Jim Mason holds a BSc in engineering physics and a PhD in experimental nuclear physics In his essay, “Reflections on faith and science,” James R. Coggins wrote, “Advocates of science often seem to assert that science is right because it is based on evidence and reason, while religion is wrong because it is based on nothing but blind faith. These advocates tell us to ‘trust the science.’”The Oxford English Dictionary defines “trust” (verb) as “believe in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of” and lists “have faith in” as an alternative expression. So people who want us to “trust the science” are really exhorting us to “have faith in the science,” or, perhaps, to “have faith in the scientists."Now there’s nothing wrong with having faith — trusting — in something if it is based on evidence and sound reasoning. But is it reasonable to suggest that “trust” in science is always based on evidence and sound reasoning and that “faith” in religion is not, but is simply “blind” faith?Science is, in fact, itself based on a tenet of “blind faith,” namely the tenet of philosophical materialism or naturalism. This is the belief that matter, or nature, is all that there is and that everything must be explained using only the existence of matter and the manner in which it interacts with itself — i.e. the four fundamental forces of physics — or, alternately, using only the processes that are currently observed in nature.The imposition of this tenet is both arbitrary and unnecessary and was done to achieve a very unscientific objective. As the late Dr. Richard Lewontin, evolutionary geneticist at Harvard University, put it, “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot let a Divine foot in the door.”.This dogma has a profound effect. It arbitrarily constrains “scientific” explanations to fit inside the box of materialism “in spite of the patent absurdity” of some of the "unsubstantiated just-so stories” that result. But “no matter how counter-intuitive” or “mystifying to the uninitiated” these stories are, other “scientists” agree to accept them as “scientific.”Ironically, the very existence of the box means that there is, in fact, an outside of the box — the realm of the immaterial or supernatural. However, “real scientists” are not allowed to think outside the box because that’s where God lives and “we cannot let a Divine foot in the door” because — who knows — His existence might actually provide an intuitive, sensible, clear explanation of the evidence that would compel people to take His existence — and His claims — seriously.This dogma can be so constraining as to even preclude arriving at the correct explanation of the evidence. For example, constraining the explanation of the origin of the 747 to only natural causes would lead to something like a tornado going through a junkyard and leaving the 747 in its wake. However, we know that this is incorrect — a patently absurd, counter-intuitive, unsubstantiated just-so story. However, if we allow the immaterial — intelligent design by creative engineers, intentional, directed activity by manufacturing personnel — we can develop an intuitive, sensible, clear explanation of the evidence… that also happens to be correct.This impact of this foundational dogma is pervasive. Because “data cannot speak for themselves; [but] have to be interpreted through a theoretical model,” it has led to the emergence of ruling paradigms in various disciplines. These are frameworks for interpreting data that are used by default within the discipline, without questioning by the practitioner. Data inconsistent with the framework are typically disregarded. Sometimes they are treated as errors by the researcher. Sometimes they are dismissed because the researcher is judged not to have appropriate credentials. Sometimes they are dismissed because the researcher is suspected of unacceptable ideology or has what are considered objectionable funding sources. If none of the preceding can be used, the data are grudgingly accommodated within the ruling paradigm by ad hoc ancillary hypotheses designed to preserve the ruling paradigm.Perhaps the most well-known example of a ruling paradigm distorting science is the geocentric model of the solar system that was enunciated by Aristotle and ‘ruled’ astronomy for centuries despite ample evidence that it was wrong, which evidence was accommodated by the ad hoc addition of more and more epicycles on epicycles, until a handful of “science deniers” — Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler — had the temerity to question it — Kepler opining that he was simply thinking God’s thoughts after Him — and were denounced for doing so..Modern examples would be:The Big Bang in cosmology;The Nebular Hypothesis of star and planet formation in astronomy;Uniformitarianism in geology, that is, that “The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now” (introduced by James Hutton in his book Theory of the Earth with Proof and Illustrations, 1795), implying that each layer of sedimentary rock in the geological column was deposited over millions of years by the slow and gradually geological processes we see today;Abiogenesis in biology, “the original evolution of life or living organisms from inorganic or inanimate substances,” (Oxford English Dictionary);Neo-Darwinian evolution, also in biology, whereby the original “simple” self-replicating organism resulting from abiogenesis bootstrapped itself, by means of mutations and natural selection over millions of years, to become, first, the complex Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) and, from this, also by mutation and natural selection over more millions of years, every living organism on Earth, both extinct and extant, most of which are even more complex than the LUCA.All of these have constrained the interpretation of evidence in the respective disciplines despite there being major issues in all. For example,The Big Bang has been falsified: “Taking all the evidence together, it emerges that all arguments converge consistently