Divine Plagiarism

God, of course, has a sense of humor. So I finished writing this in Destin’s Barnes and Noble, and as soon as I got done, I picked up a CSL book they had on the racks that I hadn’t read yet, ‘The World’s Last Night.’ I suppose something isn’t really plagiarism if you didn’t know yet that someone else had said the same thing. So he writes this whole thing (in ‘On obstinacy and belief.’) on not using the word ‘believe’ to describe things one already knows, that believe is a metaphysical word, in a way the word ‘know’ is not. I say some pretty similar things in this post. ‘Cept he does it better. Still thought it was funny. ‘Lilies that Fester’ was also pretty funny, given my neo-Proletarian writing style and self-proclaimed ‘apostate academic’ status. (I’m not sure whether he would approve or disapprove. Probably the latter. At least I think I’m funny. And that’s the only audience that remains constant.) Back to the post.

We have made science into something it is not. Science is methodology. Remember that the heart of science is not ‘the scientific faith,’ or ‘the scientific belief,’ but ‘the scientific method.’ I have heard people say ‘I believe in science’ in the same manner of speaking that one would use to recite a creed. You can no more believe in science than you can believe in long division. I have never heard anyone say ‘I believe in multivariate regressions’ as if they were making a profession of faith. When people say ‘I believe in science,’ they generally mean ‘I believe in progress as an end in and of itself, and in ‘scientific’ humanism as a means to achieve progress.’

The use of words is always interesting. The Bolsheviks (majority party in Russian) were not a majority when they started referring to themselves by that name. Through calling themselves the majority, (and my implication calling their enemies the minority party,) they were able to actually become the majority. Through linguistic slight-of hand, they redefining a term which in turn redefined reality. The same has occurred with science. People use the word ‘science’ to refer interchangeably to the use of the scientific method and to the belief in scientific humanism and progress. Allowing a metaphysical belief system to share a definition with an analytical methodology (especially a successful one) is exceedingly dangerous. An acolyte of the belief system will proselytize using the metaphysical definition, but when challenged will switch definitions to the methodology. The response to any challenge to the faith of progress will proceed something like this: ’hasn’t science brought us things like medicine, cars and computers? Would you have us return to the ignorance of the dark ages?’ Anyone who questions the faith of science is accused of hating Penicillin and the Space Shuttle. Notice the big, big problem here. Through a very effective rhetorical strategy, the acolyte shifts definitions to create a dichotomy between the faith of science and dark-ages ignorance. The dichotomy is false. Nobody learns how to make good O-Rings by worshipping at the temple of progress. Watching ‘Contact’ will not help you make a good vaccine. (Sagan wasn’t even that good of an astronomer.) All the good things that have come from science have come from analytical science, not belief system science. So the acolyte switches definitions on you when questioned, and you find yourself arguing not what he was originally talking about, but rather disputing a very effective methodology. Although effective as a rhetorical tactic, switching of definitions does little to help us understand the real issue. Therefore, let us use two definitions. For ‘the belief in progress as an end in itself, and science as an instrument toward that end,’ let’s use the word ‘scientific humanism.’ For ‘a methodology which can establish the truth or falsehood of a falsifiable and repeatable hypothesis to a given level of certainty,’ let’s use the word ‘scientific methodology.’

I won’t claim to be objective. Generally, those who do claim objectivity show the greatest lack of it. We need a methodology by which we can objectively analyze our un-objective ideas. Scientific methodology provides us this means. A hypothesis is either true or it is false. If the hypothesis is falsifiable, then we can use some means to test it. If the hypothesis is repeatable, then we can create controlled circumstances and observe it. Since we can’t logically observe every iteration, we can use means and standard deviations to establish a level of certainty for our hypothesis being true or false. If the hypothesis falls short of the standard of proof (often 95%,) it is to be rejected (and its negation, the null, accepted.) Not that scientific methodology cares, but allow me to voice my whole-hearted approval of this methodology. It certainly has yielded some spectacular results. Scientific methodology greatly reduces our self-deception, and provides an excellent cross-check on the repeatable and the falsifiable. We cannot, however, ask this method to answer questions that it is definitionally incapable of addressing. Like meaning and purpose.

