Science’s Big Lie

The normal Judeo-Christian religion does not have a beef with science. Sure, we would like scientists to be guided by a moral code (e.g., they don’t inflict people with toxins or viruses to see what happens – a practice far more common than you might think), but we don’t have a problem with gaining knowledge about the natural world or how we might go about improving it.

It would be nice if Science returned the sentiment. But it does not. Science is hell-bent on destroying religion. What amuses me is that the scientific attack is itself built on a lie.

What is the classic story that proves religion is wrong? In one corner, the Church. And in the other, Galileo. The version told by scientists is rather simplified, of course (great stories don’t let facts get in the way).

The story revolves around a simple question: what is at the center of the world?

Scientists say, with great sanctimony: “[Religious/Ignorant] people used to think the sun rotated around the earth, but we are educated and enlightened, and we know this is exactly backward: the earth rotates around the sun!”

And, therefore, religion is wrong, and stupid, and should cease to exist.

Let’s leave to the side the much more complex history and the range of ancient understandings. We can even ignore the question of whether religion (writ large) is really all that invested in one worldview or the other. I am not saying that these objections don’t have merit – they do! – but I am making a much, much simpler and more fundamental point: The logic of the scientists is, on its own merits, illogical. It is a Big Lie.

What is that Big Lie? That there is such a thing as a “center.”

For any data set, there is always more than one explanation. Occam’s Razor, the idea that one should subscribe to the simplest explanation, is not a statement of any underlying truth. Occam’s Razor is merely a convenience. Like Newtonian Mechanics (or, for that matter, any model), the answers provided using Occam’s Razor can be wrong while still being useful.

Let’s take a simple example: The number progression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 can be explained by adding one to the prior number. But that is only one explanation. There are, in fact, an infinite number of algorithms that will yield the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Arithmeticians merely choose the simplest of these, and call it “true.” But it is not “true.” It is just the simplest.

Turning to astronomy, we can observe that the earth is not obviously the center of the world we can observe with our eyes or our instruments. But then again, neither is the sun. And our solar system is out on some pinwheel of the Milky Way, itself not the center, either. There may be a center at the place the Big Bang theoretically happened – but perhaps that place is also in motion. It certainly is in motion compared to something else.

Since absolutely everything is in motion relative to another thing, the only way we can advance our understanding is to pick a spot, push a pin into it, and then show the mathematics that everything moves around that place. We can do this using the sun, the earth, the moon, or any arbitrary point in space.

Insisting that the sun is at the center is actually a lie. Because the fact is, putting the sun at the center of anything is nothing more than a convenience, and only when looking at the solar system in isolation.

In my own religion, Judaism, the important perspective is not that of these astronomical bodies: the perspective that matters is that of the individual observer. The Sabbath, for example, does not begin when the sun sets – for it is, like the famous cocktail hour, always setting somewhere. In Judaism, the Sabbath begins when the sun sets from my vantage point.

This perspective is not about “facts” or “truth.” It is about the worldview that G-d wants us to have: to understand that the world was created for the choices that mankind makes. While I cannot control the decisions others make for themselves, I am certainly responsible for the decisions I make for myself. So I am supposed to live my life as if the entire world rotates around me. And you should do the same!

Because scientists who use Galileo vs. the Church as the great proof of the idiocy of religion are either ignorant or maliciously wrong: the reality is that there is no absolute truth in the physical world about anything relational. Any assertion otherwise is illogical, and would rightly be labeled unscientific and discarded by any logical person.

But scientists do not do so, because Science is at war with religion, and the belief that there are things that matter that are more than mere matter or energy. In the minds of anti-religionists, humans must be nothing more than another animal on a planet, governed by our nature and nurture – certainly not by an unpredictable and ultimately non-physical “free will.” Mankind must be irrelevant within the universe – and any belief to the contrary is just silly.

Science’s war on religion is ultimately grounded in the belief that nothing about humanity is capable of transcending the measurable physical world.

But that war is built on a false premise. Science’s claim to superior truth is built on the heliocentric lie.