The Antichristian Phenomenon

I will first provide definitions of the three words I used in the title. I will use Wikipedia as a source for the definitions, because I think the dictionary definitions I have seen are too short to encompass what they mean. I put more trust in the encyclopedic definition more or less agreed on by the collective conciousness that manifests itself on Wikipedia.

Religion:

A religion is a set of beliefs and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, and often codified as prayer, ritual, or religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience.

(Source page)

Politics

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions.

(Source page

Science

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is the effort to discover, understand, or to understand better, how the physical world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding.

(Source page)

From their definitions alone one would not immediately suspect that these three come into contact with eachother. I need not remind you how the religionists (forgive my lack of a better word) have clashed with the scientists in deciding whether to teach creationism or intelligent design (which was ruled to be the same in this court case, so I will use the terms interchangeably) in public schools - which I will use as the primary example in this article, tiring as it may be. There are more interactions between these three than just collisions. There have been allegements, both explicit and implicit by the religious that I want to examine and, to be frank, tear down. Without going into the actual issue, I just want to make a few remarks about trends that I have seen.

First of all I want to talk about the religionists attempts to put the stamp of “science” on their ideas. This does not only concern creationism: rather a lot of Christians are trying to wedge in the idea that their claims about the bible, human nature and the universe are backed up by (scientific) evidence. These religionists’ reasons for this may be apparent: in convincing non-believers of their found “truth”, whacking them around the ears with a bible or qur’an does not work any more in these modern times. Rather than convincing people of the messages in their holy scriptures, they are convincing people that their supernatural claims are compatible with the world perspective science offers, or worse: that their supernatural claims are actually the product of science. Anyone who has ever really dealt with science would immediately remember that (in science) the bible and the qur’an are not accepted sources of information for reasons so plethoric I deem it unnecessary to mention any of them.

Secondly I want to talk about the religionists’ attempt to put the stamp of “religion” or “politics” on science. The argument that science is just another faith or religion is well-known. The question whether science is religion has been answered eloquently by Richard Dawkins (among others) in this article, concluding that science is “free of the main vice of religion, which is faith” and that even though nothing can epistemically be defended for a hundred percent, there is a “difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation.”

Science has also been bombarded as a political system with an agenda. Coined terms like “evolutionists” or “Darwinism” are the incarnations of these attacks. The terms don’t maky any sense at all, as the former merely seems to be a response to the term “creationists”. Calling someone an “evolutionist” accurately implies that that person accept evolution, but it is void of additional meaning when compared to “scientist”. Anyone who accepts science, automatically accepts all scientific concepts, including evolution. The word “evolutionists” would only make sense if there were people who do not accept science, but do accept evolution - which is silly.

The word “Darwinism” more explicit in it’s attempt to ascribe political load to the concept of evolution. More recently “Darwinism” has unapologetically been abused in the “documentary” Expelled as an inspiration for the Nazis, and subsequently, the holocaust. It is nasty blow below the belt and an unacceptable, blatantly misleading lie to the public. The line of reasoning involved in this conclusion hinges on basic misunderstandings of religion (a very illustrative one being that if Hitler was truly inspired by evolution, he would have needed to do nothing as evolution dictates that the better “race” prevails automatically). More importantly, it should be noted that there is no such thing is Darwinism. If there would be, then where is Einsteinism or Newtonism? “Darwinism”, like “evolutionist” is void.

It all seems like religionists are trying to divide science, putting the same scientific principles under different sounding categories, and then attacking these categories. They forget that science works under the assumptions that there is one universe (or “truth”) and that laws that describe that universe do not change with time or space. Therefore, science is a single, solid system. It is not at all like the macrocosmic variety of religions, varying (in time and space) from Zoroastrianism and Taoism to Christianity and the Norse pantheon, or the microcosm of one such religion such as Christianity, varying (again in time and space) from Mormonism and the Seventh Day Adventists to Catholicism and Protestantism).

I can only conclude that the religious are very desperately looking for measures to get what they want. It includes trying to level with the successful unity that is science and it’s foundation “reason”, either by trying to portray themselves as scientific or by making up sections of science which they attack with slanderous lies. Also resorting to claims that science has been infiltrated by the immoral godless who are purposely hiding the truth and demanding “equality” have luckily not had any legal support. I guess they also fail to realise that the high percentage of atheists in the scientific community is a product of the amounted knowledge and understanding of the universe that does not require a god.

I urge nobody to give into the usage of words like “evolutionist”, “Darwinist” or any other void description of what it is supposed to represent. We, as scientists, atheists, humanists, and freethinkers must keep an eye out for these kinds of religious political motives to safeguard the secular stronghold insofar it exists today and potentially exists tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.