Most of you probably have seen this on social media, but some of you link directly to the forum and may have missed it. Biologos is making a direct statement regarding the nature of science in our society, and I thought it would be good to have a post exploring that stance. For your consideration:
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Great initiativeâŚ100% gets my vote and i agree wholeheartedly that damaging, errant and extremely detrimental conspiracies have circulated, particularly since COVID, damaging the good work and achievements of modern humanity.
In as much as we stuff a lot of things up, we also get a lot right.
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The US has a long history of anti-intellectualism.
Our zeal for democracy has had detrimental consequences, such as misplaced animosity towards elites (i.e. those with more education). Our reflexive tendency towards fairness sometimes pushes us to postmodernism where all conclusions are equal, even when they arenât. Unfortunately, reality isnât something we can vote on, nor can we pass a law to change reality.
Some of our strengths as a country are freedom of expression, diversity of thought, and an adventurous spirit, but we also need a dose of reality at times. Thatâs what science is. As many of us scientists have found, sometimes our new hopeful hypotheses just turn out to be wrong. We sometimes have to mutter to ourselves, âThe data is what the data is,â swallow our pride, and chuck out what we thought was a really good idea. We have to be able to do that as a society as well.
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This.
This too.
In fact ⌠just all that. Tâs post above nails it.
Iâve just finished a book âWe the Fallen Peopleâ - and while the author is himself a religious person, and writing with that kept in self-reflective view; the book summarizes excellently (I think) what T is getting at, and anybody - secular or religous needs to read it.
Democracy - by one simple and unambiguous definition is just âmajority ruleâ. It is not necessarily justice. Not necessarily good. Not necessarily benevolent or even beneficial. Just ⌠whatever the majority of the political moment happens to want. And Lord help us when coalitions manage to make themselves large enough so that they can become majorities! (:Thank you, political parties!) Then they can make their end-runs around all the checks and balances the Framers put into place because while the Framers wanted a âmajority ruleâ (democracy) - at the same time they knew that majorities can become tyrannical just as much (even more so in the moral arena!) than any single dictator can! So they (knowing that populist masses rarely show anything remotely like intelligence or wisdom) went out of their way to build in protections for minorities too - including intelligent leadership that should have some helpful isolation from the whims of the fear-lathered populist masses. Not too much - but enough that the people can be protected from some of their own worst impulses. But certain political parties today are hell-bent on giving the Framers the middle finger and dismantling all that because they think they know better. Instead of fearing tyranny, as the Framers had the wisdom to do, they instead fear the tyrant not being âtheir ownâ. Both sides have been doing this - itâs just that one happens to be a bit worse about it in this political moment. Things like truth and science, honor and integrity are the casualties when mass movements find themselves in power.
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âMany forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.âŚâ
Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947
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Yep - or also often attributed to Churchill: âThe best argument against democracy is 5 minutes of conversation with the average voter.â
It does seem to me that a healthy democracy very much needs to have a healthy public education system in place if the majority is ever to have any hope of being able to restrain its worst impulses or cultivate any better ones. So I guess whatever people or parties are in favor of education generally are in favor of a more hopeful future, and whatever groups want to thwart or limit education as much as possible will be the friends of present and future tyranny.
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Education is good but not always sufficient. Systems that work against the dominance of one block of rulership are needed.
Whenever one block gets all the power, we end up in dictatorships like the Soviet Union, Communist China or Nazi Germany. Having a history of democracy is not a quarantee of maintaining democracy. You only need one or two elections where all the power is given to a single person or political block that wants to continue ruling, and the dictatorship of the majority (= democracy) may turn into the dictatorship of the person or political block. Laws can be rewritten as needed if the person or block has all the power.
I live in a country that has a multi-party system, with several political parties getting significant numbers of representatives into the parliament. That is one strategy that helps to maintain democracy.
A more wide-spread strategy is some form of checks and balances. Checks and balances becomes crucial in political systems where only 2-3 parties dominate the scene. Look what happens to checks and balances and you can predict the fate of the political system.
Whatever the fate of the political system is, as Christians we continue to pray for the people and government but we also can and should promote values that we consider to be fair and correct in the eyes of God. History has shown that the dictatorship of one person or political block leads to some form of persecution of those who disagree with the ruler. Some branches of believers have typically been among the persecuted.
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One thing that is unfortunately true of educationâŚwhether comfortable or otherwise, because governments mandate that we are to receive an education in modern society, that is in and of itself, indoctrination.
Well yes - or Iâd say itâs âinevitably trueâ about education. Itâs potentially either a blessing or a curse. So the question isnât âis there indoctrinationâ, but rather âwith what are we being indoctrinated?â Is it indoctrination toward integrity and being considerate of others, especially others that are different? Towards valuing an awareness that goes beyond oneâs own immediate communities or culture? Toward wanting to be aware of reality even when reality doesnât conform to my own pet theories? I hope that kind of indoctrination spreads as widely as possible through nation and world. But if it is indoctrination steering away from such values, then yes - it would be a less fortunate kind of indoctrination.
