Science, the Enemy of Religion?

I know I have declared this blog to be dedicated to exploring biblical claims with a scientific eye but I think a brief diversion from that goal is warranted this week.
I was watching a discussion on climate change and global warming issues on FOX News (which I actually DO think is fairly fair and balanced). To my great surprise however, the issue somehow got turned around to a discussion of how religion and climate skeptics went hand in hand and scientists (read, anti religionists) and AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) were similarly connected.
I did not know that the increasingly controversial AGW claims were merely another face of the Science/Religion disconnect. In fact, I do not think they are and I have still to find out how the participants in the aforementioned discussion got to that point.
What really got me though was a statement, issued matter-of-factly, by the moderator who said, without the slightest degree of hesitation, “Of course, science is the enemy of religion”. Those of you who have read my posts can well imagine how I feel about this proposition. To say that I categorically disagree with this position goes without saying but I feel that I must respond a few thoughts and I beg your indulgence and patience. I promise to be short and will try to be interesting.
A calm and dispassionate look at scriptural claims, edicts and prophecies, free from individual dogmas and biases – or from impassioned preachings of sincere and fervent ministers and priests, can be quite revealing.
Specifically, let’s look at Moses, since he alone is responsible for the first five books (or Pentateuch) of the Bible including Genesis, which gives us the most complete biblical account of the creation and early days of the Earth and it’s early inhabitants. Moses, while certainly well educated in Egypt, was nevertheless basically a desert dwelling Bedouin! Oh don’t be confused by the term; Bedouin is a perfectly good description of the desert roaming lifestyle of those who chose to remove themselves from the cities and wander throughout the land herding sheep and goats, living in tents and using camels – regardless of their ethnic or genetic heritage.
Anyway, back to the point. Moses, while certainly well educated, was not well educated in things about which there was no knowledge in those days. No one,(at least from the records we have, had any full accounting of the creation, or at least how or why it was created (We do now have various versions of the ‘book of Enoch’ and a few other ancient manuscripts that have come to light in the last century that do wander into similar territory previously occupied only by Moses). But, we must be careful not to place too much burden of proof on Moses for the things he wrote. You see, Moses NEVER claimed to know or say HOW or WHY the elements of the creation he wrote about came to pass nor did he ever say that the seven creative periods he called days were the only periods of the creation, (in fact in the Haggadah we find that early Jews used over twenty creative periods to recount the creation story). You see, Moses was only an observer; He was a reporter, simply stating facts that were revealed to him or shown to him. The method or means is really immaterial. According to his writings he was shown the creation in a vision and the record he left in Genesis is an account of what he saw. Nowhere in that record does he say how or why the events he recorded came to pass – only that they did occur. He gave us the WHAT (the exoteric) of the creation without giving us the WHY (the esoteric – see my previous post “Exoteric and Esoteric knowledge).
When Moses said that the waters were gathered together and the dry land appeared he apparently had no idea HOW that happened, only that it did. He did not know that 4,000 years later scientists would figure out the theory of Plate Tectonics which would, in fact, tell us how the event that Moses observed came to pass.
This is how science has worked for as long as there have been scientists, and before them, natural philosophers. The world was full of people who made observations of things that incontrovertibly were, but about which nobody could explain. This is how it always has been. The very first inhabitants on this planet saw and realized that birds could fly. This was a truth and nobody denied it. Neither could anybody explain how birds flew, they only knew that they did. It was millennia before people figured out the science of aerodynamics and at last could explain how birds flew. Their discoveries did not change anything about the truth that birds fly but did at last provide the explanation about how they fly so that we could no more wonder about something we knew to be true.
This is and always has been the purpose and place of science in our life. Everything about this earth was, at first, a mystery. Early people watched in awe and horror as normally solid and still mountains suddenly erupted and spewed fire and death with the lava that flowed out of their great gaping maws. Lightning flashed from the sky and started fires and killed people and animals – nobody knew how or why but it surely did! The sun came up each day and set each night. So too the moon, except that it changed through the month being sometimes full, crescent, waxing and waning. It even disappeared for a day or two each month. The stars also traveled across the sky each night and then there were a few that wandered against the otherwise fixed and steady star field. All these things and more caused wonder and fell to the scientists to explain. The function of science is to give us the esoteric knowledge and understanding of the things that we can observe on our own.
Why was I so incensed over the statement that science is the enemy of religion? Because in my world the scriptures exists to tell me, and all of us, what is what. The bible is a collection of statements of things as they are and as they were. It tells me who I am and who created me (or my spirit if you like). But, nowhere in the Bible can I find the declaration that it’s purpose or intent is to tell me how and why these things are. It, in essence, says to me, “look I will tell you what happened and what is what and leave it to you to decide, first, do you need to know how it is so and, second, if you do then leave you free to explore, experiment, seek and search unto you find out how it is so.
Now, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that among us believers there are those who adopt a very strict and very narrow interpretation of the things that Moses and others said. This is certainly the privilege of any and all who choose to exercise a degree of faith. But, any reasonable person must admit that two or more very sincere and equally studious scriptorians can disagree and argue interpretations on the same scriptural passages – so why can’t we acknowledge that there can be incorrect theology, just as in disciplined science there are equally rancorous disagreements and debates and scientists can be wrong? Indeed, the very foundation of the scientific method is that one researcher or theoretician issues an hypothesis and then stands back while every other scientist tries to disprove it. Only when the best minds in the scientific discipline have exhausted their best efforts to disprove a theory without success is a theory then deemed valid and true.
Certainly there exists bad theology just as there has always existed incorrect science. I submit that science is only an enemy to bad religion just as correctly interpreted revealed truth is an enemy to bad science. I believe absolutely that good science is the partner of good theology and will, in time, prove to be a good and close friend of the believer.
Of course faith, in both science and religion is the first and most important element in our continuing journey on our quest for understanding and truth but let us not make science or theology mutually exclusive of each other, for if we do we stand to miss out
on the richest parts of both.

