Darwin and Creation

How Scientists Embrace Lunacy in Theory and Reject It in Practice

The behavior of the scientists in this debate is particularly curious. That is because in their myth scientists accept ignorance as the beginning of the road to knowledge. The core commandment of their method is to embrace the bewilderment of the madman.

Of course they do not see it quite that way; to them the scientist is not a lunatic but rather a fearless skeptic who bravely faces the unknown. He is a courageous pioneer of truth who tests every hypothesis against carefully examined facts and ruthlessly discards any idea that does not perfectly match the facts; he is a pitiless executioner of his own most precious ideas if they are ever found to be “falsified” by a single, damning, contrary fact.

But even while they have unquestioned faith in themselves as relentless questioners, they quite as devoutly believe in a vision of the universe that is, in their eyes, “scientific,” as opposed to “superstitious,” “magical,” or “metaphysical.” But this “scientific” view of the nature of the universe is anything but skeptical, and their contemptuous rejection of metaphysics is itself a metaphysical doctrine.

This doctrine goes by various names: scientism, naturalism, pessimistic materialistic determinism, and mechanistic determinism are few of them. At least those are names used by philosophers; to many scientists, many of whom have no use for philosophy and metaphysics, it is just plain common sense.

It is a simple doctrine: nothing in the universe exists except matter in motion and everything that happens, has ever happened, or ever will happen, can be explained by the mechanistic laws that govern matter in motion. Sometimes this belief system is called the “unity of science,” referring to the idea that there is one set of laws that governs all of the sciences. This means that ultimately all the sciences can ultimately be reduced to the laws of physics: the laws of chemistry can be derived from those of physics; biology is a product of physics and chemistry; and so on.

Essentially, they simply believe that if science cannot explain it, then it just does not exist.

In some ways the best name for this doctrine is scientism, but that leads to confusion when referring to its believers: “scientist” already means a person who simply does scientific work, not necessarily a believer in a metaphysical system. So let us call the doctrine “mechanistic determinism” and its faithful “mechanists.” That reflects the essential mechanistic nature of the belief.

The theological consequent of mechanistic determinism is not skepticism nor agnosticism; it is atheism. If science cannot explain it, it does not exist; God cannot be explained by science; therefore God does not exist. Those who try to find a place for both God and science cling to the myth of skeptical, open-minded science and imagine a kind of bifurcated universe: one composed somehow of both a material and a spiritual realm, the one known to science and the other not.

Their attempt to have it both ways leads to a conflict, which is gleefully pointed out by the mechanists, in the area of human action. Our actions are necessarily the actions of our bodies, which are physical. If our actions are in any way controlled by “spiritual” considerations, then spirit would appear to over-rule the laws of the physical realm. If they do not, and the behavior of our bodies is entirely governed by physical law, then we are essentially automata. Spirit may exist (science cannot prove that it does not) but it is irrelevant to anything that happens in the physical world, including the world of our bodies and our behavior.

At least the mythical science (you know, the one that pretends to madness) acknowledges that spirit may exist. The mechanists reject it as ridiculous superstition. There is no place on the puzzle boxtop that they embrace for anything like spirit. The theists are amazed. They insist that it is plainly right there on the boxtop that guides them. We lunatics cannot see either boxtop; we stare out into a deep, murky mystery.