Our recent foray into Baconism was most interesting for me in
exploring his prescient view of the "idols" of the mind. Of particular import
was his description of one of these idols, which he described as of the
"theater." Why did he use this term? "Because in my judgment all the received
systems of philosophy are but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of
their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion." It is this sort of
stage play that people like Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins
are in the process of writing.
It is a play entitled "The Science-God." The heroes are the
materialists; the villains are the supernaturalists. It is also a play that
Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, Kepler and Newton would have panned. As Neil
Postman writes in First Things, these men...
"...did not think of their story as a replacement for the great
Judeo-Christian narrative, but as an extension of it. In fact the point has
been made more than once that the great age of science was prepared by a
belief in a god who was himself a scientist and technician, and who would
therefore approve a civilization committed to such an enterprise...Their
discoveries were made in the service of the Judeo-Christian god. And could
they know of Stephen Hawking's remark that the research permitted by the (no
abandoned) supercollider would give insight into the mind of God, they would
be pleased.
"The difference between them and Hawking is that Hawking, as an avowed
atheist, does not believe what he said. To him, the story of Jehovah's wonders
is only a dead metaphor, and the great story of science is enough for Hawking,
as it has been for many others. It is a story that exalts human reason, places
criticism over faith, disdains revelation as a source of knowledge, and, to
put a spiritual cast upon it, postulates that our purpose on Earth is to
discover reliable knowledge. Of course, the great narrative of science shares
with the great religious narratives the idea that there is order to the
universe, which is a fundamental assumption of all important narratives.
"In fact, science even has a version (of sorts) of the concept of the 'mind of
god.' As Bertrand Russell once put it, if there is a god, it is a differential
equation....In any case, the great strength of the science-god is, of course,
that it works--far better than supplication, far better than even Francis
Bacon could have imagined. Its theories are demonstrable and cumulative; its
errors are correctable; its results practical. The science-god sends people to
the moon, inoculates people against disease, transports images through vast
spaces so that they can be seen in our living rooms. It is a mighty god and,
like more ancient ones, gives people a measure of control over their lives.
Some say the science-god gives more control and more power than any other god
before it.
"But in the end, science does not provide the answers most of us require. Its
story of our origins and of our ends is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. The
question, "How did it all begins?", science answers, "Probably by an
accident." To the question, "How will it all end?", science answers, "Probably
by an accident." And to many people, the accidental life is not worth living.
Moreover, the science-god has no answer to the question, "Why are we here?"
and, to the question, "What moral instructions do you give us?", the
science-god maintains silence. It places itself at the service of both the
beneficent and the cruel, and its grand moral impartiality, if not
indifference, makes it, in the end, no god at all."
(Postman, Neil, "Science and the Story That We Need," First Things, January
1997, pg. 31)
The idol called "The Science-God" was born in the crucible of
religious struggle, of course. Tom Wolfe, writing in Forbes, correctly
describes a turning point, Nietzsche's "God is dead" proclamation:
<<The year was 1882.(The book was Die Frohliche Wissenschaft [The Gay
Science].) Nietzsche said this was not a declaration of atheism, although he
was in fact an atheist, but simply the news of an event. He called the death
of God a "tremendous event," the greatest event of modern history. The news
was that educated people no longer believed in God, as a result of the rise of
rationalism and scientific thought, including Darwinism, over the preceding
250 years. But before you atheists run up your flags of triumph, he said,
think of the implications. "The story I have to tell," wrote Nietzsche, "is
the history of the next two centuries." He predicted (in Ecce Homo) that the
twentieth century would be a century of "wars such as have never happened on
earth," wars catastrophic beyond all imagining.
And why? Because human beings would no longer have a god to turn to, to
absolve them of their guilt; but they would still be racked by guilt, since
guilt is an impulse instilled in children when they are very young, before the
age of reason. As a result, people would loathe not only one another but
themselves. The blind and reassuring faith they formerly poured into their
belief in God, said Nietzsche, they would now pour into a belief in barbaric
nationalistic brotherhoods: "If the doctrines . . . of the lack of any
cardinal distinction between man and animal, doctrines I consider true but
deadly" -- he says in an allusion to Darwinism in Untimely Meditations -- "are
hurled into the people for another generation . . . then nobody should be
surprised when . . . brotherhoods with the aim of the robbery and exploitation
of the non-brothers. . . will appear in the arena of the future."