A Few Points of Light

Isn’t it funny how the smallest things can sometimes lead to the biggest changes, events and discoveries? Take for example stars.

For the common human experience stars are little more than twinkling points of light in an otherwise black sky. They are separated from us not only by unimaginably vast distances – distances so great that even the explanation of how far away they are fails to properly acquaint us with the true scale – but also by time. It’s true! Oddly, all of the points of light we see in the night sky represent completely different times of earthly existence. For example, when we look upon stars like Orion, Sirius, Betelgeuse, Vega, Antares and Andromeda we actually see them as they were, not as they are. For example, we see Sirius as it was 8.6 years ago, Orion as it was 243 years ago, and Betelgeuse as it was 427 years ago. Antares shines light upon us that started its journey in 1402! Remarkably, if you can find the Andromeda Galaxy south of Cassiopeia you can look at light that left that galaxy 2 million years ago. More remarkable still, the Hubble telescope has taken photographs of galaxies whose light began its journey 13.5 BILLION years ago! Looking at a night sky that isn’t even representative of “real time” makes it even more amazing that these tiny points of light could have ever had any real, tangible effect on us and on our lives. Yet they say that truth is stranger than fiction and in the case of starlight they are right.

Early humans first perceived the regular east to west motion of the Sun and established the day as the first real measure of time. Each sunrise (or sunset depending on tribal preference) marked the beginning of a new day. The Moon crossed the night sky as a counterpoint to the Sun but it also did something very different as well. It not only moved east to west like the Sun but on each succeeding night it moved a little bit more to the east through the background of the star field. It also had phases , changing from full to waning gibbous and crescent to no moon at all, and then to waxing crescent and waxing gibbous until once again shining in the night sky as a full moon. This complete cycle took about 28 days and that repetitive cycle became the next demarcation of time, a lunar month. Closer examination of the Sun’s motion revealed that it too moved against the backdrop of the star field although at a much slower rate. It turned out that as the Sun moved against the background stars it also rose at a slightly different point on the horizon each day. In the summer the Sun rose well north of east and it slowly moved southward until the dead of winter when it rose well south of east. This north/south cycling repeated over and over and people noticed that the seasons followed suit. This period became a year and it lasted about 365 days. Early observers marked the northernmost and southernmost points of sunrise and these became the solstices. They also noticed that midway through the Sun’s trek from north to south and back again the daytime and the night time were of equal length so these points came to be known as the equinoxes. The four seasons were tied to these four points so we now have Spring commence on the Vernal equinox, Summer begins with the summer solstice, Fall starts at the autumnal equinox and Winter starts when the Sun hits the lowest point on the horizon, the winter solstice. In the early days of the Roman Empire (and in many other cultures as well) the New Year was celebrated at the beginning of spring. Have you ever wondered why September, October, November and December have names that begin with the prefixes for 7, 8, 9and 10 even though the months are the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th months? The vernal equinox came on the 15th of March on the Julian calendar so our 3rd month was the early Roman 1st month (although when Julius Caesar established his calendar he made January the first month, breaking with old tradition).

