Atheist Meme #4:Science, Beauty and Awe

 I have not done one of these in a while, so I think it's about time.  I saw this meme this morning and it caught my eye, not because of the way it displays modern day secularists complete ignorance of what religion teaches about the nature of man...

...but because of the way it displays their complete ignorance of what science tells us about human beings. Quite simply, in all my years as an engineer, doing scientific research, I have never come across a study or research paper which provides evidence for the claim that a human child is "full of wonder" or "beautiful". You will be hard pressed to even find the use of this language in your average scientific paper.

   I wish I could ask the parents of this child, which are obviously filling her head with these erroneous views, what is the unit measure for "awe" or "beauty"? How many of these does a flower have over a Monet painting? How many "wonder units" will trigger that most common of all toddlers questions..."why?"

    The mistake this meme makes is that statements such as "you are beautiful" or "I'm full of wonder" are by their very nature philosophical. Science can say very little about wonder and the capability to appreciate beauty other than perhaps explain the neurological effects these unique human  experiences have in the brain. The most we should expect from science is to explain the "how" of these experiences.

    To find  the "why", why a child is beautiful and why it is full of wonder, we need more than science, we must turn to philosophy which tells us that man is much more than a collection of its own electrochemical and mechanical parts. Philosophy points towards a greater reality, spiritual and eternal. It is this reality which orients us towards what is true and beautiful.

   Religion just provides context to these philosophical ideas.

• Why can we say we are are filled with wonder? Because we were created for this purpose. To be attracted to truth and beauty.  
• Why are we attracted to truth and beauty? So that we can find out our true destiny, our place in  creation. We are oriented towards that which is eternal. 

  To put it in a Catholic context:

You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You - St Augustine

 This is what the true religion has to tell about us; that we are created with a deep need for truth, and we can only find this truth when we find the Creator.

 Up to now I have been focusing on the right side of the meme. Let me address the left side.

 Often secularists portray religion in a rather pessimistic (almost Calvinistic) way. They think that  religious people suffer from a horrendous case of self loathing. This is clearly evident on the list of what religion supposedly says about a young child. The problem with this view is that ignores one of the fundamental teachings of the Bible about human beings.

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness - Genesis 1:26

  We are created in the likeness of God, we reflect God's goodness and beauty, yes we are flawed and yes we make mistakes but fundamentally we are good because our creator is good. To quote the Cathechism of the Catholic Church:

1702. The divine image is present in every man. It shines forth in the communion of persons, in the likeness of the unity of the divine persons among themselves

 So you see, religion exalts the human being, but for science, humans are just another subject matter.

 I hope this presentation helps dispel the erroneous ideas this little meme is propagating.

"Viva Cristo Rey!!"

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Atheist Meme #3: The New Atheist World View

I found this meme in an article posted at the blog hosting site Worldpress. The blog is called "Why evolution is true”. Its simplicity caught my eye.  It presents an empty list of “Religious Discoveries” (Whatever that means). In the article this meme is contrasted with a list published by the Wired Science web site: “10 Top Scientific Discoveries and Accomplishments of the year 2012"

1. The Higgs Boson
2. The Curiosity Rover lands on Mars
3. Most human genetic variation is rare and the deleterious variants arose recently, during our expansion out of Africa
4. The sequencing of fetal genomes using non-invasive procedures, from fetal DNA floating in the mother’s blood
5. The teleportation of entangled quantum particles over a large distance: 50 miles
6. The synthesis of XNA, a new polymer that can carry information and evolve via a form of selection
7. A private company, SpaceX, launched and orbited its own spacecraft, and delivered it to the International Space Station
8. Discovery of an Earth-size exo-planet orbiting a nearby star, Alpha Centauri B
9. The reaching of Lake Vostok, an Antarctic lake, which required drilling through more than 2 miles of ice; this may lead to the discovery of unusual forms of life
10. Government policy has started to end invasive research on chimpanzees in the U.S. (yay!)

The implication in the article is obvious: religion lacks the progressiveness of science. Science is always advancing by quantifiable, concrete discoveries. Science contributes to the progress of humanity where religion is devoid of anything useful.  This is a common theme of the new atheism: Pining the usefulness of science against religion apparent sterility.

