What We Know That Ain't So

It is the glory of kings, Solomon tells us, to search out a matter (Pro.25:2). Likewise, the psalmist tells us that the works of the Lord are great, and that everyone who has pleasure in them searches them out(Ps.111:2). Consequently, we are that science, rightly understood, is a glorious thing. This had been understood and acknowledge in history particulaly by those with a full-orbed biblical worldview.

       

        The problem arises with all the bad information that we think is science, such as junk pop science or politicized science. Scientists who do not acknowledge a God with final, ultimate knowledge of every created thing have problem'.Those men who think they are the first ones to know anything can, on principle, know nothing. By contrast, men who think God's thoughts after Him can come to know as Solomon knew ( 1Kings 4:29-34 ). A fact not know by God can never be discovered by anyone. And those things in the world that He knows can, in principle, be known by those men who search them out.

       But when scientists refuse to acknowledge an omniscient Creator God, their pretension to actual knowledge become funnier and funnier. This is because We all instinctively know that someone around here must be the Omniscient one. If we have denied that God can be that one, then someone else must take on the mantle. In our society, this priestcraft, this shamanism, is performed with a white lad coat. This is why the scientific establishment makes pronouncements, and this is why the people, hungry for a  word of knowledge from behind the veil, hang on every word. This is why we can actually sell medicines using an actor who confess that he is not a doctor but he plays one on TV. I hesistate to use particular examples because science changes so often. Nevetheless, take a very recent one the medical establishment left everyone flummoxed when it announced that a high-fiver diethas, ahem no value in preventing colon cancer. Devotees have been eating Shredded Lawn Clippings for 30 years or so, and then they read this in the morning paper. It makes a guy think or ought to. The difficult is not with the research, with trying to search out a matter. And there is no problem with correcting a mistake once it is discovered. The problem is with the hurbris in the meantime, the lack of humility. In godless universe, we might admit under pressure that we don't know everything, but we still think we  know the most. And so this means that every bit new information, or pseudo-information, requires us to act now. Anything less is irresponsible. There is no one greater or wiser in whom we might trust.

        This means that pur flailing anout is the best we have. Carcinogenic hamburger patties, oil spills, carbon monoxide, global warming, nuclear winter you name it. We notice that A might cause B. Immediately demand federal legislation banning A, forgetting that A might also cause, who knows, C, D, E, F, G, and M, three/quarters of which help make the sky blue and the grass green. If someone notices a hole in the ozone, we do not hear cries to study the hole for three hundred years to see if there might be a problem. Instead, we rush in, because we are without God and without hope in the world.

        We have gorgotten thay whod gave us His law. He had told us how to live. And nowhere in Deuteronomy does it say? "And whatever you do, don't mess with those fluorocarbons." In saying this I am not taking a stand, one way or the other, on fluorocarbons. But the point is to put them and their trouble-making potential, or lack of it, into perspective. We do not need to panic over the prospect of life as we know it coming to an end just because we still have those toilets with water tanks on the back.

        C.S. Lewis once commented on the debt that he owed a friend who taught him that the present is a mere period in history. And like every period in history, it had its very blind spots. One of ours is that we think our science can see what it cannot. But the limitation is not in our science; it is our thrology. We are amazed that doctors usef to bleed theirs patients. But we then assume, as a rigid  point of dogma, thatbwe zte doing nothing comparable. We believe, without reflection, thatbno one in the future will,be amazed and appalled at what we  are doing today.

        It would be a mistake, thought, to think thatbthose involved in all this are stupid . They know what they are about; they do what they do in order to gain power. In another insightful comment, Lewis rejected the idea that man is gaining mastery over nature. He is actually gaining mastery over men, using nature as his instrument. A people without faith in God are of necesssity a fearful, timid, enslaved people. And their science keeps them that way.