Once it was observed that the Sun moved against the star field it was decided to divide the star field along the ecliptic (the path followed by the Sun and Moon) into twelve portions. The constellations in those sections made up the Zodiac. When a person was said to be born under Pisces it meant that he or she was born during the time that the Sun was in the Star field in front of Pisces. Each of the signs of the Zodiac represented the time when the Sun was in that particular portion of the ecliptic. The men who studied this stuff were called astrologers and they held a very important place in society. As most all societies were agrarian it was crucially important to know when to plant and when to harvest. Tomato and melon growers, for example, dared not plant until the last frost of the year had fallen or else they would lose their whole crop. Likewise, harvesting had to be done before it got too cold. Astrologers were the people assigned to read the stars and make those determinations. The very survival of whole societies depended upon their accuracy.

Reading the stars took on a mystical aura and soon people began to ascribe all sorts of things to them. It was believed by many that the stars a person was born under were determinative of the course for that person’s life. So strongly held was this belief that the saying “you can’t change a person’s stars” was born along with the rather fatalistic determinism that followed. Many of us might remember a grandparent who would say “my stars’ as an exclamatory statement. It was also believed that stars controlled health and sickness and as pandemics swept Europe during the Middle Ages it was believed that sick people were under the ‘influence’ of the stars. The Italian word for influence is ‘influenza’ and we still use that word today, or its foreshortened term ‘Flu’.

What does this have to do with science and religion you may ask? Well, everything, as a matter of fact. You see, the early astrologers were often the theologians as well, or at least in the employ of the head cleric. This was appropriate as who better than men of God to study the heavens? However, things began to happen in the third and fourth centuries that would change the course of humankind forever, just not right away.

 The emperor Constantine, the last Caesar of the Roman Empire fought tirelessly to quell the rising interest in Christianity until he finally concluded that it would be easier to adopt it as the official religion and transform the ‘Roman Empire’ into the ‘Holy Roman Empire’. In 325 A.D. he called all the clerics from around the Mediterranean to a conclave in Nicaea, a city in Turkey. There they were instructed to hash out their doctrinal differences and come out of the council with one unified, universal (or ‘Catholic’) doctrine. They were to make determinations and set doctrine on almost everything they could think of, including the heavens and the Sun, Moon and stars. They made decisions on whether there was empty space and just exactly what the Sun was. They decided that the stars were fixed in a shell that rotated around the earth. The Sun had its own shell as did the moon. They decided that the earth was the center of a geocentric universe and all things in the heavens revolved around our little planet. Now, this would have been OK if the council had issued a proclamation saying something to the effect that these new doctrines represented the best of their understanding to that point and that as further light and knowledge appeared doctrines would be reviewed and amended as appropriate. Instead, they declared the doctrines of the Nicaean Council to be ‘infallible’. Furthermore, they declared that anyone who disagreed with the doctrines would be guilty of ‘Heresy’, a sin punishable by death! Well, this worked OK for a little while but even from the beginning there were problems that unsettled the hearts of people of learning. Among the biggest of those problems were the stars the Greeks called the wandering stars or “Planetas”.