Scientific methodology has given us some pretty great things. The danger of this is to begin ascribing too much meaning to these things. We are generally overly optimistic about progress. A Wells or a Heinlein would likely be astonished at our lack of progress. No flying cars, no cure for cancer, no space colonies. Our cars are only slightly refined versions of the cars of the fifties. What changed the most was the body styling, which is a function of changing tastes, not changing technology. Airplanes haven’t changed much either. There hasn’t been anything really revolutionary (besides maybe stealth,) since the jet engine. Perhaps the increase in Internet and telecom connectivity could be called revolutionary. But this has been hardly a panacea. ‘Progress and its discontents’ we will address later. The point here is that we have asked science to deliver more that it ever possibly could. It is hardly fair to place so many hopes upon the shoulders of one poor, little analytical method. Even less fair is when we ask science to answer our questions about purpose and meaning. Perhaps if science has made my life so much easier by giving me an electric dishwasher, it can make it that much easier by explaining away all those pesky questions about God. So the methodology which limited itself to the falsifiable and the repeatable is now asked to answer non-falsifiable and unrepeatable questions like the meaning of life, the origin of the universe, and everything. (slight Douglas Adams reference.) Since poor, little scientific methodology couldn’t give us answers to these questions, we had to invent his big brother, scientific humanism.

Scientific humanism could take on all of these big questions. While it remained nominally science, it was unfettered with pesky constraints like proof and real analysis. Like any other faith, scientific humanism needed a god. Progress was the natural choice. Progress will lead us to a perfect future without suffering, without war, without disease. The journey to that future was propelled by information. There needed to be a continuous new supply of information in order to keep the journey from stalling. The temple of progress gets greedier and greedier, there must always be more information. Not wisdom, just information. In fact, just as the impurities must be refined out of oil to make gasoline, wisdom must be refined out of information so as to not gunk up the machine of progress. If you can do something, you should. As we filter out all the wisdom from information, we forget how small we are. We abandon all humility, we lose the ability to approach knowledge with respect. If the cow won’t produce enough milk, then you keep it in a small pen and attach a machine to extract more milk. You inject the cow with artificial hormones, because you need more milk, not safer or better milk. There is no respect for the source. We take this same attitude with knowledge. Progress demands that we throw knowledge to the ground, chain her down, and extract whatever secrets we can take. (Refer to IVP’s Six Modern Myths for an outstanding discussion of assault imagery used in connection with the Enlightenment.) Once we picked plump fruits off of the tree of knowledge. Progress simply cannot wait for the tree to yield its fruit.

Progress strip-mines information, tears it away from wisdom against its will. But progress, in its avarice, forgets the tale of the goose that laid the golden egg. In cutting itself off from the source of knowledge, it finds itself using more and more extractive means to find information. As we add more and more artificialities into our pursuit for progress, we may find that the information we extract is tainted. Like the artificially induced milk, it is somehow no longer the same, no longer as pure. Regardless of information production, the worship of progress requires a loss of respect toward wisdom. In the worship of progress, the pursuit of knowledge becomes an assault instead of a dance. This is not to say that an assault does not yield information. To the contrary, it yields much information. The problem is that there are no interlocks, no safeties on that information. Remember that progress discarded wisdom in the pursuit of information. Now progress has that information, but lacks the wisdom to use it safely. Still, progress demands that if you can do it, you must. So under the watch of scientific humanism, which promised peace, the 20th century was the bloodiest the world has ever known. (It seems Star Trek was wrong. Star Wars is better, anyways.) The demand for more and more raw materials to fuel the machines of progress, the harnessing of technology to make weapons more cruel and deadly than ever before, the adaptation of medical technology to murder the most vulnerable, all of these things happened before the throne of progress. This is not the fault of scientific methodology, for the scientific method is simply an instrument. It will give you what you ask of it, but it can ask nothing of you. These are the effects of scientific humanism. In abandoning wisdom in the pursuit of information, information becomes dangerous. The pursuit begins to consume you to such a degree that you cease to care where you are going, as long as you continue to progress.

Knowledge is information wrapped in wisdom. Wisdom will not yield its fruit unless you approach in humility, willing to learn. This is not to hinder us, but to protect us. When we rip the fruit from the tree without paying heed to wisdom, the fruit becomes poisonous. Information becomes a trap when we seek to use it as a tool for our own power and control. As descendants of Eden, we should certainly know this. It is staggering that we should seek to repeat the mistake of the Garden, given the horrendous consequences. Progress would have us believe that is either this assault on knowledge or a world of dark ignorance. There is a third way. The tree of wisdom still yields its fruit in season. Knowledge calls out to those who would listen, it calls them to join in her dance.

