“Fantastic Light” was on TV last week. The documentary tried to show how the intellectually bankrupt concept of religion led to Scientific Progress.
Yes, the Physics was great, but something else was even better!
I’m a Biochemical Engineer so as you’d expect I come across a lot of Scientists in my time. They’re a very intelligent bunch of people but as soon as you begin a rational discussion on the existence of a Creator of the Universe, they go into some kind of mental block. It’s really strange, mainly because it’s an instant switch, very similar to schizophrenia. One minute they’re normal rational people, next minute they’ve engaged “Scientific Thought Mode” and all rationality goes out the window.
I always wondered why that was, and this programme shed some “light” on the reason.
Rene Descartes (a French Catholic Scientist, 1596 - 1650) demonstrated how an eye lens inverted an image onto the retina. He argued that this was clearly a result of intelligent design and therefore there must be a God. This led to Descartes receiving immense intellectual leadership, he then continued to make conclusions about light and colour. One of these conclusions was that white light is pure. Coloured light was simply contaminated white light. Descartes could not substantiate his claims experimentally but people (especially Catholics) didn’t care - they blindly put their faith in the Catholic Scientist who had strengthened their faith in God.
Isaac Newton (1643-1727) wasn’t having any of it. So he demonstrated using a prism that white light was not contaminated at all but simply refracted into different colours.
A lot of people realised that day that what they believed in was false. It sent a shockwave through the thinking of Scientists. They would never let this happen again! From now on, anything that can’t be experimented on was false. Scientific fact is only true if we can experiment on it. So the rational guy (me) hears a knock on the door and knows somebody or something is behind the door. According to Scientific thought we can only say there’s a knock and that’s it, simply because we can’t experiment on the cause of the knock.
So to the rational guy (me), the existence of a Creator can be definitely proven. To the Scientist, you can never be sure…
August 26th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
They should have called the documentary How to Make Clever People Stupid”. You got a clever guy (Descartes) that does something stupid – he says things without checking the facts. Then you get an even cleverer guy (Newton) who reacts and comes up with the stupidest thing ever: Scientific Thought!
Fair enough – it works in the lab but in real life we all know when we hear a knock that someone’s behind it. Or if my house is in a mess when I left it tidy I know someone or something has come in and messed it up. It’s that simply. I don’t have to see the cause to know it exists. Duh!
To me Scientists are just as irrational as people who believe in their religion just because their parents told them to.
August 30th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
Anyway, science does not deal with issues that do not obey to the laws of the Universe, meaning issues outside the Universe. So for example, science has no say whatsoever with miracles. Science cannot proof that miracles took place nor can it disproof them.
Science only deals with the how of things and not the why.