Trouble ahead: When our theories are wrong but don’t feel wrong …

Recently, a clever ad campaign flooded the Toronto transit system. We were told that the makers of WhyBecauseISaidSo had put out a new pharmaceutical product called OBAY, which eliminates the dangerous tendency of teenagers to think for themselves. One of my special favourites shows a middle-aged dad hugging his cute—but now idea-free—teenage son, positioned above an empty pill container. That young fellow will never again be a problem to anyone, anywhere, for any reason whatever …

It was certainly not my special favourite because I like the idea! No, rather because it looks so wholesome, and is in fact so evil. Satan, after all, can look like an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14)! Anyway, a couple of weeks later, the happy OBAYTM ads were plastered over with the notice “Luckily, OBAY isn’t real.” Teens were advised to check out post-secondary education in Ontario for themselves, and not rely only on family advice.

A number of causes could use a spoof like OBAY to get their point across, causes that might be more important in the long run.

Consider some of the issues I have written about here in ChristianWeek in the past few years, issues where the official story could use an edit or two:

- Human embryonic stem cells are essential for lifesaving research? Anyone who disagrees is merely a “denialist”? No, recent research shows that adult cells from volunteers can be coaxed to do the same job.

- We don’t need to worry about the origin of donor kidneys if they are not from totalitarian states? Yes, we do need to worry. Many Third World democracies’ intentions are sound, but their enforcement lags. Kidneys can be stolen without murder. Sign that wallet card!

- Obesity is a huge problem (so to speak)? Yes, sort of. But we need to ask, what kind of problem and for whom? Claims about high death rates from obesity have been seriously downscaled in recent years. Also, “overweight” is not the same thing as “obese” and is probably not a key source of ill health, provided the overweight person exercises. In North America and Western Europe, extreme fashion-conscious thinness may be more of a problems. That’s why some catwalks now ban models whose body mass index shows that they starve for attention.

Experts are human, and they must work with whatever information they have. So experts getting it all wrong is not a new problem. Recently, I was reading Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder’s book, The Science of God (1997). He reminds us that in 1894, Albert Michelson, who had measured the speed of light in 1887, delivered the main address at the dedication of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory of the University of Chicago. Michelson took the opportunity to declare that “The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered.”

Another great scientist, Lord Kelvin (after whom the temperature system “degrees Kelvin” is named), agreed with Michelson. He remarked in 1900 that there were just “two little dark clouds” on the horizon of Newton’s physics, namely, the velocity of light and the puzzling phenomenon of blackbody radiation. Kelvin himself was certain that these troubling little clouds would be blown away shortly.

Yet, as Mario Beauregard and I note in The Spiritual Brain (2007), “all of modern physics—relativity and quantum mechanics—derives from these two little dark clouds.” (p. 172)

It was only five years after Lord Kelvin’s address that Albert Einstein’s brilliant relativity papers blew off many official physics certainties. Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics later dispatched most of the rest. Like many official systems, nineteenth century physics was tidy but wrong. The good news is that vast science progress resulted when wrong ideas were confronted, not merely defended.

There is a message here for Christians, of course. Our challenge is to encourage people to live the gospel, so that they see that the gospel is true for themselves. Then they no longer merely accept it on authority (John 4:42). Their understanding will deepen over time, as physicists’ understanding of our universe has deepened over time. By contrast, OBAY and WhyBecauseISaidSo provide peace and quiet, but no advance in knowledge and little nourishment for the spirit.

Journalist Denyse O’Leary (http://mindfulhack.blogspot.com/) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul (Harper One 2007).

(This column was originally published in ChristianWeek, March 28, 2008.)

Just up at Mindful Hack:

Things we know but cannot prove: Another nail in the coffin of materialism.

Excerpt: “We are at an undisputed edge of naturalism in computing and math. There is no TOE. Does science have a TOE? If so, will we ever know we are at the edge?”

The fours be with you! (You will be “fours”ed to cooperate with this words/numbers game. (Hey, it’s Friday night!)

Altruism: Why it can’t really exist but why it does anyway

Evolutionary psychology: Eliot Spitzer is a kludgebrain!, psychologist opines (but so are we all)

Mind and medicine: The placebo effect – Did your doctor just prescribe you a quarter teaspoon of coloured sugar? Maybe …

Materialism: When the store is on fire, hold a fire sale: Excerpt: So this is the latest pseudo-explanation of the soul? I could do better myself! How about this: Minds that are accustomed to think in terms of a future have difficulty grasping the idea that there is no future after death.

Way simpler, to be sure, but materialists wouldn’t buy it because I forgot to drag in the Paleolithic cave guys telling stories around the fireside – the staple of evolutionary psychology.

Fitna: A thoughtful Muslim’s response The predicted riots largely didn’t happen, but where to go from here?
Excerpt: And while we are here: Dial-a-mob/rent-a-riot behaviour is NOT copyright to Middle Eastern Muslims. I ran into the same thing among the American Ivy League elite in May 2005, when the New York Times bungled a story I broke on my other blog, The Post-Darwinist, claiming that a film about to be shown at the Smithsonian was “anti-evolution.” It wasn’t; it did not even address the subject. But zillions of Darwinbots, as I called them, behaved exactly as if it had. It’s a good thing that no one gives them sharp objects to play with.

Rupert Sheldrake’s guide to New Atheism (which makes it sound like New Coke, really)

Can a transplanted heart lead to transplanted thoughts? Well, maybe, but the mechanism might be fairly conventional.

Why science without God destroys itself: Because the alternative idea of a multiverse is a step into magic, that’s why

Just up at the Post-Darwinist

Darwin dating: Only a Darwinist would think of something this vulgar

Expelled ten days later – Yoko Ono is suing over the use of John Lennon’s Imagine – which you can hear on YouTube.

Churches should holler for Jesus and schools should indoctrinate Darwin?

The miracle of the disappearing prof: St. Charles Darwin’s fanatics make Prof. Nancy Bryson disappear

Blogging: Crocodile, crocodile, cry me some tears (The circulation-bleeding New York Times feels sorry for people like me. Yeah really.)

Blog seeks the firing of Baylor U’s anti-ID president

Darwinism and atheism: No connection whatever?

Expelled: Did Darwin really lead to Hitler? Better question: Did the suggestion lead to free publicity?

A kind correspondent wants to know why I am not in Expelled (”Well, for one thing, I wasn’t kicked out of anything for making the intelligent design controversy my major beat. Oh sure, people laughed at me in 2001 when I said it would be one of the biggest stories of the decade by mid-decade.”)

Reasons to Believe: Reasons to Believe: Old Earth Creation ministry thumbs down on Expelled film – claims there is no persecution of ID theorists

New for blogroll: Atheism is dead

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 7:50 am and is filed under Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 5 views | Trackback | Print this page |

My name is Denyse O'Leary, born 1950, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. I have been a journalist all my life. I began to publish books in 2001. I live in Toronto, and I have two daughters and two granddaughters, as of 2008. You can reach me at oleary@sympatico.ca | More from Denyse O'Leary