The Shifting Sands of Science, Part 5 Title: Are Scientists the Holy Men and Prophets of Today?

That’s a bold question, so I’m first going to show how our culture has made them holy men and prophets. Then I’m going to prove that they don’t deserve such respect.

Einstein was constantly asked, “What is God like?” or “Does He exist?” Certainly we’ve all heard that most scientists are atheists or agnostics and many use their scientific reputation to warn people, “There is NO god.”

We can’t allow a Bible in public schools. Teachers who even have one sitting unread on their desks can be fired. Teachers who mention the name of Jesus can also be fired. And while ANYBODY can say, “There is no god” without any punishment, NOBODY is allowed to take the ‘no’ out of that statement in many public forums.

Therefore, if we have holy men today, the scientists are certainly more trusted and more able to speak of spiritual matters or promote atheism than pastors or Christian teachers doing the opposite.

What about prophets?

Many scientists can and do say “Global warming is happening” or “Because 50% of the world lives near sea level, about half of the world WILL drown soon because of global warming.”

Consider the question, “When will the Yellowstone Caldera or Super-Volcano erupt next?” We find 3 major supervolcano flows in the Yellowstone Caldera in the geologic record. We divide the number of catastrophes by the number of years passed and end up with a frequency or time between eruptions. On an old earth, eruptions may be expected every 600,000 years. On a new earth, one every 2,000 years. Thus, on a young earth, catastrophes happen more often. Would we rather be lulled to sleep by unsure promises or be given a reasonable estimate for the next crisis and time to prepare?

At the very least, scientists have a larger bully pulpit than any Christian or the Bible does. Scientists are considered more honest, wiser, and more capable of predicting the future than Christians and their Bibles.

Therefore, I think it’s obvious that, if anyone is considered a holy man or prophet, it’s more likely scientists than Bible-believing Christians in our culture today.

Global warming data that is the strongest support for that position has been proven falsified (see www.dailywire.com/news/18433/uh-oh-new-report-just-dropped-bomb-key-climate-james-barrett). If you’re a proponent of global warming, this statement will be automatically discounted, without further consideration. But science does NOT advance by keeping your head in the sand. I’m not saying that the data for the 1940s warming being deleted or the false ‘hockey stick rise’ at the end have been changed for nefarious reasons. The researchers probably believed that global warming is so obvious, it doesn’t hurt to ‘tweak’ the data a little. This is like the policeman who carries a nonregistered gun just in case he has trouble finding evidence to arrest a truly evil criminal. It’s like that, but it’s still illegal for the detective and wrong for the scientist. Like my statistician friend used to say, “It might seem okay to lie to others, but it’s stupid to lie to yourself.”

Dr. Linus Pauling, the only person ever to win two unshared Nobel prizes, is undeniably a model scientist. But look further. Has he ever unfairly fired someone who disagreed with him? Could he possibly be guilty of slander and libel, substantiated by a settled court case? Would he repeatedly make unsubstantiated scientific claims? Is it possible he was motivated more by money and reputation than a genuine search for truth? Before making an off-the-cuff decision, take a look at https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.html . The lesson here? When a reputable scientist gets fired, don’t be quick to assume he suddenly became incompetent. He might just have disagreed with the wrong scientist.

The experiment that determined the age of the earth to be 4.5 billion years, did not follow standard statistics, was ignorant of natural phenomena critical to their experiment and followed an approach determined by other scientists to “not pass the laugh test”. Regardless, that 4.5-billion-year date is firmly established in our scientific teaching and dogma. For details, see https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/shifting-sands-science-part-4-james-wilson/

Why is the date of the universe – first predicted by Dr. Halton Arp and then rejected by him – also firmly established in our scientific dogma? (details in https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/shifting-sands-science-part-2-james-wilson?trk=v-feed).

Why is that? Why do those who oppose poor science have to try 10 times harder than those who support poor science? Because this world assigns an undeserved reputation to science.

But remember that Einstein, probably the most successful scientist in history said, “When you have a problem you cannot solve, figure how you would solve it if you were God. Then see if He did it that way.”

According to Einstein, it’s not wrong to question science. And the Bible says in several places that God will prove men foolish in their wisdom. (https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Foolishness-Of-Men).

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For other articles like this one, see:

Part 1 (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/shifting-sands-science-part-1-james-wilson?trk=v-feed)

Part 2 (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/shifting-sands-science-part-2-james-wilson?trk=v-feed)

Part 3 (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/shifting-sands-science-part-3-subtitle-power-james-wilson/)

Part 4 (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/shifting-sands-science-part-4-james-wilson/)