For the past several weeks we have been exploring the various stages of the development of human consciousness or you can call it the history of religion.  Today we will consider the Science-o-meter.

As people began to express their autonomy and independence from cultural, religious, and personal institutions they soon realized their desperate need for AUTHORITY. It's ironic really, how we strive to become our own authority only to discover we can't ultimately possess it.

For many in our modern culture, Science has filled this gap. Scientific theories and technology are now presupposed as the standards for what is to be believed. The science-o-meter is an appeal to logic and reason.

I chuckle when I hear people say that they do not believe in God or subscribe to a religion because they hold to a scientific worldview. They are saying that if something cannot be empirically proven then it cannot exist, and if something does exist that defies explanation, they simply say, "We don't yet know the scientific explanation of it."

Those employing the "science-o-meter" don't understand that they are placing a tremendous amount of faith in their belief system.  They have not escaped religion by trusting in science.  Sorry Mr. Hawking.

The irony is that science claims to be a system based upon empirical, provable data, along with reason and logic. It denies superstitions, myth, and allegory because they are seen as unreliable sources of Truth.  For them, Facts are the authority. 

My questions to science are these: "If your faith is based in reason and empirical data, then give me empirical proof of "reason". Can you logically explain the laws of logic if they are not empirically based? How heavy are they? What is the diameter of reason? Where is it located? How can logic and reason be true without the realm of allegory, myth, or religion? We can't surgically remove logic or place reason in a petri dish. 

The late Greg Bahnsen point out to us that Science presupposes meaning, purpose, beauty and creativity, and thus does so outside of the scientific worldview. 

I have worked for 13 years in the field of human genetics and cancer diagnostics. I have asked countless scientific people and experts in the field these questions and not one of them has been able to consistently live within the scientific worldview. We all believe in meaning and some form of transcendence. Which is another way of saying that Authority is always beyond ourselves.  God is beyond us.

​A myth or an allegory do not have to be scientifically defendable in order for them to be true. In fact they are pointing to something that is true on a whole other level. Even science accepts this in the field of quantum theory and cosmology. They believe things are true long before they are able to prove them.  That is FAITH. That is RELIGION.

Can we get beyond this? Yes, but only by including it. In fact, the way we get beyond any of these stages is by transcending and including each stage. But this only happens when we get to the place where our present reality is no longer working. 

If the science-o-meter is fully satisfying to you, it is because you, like those in any other phase are not concerned with the questions that would cause you to expand your ideas about it. Science has its own fundamentalists. 

This sets the stage for the trends in our Post-modern world. We'll look at that next week.