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As a friend from the late 1970s would have said, âHallelujah-Praise-God-Amen!â
Not surprisingly we learned that in grad school with respect to ancient texts.
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Instead Americans, at least, seem to regard democracy as a sort of game of Monopoly where the idea is to wipe out everyone else.
So I shouldnât be watching the news and thinking, âPlease, someone shoot that guy!â?
all true, but its indoctrination never the less and with that comes biases. Those biases are reflective of things like cultural norms or in i suppose worst cases, dictatorial demands of leadership. I see integrity as being a matter of perspectiveâŚfor a North Korean that would be very different to a North American.
It interesting that this topic should come up though, because it does certainly lend evidence to the notion that St Roymond often highlights âthat biblical interpretation is [âmight beâ] dependant on the language of the dayâ (i hope that is a sufficient paraphase of your views there St Roymond?)
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Language in its context of literature, culture, worldview, etc. â i.e. the grammatical-historical method.
But thatâs the meaning, which is the step that precedes interpretation.
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Well, hoping I donât come across unnecessarily antagonistic, but I personally donât like this kind of rhetorical tactic. If in any other field (education, banking, etc.), there had been numerous scandals or other public relations disasters that had dried up public trust and consequential financial support in said institutions, I would not be impressed by an article titled âEducation is Goodâ or âBanking is Good,â that lamented the distrust of those institutions or suspicion of those experts, without acknowledging various legitimate underlying causes of said distrust⌠but rather implied that lack of trust in those institutions was entirely or essentially the fault of those harboring said distrust.
Further, I just donât like the rhetorical tactic of equating the goodness of an entire field (âEducation is Goodâ) with the authorâs own particular proposals within that field, thereby implying that anyone who disagrees with their own particular proposals must de facto espouse the opposite (i.e., if you disagree with my proposals, then de facto you must be one of those that think âEducation is bad.â). It strikes me as a variation of the âNo True Scotsmanâ FallacyâŚ
âThose who think âEducation is Goodâ will not distrust institutions or be suspicious of experts.â
âI think Education is good, but I distrust various institutions and am suspicious of various experts.â
âAh, then you must really think Education is BadâŚâ
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A legitimate point. I actually had some of the same thoughts when I first read the title, and wonder if perhaps a better tagline could have been made, as I agree with the text of the letter following. On the other hand, in todayâs world, you have to have a caption that grabs attention if you want anyone to click on it and dive deeper, so maybe it was purposely done that way.
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That reaction reveals why a dictatorship of one person or political block does not form a benevolent alternative to democracy, even if the ruler would be a Christian. I do not think that democracy is the best possible system but the alternatives we currently have are even worse.
We would need a ruler that is wise, fair, knows everything, cares about the people and makes decisions that lead towards a better future - a person ruling by the principles of truth and grace. I know only one person who could be that kind of ruler - Jesus Christ. Waiting for his returnâŚ
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I agree with this statement.
Im going to be controversial now, a working illustration of the above which i am regularly finding myself defending against is the notion of âif it dissagree with Darwinian Evolutionary scienceâ its pseudo science". That is simply untrue and slaps some very capable and extremely famous scientists and their work in the faceâŚthese individuals are doing great science so long as they continue to produces results in favour of the dominant modelâŚas soon as they do not, they get absolutely trashed. Mary Sweitzer in her first findings is point and example. Initially she copped an earbashing citing her method must be flawed. The was little initial interest in being impartialâŚthe immediate response didnt give a crap about the actual evidence, all it cared about was defending the institution at all costsâŚthe response was unscientific and honestly, it was terrible. Did the dilemma eventually resolve itself? yes, but that does not justify the initital responseâŚwhich has clearly altered the status quo now.
The accepted reality now is
The extraction of protein, soft tissue, remnant cells and organelle-like structures from dinosaur fossils has been confirmed.[14][15][16] Blood-derived porphyrin proteins have also been discovered in a mid-Eocene mosquito fossil.[17]
While science helps us understand how God works and continues to work in His created world, it should not be mistaken for scientism, which elevates scientific knowledge as the only path to truth. Science reveals the mechanisms of creation and reflects Godâs ongoing sovereignty and brilliance. In the past, Scripture and history told us what God did; today, science helps us witness His glory as it continues to unfold in real time.
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I think this was even closer to what I was trying to say. There are plenty of people that absolutely believe âscience is goodâ, but who simply have major problems with the current way that science is being undertaken, or the various political or social agendas behind it. The clear implication I felt from the article was that if I disagree with Biologosâ particular interpretation, approach, or agenda (particular amounts of public funding or trust in certain experts, etc.), then I must be anti-science.
Indoctrination is not necessarily a bad thing, though we often attach a negative connotation to it. It is simply an approach to education. You donât always have time to teach students about the long process of how some ideas were discovered, so instead you teach them the conclusions that are considered consensus in any given field, be it history or chemistry. For example, we donât run high school chemistry students through all of the work that led to our current understanding of electron orbitals. Instead, we just teach them that there are electron orbitals, and this is what they look like. That is indoctrination.
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