In no way was my criticism of Ben Stein’s approach a defense of one scientific theory over another. Neither was it an attempt to make peace among disparate warring factions by proclaiming that science and religions are somehow incongruent and should peaceably stay among their own flock. I simply observed that science has started to reach beyond the measure of its ability into realms best suited for the study of esoteric and metaphysical doctrines. I’ll try to clarify this point further:
Science has become the new Catholic Church as epitomized during the Dark Ages. It has merely supplanted a faith in a Divine with a faith in Darwinian Natural Selection, deifying the latter to the point of absolute orthodoxy. Where there were formerly Cardinals, Bishops and Priests who announced that their truth was the only way to salvation, today we are met with Biologists, Geneticists, Scientists et., al., claiming not only the rights of knowledge of their respective fields, but arrogantly laying claim that theirs is the ONLY knowledge accessible to humanity. Where there was once a faith is Mystery, there is now a faith in Future Science which will explain everything. If empiricism cannot prove all absolutes, it is only due to the relative infancy of the scientific fields, not the nature of the limits of scientific knowledge. All Hail Lord Darwin! Perhaps evolutionary theories can explain how species actually originated? From whence did life spring forth out of nothing? Unfortunately, proponents of intelligent design fall under the same orthodoxy as their Darwinian brethren. They do not know the limitations of their own field. Perhaps they should retreat from the confines of their lab and read some Frithjof Schoun once in a while:
“Modern science... plunges dizzily downwards, its speed increasing in geometrical progression towards an abyss to which it hurtles like a vehicle without breaks. This criticism of modern science is made not on the grounds that is studies some fragmentary field within the limits of its competence, but on the grounds that it claims to be in a position to attain to total knowledge, and that it ventures conclusions in fields accessible only to a supra-sensible and truly intellective wisdom, the existence of which it refuses on principle to admit.
By refusing to admit any possibility of serious knowledge outside its own domain, modern science...claims exclusive and total knowledge, while making itself out to be empirical and non-dogmatic, and this, it must be insisted, involves a flagrant contradiction.”
Your invocation of Obama is quite telling, as you resort to similar character analysis of all religious people, claiming that they “cling” to their stubborn beliefs despite all empirical evidence to the contrary. It is one thing to rail against Intelligent Design as a plausible scientific pursuit (as you laboriously do in your thesis), but it is in no way a refutation of the fundamental criticism of Darwinian or neo-Darwinian thought. It seems quite odd that Darwin would title his work On the Origin of Species, yet offer absolutely no ‘theory’ on the actual origins of life. Dealing with biological/genetic transitions among already living organisms is wholly different than offering scientific explanations on the origins of life. Here all ‘scientific’ camps (including Darwinian and ID) are grasping at things far beyond their reach.
The failure also lies at the feet of those religious leaders who have lost all deeper understanding of their religious tenants (unfortunately they are currently a majority,) and now must square their beliefs against the mounting scientific evidence which on the surface seems contradictory. Here again, Schuon illuminates the problem :
One of the effects of modern science has been to give religion a mortal wound, by posing in concrete terms problems which only esoterism can resolve; but these problems remain unresolved because esoterism is not listened to, and is listened to less now than ever. Faced by these new problems, [ i.e. literal interpretations of Biblical texts vs. scientific empirical evidence] religion is disarmed, and it borrows clumsily and gropingly from the arguments of its enemy [i.e. the emergence of Creationism as a pseudo-science]; it is thus compelled to falsify by imperceptible degrees its own perspective, and more and more to disavow itself.
This was the core of my admonition to scientists and fundamentalists to go study metaphysics when searching for answers to supra-scientific questions. This is not a call to “kumbaya,” but the separation of intellectual wheat from the chaff.
I’ll leave you with a final nugget:
To exist is no small matter; the proof is that no man can extract from nothingness a single speck of dust; similarly, consciousness is not nothing; we cannot bestow the least spark of it on an inanimate object. The hiatus between nothingness and the least of objects is absolute, and in the last analysis this absoluteness is that of God.”
P.S.
If any readers are interested, there is a great scientific work which attempts to reconcile the aforementioned dilemma with a degree of efficacy. Highly recommended reading for those unconvinced by the nihilistic Darwinian perspective. Check it out here.
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