PANDEMONIUM BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS.
Merida, Venezuela, 1999.
COPYRIGHT: Franz J. T. Lee.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SCIENCE FINDS
GOD III
In Excellent Company
Let us continue with our analytic scrutiny of the before mentioned NEWSWEEK article. As we were saying, the modern scientist, Allan Sandage, still has a lot of interesting things to tell us. He informs us that the present day scientific community so scorns Faith and God that "there is a reluctance to reveal yourself as a believer, the opprobrium is so severe."
This reminds us of the "Marxists" and "Communists" of yesteryear, also of the ordeal of the "original Christian believers" during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero; but even Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei and their scientific community had a very severe time to acquire official social approval. Many of them were fed to the lions or they landed on the burning stake. Hence, the "modern scientists" surely find themselves in excellent company.
However, another "modern scientist" who has become a theologian, Robert John Russell is far more optimistic : "theology and science are entering into a new relationship". This is indeed "modern". He is convinced that "scientific discoveries are offering support, ... at least in the minds of people of faith". In accordance with Pope John Paul II, many scientist-theologians claim that "evolution ... provides clues to the very nature of God". They even believe that the modern "chaos theory’ is "opening a door for God to act in the world".
The 1977 Nobel physicist, Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, voices desperation : the more the universe has become comprehensible through cosmology, the more it seems pointless. John Polkinghorne of Cambridge University, another distinguished physicist, like Sandage, comes to the conclusion that the Laws of Mother Nature (We call her Cosmos) "must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see", and for this very reason, the Main Tuner must logically be God ; hence, in 1982, he upgraded his profession : he became an Anglican priest.
"Ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise !"
Still blindfolded by patrian geocentric smog, the "modern scientists" are so desperately looking for "God", are searching for the "Tree of Life" in the centre of the "Garden of Eden", that they cannot observe the immense Cosmic Forest which unravels its simple truths before them; they stubbornly refuse to attribute to the "Universe", to the "World", to Cosmos, to Nature, the very same qualities, functions and "miracles" which their Divine Hypothesis for capitalistic reasons must possess; it is their "socially given order" ; they have to eternalize the official conceptions of "History": a Great God, with Great Ideas, inspires Great Men of a Great Race to make History, to liberate all Mankind, to globalize their religious Renaissance, and to guarantee World Peace, now and forever more. Amen !
"Call a Rose by any other Name, it will Smell just as Sweet !"
The above problem arises when seated on the horns of a dilemma, we cannot differentiate between words or language and thoughts or thinking. Also, Formal Logic takes us for a ride, sends us on a wild-goose chase. A=A, God is God; Non-A = Non-A, it can never be A. Non-A=Nature. Nature can never be God! We are searching for God, for "spiritual wonder", and not for such a secular everyday thing like Nature, like Natural Resources; Nature, Mothers, only serve for economic exploitation! Cosmos cannot just "act"; it must have a "purpose", it must be a "divine purpose". Well, there we go, chasing the wild-goose, the phantom of our most sacred fantasies!
"And ye shall know the truth, and
the truth shall make you free."
(St. John 8:32, King James version)
Even Jesus Christ insisted that Man should know the Truth; in desperation, in death agony, he had to scream across a god forlorn planet: "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they do!" Even if Jesus had never ever lived, at least, not as he is being pictured according to Christian religious tradition, the above statements, whoever should be their authors, surely merit some intellectual and rational reflections.
"Without God, We all will just become Pigs !"
But let us return to our "modern scientists" who try to reconcile "Theology and Science". Polkinghorne made it his duty for life "to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it." Well, what would happen to Prof. Polkinghorne, if de facto et de jure just the very opposite is true, that the "universe" does not need a "purpose", and even less a "divine purpose", to happen, to be, to exist, and to transcend? A student in one of our classes here at the University of The Andes, Mérida, Venezuela, bluntly gave the patrian formal-logical answer : "Without God, we all will just become pigs !" What a pity for the "poor piggies" !
Another physicist who had shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964, Charles Townes, was touching the "cosmic riddle" with the tip of his nose, yet he could not see much further :
"Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence (We call it Intellect or Einai-In-Itself.) must have been involved in the laws of the universe (We call them the Acts of Cosmos.)".
He even goes so far to state that "... our minds, which invent mathematics, conform to the reality of the universe. We are somehow tuned in to its truths." So far so good, but there we go again; Carl Feit, a biologist and Talmudic scholar, argues that because "pure thought", probably "Reason", can penetrate the universe's mysteries, "this seems to be telling us that something about human consciousness is harmonious with the mind of God."
Myopic Science versus Blind Faith
The theologian-natural-scientist W. Mark Richardson sums up the whole modern theology-science debate as follows :
"Science may not serve as an eye-witness of God the creator, but it can serve as a character witness."
This means that exactly in the workings of "evolution ", we can get an idea of the marvellous "character of God". In it we find "signs" of the nature of God. However, the "modern scientists" have another serious problem : their "default setting" is myopic Cartesian doubt and the crux of religious matters is blind faith.
The Bottom Line
In a previous lecture, we have stated that the three major elements in patrian "human being" are doing, thinking and believing; respectively, Science, Philosophy and Theology handle the problems which result from these efforts.
Stereotypically, in the NEWSWEEK article, mainly the two extremes, Science and Theology were discussed; "ivory tower" Philosophy was left out in the cold. After all, philosophy has to do with "theory", with mental "headaches"; de rigueur, we have to be "concrete", we must only do the thing. For common "human beings" earthly life mainly concerns doing, acting, working and labouring; and these produce commodities, capital, money and profits en masse.
But this ideological perspective is not accidental; de règle, it corresponds with current "human" control, regulation and deregulation on a world scale. In modern production, Labour should not be guided by Philosophy, by Reason; e contrario, like in the olden days of colonial rule, Christianity and Religion must calm the billions of toiling masses, must revive them for their daily peaceful labour. Natural Science occupies itself with the economy, with the production of industrial technology and armament of mass destruction.
Nowadays, a pot-pourri of Science (Intellectual Labour) and Theology (Belief or Make-Belief), spiced with Virtual Reality, do a far better job. Surely for themselves, for their personal lives, the mafia bosses, the war-mongers, the "terrorists", the authoritarian dictators, "Castro", "Hussein", but also the fairy godmothers, the IMF and the World Bank, are not interested in a Science which finds God, or vice versa, they have other real problems.
Also in the "Dark Ages", the nobility and clergy had no sleepless nights worrying about the religious "First" and the "Second Death"; what they feared most were Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei and the peasant "terrorists" who were storming their terrestrial Bastille, their castles of feudal absolutist power. In other words, they feared the emerging bourgeoisie, its new capitalist world order, the coming "Industrial Revolution", the French Revolution, the "Regime of Terror" of Danton and Robespierre.
Finally, we repeat once more: We are no "atheists", we are not organizing a "crusade" against religion. We have no problems whatsoever with either the Being or the Existence of God; also not with animism, mysticism, black and white magic, superstition, mythology and religion. Who wants to believe should do that with great pleasure, at her or his own mental and psychic risk. We are only interested in the Search of Truth which will make us Free.