William B Stoecker

The new dogma

July 24, 2008 |  14 comments
Image Credit: NASA/ESA/ESO It has long been noted that modern science, which, in its infancy, waged a battle against the sometimes intolerant and dogmatic Christian churches, has become a kind of new religion, with scientists as priests. They even refer to non-scientists as "laymen," the same term that the Catholic Church used. Science, for the most part, accepts philosophical materialism as axiomatic, not to be questioned, even though there is no way of proving it. And the "church" of science has its own Inquisition in the form of so-called "skeptics," most of whom are actually debunkers, and many of whom are laymen. This can all be better understood if we look at some of the current dogmas of science, both their strengths and weaknesses, and look at some other beliefs accepted by science which have since been disproved.

The Darwinian view of evolution, that it is governed solely by random mutation and natural selection, is accepted as beyond question by all but a brave minority of scientists, and these dissenters are often denied jobs and academic tenure, and have a hard time getting their papers published. Those who propose intelligent design as an alternative view are often shouted down and disparaged as religious fanatics, despite the fact that most of them are scientists themselves and base their arguments on facts, not religious beliefs.

The majority of scientists refuse to investigate ufos and the paranormal, despite the literally massive evidence that these phenomena are real, even if we don't understand them.

The prevailing cosmology rests on the Big Bang and expanding universe theory, and here the evidence is quite strong. The theory is probably correct, but it has its problems, and even a few physicists and astronomers have their doubts. Ironically, the term "Big Bang" was first proposed by Fred Hoyle, who, at that time, believed in the alternative steady state theory. The idea of an expanding universe was first proposed by Georges Lemaitre, and Alexander Friedmann, in 1922, developed mathematical evidence in favor of the idea. As early as 1912 astronomer Vesto Slipher noted the red shift of spiral galaxies, indicating that they were receding from us at a high speed, but failed to realize the significance of his discovery, mainly because, at that time, astronomers thought the galaxies were actually relatively near nebulae, or gas clouds, rather than the vast and distant collections of stars that they actually are. In 1929 Edwin Hubble measured the red shift of numerous galaxies, which, by then, were known for what they are, and the expanding universe became the accepted model, with an age currently estimated at 13.7 billion years. The theory is also supported by the discovery by Penzias and Wilson of Bell Laboratories of the cosmic microwave background in 1964. This microwave emission from all directions is believed to be the extremely red shifted light from the original explosion. The expanding universe theory is also supported by the abundance of hydrogen and helium in the universe, which appear to agree with mathematical predictions. Its weakness lies in the abstruse "horizon problem" and the absence of antimatter which, the theory predicted, should be as abundant as normal matter. These problems have been "fixed" by the inflationary universe modification, which insists on an ultra-rapid expansion when the universe was young, and by the discovery of dark matter and dark energy.

Relativity and quantum mechanics are the very foundation of modern physics. Much of relativity theory has supposedly been proven, and quantum mechanics is undeniably effective, for lasers and much of modern electronics are based on it. But there has always been a problem reconciling the relativistic theory of gravity with quantum mechanics, and physicists since Einstein have struggled trying to develop a grand unified theory, or GUT. String theory, an incredibly complex and virtually incomprehensible idea, was proposed, but it has now been modified into membrane theory, and it seems likely that a workable GUT still eludes us. When scientists have to keep modifying and tinkering with a theory, it is often a sign that the idea is basically wrong to begin with, and that they need to start over from the beginning. A few dissenters even believe that physics went off on the wrong track as early as the late nineteenth century, with a possibly flawed modification to Maxwell's equations and a flawed Michelson/Morley experiment, which supposedly disproved the existence of a luminiferour aether.

Geophysicists "explain" Earth's magnetic field by claiming that it is generated by electric currents in the nickel-iron core. They cannot explain how these currents got started, nor can they explain why the magnetic poles are separate from the rotational axis, why the magnetic poles wander about, or why the field is currently weakening at an ever-increasing rate. In the past, the field has died out completely and then rebuilt with polarity reversed; again, no one knows why.