I find articles like this one disturbing, not because they present a serious threat to religion, but because they reveal a disturbing worldview. To see what I'm talking about one just needs to take a closer look at the list of scientific discoveries from Wired Science. Of the "10 Top Scientific Discoveries" 2 are from quantum physics, 3 are from astronomy, 2 are from genetics, 1 is from material sciences, and the last 2 (9 and 10) are not discoveries at all but milestones of exploration and government policy. These last two could hardly be called science, and I suspect they were added just to make the list an even 10. This seemingly innocuous fact will become significant later.

Looking at the list of scientific disciplines it is obvious that for the author only a certain type of disciplines produce any discovery worth reporting. Physics, astronomy, genetics and material sciences are part of what is known as natural or “hard” sciences. These are disciplines which rely on quantifiable data, and mathematical models to generate understanding of natural processes. There is, however, another type of scientific disciplines which cannot be placed in this group because they do not rely in repeatable mathematical process but on observation, inference, conjecture and qualitative analysis of data. Examples of these are anthropology, sociology, paleontology and archeology. These disciplines are also known as soft sciences.

Apparently for Wired Science, soft sciences did not produce any significant discoveries last year; at least significant enough to make the Top 10 List. You might be thinking "well in a 10 items list it is impossible to report everything!" but we need to remember one important fact: items 9 and 10. The reality is that these can hardly be called discoveries. To be more blunt: Are we to believe that last year, the government, changing its policy on chimpanzee research, is more significant than all the research performed by archeology, sociology, paleontology, psychology and the rest of the soft sciences?

This is the crux of the matter. For the person compiling the Wired Science list and for the atheists using it to score cheap points against religion, the only science with any significant value is the type of science which only advances our knowledge of the physical world. Science which is quantifiable and can produce repeatable data. Disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, paleontology or archeology are not worth the ink in which their scientific papers are written.

You might be asking why this worldview is dangerous; what is the big deal? Well, soft sciences, when applied to the human race, provide a view of who we are as a species, where we come from, what motivates us, what gives meaning to our existence; the things which make us unique among all the other species in this planet. Denying the validity of these disciplines makes scientific advances to be guided exclusively by utilitarian goals. Science becomes the search of just the things can be replicated, reproduced and exploited. This worldview deprives science of its humanity; and when we allow this, science, to paraphrase the great Mahatma Gandhi becomes  evil.

The new atheists would like very much to convince us that religion has nothing to offer to the human race. The problem is that it does not matter how much they wish for it to be gone, religion IS part of the human experience; it is intertwined with everything the human person does; it is part of our collective culture and art.  It follows then, that any contributions of religion to the human race will occur in the fields of science which study the human person and its development. It is in these areas of scientific study that we will find the contribution religion has offered to mankind.

There is one last thing about the “Why Evolution is True” article. In their zeal to take jabs at religion and pin it against what they consider the only valid type of Science the writers of this article place themselves in an embarrassing position. Perhaps you already noticed: The soft sciences of anthropology, paleontology, sociology, etc. are the same disciplines which have provided most of the evidence for the Theory of Evolution. The same theory they named their  site after! The irony is exquisite; they have to go to that which they disdain the most to justify their own name.

I hope you chuckled as much as I did :-)

One last thing...

Here is some homework for you. Go to Discovery's "Top 10 Archeological Finds of the 21st Century", Take a look and tell me how many of these are religious in nature. Extra credit if you can see any references to Christianity. Enjoy!

 "Viva Cristo Rey!!"

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Atheist Meme #2: On the many Gods of Man

I received this meme from an Atheist over my twitter feed:

The picture lists about 230 names of deities from different cultures and time periods, followed by a quote by Stephan F. Roberts. Now if you are like me the first thing you will ask yourself is :Who is Stephan F. Roberts? I recognize names such like Russel, Nietzsche, Frey or Dawkins but  Roberts? Is this a new Atheist philosopher I do not know? Of course a quick Google search produces this link. As it turns out this is just a guy who thought about this "witty" phrase, and time has enshrined it in the pantheon of Atheism "arguments" against theists. This only shows you the depth of contemporary Atheism's thought.

The meme itself is trying to make an argument I have heard many times. It goes like this: Throughout history there have been many deities. In fact almost each culture has developed their own idea of an omnipotent being. How are you certain that your God IS the right God? What about the others you dismiss?

I could go into a long explanation but I will let solid Catholic doctrine do the talking. Here is what  the Catechism of the Catholic Church, has to say about this:

    I.      THE DESIRE FOR GOD

27 The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.

28 In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behavior: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being.

