ShelfLife

The blog entry for Chapter 6 is brought to us by David Peters:

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We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. –Albert Einstein 

Chapter 6 of Mr. Keller’s The Reason for God is entitled “Science Has Disproved Christianity”. It is a short chapter in which Keller takes on the role of apologist for Christianity. Keller devotes much of the chapter to evolution. Since there is probably not a bigger topic in the current science vs. religion debate than evolution I will mainly talk about it.

In my opinion, those arguing for the side of religion have often made fools of themselves by seeking to throw out all aspects of the theory of evolution. For instance, to me, it is patently obvious that natural selection is a fact. The best way to see it is in rapidly reproducing organisms, say bacteria. Our hospitals are unfortunately a living testament to natural selection.  MRSA is the perfect example of how traits in a population will react to nature. Those bacteria that are susceptible to antibiotics tend to die; those that aren’t tend to live. So, due to the mechanism of natural selection, we now have a lot of nasty bugs in our hospitals that are causing many problems.

Evolution fails when used as an “All-encompassing Theory”. Keller writes, “When evolution is turned into an All-encompassing Theory explaining absolutely everything we believe, feel and do as the product of natural selection, then we are not in the arena of science, but of philosophy.” Sounds like a religion to me. Quick, someone tell Richard Dawkins.

I wish Keller had addressed what I believe is the ultimate failing of science: that it is human. Since science is the accumulation of the human knowledge of nature, it is therefore finite and wrong. That is why I love the quote by Einstein that preludes this entry. The great scientist, who used his talent to uncover the secrets of how God made the world, confesses how little he knows. It is arrogant to believe that we have it all figured out. Einstein wasn’t that arrogant. But, it seems, Richard Dawkins is.

I think we sometimes forget that while science attempts to describe nature, it isn’t nature. Think about it. Every generation always thinks they have nature figured out. With the false precision of mathematics and advanced scientific instruments it is easy to think we understand everything. But the universe used to end at the edge of our flat Earth.  Now, they say that not only is the universe infinite in size, it is expanding at the speed of light. Wow. And the smallest particle used to be the atom. Atom means “something that cannot be divided further”. It is an unfortunate name because the subatomic particles keep getting smaller and smaller!

All we have to do is look at the history of science and see how limited and false some of the theories were. Why do we think that our current science is immune to those limitations and falsehoods? Cognitive bias? Yes. Human arrogance? Yes.

I, for one, am happy that human knowledge, science, doesn’t stand still. What if medicine were still dominated by the theory of  humorism? Leaches, anyone? Gross!

And sometimes, I think scientists just miss the point. Isn’t the beauty of DNA, not the double helix structure for which it is famous, but that it allows me to see bits of my wife’s face when I look at our daughter?