“Gorilla in our midst, ha!” said Walter, laughing.
“I couldn’t resist,” she responded, smiling playfully before continuing. “That’s what you’ve been trying to do for most of your life, pretend that He didn’t exist while evidence that He did was beating you over the head.”
“Do you really think that’s the case? That we’ve been ignoring the evidence?”
Walter answered, “The history of science is full of it.”
“Science is full of it, all right!” Doris quipped.
Walter and Doris both laughed, leaving Duncan to feel that it was at his expense. “Look, Randolph,” Walter said, “you can’t even laugh about it. That’s part of the problem. You and I…all of us have taken ourselves far too seriously. And the danger of doing so is that we start to feel like high priests of science, instead of guys who are just trying their best to figure it all out. Yes, scientists do ignore evidence if it doesn’t fit with their theories. That’s been the pattern forever. I don’t need to go back as far as Copernicus to illustrate it. All of the fields are guilty…medicine, astronomy, physics, biology, even mathematics.”
“How can that be with math?”
“One would think it couldn’t. One plus one equals two, right? The problem is that mathematicians felt hemmed-in by reality-based math. When you start creating mathematical representations of reality, math becomes subverted. Reality has limitations that are governed by laws. Math, in the application of models, doesn’t.” Penfield took a muffin from the platter and, holding it out next to the table, let it drop. It fell to the patio deck. He explained, “In reality, you drop the English muffin, it falls to the deck. In math, once I’ve created a ‘model’ that represents all of the forces at work, I can make the muffin hover, fly sideways, shoot out into space, or disappear into another dimension. Math doesn’t care. If I’m good enough at it, I can make math prove that the muffin will do any one of those things, instead of simply falling down.”
“Too bad you didn’t run those calculations before you dropped it,” Doris said. “Now our reality is going to get ants.”
Shaking his head, Walter bent and picked up the muffin, wiping the butter from the deck with a napkin as he continued, “I hope I’m quoting Ronald Reagan accurately. He once said that the definition of an economist is someone who tries to prove in theory that which occurs in reality. That concept describes far too much of what we do. But the problem is that once we develop our models, we succumb to the temptation to play God. We are like a little boy with a toy town; he sees no reason to stick to the rules of nature. He can make anything happen that he wants.”
“You’re saying that scientists play God? Isn’t that a cliché right out of science fiction movies from the 1950s?”
“Randolph, isn’t it a cliché for a reason? I think it’s human nature. I have a friend who’s an architect. He tells me that all the architects he knows wish they were builders, including himself. Their egos force them to maintain the position of architect, because society has created a caste system that places the architect above the contractor, and they don’t want to give up the prestige. The problem is, when an architect is finished with what he does, he has a rolled-up set of plans on a shelf or, worse yet, a bunch of electronic bytes stored on a hard drive. When the contractor is done, he has a building. My friend calls it production-envy. And architects aren’t the only ones to suffer from this. What does a lawyer have to show for his entire career? A whole room full of papers?”
“And a lot of miserable people,” added Doris.
“Unless he’s in criminal law. Then either he has people who are locked up or he has people who have avoided getting locked up – hardly a body of work that engenders a feeling of accomplishment. Same thing with accountants. Other people are actually producing something, and the accountant has spent his or her life counting it for them. The list goes on: reporters who watch what happens, insurance agents and underwriters, appraisers, bureaucrats, bankers….”
“And scientists?” asked Duncan.
“Yes. And scientists.”
“But science does create. So much of what we have today is a result of the science that was done in the past.”
“You’re confusing scientists with engineers. All of the infrastructure we have, all of the gadgets and gizmos that we enjoy were made real by engineers, not scientists; the scientists only created the concept – just as the architect’s plans are made real by the builder with the help of engineers. Architects, especially the current avant-garde architects, draw their buildings without regard for the laws of gravity or the effect of winds, earthquakes, or any of the other things that can make a building fall down and kill people. They then turn the drawings over to a structural engineer who figures out a way to translate them from the abstract to the possible. If you talk to builders or structural engineers, they’ll tell you that it almost seems as if some architects resent the laws of nature because those laws place limitations on them.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” asked Duncan. “We need dreamers who think, forgive me for using another cliché, outside the box. That’s the source for some of the most exciting new things in the world.”
“That’s true,” Walter said. “Had Frank Lloyd Wright not visualized cantilevered designs and forced engineers to figure out the ways and means to make his designs work, we would not have received the benefit of his vision. There is a similar parallel between physicists and theoretical physicists. Einstein sat and stared, creating a theory. Afterward, thousands of physicists spent decades trying to prove, or disprove, the theory. But, Duncan, how many Einsteins or Wrights have there really been?