to the result that the SMoC [Standard Model of Cosmology, a.k.a. the Big Bang] is falsified;”The Nebular Hypothesis is contrary to frontline research: “The scary part [being] that if none of us knew in advance that stars exist, frontline research would offer plenty of convincing reasons for why stars could never form.” (Death by Black Hole: and Other Cosmic Quandaries, by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist);Uniformitarianism is inconsistent with polystrate fossils: Fossils of trees stretching across several distinct rock layers supposedly requiring millions of years to deposit even though “Pine, spruce, and fir stumps typically require 15-20 years for complete natural decomposition in the Chicago region. Hardwood stumps from oak, maple, and hickory trees resist decay much longer, often persisting 40-50 years or more before fully returning to soil.”; Abiogenesis contradicts the laws of physics: “We now know that the secret of life lies not with the chemical ingredients but with the logical structure and organizational arrangement of the [DNA] molecule… biological information [the genetic code] is not encoded in the laws of physics and chemistry… [and it] cannot come into existence spontaneously… There is no known law of physics able to create information from nothing.” (Dr Paul Davies, Life force, New Scientist 163(2204):27–30, 1999), and “… the major problem is the origin of the genetic code and of its translation mechanism. The code is meaningless unless translated. The modern cell's translating machinery consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in DNA: the code cannot be translated otherwise than by products of translation.” (Jacques Monod, biochemist, Director, Pasteur Institute, France, Nobel Laureate in Medicine); the irreducible-complexity problem;Neo-Darwinian evolution requires mutations to have the opposite effect to what they actually have: “the vast majority of mutations are deleterious. This is one of the most well-established principles of evolutionary genetics, supported by both molecular and quantitative-genetic data,” and just like ever-increasing entropy in physics ineluctably destroys the useable energy available for work until all the energy sources are extinguished, this ever-increasing “genetic entropy” in biology ineluctably destroys the fidelity of the DNA information required to make and maintain viable organisms, leading to their eventual extinction, which for humans, would happen in perhaps as little as just over 100 generations. Thus, the LUCA could not happen (which is consistent with the fact that there is no physical evidence of a LUCA in the fossil record), never mind the transformation of the LUCA into everything else..People who put their faith in science believe that all these (and many other) issues will be resolved over time as more things are discovered. However, the more things that are discovered, the more issues are created. For example, “JWST [James Webb Space Telescope] Discovers Enormous Distant Galaxies That Should Not Exist.” As noted in that article, according to Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, "It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question.”On the other hand, if one drops the arbitrary and unnecessary presupposition that there is no supernatural — looks outside the box of materialism—and accepts that the first 11 chapters of Genesis recount actual history, then all of these issues disappear:The numerous “big problems” in the Big Bang, and the ad hoc contrivances like dark matter and dark energy — modern day epicycles — that are used "not to describe known empirical phenomena but rather to maintain the mathematical coherence of the [Big Bang] framework itself while accounting for discrepant observations,” disappear;The myriad issues with star and plant formation inherent in the Nebular Hypothesis disappear;Various problems with the geological column, such as the polystrate fossils, disappear since “It should also be remembered that Steno's law [of superposition] is a statement of relative time, not absolute time: two rock layers, in principle, could have formed millions of years apart or a few hours or days apart,” and the geological column was deposited during the non-uniformitarian, approximately 1-year long global flood of Noah’s day;The origin of life is no longer the laws-of-physics-defying, accidental abiogenesis but the intentional act of the creator of the laws of physics;The inevitable extinction inherent in the genetic entropy produced by mutations (which cannot be stopped by natural selection) which could result in human extinction in as few as 100 generations and is a major problem for the evolutionary timeline of 7 million years since the alleged divergence of chimpanzees and humans or even the supposed 130,000 years since the start of the out-of-Africa migration, becomes a non-issue since humans — indeed all life — has been in existence for only about 6,000 years.Many other anomalies in the materialistic “box” also have straightforward explanations with this “out-of-the-box” perspective. Things such as:The fact that all people are descended from just one man (Y-chromosomal Adam) and one woman (Mitochondrial Eve) — who could have lived just a few thousand years ago if the measured mutation rates for mitochondrial DNA are used for the calculation rather than the 100,000-200,000 years ago that results from the use of mutation rates indirectly inferred by other means — with there having been a severe population bottleneck at some point that resulted in three dominant female mitochondrial DNA lines: (Adam, Eve, and the three daughters-in-law of Noah);the presence of significant levels of radioactive carbon-14 in coal from three different layers in the geological column alleged to be between 30 and 300 million years old — meaning that there should be zero radiocarbon present — that are consistent with the coal all being of the same age and that age being much less than the upper limit of 90,000 years determined by the sensitivity