No one was really quite sure what the planets were. What was sure however was that the planets didn’t seem to follow any of the rules that all the other heavenly bodies followed. For example, the rest of the stars all moved in unison across the sky. Likewise the Sun and the Moon had their own predictable patterns. But the planets were a different story altogether. An individual planet like Mars, for instance, would move west to east for a while against the backdrop of the stars. It might then suddenly stop. Once it started moving again it might resume its eastward trek or it might just as easily begin moving east to west! It would follow this path for a time and then suddenly resume eastward movement. It might then disappear completely only to reappear some months later on the other side of the night sky! Jupiter and Saturn would likewise ‘wander’ around the sky although much more slowly while Venus verily zipped back and forth across the face of the Sun. All this was most confusing and no acceptable model could be made to explain it according to Catholic doctrine. It remained for many centuries a mystery.

Now let’s jump ahead 1100 years to Firenze, Toscana, or as we know it, Florence, in the Provence of Tuscany in Italy. It is the 1400s and a very powerful Florentine family known as the Medicis rule Tuscany. The Medicis are a banking family who, through intrigue and hard work, have become the bankers to the Vatican. This yields them wealth and power beyond imagination. But the Medicis are an amazing family as well for they determine to spend some of their wealth serving as patrons for many of the brightest minds they can find. They patronize artists and architects, philosophers and poets. Among their more famous and productive patronages were people like Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Leonardo Da Vinci. Another of their men was a brilliant mathematician whom they hired to tutor (ultimately) multiple generations of Medici children. His name was Galileo Galilei.

Galileo was a man of wide a varied interest with an intellect sufficient to accommodate them all. His discoveries and inventions are numerous and his work lives on today. On the British two pound coin is inscribed around the edge “standing upon the shoulders of giants”. It is Sir Isaac Newton’s homage to Galileo and refers to his answer to the question “How have you managed to see so much farther than other men?” to which Newton replied “If I have seen farther than others it is only because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants!” referring particularly to Galileo.

Galileo is perhaps best known for two things, dropping two rocks is dissimilar size from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (his birthplace) and the invention of the telescope. It is this last item which brings us back to our tiny points of light that changed the world.

The telescope was a remarkable invention. It had the previously undreamt of ability to bring distant objects into full view. It could even reveal things unable to be made out with the naked eye. Galileo probably first used the new device to check out the sights of the surrounding Florentine environs. After scoping out the hot Italian ladies in the neighboring buildings (come on, you know he did!) he then turned his sights on even more heavenly bodies – the moon and the stars. The brightest star in the night sky was Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. (Though Jupiter is today referred to as a planet, in Galileo’s day planets were considered mysterious ‘oddly acting stars’). As he trained his telescope on Jupiter Galileo made a surprise discovery that forever changed the relationship between scientists and theologians and, more generally, between science and religion. He saw four tiny specks of light next to the giant planet. That’s all, just four tiny points of light. After a few weeks of observation and careful note taking it became obvious that the four little lights were in fact moons of Jupiter! And that, my friends, was earth shaking! That four previously unviewed sparkling points of light could change the world seems oddly disproportionate to their apparent significance but, like it or not, the world would never again be the same.

The Galilean moons, as the newly discovered objects came to be known, weren’t supposed to be there. They weren’t supposed to exist at all. The doctrine established by the Nicaean council had declared that all objects in the sky revolved around the earth and nothing else, yet here were four objects clearly and indisputably revolving – orbiting – another object in the sky! The implications were enormous and the entire geocentric (earth centered) theory of stellar mechanics – already hanging by a thread – was brought to the brink. Copernicus had already advocated an Heliocentric ‘Solar system’ in which the planets, including Earth, orbited the Sun. Galileo subscribed to this thinking and the discovery of the Galilean moons only reinforced that belief. In 1615 he was denounced for his beliefs before the Roman Inquisition. Though he was cleared of offenses at this time his ideas, published in 1632 in a supposedly fictional conversation called “Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” brought him back before the inquisition where he was found “vehemently suspect of heresy”. He could have been sentenced to death but by recanting his support for the heliocentric theory and through the intercession of the Medicis he was merely sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

