Editor’s note: The following letter is in response to the letter “Religion Is Not Science” by Andy Rosen, published last week.
Were it not for ad hominem and genetic fallacies, Mr. Rosen would be reduced to actualizing what appears to be his imagined authority — anathematizing and insulting those who disagree with his faith; his scientism. (Wouldn’t it be nice of him to tell us where his imagined authority came from?)
Oh, to be sure, there is also his nasty habit of attributing what he imagines to be absurd beliefs and malicious interior motives to others, but, of course, he cannot either explain or defend those nasty habits using the scientific method, and because he exhibits not one iota of any afflatic ability, he is not only easy, but fun to ignore (most of the time), and so if nobody objects to what he does, I am happy to have him stand as the exemplar of the scientific man.
As Pope/Saint John Paul II demonstrated in his encyclical, Fides et ratio, there is no legitimate opposition between faith and reason.
Mr. Rosen, given his palpable and vicious antipathy to religion is still, however, left with no possibility of using the scientific method to defend what appears to be his atheism. Hell, he can’t even scientifically prove that science is the best way to acquire knowledge.
Let us just assume that he is a Darwinist, even though it was not Darwin, but Alfred Russel Wallace who first created the theory of evolution. Let him put his scientific proof where his atheistic macroevolution mouth is, for when it comes to macroevolution, one could write a book on how it fails the test of science.
Oh, that’s right, Tom Wolfe has written a book of how Darwinism has failed the tests of science, The Kingdom of Speech, in which he treats of the non-scientific faith in evolution. “There are five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis. Had anyone observed the phenomenon — in this case, evolution — as it occurred and recorded it? Could other scientists replicate it? Could any of them come up with a set of facts that, if true, would contradict the theory (Karl Popper’s “falsifiability test”)? Could scientists make predictions based on it? Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science? In the case of evolution… well… no… no… no… no… and no.”
Mr. Rosen’s scientism is irrational, and it is his false faith, even despite the recent confession of some researchers that over 30,000 published scientific studies are probably wrong due to the use of contaminated cells:
“Researchers warn that large parts of biomedical science could be invalid due to a cascading history of flawed data in a systemic failure going back decades.”
“A new investigation reveals more than 30,000 published scientific studies could be compromised by their use of misidentified cell lines, owing to so-called immortal cells contaminating other research cultures in the lab.”
Thirty thousand published scientific studies and not even one-half of them are accurate or reliable. All hail science!
Mr. Rosen seems to believe that scientists are not mere mortals, but gods of the lab, who are infallible when the plain and simple truth is that many of them are corporate lackeys in the pay of Big Pharma or government lap dogs delivering to their masters what will increase the irrational fear of the taxpayers, which is so desired by the collectivists, because fear fuels the engines of their insatiable desire for more power and control.
Larry Spencer, Wellington