of the measuring equipment. (The coal was formed from trees, buried within months of each other during the global flood, all of which were growing and incorporating, via photosynthesis, the atmospheric 14C—14C not being naturally occurring but being produced in the atmosphere by cosmic rays — during the same pre-flood era.)soft biological tissues of many different kinds, including segments of DNA, in the bones of many different kinds of dinosaurs, all of which allegedly went extinct at least 65 million years ago, even though biological tissue decomposes rapidly and, in particular, DNA is a chemically unstable molecule that spontaneously disintegrates and would be completely disintegrated in just over 1 million years even if kept continuously at -5 ℃, which, of course, would not be the case if it was buried even a few feet below the surface (i.e. below the frost line), indicating that the dinosaurs were buried recently and more or less concurrently, as in a year-long global flood just 4,500 years ago..So we have two different interpretations of the evidence regarding the origins and histories of the universe, Earth, and life on Earth. One of these, the supposedly “scientific” one, is seriously at odds with the empirical evidence and requires blind faith in a number of things even to explain the things that it does manage to explain. The other, the supposedly “blind-faith” religious view, is almost totally consistent with the empirical evidence and requires no blind faith at all, just faith based on “[the empirical] evidence and [valid] reason.”Now, it is a characteristic of science that it does not prove hypotheses/theories to be true, only that they are false. This happens when the empirical evidence is inconsistent with the implications or predictions of the hypothesis/theory. That being the case — and it unarguably is — then, by the very logic of science itself, one must conclude that the hypothesis of materialism/naturalism is wrong. On the other hand, since the empirical evidence is by-and-large consistent with the hypothesis underpinning the so-called “blind-faith, religious” interpretation — namely that the supernatural exists and the first 11 chapters of Genesis record actual history — one can conclude that this hypothesis has not been shown to be wrong. Since there are only the two alternatives — i.e. naturalism is right and supernaturalism is wrong, or naturalism is wrong and supernaturalism is right — logic says that naturalism is wrong and supernaturalism is right, and the first 11 chapters of Genesis do, indeed, recount actual history.Not only is the “religious” view the more scientific, it comes with some bonuses.One bonus is providing individual significance. The naturalistic view means that one’s life is just the meaningless, purposeless outcome of a sequence of innumerable undirected, purposeless accidents (mutations) with no more inherent worth than any other species, such as, say, a slug, which is simply the outcome of a different sequence of innumerable undirected, purposeless accidents. The supernatural view is that one’s life has meaning and purpose, and each person is of immense inherent worth because we are each made in the image of God.As the late Dr. Will Provine expressed the “naturalistic” perspective, “Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear, and I must say that these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposeful forces of any kind, no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be completely dead. That’s just all — that’s going to be the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.” Given that we teach modern evolutionary biology to all grades as if it were “proven” scientific fact, it is not at all surprising that students become so hedonistic and nihilistic. (Ironically, Dr Provine probably believed that he made this statement of his own free will, and now, being the late Dr Provine, he knows just how wrong he was!).Another bonus is providing insight into the nature of mankind. Rebellious, willful, and deceitful for sure, but also aspiring to be like God and know the difference between good and evil. Not content to live in a “very good” world as it was at the end of creation on day 6, mankind just had to know about evil, which then became endemic, with fratricide in the very first generation after Adam and Eve, and eventually “the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” While the global flood of Noah’s time did a bit of a reset, things are now pretty much back to this state.The most important bonus, however, is of eternal significance. Notwithstanding mankind’s continual rejection of God, and the propensity of our thoughts to be only evil continually, God, in His grace and compassion, provided a way for us to know the truth and to reconcile with Him — the world’s first truth and reconciliation program. “The truth will set you free” and while “the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ” because "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”. We all have faith in something. The question is, in what?Do we place our faith in those who, a priori, arbitrarily preclude the existence of God and, as a consequence, are forced to construct patently absurd, unsubstantiated, counter-intuitive, mystifying, just-so stories to explain the phenomenal world, which stories are themselves often contradicted by the empirical evidence and tell us that life has no meaning and humans have no free will?Or do we place our faith in God who, after creating a "very good” place in which we were to live, arranged to have an accurate account of His efforts recorded for our benefit, which account continues to be confirmed as new evidence is discovered, and who provides meaning and value for each individual and the opportunity to spend eternity in His company?If we are to make our decision based on evidence and reason, there is no question. I simply do not have sufficient faith to be an atheist.Jim Mason holds a BSc in engineering physics and a PhD in experimental nuclear physics