Physicists assert that the Sun's energy is produced by a specific hydrogen fusion reaction known as the proton-proton cycle, but only a short time ago they were assuring us that it is caused by a slightly different fusion reaction known as the carbon cycle. There is a problem explaining the shortage of neutrinos that theory predicts should be emitted by the Sun, and attempts have been made to "fix" this problem. As to the internal heat produced by the planets, current explanations don't quite add up, and it is not unreasonable to suspect that an unknown energy source may be at work, and perhaps that source also at least contributes to the energy output of the Sun and other stars.

It might be instructive at this point to look at some other dogmas of science, presented as fact, not theory, at the time, and since abandoned with no apologies. Astronomers for many years assured us that Mercury was tide locked so that its axial rotation coincided exactly with its orbital period aroiund the Sun, causing it to have one side always facing the Sun and the other facing away. Now they tell us that while Mercury's year is 88 Earth days long its day is almost twice as long at 175 Earth days. Never did they admit that they had made a mistake; never did they admit any uncertainty.

We were for a long time told that the huge M-31 galaxy in the constellation Andromeda was less than 900,000 light years away. Then astronomers discovered that the Cepheid variable stars they had been using to estimate distances too far to compute with parallax were brighter than had been believed, making distances much greater. Now they tell us that M-31 is 2.2 million light years away, and pretend that they are absolutely certain of that and never believed otherwise.

And then there is the failure of the uniformitarianism theory, long a cornerstone of geology and paleontology. In the early days of geology Georges Cuvier and Louis Agassiz, among others, believed that catastrophic events had shaped the past. They never denied that gradual processes like erosion also played a major role, but perhaps their view of things was too close to the Biblical view for the scientific community then rebelling against the Church. James Hutton argued that gradual processes, and gradual processes only, explained the past, and this view, developed further by Charles Lyell in the early nineteenth century, became the ruling paradigm of uniformitarianism.

Today we know that asteroids and comets have struck the Earth repeatedly, and that there have been episodes of vulcanism unlike anything experienced in modern times. In other words, even though a few geologists and paleontologists are fighting a desperate rear guard action, catastrophism is back in vogue.

To illustrate how much of a dogma uniformitarianism was, consider the savage attacks on Immanuel Velikovsky and his book Worlds in Collision . Velikovsky proposed a theory that, overall, was almost certainly wrong, involving as it did a "comet" somehow ejected from Jupiter that then became the planet Venus. But this fails to explain why astronomer Harlow Shapely boycotted Velikovsy's first publisher, Macmillan, and pressured the company into firing the editor. This is the kind of overreaction typical of people with dogmatic beliefs, and it looks as though Shapely was not so much enraged by Velikovsky's admittedly bad science as by his challenge to uniformitarianism.

And there is evidence of real dishonesty on the part of the true believers in uniformitarianism, or at least self deception. If only gradual processes like erosion are responsible for all that we see in the geologic record, it would be logical, and simple, to divide the past into eons, eras, and periods of equal length. For example, each eon might be one billion years, each era 100 million, and each period ten million. But that is not what geologists and paleontologists did. They divided the past into widely varying times. For example, the Hadean eon lasted about 700 million years, the Archean lasted 1.3 billion years, and the Proterozoic two billion years. The Paleozoic era lasted 290 million years, but the Mesozoic was only 185 million years long. The Cambrian period lasted fifty million years, as did the Ordovician, but the Silurian was only fifteen million years long.

This is a tacit admission that something happened at the end of each of these time periods, something that was not gradual at all. Yet the scientists were not honest enough, even with themselves, to admit it. This raises the question: are they being honest today? Do they truly believe in, for example, Darwinism? And how many of today's cherished beliefs will, tomorrow, be recognized as failed theories?

