Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10.5)

Disciplines
Science
The impressive achievements of the scientific community, together with the boorish bullying of certain academic scientists, has cowed many Christians, leading them to draw a cloak of fear around themselves, and to hunker down into a faith that is merely personal and largely irrelevant.

We believe in Jesus, and we claim that He is Lord of all. But we dare not speak up about it, because we suspect someone is waiting with a quiver full of scientific facts, discoveries, and theories to shoot the air out of our Gospel balloon.

Certain members of the scientific community have presented their discipline as an unassailable redoubt of truth, commanding the field of all knowledge, and vanquishing all challengers and pretenders with a scowl.

It hardly ever occurs to any of us that science might instead be in some ways more like the Wizard of Oz – all bells, whistles, smoke, and noise, and even a little fraud and deception.

We are so used to science and scientists being held up as the final arbiters of all things true that it’s easy to believe science is free of the kind of self-serving, truth-stretching corruption that affects such disciplines as business, politics, academia, and the ministry.

But it just ain’t so, as William A. Wilson reports in the May 2016 issue of First Things (“Scientific Regress”). In fact, scientific research is so riddled with self-interest that most of what is published each year in prestigious peer-reviewed journals is simply bogus. Both the “soft” sciences – psychology, sociology, and so forth – and the “hard” sciences – medicine, chemistry, physics – are awash in fabricated data, false claims, and experiments no one has been able to replicate, leading to scandals, waste, and increasing retractions of published papers.

Mr. Wilson insists, “and there is no putting it nicely, fraud is far more widespread than the scientific establishment is generally willing to admit.”

He provides numerous examples to support this claim. Many in the scientific community will admit the problem, but they fall back on the claim that science is a self-correcting enterprise and will ultimately weed out the fraudulent research.

However, Mr. Wilson explains that the peer review process is not as reliable as it should be: “If peer review is good at anything, it appears to be keeping unpopular ideas from being published.” Entire fields of scientific study, funded and staffed and given appropriately lofty and impressive names, have been erected on false or fraudulent research, wasting everybody’s time and money on lies, while building large reputations for researchers and institutions, and perhaps doing more harm than good.

It seems the culture of narcissism, materialism, and secularism has washed over the decks of the sciences. Those who insist that science is free of bias and deals only with facts and truth just don’t have it right. Science is a faith-enterprise, and lately, much of what science has been producing has been bad faith.

Mr. Wilson concludes, “When cultural trends attempt to render science a sort of religion-less clericalism, scientists are apt to forget that they are made of the same crooked timber as the rest of humanity and will necessarily imperil the work that they do.”

Science is a marvelous resource and tool, and many honest, capable, and brilliant people work within its many disciplines. But science is not the last word on truth.

Only Christ is that.

For reflection
1.  Has any unbeliever ever tried to bluster his way with your faith by pointing to the claims of science? If not, how might you expect that to happen?

2.  Can any amount of scientific data lead you to deny your experience of Jesus? Explain.

3.  How might you begin to become more consistent in talking with others about the Lord?

Next steps: Pray for an opportunity to share your faith with someone in your Personal Mission Field during the week to come. Ask a Christian friend to pray for you as well.

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