Scientific Philosophising

So often, it is submitted that science and religion are incompatible, religion holds back the progress of science, choking visionaries with arbitrary beliefs, impeding a logical interpretation of observations from a moral high ground. Science is the way forward, out of an age of ignorance and irrationality. It may not have all the answers now, but it will, and when it does, God will be dead. Such a view arrogantly holds that science is without its limitations. I'm not talking about academic limitations, such as uncertainties in experiments, but limitations to what science can explain. I for one believe that science does a fantastic job of showing how things work, but it reveals nothing with regards to a higher existential purpose.

One of the weaknesses of the scientific approach to understanding is extrapolation. Primarily in the assumption that if nature functioned one way in the past, it will continue to do so. That the constants of the universe are indeed immutable. Extrapolation is essential to science, and ties intimately with the tenet of replicability. If hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide have reacted to neutralise each other in the past, they will do so again. If every patient I have operated on in the past has had two lungs, so will the next patient. Without a faith in the discoveries and principles of the previous generation, no one would be able to stand on the shoulders of giants. We would be lying on the ground. But relying on this too far doesn't sit too well with me.

Shortly after I heard about radiocarbon dating, I wondered to myself, well no one's actually lived that long right? And of course, not one conscious person was actually around in the time of the dinosaurs, at the time when our atmosphere was devoid of oxygen, at the time when the sun formed. Yet we pin dates on these events. It's one thing to say that most people have two hands, since we've seen that for ourselves. It's quite another to say the earth is 4.54 billion years old, when no one has actually observed carbon radioactivity for that long.

And so within my narrative, along with the structure of the system of magic, I'd like to suggest a serious consideration of what would be possible if the forces were not constant, the extrapolation invalid. This connects with the notion that what we discover through science could be manipulated. I admit this is a stretch, but I feel there is merit in a healthy dose of doubt. If there really is a God, and a Satan, as I do believe there are, then there are beings who are older than us, more powerful than us and capable of influencing our conclusions.

None of us can really say with absolute certainty that dinosaurs existed, I've carried around the notion in my mind that when we get to heaven and ask the Creator about them, he'll say they were put there for decorative purposes. To walk along this road a little more, what if there really was a counterintelligence, who wanted humanity to reject the belief in a God? Could this malignant intelligence not set up their own false signals, half bird half reptile fossils, fake evidence that would misdirect scientific understanding?

We tend to believe that whatever we learn for ourselves has to be the truth. We take the evidence, look at it with fresh eyes, then assemble the jigsaw into a coherent whole. But what if there is a superior being, dancing just outside of our awareness, constantly altering the evidence, pointing us subtly, but dangerously, in the wrong direction? We will never be able to say what is truth and what is falsehood. But in our assurance, the lies that we construct for ourselves are more convincing and deceitful than the lies we are told by another. What better way to convince someone that you are right then by having them do it for you?

The scientific paradigm of using models that work until we create a better one is wonderfully open-minded and has served humanity well. However I feel that we need to keep our minds more receptive yet, to the possibility that we can never really know anything at all with absolute certainty, not even with the most rigorous scientific tests, for the ways that man obtains evidence are ultimately limited.