William B Stoecker[!gad]It has long been noted that modern science, which, in its infancy, waged a battle against the sometimes intolerant and dogmatic Christian churches, has become a kind of new religion, with scientists as priests. They even refer to non-scientists as "laymen," the same term that the Catholic Church used. Science, for the most part, accepts philosophical materialism as axiomatic, not to be questioned, even though there is no way of proving it. And the "church" of science has its own Inquisition in the form of so-called "skeptics," most of whom are actually debunkers, and many of whom are laymen. This can all be better understood if we look at some of the current dogmas of science, both their strengths and weaknesses, and look at some other beliefs accepted by science which have since been disproved.

The Darwinian view of evolution, that it is governed solely by random mutation and natural selection, is accepted as beyond question by all but a brave minority of scientists, and these dissenters are often denied jobs and academic tenure, and have a hard time getting their papers published. Those who propose intelligent design as an alternative view are often shouted down and disparaged as religious fanatics, despite the fact that most of them are scientists themselves and base their arguments on facts, not religious beliefs.

The majority of scientists refuse to investigate ufos and the paranormal, despite the literally massive evidence that these phenomena are real, even if we don't understand them.

The prevailing cosmology rests on the Big Bang and expanding universe theory, and here the evidence is quite strong. The theory is probably correct, but it has its problems, and even a few physicists and astronomers have their doubts. Ironically, the term "Big Bang" was first proposed by Fred Hoyle, who, at that time, believed in the alternative steady state theory. The idea of an expanding universe was first proposed by Georges Lemaitre, and Alexander Friedmann, in 1922, developed mathematical evidence in favor of the idea. As early as 1912 astronomer Vesto Slipher noted the red shift of spiral galaxies, indicating that they were receding from us at a high speed, but failed to realize the significance of his discovery, mainly because, at that time, astronomers thought the galaxies were actually relatively near nebulae, or gas clouds, rather than the vast and distant collections of stars that they actually are. In 1929 Edwin Hubble measured the red shift of numerous galaxies, which, by then, were known for what they are, and the expanding universe became the accepted model, with an age currently estimated at 13.7 billion years. The theory is also supported by the discovery by Penzias and Wilson of Bell Laboratories of the cosmic microwave background in 1964. This microwave emission from all directions is believed to be the extremely red shifted light from the original explosion. The expanding universe theory is also supported by the abundance of hydrogen and helium in the universe, which appear to agree with mathematical predictions. Its weakness lies in the abstruse "horizon problem" and the absence of antimatter which, the theory predicted, should be as abundant as normal matter. These problems have been "fixed" by the inflationary universe modification, which insists on an ultra-rapid expansion when the universe was young, and by the discovery of dark matter and dark energy.

Relativity and quantum mechanics are the very foundation of modern physics. Much of relativity theory has supposedly been proven, and quantum mechanics is undeniably effective, for lasers and much of modern electronics are based on it. But there has always been a problem reconciling the relativistic theory of gravity with quantum mechanics, and physicists since Einstein have struggled trying to develop a grand unified theory, or GUT. String theory, an incredibly complex and virtually incomprehensible idea, was proposed, but it has now been modified into membrane theory, and it seems likely that a workable GUT still eludes us. When scientists have to keep modifying and tinkering with a theory, it is often a sign that the idea is basically wrong to begin with, and that they need to start over from the beginning. A few dissenters even believe that physics went off on the wrong track as early as the late nineteenth century, with a possibly flawed modification to Maxwell's equations and a flawed Michelson/Morley experiment, which supposedly disproved the existence of a luminiferour aether.

Geophysicists "explain" Earth's magnetic field by claiming that it is generated by electric currents in the nickel-iron core. They cannot explain how these currents got started, nor can they explain why the magnetic poles are separate from the rotational axis, why the magnetic poles wander about, or why the field is currently weakening at an ever-increasing rate. In the past, the field has died out completely and then rebuilt with polarity reversed; again, no one knows why.

