Don't Be Intimidated by Science
Posted by Matt Postiff January 11, 2011 on Matt Postiff's Blog under Creation
This post continues the series derived from my recent talk on the foundational truth of young earth creation in the Bible.
As a person trained in science and engineering (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2001), I want to encourage you that there is no reason for you to be intimidated by science or scientists.
Scientists are sinners just like the rest of us and suffer the noetic effects of sin. That is, total depravity affects the mind, and all people without exception have this sin-damage to their thinking. In addition, scientists have their own presuppositions. They are not totally objective, though they may claim they are. They are under great pressure to produce new work in their field and to conform to expected norms in their field. This is why you do not see any young earth creation science being done in secular universities. Those universities and their faculty are under the spell of Darwinian evolution and geology. Anyone who bucks that trend will find it very difficult to receive a Ph.D., at least in the natural or physical sciences such as biology, anthropology, geology, etc.
Another thing to remember is that data is often “massaged” to get it where it needs to be. This is of necessity, given the volumes of data and the interpretation that is required to boil it down and make sense of it. Such activity is not usually done with malicious intent, but presuppositions and hopes for the data to turn out favorably, etc. can tend to skew the results. Witness “Climategate” at University of East Anglia and the alleged illegal activities with respect to FOIA requests, not to mention the massaging of data to get it to match expected trends from other data.
Science does not operate in a vacuum. There are forces that affect it which are not always consciously recognized or acknowledged by scientists.
The sum of the matter is that Christians do not need to be intimidated by scientists as if they are a pure breed doing pure research that is untainted by anything. Scientists are not untouchable. Science is not the ultimate authority; God is.