40 Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point, and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking.

41 All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures—their truth, their goodness, their beauty—all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures’ perfections as our starting point, “for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.”

Catholic Church. (2000). Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed.) (13–14). Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference.

So as you see it is quite simple, the multiplicity of Gods in many cultures is the result of man's desire to know God. Responding to this desire many cultures have given an expression to their own, sometimes warped, always incomplete idea of a supreme being. So in a sense all "Gods" are a "shadow" of the one true God.

Of course now the question of how to know the One True God from this list becomes simple. You look at which one in this list revealed Himself into human history. A quick historical review yields of course Jesus the Christ, who "Became flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1:14).

One last comment about this meme. Looking at the list itself you will find some amusing points. For example, the list includes Yahweh, Jesus and El. Whomever composed this list didn't know that El is just the ancient name of Yahweh, . (This is why the names of archangels end with El such as in Gabri-el, Rapha-el, Micha-el and of course the name of the Jewish people Isra-el). Also some significant contemporary deities are missing like Ya, and Haile Selassie, the Rastafarian deity.

I hope this helps :-)

"Viva Cristo Rey!!"

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Atheist Meme #1: The Black Cat Analogy

I received this meme in my twitter feed. The author used the analogy of a cat in a dark room to point out the fact that metaphysics and theology although part of the philosophical field of study, search for a truth (I assume this truth is God) that is not there. Unlike science, which illuminates the search for the truth that is there, but hidden

.

Right out of the bat we hear echoes of Scientism, a favorite belief system of today's atheists. This is the view that the  inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only way genuine factual knowledge can be achieved. In other words that the science alone can yield true knowledge and that an idea  not verifiable through science, is not valid.

I must admit, on first analysis, this meme presents a very clever analogy. The problem with it is that in a very subtle way it mixes apples and oranges. To understand this we need to just look at each area of study by themselves.

Philosophy is  the study of fundamental ideas of knowledge, such as the nature of  reality, existence, values, reason, mind, and language. The "field" in which philosophy operates, and here is the key point, is in the conscience of every human. In philosophy there is no measurable or tangible (i.e. material) object of study. Philosophy does not care much about the physical and chemical mechanisms which produce ideas but about the ideas produced by these mechanisms. It tries to answer the "Why" and not the "How". Philosophy cares about why is the cat in the dark room purring not how is the cat making that noise.

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy which specifically deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing and cause. Of course God, been the first cause, is an important part of metaphysical analysis. As a branch of philosophy the "field" in which metaphysics operates is, again the human conscience.

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religious belief and of the nature of religious truths, we could also say theology is basically the study of the nature of God. Metaphysics and theology share the same "field" of operation and in fact borrow from each other many concepts, but theology concentrates on the religious aspects of metaphysics.

Looking at these three definitions, we see that in broad terms theology, could be seen as a specialized branch of metaphysics, which in itself is part of philosophy, and these three disciplines share the same "field" of  operation, the human consciousness..

Well? What is science?

Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world. By its own definition science's field of operation is the physical world, it does not concern itself with concepts, such as values or causes, which can not be measured or verified. In other words Science aims at answering the "How" the universe works, with out addressing the "Why".

So by definition science and philosophy do not share the same field of operation. In fact it is a categorical mistake to think, like this meme implies, that they compete with each other, The fact is, it is very easy to show that science and philosophy complement each other to give a better understanding of reality.

So the problem with this meme is that it gives the idea that science, theology and metaphysics are all competing in a darken room, by assuming they all share the same field of study, a cat meowing in the dark.

I think it would be more accurate to say this:

Philosophy is like been in a room, listening to the sounds happening in the dark and wandering what is the fundamental idea behind that sound. Why is that sound happening?

Metaphysics is like been in the same room and wandering what is causing this sound. What kind of being would make such a sound, and why, What would cause "it" to make such a sound.

Theology is like been in the same room realizing that a cat is making this sound, and wandering why is the cat trying to tell us something and what is this being trying to reveal about itself, by meowing in the dark.

Science is like been in the same room measuring the volume, frequency and pitch of the meow. And determining that a four legged mammal, most likely a felis catus is making that noise. Without any commentary about the value of this sound or the intentions of its maker.

I hope this helps :-)


"Viva Cristo Rey!!"
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