Physicists assert that the Sun's energy is produced by a specific hydrogen fusion reaction known as the proton-proton cycle, but only a short time ago they were assuring us that it is caused by a slightly different fusion reaction known as the carbon cycle. There is a problem explaining the shortage of neutrinos that theory predicts should be emitted by the Sun, and attempts have been made to "fix" this problem. As to the internal heat produced by the planets, current explanations don't quite add up, and it is not unreasonable to suspect that an unknown energy source may be at work, and perhaps that source also at least contributes to the energy output of the Sun and other stars.

It might be instructive at this point to look at some other dogmas of science, presented as fact, not theory, at the time, and since abandoned with no apologies. Astronomers for many years assured us that Mercury was tide locked so that its axial rotation coincided exactly with its orbital period aroiund the Sun, causing it to have one side always facing the Sun and the other facing away. Now they tell us that while Mercury's year is 88 Earth days long its day is almost twice as long at 175 Earth days. Never did they admit that they had made a mistake; never did they admit any uncertainty.

We were for a long time told that the huge M-31 galaxy in the constellation Andromeda was less than 900,000 light years away. Then astronomers discovered that the Cepheid variable stars they had been using to estimate distances too far to compute with parallax were brighter than had been believed, making distances much greater. Now they tell us that M-31 is 2.2 million light years away, and pretend that they are absolutely certain of that and never believed otherwise.

And then there is the failure of the uniformitarianism theory, long a cornerstone of geology and paleontology. In the early days of geology Georges Cuvier and Louis Agassiz, among others, believed that catastrophic events had shaped the past. They never denied that gradual processes like erosion also played a major role, but perhaps their view of things was too close to the Biblical view for the scientific community then rebelling against the Church. James Hutton argued that gradual processes, and gradual processes only, explained the past, and this view, developed further by Charles Lyell in the early nineteenth century, became the ruling paradigm of uniformitarianism.

Today we know that asteroids and comets have struck the Earth repeatedly, and that there have been episodes of vulcanism unlike anything experienced in modern times. In other words, even though a few geologists and paleontologists are fighting a desperate rear guard action, catastrophism is back in vogue.

To illustrate how much of a dogma uniformitarianism was, consider the savage attacks on Immanuel Velikovsky and his book Worlds in Collision . Velikovsky proposed a theory that, overall, was almost certainly wrong, involving as it did a "comet" somehow ejected from Jupiter that then became the planet Venus. But this fails to explain why astronomer Harlow Shapely boycotted Velikovsy's first publisher, Macmillan, and pressured the company into firing the editor. This is the kind of overreaction typical of people with dogmatic beliefs, and it looks as though Shapely was not so much enraged by Velikovsky's admittedly bad science as by his challenge to uniformitarianism.

And there is evidence of real dishonesty on the part of the true believers in uniformitarianism, or at least self deception. If only gradual processes like erosion are responsible for all that we see in the geologic record, it would be logical, and simple, to divide the past into eons, eras, and periods of equal length. For example, each eon might be one billion years, each era 100 million, and each period ten million. But that is not what geologists and paleontologists did. They divided the past into widely varying times. For example, the Hadean eon lasted about 700 million years, the Archean lasted 1.3 billion years, and the Proterozoic two billion years. The Paleozoic era lasted 290 million years, but the Mesozoic was only 185 million years long. The Cambrian period lasted fifty million years, as did the Ordovician, but the Silurian was only fifteen million years long.

This is a tacit admission that something happened at the end of each of these time periods, something that was not gradual at all. Yet the scientists were not honest enough, even with themselves, to admit it. This raises the question: are they being honest today? Do they truly believe in, for example, Darwinism? And how many of today's cherished beliefs will, tomorrow, be recognized as failed theories?

William B Stoecker Comments (14)

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