A synopsis of an article by Chris Wenham
Recently someone on JoeUser asked me to explain how I adopted my personal belief system. That is not a tale I wish to tell, primarily because religious debate bores the hell out of me. I don’t like trying to change other people’s beliefs, and I appreciate the same respect. I especially resent such attempts by people who came to their beliefs through inertia rather than consideration.
That being said, let me tell you that I am a mechanist, a type of atheist. That’s not an easy thing to admit in America. Especially growing up in the South. Southern Baptists are some of the most rabid soul-savers I’ve ever seen, and the idea of an atheist just seems to get their blood up.
Anyway, in an attempt to cool anyone’s blood out there I would like to present an article written by one of my favorite online writers, Chris Wenham at Disenchanted. Chris has written some of the most interesting, intelligent, and insightful articles that I have ever read. This particular one is an attempt to describe science as, hopefully, something non-confrontational.
Chris opens with an interesting discussion of the difference between knowing something and knowing the name of something. The example used is inertia. We know that "things have a tendancy to want to keep moving when they're moving, or want to stand still when they're not. This is called 'inertia', but nobody knows why it is." So often, when we are aware of something we give it a name, even if we do not understand that thing.
Chris goes on to point out that, “scientists do not wake up in the morning and say to themselves ‘how are we going to make creationists look like fools today?’” Science isn’t about that. Science is about moving towards a greater understanding, with respect towards all ideas that can be supported by certain rules. Chris imagines those rules as part of a game.
The rules of this game are straightforward, and go as follows.
1. The object of the game is to get to the other side of the game board.
2. The game board is divided into squares, but you're not told how many squares wide or long it is.
3. You can only step on a square if it has a tile on it. You can step on any tile, even if it was made by another player.
4. If you step on an empty square, or the tile you're standing on breaks, then you "fall in" and have to swim back to the nearest tile.
5. Each empty square that either borders a tile or the starting edge of the game board has a question visible on it. The questions are very simple and have single answers, such as "why does water flow downhill?" or "why can light pass through glass?" or "what is heat?"
6. The only way to make new tiles is by making-up an answer to the question.
7. A tile will only float if you can verify the answer with a reproducible test.
8. A tile can only be broken by proving the answer is wrong with a reproducible test.
9. A test can't break a tile if its results can't be reproduced, a tile can't float if the verifying test's results can't be reproduced.
10. If a tile is broken, then all tiles ahead of it that cannot be connected back to the starting edge by another continuous series of tiles will be broken as well.
11. A player is defined as someone who obeys the rules. If you stop obeying the rules you cease to be a player until you start obeying the rules again.
Chris points out that creationists want to use Faith to move to the other side of the board, without having to obey any of the rules of the game. That they fail to see that though the object of the game may be to reach the other side, but “this is not the reason for playing any more than the reason for playing Chess is to get your opponent in checkmate.” Here we see the old proverb, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”
In the end, Chris hypothesizes that science may eventually lead us to discover the secrets of God. And that at that time we may know something in addition to knowing it’s name.