“And I mis-spoke a moment ago when I said that the concept was created by scientists. Scientists are human, and as Elohim explained to us, all humans participate in the creation of our reality. However, scientists, when solely in the act of plying their trade, create nothing; they only discover that which is already there. The problem begins when the scientist, just because he discovers something, takes credit for its existence. When Columbus discovered America, he didn’t take credit for creating it.”
“Oh, come on, Walter. Scientists don’t take credit for what they find.”
“The Doppler Effect, the Van Allen Belt, Einstein-Bose Condensate, Hawking Radiation, Hubble Constant…the list goes on.”
“That’s not taking credit for its existence.”
“It’s not? Many years ago, when scientists were a humbler lot, the nomenclature was a bit different. It was Bernoulli’s Principle, not the Bernoulli Effect. And we had the Archimedes Principle, not the Archimedes Displacement. There was the Archimedes Screw, but that’s okay because he conceived of it, drew a practical design, and then actually built it. It is not Doppler’s effect, not Van Allen’s belt, not Mr. Einstein’s or Mr. Bose’s condensate, not Stephen’s radiation, and Edwin had nothing to do with creating the Hubble constant. All of those things were created by another, and putting their names on them is plagiarism.”
“Another? You mean God?”
“I,” Walter said, emphasizing the word, “might mean God. Another person may choose to believe that they are all natural processes. It’s irrelevant. The fact is that each of the phenomena existed long before it was discovered and will continue to exist long after we are all gone. We run into problems when scientists, feeling a need to be not just observers but a part of the process, set themselves up as arbiters of what we all must think. Whether someone in the rest of the world finds a plant that cures a disease or whether tens of thousands of people see a UFO, scientists, in their arrogance, do not acknowledge it as real until they have confirmed it. It’s almost as if, once they have decided what is the truth, all other beliefs must be banished.
“Whether it’s the existence of God or the appropriate designation for Pluto, a group of like-minded scientists get together for a meeting, issue a statement, pat each other on their backs for how brilliant they are, and become outraged when people continue to call Pluto a pl
anet or when parents continue to teach their own children that there is a God. And there is never…never a valid representative of the opposing point of view present. You attended the symposium in La Jolla entitled Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason, and Survival, didn’t you?”
Duncan nodded.
“There were three questions to be addressed.” As Penfield talked, he counted off the items on his fingers. “Should science do away with religion? What would science put in religion’s place? Can we be ‘good’ without religion? Putting aside for a moment the monstrous ego necessary to set themselves up as the appropriate judge of these issues, tell me, Randolph, were there any clergy in attendance, any theologians?”
“Of course not.”
“Would you have a symposium to discuss doing away with health care and not invite a single doctor?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Obviously, we would have doctors present.”
“Why doctors for health care and not priests for religion?”
“Doctors are scientists.”
“And only a scientist can possibly have something valid to say? Randolph, are you listening to yourself?”
“Wait a minute!” said Duncan, getting defensive. “Scientists are trained to deal with the facts, the truth, not beliefs. You can’t have a reasoned discussion, with faith and emotion as the core of the differing opinion.”
“And you actually believe there is no faith or emotion within our group? Is it not only faith that someday the mystery of consciousness will be solved? Was there not emotion at the symposium when Neil deGrasse Tyson, referring to the U.S. National Academy of Science polls showing that fifteen percent of the participating scientists still believed in God, identified the believers as a problem and a group that needed to be investigated?”
“There were others present who defended religion.”
“There were scientists present to defend religion, not qualified representatives of the faiths. It is as absurd and patently biased as a meeting of evangelicals to decide whether to do away with science, without a single scientist in attendance.”
“There have been such meetings by evangelicals!”
“I know that, Randolph. That’s my point. What was the outcome of those meetings?”
“To abolish the teaching of evolution in schools, take the classroom back to the days prior to the Scopes trial.”
“The fanatics within religion urge abolishment of the teaching of evolution, so the reasoned, scientific response is to insist upon the abolishment of creationism? How is your reaction any less fanatical than theirs? The mainstream religions – the Jews, the Catholics, and the vast majority of the Protestant faiths – all have come out officially separating themselves from the fanatics, asking only that Creation or Intelligent Design be taught as an alternate theory or, in most environments, simply a belief. But, no, that has been unacceptable to you. Your goal is not only to stop the teaching of Creation, it is to stop the mere mention of it. There is a large lobby within the scientific community to make home schooling illegal because parents might teach their children about God. If the members of the so-called scientific community have their reasoned, logical way, they would criminalize religion. For the past few years it has made me ashamed to be a scientist!”
Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Walter continued, “I’m sorry I worked myself into a frenzy, Randolph. It would be different, you know, if we actually had the answers. But we don’t. As I alluded to a moment ago, we have no clue how the mind works. You know that. Physicists to this day cannot explain something as commonplace as lightning, for God’s sake. That, by the way, hasn’t stopped us from putting forward a stream of theories supposedly explaining the process of lightning before we’ve bothered to actually prove or disprove them. There are parents out there, sitting on their patios during a storm, who pass on to their children the ‘fact’ that as clouds pass over the Earth, differential charges build up, like walking on a carpet, until lightning strikes to equalize the charges, the same as static electricity when you touch a doorknob. They teach it to their children as a fact because scientists taught it to them as one.”
“That isn’t how it works?” asked Duncan.
“See what I mean. No, that isn’t how it works. The charges that develop are a small fraction of what would be needed to cause the event. So what do the reasoned, truth-seeking scientists do when confronted with reality? The same thing we always do. Instead of just admitting we don’t know and keeping our mouths shut, we start adding embellishments to the original theory, just as scientists did when confronted with the physical observations that made it impossible for the sun and other planets to be orbiting around the Earth. They added epi-cycles, convoluted and increasingly complex orbits within orbits, to account for the observations, rather than just abandoning the theory. Physicists are now saying that cosmic rays, passing through the clouds, provide the additional energy or channel to allow the weak charge differential between the ground and the cloud to trigger a lightning strike.”
Walter paused and sighed, showing his frustration. “Randolph, we scientists cannot even explain why it is that when one person in a group yawns, everyone else starts yawning. I’ve actually read a paper on it. I’m as curious as anyone. Do you know what the scientific explanation was?”
“No. I guess I missed that paper.”
“That everyone in the group starts yawning because there must be a shortage of oxygen! Isn’t that ridiculous? Several years ago, a television station set up a camera next to a freeway, positioned so it would catch the faces of the drivers. They placed it just past a billboard that had a white background with nothing except a huge letter ‘O’ in the center. Guess what? Most of the drivers yawned after seeing the ‘O.’ I guess each of those cars had a sudden shortage of oxygen.
“It’s taking me a long time to get there, but my point is…when scientists add epi-cycles, add cosmic rays as lightning triggers, or insist that an oxygen shortage is the cause for mass yawning, all in the name of defending the indefensible, don’t they sound a lot like those religious folks whom you so love to bash for their illogical and emotion-based reasoning?”
“We’re not perfect, Walter. You know that.”
“Yes, I do know that. Unfortunately, the masses have been led to believe that we are. And they have been led to that belief by us. They have been taught to revere the ‘scientific method.’ They have been brainwashed to believe whatever we say, no matter how absurd. They believed us twenty years ago when we were all telling them that we were heading into an ice age. They believe us now when we tell them that they’re creating global warming. Randolph, we are guilty of only living in the ‘now,’ as the New Agers call it. We’ve lost the ability, if we ever had it, to look back at our own past and be humbled by it. Scientific American has a regular column each issue where they reprint articles from twenty-five, fifty, and a hundred years ago. New Scientist recently started the same practice. We all love to read the old stuff and chuckle to ourselves, marveling at what fools we had for scientists years ago. We laugh, that is, until we’ve practiced our trade long enough for our own papers or statements from twenty-five years ago to appear among those reprints. Then, all of a sudden, it’s not quite so funny.
“That happened to me recently…on a paper supposedly explaining what happens at the event horizon of black holes. I was totally full of crap. It was something of an epiphany for me, and I started going back through the old, peer-reviewed science journals, highlighting in the indexes which of the papers within were also full of crap. Randolph, the ratio was staggering. We, as a group, are wrong much more often than right. To go back to my earlier analogy, if a contractor failed as often as we do, his collapsing buildings would have killed thousands by now. Using whatever analogy you’d like, if any single person had our consolidated batting record, he or she would be considered a failure and an incompetent. And yet we, as a group, refuse to practice even the smallest degree of humility, loudly proclaiming with absolute certa
inty each new conclusion that we reach…as if it were, well, gospel.
“We are furious that every single leader on Earth has not embraced our warnings about global warming. We’ve told them all, in no uncertain terms, that drastic changes in their lifestyles must occur, entire industries must be outlawed, hundreds of thousands of people must be put out of work. Randolph, I don’t know if global warming is happening or not. From what I’ve read, the average temperatures from hundreds of stations with good history are gradually going up. Since most of those stations are located in urban areas, and the urban heat island effect is a proven phenomenon, I would like to see the trend after that effect is factored out. But, I’m a physicist, not a climatologist, so what do I know?
“I hope the members of scientific community are wrong on this one because none of the people are going to listen to them. Why should they? If your neighbor came to your door and told you that you had to give up your possessions and move into a tent because, if you didn’t, something horrible was going to happen, would you do it?”
“No.”
The Harvest Page 48