The damage to the already uneasy relationship between the thinkers and the Church had been done and the rift was only to grow wider from this point on. Galileo’s moons were obviously real and easily seen by anyone who cared to gaze through the telescope. That the church would doggedly maintain a doctrinal disagreement with readily observable fact only heightened the suspicion held by some that the church was not, in fact, the sole and absolute repository for truth. This, coupled with the persecution of the Inquisition against any who dared think along lines other than those expressed by the church, created a cabal of intellectuals who began to rely on their own cleverness and discovery rather than the proclamations of the church. More damaging still to the church was the growing willingness of others to question other aspects of theological edict and doctrine. The coming forth of Guttenberg’s printing press and the accompanying availability of the written word to the huddled masses empowered people to begin their own self directed searches for truths and answers. Ultimately, growing discontent with the official church doctrines led to the Protestant Reformation.

The die had been cast and the grip of the Holy Roman Empire was quickly losing purchase. There was change in the air and a sense of empowerment that the people had never before known. People began to explore and question all aspects of their lives and the western world began to emerge from the long intellectual sleep we call the ‘Dark Ages’. The Renaissance had begun and the rate of discovery and progress it spawned are unrivaled in the annals of history.

To say that Galileo single handedly started the Renaissance would be incorrect. There had been a restless undercurrent of discontent which inspired men like Galileo to challenge the conventions common to the time. However, Galileo’s invention of the telescope and the ensuing discoveries of moons around another planet were the first tangible, ‘hard’ evidence that, as Shakespeare wrote, ‘There are more things under heaven, Horatio, than are dreamt of in man’s imagination.”

It’s hard to imagine that a few points of light could change the world – but it’s true.

The Politics of Science

Science is a wonderful pursuit, or so it would seem. In theory, science is the discipline of observation and measurement, of inquiry and hypothesis, of experimentation and interpretation. It is the vehicle that propels human understanding and awareness beyond the confines of everyday experience. Our eyes let us see things as they appear. We gain an exoteric knowledge of the things of the world. For instance, we all know that birds fly. We did not need to be told that they fly. We observed it from a very early age. As children we would pretend that we were birds and that we could escape the backyard with outstretched arms that flapped wildly as we ran. We also saw and understood that the sun goes round and around the earth each day. We saw the phases of the moon every 28 days and we know that if we miss seeing a full moon this month there will be another next month, and the month after that, and so on and so on. Our brains are filled with all sorts of exoteric knowledge – that is, knowledge that defines the ‘what’ of the world. The ‘how’ and the ‘why’ are different matters altogether. To learn how a bird flies or why the moon has phases requires inquiry and study. We are tasked with seeking understanding of the things we see. We see a rainbow. We must study light and refraction and geometry to understand how the rainbow appears so effortlessly after a rain storm. Luckily, we have people who do the inquiring for us. They are called scientists. They study such things most diligently and write books about the things they study. Our only task is to pick up the books and read what they have written and then we are as smart as they.

How nice of scientists to do this for us. As long as scientists keep being curious about things we are interested in, or as long as scientists can interest us in the things they are interested in we will get smarter and smarter until we all know everything there is to know about the world we live in and the universe that it floats in.

We put a lot of faith in scientists. We trust their instinct and their pronouncements as fact primarily because we, ourselves, were never motivated enough in school to study what they had to study to become scientists. We did not do the work, learn the math, or memorize the laws and theorems that they did. We played basketball and football instead. So, in the end we put ourselves in the only slightly uncomfortable position of having to trust the scientific community to tell us the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of the ‘whats’ we already knew. This is OK as long as the scientists are right and smart enough to have figured it all out correctly. But, what’s to worry? Right? I mean, after all, they’re scientists, and science is a pure art; not like philosophy or any other social science where anyone with an opinion and a loud enough voice can make himself or herself heard. No, science is pure – see it, weigh it, measure it, explain it. What could go wrong?