George Washington Carver. (Reference Under God.) So this brilliant young Ph.D. student gets recruited to teach at the Tuskegee Institute. His charge is to develop uses for peanuts, so as to provide economic opportunities for Black farmers. Dr. Carver uses a remarkable methodology. He opens his Bible, prays, and asks the God who designed the peanut to show him all the uses of the peanut. He becomes tremendously successful, and is called to testify before Congress on the various uses of peanut. He is allocated 15 minutes, but he so impresses the congressmen that he is given as much time as he wants. After an hour and a half, a congressman asks Dr. Carver where he learned all of these things. He answers, ‘an old book.’ They ask him which book, and he responds, ‘the Bible.’ Predictably, the academé (I hate that word, it just looks pretentious) of the time mocks him for citing Scripture as a source. I suppose some things don’t change. Dr. Carver was vindicated. None of his contemporaries had an impact even remotely comparable. Consider that, a hundred years later, we still use a process he invented to make soy milk. Dr. Carver understood something deep about knowledge. The best way to understand creation is to pursue the Creator.

The way to knowledge is not an assault but a dance. Instead of trying to push all the other dancers around, it is far easier to simply learn to dance ourselves. We are like deaf people trying to figure out the next note on a page of sheet music. We try to catch the music on the pages, but it is like trying to trap water. We must first learn to listen, we must be given ears to hear. When you learn to hear the song of the Creator, you being to understand the sheet music before you. Once His music becomes a part of you, you learn to anticipate the next note, the next step in the dance. Dancing with Him, you catch the knowledge that spins off of His steps. He will give you eyes to see all the magic around you. Here is the difference between the dance and the assault. The dancer first listens to the music. We need to be quiet and listen, we need to let it permeate us, and then we will gain understanding. We need to approach knowledge with humility. As we learn to dance, we can begin to assert ourselves within the dance, adding a move, shaping it in useful directions. The assaulter cares nothing about hearing the song, only about what he can get out of it. What he is looking for he certainly will not find. The more force he uses, the more it will allude him, for his pride makes him deaf to the song. And blind to understanding. The god of progress fails. As in faux originality, the desire for progress for its own sake leads nowhere. To ask the instrumental to be teleological is to ask the impossible. Progress, like originality, can only take form when it is directed towards something other than itself. This is why we must seek God first. We progress the most when we draw in to Him. As He teaches us to hear His music in His relationship with us, surely our ears will become more attuned to the symphonies He has written into nature.

After you hear the music, you can start to write it down. You can start to write your own music, and you will make beautiful harmonies as long as you are immersed in God’s symphony. Science is just another instrument we can use to play in that symphony. Knowledge starts and ends in Him. Surely the Creator of the heavens can show us how they go, if we ask. God will answer our questions when we approach Him with humility. As we draw deeper into Him, we naturally progress. And as our language becomes more advanced, we can ask better questions. In this is the miracle of science. It gives us a new language with which to ask Him better questions.

This is a personal note. God used the story with C to cast down my intellectual pride and to humble me. I had always trusted in my analytical abilities. So when things started to go awry with her (long time ago,) I first turned to my analytical capacities. I would figure out what the problem was, I would figure out how she thought, I would unleash my intellect on all the problems before me, and through the power of my mind I would figure out the perfect things to say at the perfect times and all would be well. So I tried that. A couple of times. It failed disastrously. So I started praying, ‘God, give me the right words at the right time.’ I had not totally humbled myself at that point, I think (about a year ago.) Nonetheless, He gave me better things to say, more beautiful, more true things. Braver things that I would have thought, more selfless. So I said words to her I believe to be His. I am glad I said them, but I was not there all the way yet. It was not until this most recent story that I finally gave up the remainder of my intellectual pride. I began to pray ‘God take my foolish words and make them say the things you want them to say.’ It was amazing. Certainly things didn’t go the way I wanted them to, but in this iteration, I have no regrets. I know for sure I am in the center of His hands, that I am not fighting Him for her, but instead I am fighting courageously with His strength for her in my prayers. The craziest thing, though, is as I draw deeper and deeper in to Him, I am starting to understand more about her (and myself) than I ever had before. Only in seeking after Him was He able to show me the things I had tried so hard to understand before. Because He loves me, He was only able to teach me these things when I became humble enough to use them safely. Here is the irony: I had tried so hard to understand her before, analyzing every sentence in her emails. But it is only now, when I have absolutely no contact with her or information about her (this is by choice and by promise,) that God is finally able to teach me about her and why He chose to do certain things the way He did. What I had tried so hard to figure out, He was just waiting to tell me. It was not until I approached the throne of grace with humility that He was able to give me ears to hear His symphony.