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"Scientific Chauvinism"
Well, my esteemed co-editor just sent me his part of the issue. My first
reaction as I glanced at his Final Page editorial was "Warren stole my Front
Page editorial!" There's the old saying, "Great minds work alike" but our
friends would say, "Yes, but what does that have to do with Warren and you?"
There is plenty of information on Michael Behe's book "Darwin's Black Box" to go
around, so I would like to look at one of the enlightening points I gained from
reading the book. I just finished it a couple days ago, and things are still
settling into place in my mind. But the point I am about to make is not a new
one to me, but Behe's book reinforced something that was communicated to me
years ago.
In the words of an agnostic friend of mine, a scientist who was doing research
as a physicist at the University of Chicago before he moved away several years
ago; "Jon, you know that we scientists, who pride ourselves in being so
objective, are some of the most unobjective people on earth!" He went on to talk
about developing a theory, devoting 15 to 20 years of ones life to proving it,
living on research grants, and then finding that new data tends to work against
your theory. What does one do? Too many times, he said, one simply sweeps
unfavorable data under the rug so as not to jeopardize the work and hope for
more favorable data in the future.
Behe quotes some scientists in chapter eleven, "Science, Philosophy, Religion" ,
and expresses the same idea. In short, he gives evidence that NOTHING will
change the minds of some scientists who discount and ridicule the idea of an
Intelligent Designer as being behind the origin of our universe.
For example, Behe quotes Robert Shapiro, who gives a "devastating critique to
scientific studies of the origin of life." But then, Shapiro manifests his own
lack of objectivity due to his prejudice against the intelligent origin of
design:
"Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to
discover a probable origin for life have failed unequivocally. Further, new
geological evidence may indicate a sudden appearance of life on the earth.
Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or
process leading to life, elsewhere. In such case, some scientists might choose
to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would
attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in hope
of selecting one that is still more likely than the remainder."
Behe attributes such prejudice (he calls it "scientific chauvinism") to anger
that has grown up through repeated clashes between scientists and theologians.
Another scientist, Richard Dawkins, stated that if he were walking by a statue
of Mary, and the statue waved at him, he would opt to believe that against
astronomical odds, that all the atoms in her arm moving about randomly just
happened to move in the same direction. Another scientist suggested that design
did come from intelligence, but not God; that in alien laboratories DNA packets
were created and the scattered among the stars to seed life. Of course, this
just moves the ultimate origin back a step, for it does not explain where the
aliens came from. This is not from your average scientist, but Nobel prize
winner Francis Crick, who used experiments to deduce the double helical
structure of DNA.
In short, don't consider your best argument from design for the existence of God
to have much effect on those so set against it. With some people, it will take
standing before Him at judgment to bring them to accept that He is the true and
living God.
By Jon W. Quinn
The Front Page
From Expository Files 4.6; June 1997