Well, the answer is plenty. The history of science is full of missteps and erroneous assumptions. Take the Flu for instance; the word flu comes from the Italian word ‘influenza’. In the 15^th and 16^th centuries scientists were certain that the pandemics caused by the flu were really caused by the particular alignment of the stars. Stars and their alignment were blamed or credited with controlling almost everything in those days and expressions of that idea still linger with us today in the form of expressions like “you can’t change your stars’ or ‘it is written in the stars’. We commonly use the word ‘lunacy to describe the crazy behavior of certain individuals. The word ’lunacy comes from ‘luna’ or ‘the moon’. It was believed for many many years that a full moon caused aberrant behavior in certain people. Back to the flu – the word ‘influenza’ is Italian and means ‘influence’ and refers to being under the ‘influence of the stars.

When a young and very timid Isaac Newton went before the Royal Academy in London with his theories on motion and gravity – theories which were correct, mind you, – his was run off and threatened with severe personal and professional harm for daring to take on the venerated and revered Aristotelian Physics that had prevailed for over 2,000 years. Robert Hook, a respected and accomplished scientist in his own right swore that he would destroy Newton for daring to be so bold. But Hook was wrong. So were all of his colleagues. Newton was right. His mistake was in not recognizing the entrenchment of any established concept, idea or cabal of ideas upon which other men and women base their own credibility. His clear and lucid exposition of the basic laws of physics, right  though they were, were viewed as threats and destabilizing forces against the accepted and well acclimated rule of the day. In other words, he was upsetting the apple cart.

Newton was not the only one to be so bold. In fact, almost every ground breaking scientist had to refute the existing theory to gain exposure for his own. Einstein had to modify Newton, although he did it most gently. Neils Bohr had to take on Einstein, much to Einstein’s chagrin, to put forth Quantum Mechanics, a theory just as provable and verifiable as Relativity but completely at odds with it. Irony let us observe that although Einstein had significant issues with many of the provisions of Quantum theory, it was his own work that helped prove its validity.

And so it goes that almost all progress has to first tear down the walls of convention and accepted theory to gain its own foothold in the public mind. You see, science isn’t so pure after all. It is as much a political animal as is almost any other philosophy. Oh, at the root of it is the sincere desire to find the truth, but the acceptance of that truth comes at the expense of reputations and positions of prestige and esteem. Almost invariably, each time a career is made, another is diminished. Egos are hurt and livelihoods are damaged.

Science has another strange quirk to it. It needs to be funded. You and I aren’t usually willing to go to the store and pay for science. Oh, we love the inventions and devices that come from great science. We all have computers and IPods and Xboxes and such. Many of us use GPS technology to help us find uncle Bill’s new house or the nearest Wendy’s, but to go out and buy the latest research into Quantum Transfer or spin preservation, we’re just not interested. So, how do scientists make money? Well, in the old days they received patronage from wealthy families like the Medici’s of Florence, or they were members of aristocracy in their own right. De Broglie was a French prince (sadly he lost his head in the French Revolution). Many of the great English scientists were lords of titled peerage. Today however, there aren’t so many Lords or patronized researchers as in days past so a new structure had to be created. Enter the National Science Foundation or NSF and its equivalent in other parts of the world. Private institutions like the National Geographic Society or the Royal Geographic Society in London also fund major research projects.

So now days the major task of a scientist is to first get funding. This is no easy task  but it is doable. It requires getting noticed and that requires getting published. Today, the mantra is “Publish or Perish”. It’s just that simple! Scientists look for issues of general or public interest and they write papers on them. If a scientists can raise a question or propose a path of research that might answer that question he has a chance at getting funding to study it. If they are creative enough or good enough writers, they get published and the issues get noticed. Notice also means funding and publishing is the fastest path to public funding. It is no wonder then that very public awareness of scientific arguments means great amounts of funding for research. One very good example of this is the hole in the Ozone Layer.

