red smoke hangs in the air, and charred corpses lie where they fell in the roads.

Wandering dazed through this wilderness of death and carnage, Nickleson stumbles on the hiding place of an army pilot who also escaped the slaughter. He is the first living human Nickleson has seen in days. As they crouch together in hiding, Nickleson and the Pilot discuss the new state of things. Man is no longer Lord of the Planet. The arrival of these higher life forms has reduced the human race to hunted vermin on level with rats. The future of humanity looks black, but the steely Pilot resolves that it is their “duty to go on living for the sake of the race.”
Driven by desperation to survive and duty to race, the two of them begin formulating plans to organize an underground resistance against the Martians. But before they are able to act, the Martians suddenly and inexplicably begin to die out on their own. With no immunity to terrestrial diseases, the Martians rapidly sicken and die. Ironically, not man, but bacteria becomes the hero.

There is a basic outline of War of the Worlds. Unlike what you may expect after such a description of the story, it was not the inhuman cruelty of the alien invaders that troubled me so deeply, although indeed, Wells’ descriptions are lurid enough to turn ones stomach. Rather it was Wells’ conclusion that bothered me. I did not tell you the final conclusion of War of the Worlds in the summary above.

Here it is: Sometime later, after the dead have been buried, towns and villages rebuilt, and Martian weapons safely displayed behind glass in the London Museum, Nickleson sits once again in his observatory. He is theorizing again. Looking into the future, he realizes that just as the Red Planet is cooling, one day Earth too will begin to cool, and like the Martians, man will be forced to move closer to the sun or face total extinction. Where will man go? Venus perhaps. Yes, Venus. And having exterminated all inferior life forms on that planet, the human race will establish a whole new civilization. So man will leap from planet to planet, preserving the race and spreading human domination throughout the solar system and eventually the universe. The end.

Do you see the implications of this reasoning? Wells’ essentially says Man should do to Venus exactly the same thing that the Martians tried to do to our own earth!

That is how the book ended. And that is why I could not sleep. My senses reeled as I tried to seize on what had caused the author of that book to come to such an appalling deduction. The images of carnage and brutality he had so skillfully created earlier in the story lent themselves to any conclusion but this. It was as wrong as if he had just finished a history of the Holocaust with the statement “Hitler was right, America should follow his example!” How could anyone come to such a conclusion? His logic must have failed somewhere.

Or had it?

Several days later, I found out that Wells’ was a committed Darwinist. Below are listed the core tenants of Darwinian Evolution:

1. There is no God and there is no spiritual reality. The material universe is all there is or ever will be.

2. Life arose by way of natural processes and chance.

3. All life is descended from a common ancestor. Therefore, man is just an animal.

4. Natural Selection. Only the strongest do (and should) survive. Therefore, morality is determined by strength.

5. As a corollary of Natural Selection, one race of humans is superior to the rest.

6. The ultimate purpose and duty of man is to reproduce himself.

It seems then, that Wells’ was more logical than I had given him credit for. You see, he was only taking Darwinism to its logical extreme. That was how he was able to come to the conclusion he did. By Darwinian philosophy, it is natural, reasonable, and even right, for a stronger (i.e. more advanced or more intelligent) race to destroy another, in view of their own interests. According to this same logic, racism, genocide, euthanasia, and abortion suddenly become permissible. Actually, this is exactly the sort of “advancement of the human race” that Wells’ advocates in many of his more technical writings. Compared to some of the plans Wells’ proposed, Hitler would appear a moderate. Here are a few of them:

Ÿ The universal practice of eugenics, that is, selective breeding of human beings.

Ÿ Mercy killings, meaning the murder of anyone he considered unfit to live. By the way, in case you are wondering, Wells’ considered anyone with a transmittable disease, mental disorder, physical deformity, criminal record, or alcohol addiction unworthy of life.

Ÿ Sterilization and birth control to prevent races he deemed ‘inferior,’ specifically darker skinned ethnicities, from having children.

Ÿ Voluntary suicide of so called unfit persons in the name of the greater good of humanity.

Ÿ A worldwide government controlled by an ‘enlightened’ scientific elite. These would be the ones to determine who was fit to survive and who was not.

Sound like Nazi Germany, anyone?

But wait a second, Neo Darwinism (which is simply the modern version of the same Darwinism Wells’ adhered to) is the doctrine that underlies America’s schools, scientific institutions, and even government. If this is the logical conclusion of Darwinism, then why does not what Wells planned happen? Why does not a War of the Worlds actually happen…here?

There are many reasons, not the least of which being the fact that any government that tried to implement such measures would be overthrown by an angry and terrified population. No government yet existing has the power to put Wells’ plans into action. Only a global “world domination” would have the power to do that.

But the most important reason is the reality that few people actually think about what they believe and how it should affect the way they live. We can be grateful fewer students put in the mental effort to work out the implications of what they are told in the classroom, otherwise tragedies like Columbine or Virginia Tech would occur much more frequently. On the other had, there are some who do think, and that is where abortion clinics, planned parenthood, the euthanasia movement, and Neo Nazism originate.

It is not just Evolutionists, either. Few Christians seriously think about what they believe. If they did, who knows how the Kingdom might advance and how many lives might be saved for eternity? A note needs to be made here. We have to be extremely careful about what worldview we chose to believe because what we believe determines our behavior, and actions have consequences. Darwinian philosophy is not a stable worldview to act upon because it is neither logically nor scientifically sound (for more information on that, check out the Intelligent Design or Creationist counter arguments). Unlike Darwinism however, Christianity, real Christianity based on the Bible, is both logically and scientifically solid (again, if you would like to learn more on that, check out some of the links on our blog).

In conclusion, although H.G. Wells was fundamentally wrong in his worldview, at least he was consistent, terrifyingly so. The world has been saved much trouble by Evolutionists not acting on their beliefs. I only wonder how much harm has been done by Christians not acting on theirs.

Welcome!

Welcome!
As the title indicates, this blog is a push against the modern philosophies and worldviews of today which contradict Biblical doctrines.
A little background on us: we’re Christian home-schooled seniors. So, as a given, our writing will be slanted from that angle. We will not, however, slant things to the point of distortion or flat bias without facts to back our viewpoints.
That's pretty much the blog in a nutshell. Thanks for reading!