Anthony McIntyre ✒ Journeying across my curiosity scanner since the onset of Covid has been an unremitting flow of science books and podcasts. 

Brian Greene, Sean Carroll, Jim Al Kalili, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Bill Nye are some of the better-known figures in the science world that have bubbled to the surface. I read and listen to popular science as my grasp of anything beyond that is limited. Even when popularised, my understanding of science remains at best rudimentary. Reading Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, for me at any rate, was a considerable challenge.

When the conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics is discussed, followed by the increasing utilisation of String Theory in a bid to marry the two and thus create a unifying whole in the field of physics, I get only bits of it. Still, the snippets that fall my way are immensely rewarding in terms of both causing and scratching the itch of intellectual curiosity.

Ultimately I find a physicalist explanation of the universe and the world we live in, immensely satisfying. If there is a non-physicalist force at play, there is no one alive who knows what it is. It remains in the domain of unicornology, with which there is no overlapping magesteria. Nor does there seem any need for it, the laws of physics, chemistry and biology manage to survive and function without any prodding from some magical entity. There are plenty who know their Bible, Koran, Torah, Puranas but that just means they know about a book that explains nothing about the origins of our universe or the evolution of our species. The bible is no more persuasive in explaining the origins of the universe and life within it than a book on King Arthur and Merlyn the Wizard. They are in general just myths, with the holy books being specific myths of creation.

Society would be a much poorer place without its myths and its fiction. The sheer pleasure to be derived from novels demonstrates the usefulness of storytelling. People are no more expected to believe novels than they are holy books, even if there is a value to be derived from them. A read of writers like the late Helder Camara show how religion can inspire love. Conversely, in the hands of many evangelical Christians it gives rise to a theology of hate. In the words of HL Mencken, Evangelical Christianity . . . is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.

There is a striking book by Ronald L Numbers, which I am still dipping in and out of, The Creationists, in which the history of Young Earth Creationism is set out in forensic detail. The obstinate idiocy of its adherents is such that perhaps Young Earth Cretinism is a more apt term to describe it. A quick dive, not even a deep one, into its intellectually fecund pages soon reveals the shallow depths of creationism. To draw on the witticism of a friend, creationists know as much about a Creator as a cat does about its father. 

Science to Young Earth Creationists is like garlic to a vampire. The Hosanna in the Highest men scale no intellectual heights, their pinnacle a molehill beside the Everest of science.  They love the biblical god for his wickedness, being singularly unable to demonstrate any good that the boss of the desert gang is supposed to have done. A Jesus capable of love would drive them to distraction. Give us Trump, they would shout, if offered the chance to save one of the crucified. In the Old Testament tyrant they can find a Supreme being who gives the stamp of approval to their own hatreds. They scream persecution when denied the ability to have theological bafflegab taught as fact, a science on a par with the other sciences, impervious to science being in the words of Brian Cox, the enemy of certainty. 

On this I find myself at one with Isaac Azimov:

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.

 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Theological Bafflegab

Anthony McIntyre ✒ Journeying across my curiosity scanner since the onset of Covid has been an unremitting flow of science books and podcasts. 

Brian Greene, Sean Carroll, Jim Al Kalili, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Bill Nye are some of the better-known figures in the science world that have bubbled to the surface. I read and listen to popular science as my grasp of anything beyond that is limited. Even when popularised, my understanding of science remains at best rudimentary. Reading Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, for me at any rate, was a considerable challenge.

When the conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics is discussed, followed by the increasing utilisation of String Theory in a bid to marry the two and thus create a unifying whole in the field of physics, I get only bits of it. Still, the snippets that fall my way are immensely rewarding in terms of both causing and scratching the itch of intellectual curiosity.

Ultimately I find a physicalist explanation of the universe and the world we live in, immensely satisfying. If there is a non-physicalist force at play, there is no one alive who knows what it is. It remains in the domain of unicornology, with which there is no overlapping magesteria. Nor does there seem any need for it, the laws of physics, chemistry and biology manage to survive and function without any prodding from some magical entity. There are plenty who know their Bible, Koran, Torah, Puranas but that just means they know about a book that explains nothing about the origins of our universe or the evolution of our species. The bible is no more persuasive in explaining the origins of the universe and life within it than a book on King Arthur and Merlyn the Wizard. They are in general just myths, with the holy books being specific myths of creation.

Society would be a much poorer place without its myths and its fiction. The sheer pleasure to be derived from novels demonstrates the usefulness of storytelling. People are no more expected to believe novels than they are holy books, even if there is a value to be derived from them. A read of writers like the late Helder Camara show how religion can inspire love. Conversely, in the hands of many evangelical Christians it gives rise to a theology of hate. In the words of HL Mencken, Evangelical Christianity . . . is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.

There is a striking book by Ronald L Numbers, which I am still dipping in and out of, The Creationists, in which the history of Young Earth Creationism is set out in forensic detail. The obstinate idiocy of its adherents is such that perhaps Young Earth Cretinism is a more apt term to describe it. A quick dive, not even a deep one, into its intellectually fecund pages soon reveals the shallow depths of creationism. To draw on the witticism of a friend, creationists know as much about a Creator as a cat does about its father. 

Science to Young Earth Creationists is like garlic to a vampire. The Hosanna in the Highest men scale no intellectual heights, their pinnacle a molehill beside the Everest of science.  They love the biblical god for his wickedness, being singularly unable to demonstrate any good that the boss of the desert gang is supposed to have done. A Jesus capable of love would drive them to distraction. Give us Trump, they would shout, if offered the chance to save one of the crucified. In the Old Testament tyrant they can find a Supreme being who gives the stamp of approval to their own hatreds. They scream persecution when denied the ability to have theological bafflegab taught as fact, a science on a par with the other sciences, impervious to science being in the words of Brian Cox, the enemy of certainty. 

On this I find myself at one with Isaac Azimov:

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.

 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

6 comments:

  1. Of course, live long enough and you'll see scientific understandings being corrected. Something religion can not do for obvious reasons.

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    1. Religion can as well Steve - the major religions came to embrace evolution in the wake of overwhelming evidence. Hate theology never will - it needs hate to sustain it and without the sustenance of hatred, it withers and dies.

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    2. Not their 'First Cause' tenets though, and Evolution was only accepted after rage, indignation and denial for eons.

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  2. Quillers at the end of the day no one knows how the universe came to be. There is almost as many theories about how everything started as there are religions.....Its all guess work

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    1. I think we can know for certain that Pangu created the universe. How else do we explain so many Chinese people? They must be the Chosen People!!!

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    2. Frankie that is true to an extent, but the Universe appears to have physical properties. Ergo it can be quantifiable to a degree, which leads to much further questions arising, specifically in the fields of Mathematics and Physics. Still, it all started simply and became complex.

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