The Ozone Layer is vitally crucial to our very survival. It is also remarkably self-preserving and self-regulating. One of the unique characteristics of the Ozone Layer is that, for a variety of factors, a hole forms over the South Pole (not the North Pole) each Antarctic winter. The existence of this hole was known for over a hundred years before it became an issue of serious scientific concern. But, it wasn’t until we developed the ability to accurately and precisely measure its characteristics each year that alarmists were able to raise public fears over its eminent demise. Yearly fluctuations in its size were seen as trends and portended eventual disappearance.We were told and convinced that man induced excesses of chlorine gas in the upper atmosphere were the cause of the hole and , if left unchecked, would lead inexorably to the total destruction of the Ozone Layer and our death by terminal sunburn. Such foolishness and bad scientific reasoning found purchase in the public mind because reporters and opinion makers smelled a good story. Anything to scare the public was good for ratings and what better scary threat than death by sunburn. Never mind that the physics of the argument didn’t hold up or that knowledgeable scientists in that field already knew the truth, the fact was that if the public wanted research into this matter the scientific community was all too happy to provide that research. After all, it would certainly be good for 5 – 10 years of funding. In fact, the funding machine was able to run a little bit longer and many scientists found good steady work for a good number of years studying something that secretly they already knew wasn’t an issue.

Today, in 2009, we seldom hear anything about the Ozone layer except for the well meaning but radical activists who need a good cause more than they need the truth. The Ozone layer is still here and it isn’t going anywhere any time soon.  (if you strongly disagree with my position please comment and I will be happy to provide a more technical exposition of the facts –for now though, I’m just trying to make the bigger point). None of this is as cynical or conspiratorial as it may sound. We are a people who expect due diligence and if enough people express a concern about any subject then due diligence requires that the matter be looked into. The people wanted answers so the scientific community gave them answers.

Today, the new religion is “Global Warming”. We know it is a serious matter because Al Gore, an ex-Vice President for heaven’s sake, scared us all with his silly and inaccurate “An Inconvenient Truth”. We know his warning is real because movie stars said it was important and he won an Academy award for the movie. He even won a Nobel Prize for his work (not a physics prize or any other scientifically rooted Nobel Prize – no he won a Peace Prize). There were many inconvenient truths associated with the whole global warming alarm but the media and the movie stars didn’t want to address them so they got little airtime – truths about the increased solar flux and the fact that the Martian ice caps were also melting. No, we needed to know that once again evil human beings were destroying the earth by driving cars and flying jets – of course if you buy carbon credits like Al Gore you can fly around in a private Boeing 757 to talk about the deleterious effects of our carbon footprint on the earth’s atmosphere. It’s OK. You have carbon credits – no hypocracy there!

Well, things are already settling down atmospherically so now the proper term is ‘climate change’ rather than the less supportable ‘global warming’. But it is still a funding machine and millions and millions of dollars are still being doled out to scientists to show us the error of our ways. We even have a new president who is going to make us all buy hybrid cars and impose other environmental restraints in order to save the earth for future generations. And we’re buying it! Serious discussion is even being given to the idea of covering glaciers with aluminum blankets to slow their melting. And why are we doing this? Because there is lots and lots of money out there for doing it! And, it’s politically expedient. We as a people love causes. We all need to feel like we belong to something larger than ourselves and what better endeavor than to save the world? And the scientific community? Well, many of them will gladly continue to accept our research dollars as long as they can milk this non issue. More and more scientists, however, just cannot keep up the ruse. In droves they are leaving the global warming religion behind, including 11 of the 13 scientists featured in “An Inconvenient Truth”. This year’s U.N convention of global warming was met with much louder dissent from an ever growing number of scientists. The tide is turning and like the Ozone Layer, this too will pass as we finally admit that the earth will be just fine.

Too bad we don’t have time to discuss the regrowth of new rain forests that is far outpacing the cutting down of older rain forest. That would be a fun discussion. Maybe next week. In the mean time please consider for a moment that science is just as vulnerable to politics and opinion as is any other religion or philosophy.