(Wolfe, Tom, "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died," Forbes ASAP, Dec. 2)
Nietzsche was nothing if not a prophet. The Science-God has stomped
its way through the 20th century, with the attendant priesthood. Wolfe calls
them elders, as in:
<<The elders, such as [James Q.] Wilson himself and Daniel C. Dennett, the
author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, and
Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, insist
that there is nothing to fear from the truth, from the ultimate extension of
Darwin's dangerous idea. They present elegant arguments as to why neuroscience
should in no way diminish the richness of life, the magic of art, or the
righteousness of political causes, including, if one need edit, political
correctness at Harvard or Tufts, where Dennett is Director of the Center for
Cognitive Studies, or Oxford, where Dawkins is something called Professor of
Public Understanding of Science. (Dennett and Dawkins, every bit as much as
Wilson, are earnestly, feverishly, politically correct.) Despite their best
efforts, however, neuroscience is not rippling out into the public on waves of
scholarly reassurance. But rippling out it is, rapidly. The conclusion people
out beyond the laboratory walls are drawing is: The fix is in! We're all
hardwired! That, and: Don't blame me! I'm wired wrong! >> [Ibid.]
What Bacon observed in the idols, Nietzsche helped implement in the
culture. The Dawkins's and Dennett's have their pedigree in the [eventually]
mad Prussian. Phil Johnson is clearly correct when he writes:
<<Scientists and philosophers frequently say that God is a subject outside of
science, but such statements are seriously misleading. It would be more
accurate to say that the scientists who think about the big picture are
obsessed with the God issue, and it is natural that they should be. The aim of
historical scientists--those who attempt to trace cosmic history from the big
bang or before to the present--is to provide a complete naturalistic picture
of reality. This enterprise is defined by its determination to push God out of
reality, because naturalism is defined by its exclusion of the supernatural.
Particle physicists and cosmologists tend to be very religious people in their
own way, but their religion is often science itself, and so the only creation
story they will accept is one in which all the elements of reality are in
principle accessible to scientific investigation. An imaginative story that
makes the universe itself eternal is hence preferable to a scientific theory
that requires a disturbing singularity at the beginning, and for this reason
the former may attain the status of scientific knowledge on its imaginative
appeal alone.
That removing God from the history of the cosmos is the central point of A
Brief History of Time is pointed out to readers by the astronomer Carl Sagan,
in the closing lines of his Introduction to the book, although Sagan presents
the conclusion as if it were an unanticipated experimental result rather than
the conscious purpose of the author:
The word God fills these pages. Hawking embarks on a quest to answer
Einstein's famous question about whether God had any choice in
creating
the universe. Hawking is attempting, as he explicitly states, to
understand
the mind of God. And this makes all the more unexpected the conclusion
of the effort, at least so far: a universe with no edge in time, no
beginning
in time, and nothing for a Creator to do. >>
(Johnson, Phillip, Reason in the Balance, pp. 58-59)
The Science-God marches onward. It is a jealous god. It will not have
any other gods before it. It will tolerate an emasculated god of religion, so
long as it does not interfere with its larger purpose. It will give the god of
religion some seats in the back of the bus, but no more.
And what should the Christian response be? There are some who are
content to work under the beneficent wing of the Science-God, keeping quiet
about its attempted takeover of reality, basking in its approving nod while
ignoring its talons poised at their necks.
I, for one, don't think we should allow the Science-God to teach us
Reality. We should send it back to the lab, where it belongs. Its place is as
a servant of the One, True God, as Bacon saw it.
And as Howard Van Till sees it. I was pleased again to read his
chapter on Carl Sagan and Cosmos, in Science Held Hostage. That chapter is
entitled "Science Education or Religious Theater?" [Shades of Bacon!] An
excellent chapter, IMO. (This causes me to wonder at the Van Till-Johnson
breach. Especially in light of things like this: "In spite of the best
intentions of writers to recognize the limits of natural science, the
temtation to make metaphysical assertions as if they were the logical
deductions from scientific discoveries is a strong temptation that is not
easily avoided." Ibid., pg. 139. Right on, I say!)
Anyway, it's time to take a nap so I can stay up and watch Dick Clark
(who must have a horrible portrait of himself in some hidden closet
somewhere). May we continue the fruitful dialogue in 1997.
Happy New Year, all.
Jim