If you follow me on facebook you saw the end result of my little row with a representative of a movie project called "The Principle."
So I did.
In case you're wondering what this movie is all about you can watch the trailer below.
Now I may be preaching to the choir here but I think it's important to get the message out about this group and it's project. This is a religious sponsored, religious run and religious funded movie that attempts to use science to discredit science. Something that angers me greatly is this assertion that because science lacks knowledge about all things then it can't be trusted. Something else that angers me probably even more is the hubris required to look at our universe and honestly believe that it was made entirely for us.
I'm not going to waste your time debunking their claims, any idiot with a high school science textbook can do that but there are two things about this movie that I want to make you aware of if you aren't already. The first is that weapon number one of creation groups like this is to claim that science is wrong because "science can't explain (XYZ) and therefore God must be real because we can't explain God." The second is that groups like this NEVER have any evidence of their own to back up their claims. They operate with movies like this that do nothing but make challenges to the scientific discoveries that have been made and they love nothing more than to harp on any discovery that has failed peer review. There have been no funded studies to prove the existence of God using anything other than the Bible. No telescopes have ever gone searching for heaven, no ground based detectors have ever found evidence of hell and no experiments have ever been conducted that might shed some light on the properties of God by any of these groups.
Naturally, they would claim that this is because of some great cover up by science to disprove the existence of God. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all 40% of scientists across all disciplines are religious. 7% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences (The elite scientists, many considered among the smartest human beings on Earth) are religious. God would be a wonderful scientific discovery for these men and women and launch an entirely new branch of science if it were discovered. If that wasn't enough, groups like this are quick to forget about books like: "Heaven is real." written by a neuroscientist after he was revived from a coma and rose rapidly up the best seller list. People want to know God is real. They NEED to know God is real and this is so strong, so prevalent in their everyday lives that even whispering the contrary is frightening to them. The problem with their thinking isn't that science is out to disprove religion, the problem is that everywhere religion has told science we would find God we haven't.
For people like those that made "The Principle" God HAS to be real. God can't NOT be real or their own existence (many would contend the entire existence of humanity) would be irrelevant and they HAVE to be significant. I mean just look at the hashtag under neath the title page. #areyousignificant That by itself should tell what their real motivation for making these kinds of arguments really are.
Now I digress. The first thing you need to be aware of with groups like this is how they work. Creation groups are always claiming that science can't explain everything and that's why God is more trustworthy. Granted we can't explain everything we see but that doesn't mean what we can explain isn't valid. If the Bible had 100 stories and we found out only 99 of them were true would the entire Bible be invalid? Of course not we would just have to alter our beliefs based on what we know is true and what isn't. But you see Creation groups don't work that way. In the words of Ken Hamm: "People will look at the Bible and assume that if one part of it isn't true why should they listen to any of it?" To Creation groups, everything is true or nothing is true, you can't have any in between and this is why they love it so much when scientific discoveries are proven false. They are claiming that science is supposed to be what they want it to be. They have to be the gold standard of thinking so if they work in absolutes then everyone has to. If we don't, that's wrong. Science NEVER works with absolutes so it's not hard to understand why they have such a problem with it.
The second thing you need to know is these groups have no scientific scientific evidence that proves God and they are actively avoiding using science whenever they make claims to do so. You see to these groups, science is the enemy so science can't prove the existence of God no matter how hard you try. They use poetic statements like: "The ways of our Lord are not ours to understand." or "How can you prove the unprovable?" as if any of those statements have any meaning whatsoever. To them God is real and that's the end of it. That's why they won't conduct any experiments of their own. They're not only sick and tired of every claim they've made being debunked but the fact that God most likely isn't real (at the very least the God as predicted by any holy text ever written) is unacceptable. They avoid science I think because deep down they know that science will bring forth the very possibility that their faith is based on a fantasy. And as I will once again remind you their faith simply HAS to be real. There is no other acceptable alternative.
But wait a minute, what about those scientists that ARE religious? How can you be religious and a scientist? Well not only is it possible I daresay at one point in human history it was a requirement. During the early renaissance the church was heavily funding science and was the leading power behind most of the early scientific discoveries we are researching unto this day. It may even surprise you that the Big Bang theory (the theory that got me into my little tet au tet with The Principle representative) was authored by a Catholic Priest and praised, not condemned by the sitting Pope. Sir Issac Newtown, the father of modern physics was also a deeply religious man. So was Galileo Galilei who authored the sun centric solar system. So what gives? Why the disconnect between religious scientists and creation groups like The Principle? The answer:
I don't know.
And you'll NEVER hear those words from a creation proponent.