The Impact of Science on Belief
by Bob Grubb

Why is it that some people refuse to go with the flow of fact acceptance, preferring instead to believe more questionable, and often unanswerable, ideas? These belief-led individuals are a minority, but can be found in every walk of life. They subscribe to alternative explanations of events, like refusing to believe a lone killer explanation for an assassination; instead suspicious of conspiracies. Others may not accept scientific explanations of man's early history, believing in religious explanations, extraterrestrial influences, or the existence of super cultures destroyed long ago that precede official history.

Unlike fact, belief cannot be proven, and is therefore subject to dispute. Believers of one side of an issue point to evidence they claim support their particular beliefs about the issue. Believers on the other side may interpret the same evidence as supportive of their beliefs. Until one side or the other prove its conclusions, moving the matter from the realm of belief into the realm of fact is not possible. Until such time, acceptance can occur only through faith.

The question of whether extremely low frequency electrical radiation causes cancer is such an issue. It can be safely projected that at some point in time this issue will be resolved, and beliefs of one side or the other will cease to exist. The matter will have passed into the realm of fact. This is no less true for more fundamental and impacting beliefs.

The issue of whether Jesus Christ was a fraud, God incarnate, angel, inspired human, extraterrestrial, an initiate of ancient knowledge, or mythical being is one that has resulted in nearly 2,000 years of dispute, itself largely responsible for the many denominations of the Christian religion. There seems to be little chance of this issue being resolved. If it was, many belief systems would crumble under the weight of fact. The impact of this belief destruction would be great, and affect as many aspects of life as the dispute over differing beliefs has.

Facts are belief destroyers. This is not stated as a negative. During the Black Plague many people believed the disease was caused by exposure to sunlight. Many people believed Richard Nixon had no knowledge of the Watergate break-ins. Countless dates have passed that were believed to be the date the world would end. Facts later destroyed these beliefs.

Science deals with facts. Rather than dispute belief, science denies the existence of anything not fact. Without science only fact can destroy belief. With science, the absence of fact is used to destroy belief.

In view of this, it is strange that science can contradict itself. Scientists create facts from what they term "conclusive evidence". This is evidence supporting belief that is commonly held to be true. Thus science allows belief to pass as fact. These "pseudo-facts" are in turn used as conclusive evidence to advance other beliefs into the realm of scientific facthood. The resultant acclaim lends further support to uphold these self-proclaimed realities.

Non-scientists make regular use of this tactic as well. However, their beliefs often contradict those of established science. The resultant jeering from the scientific community undermines the non-scientific effort.

The process of fact-weaving (creating reality out of thin air) is distinguished from belief-preaching, which is undertaken for the express reason of convincing others of a certain belief system. The purpose of fact-weaving is to force conformity. This is not hard to understand. It is not possible to convince others concerning facts, for there is absolutely no convincing necessary. However, it is possible to condition people to accept beliefs as facts.

This distinction may seem difficult to accept. We often meet with or hear of those who do accept their beliefs as fact, such as religious zealots. How often have we heard the phrase, "if the facts were understood", from the mouths of politicians. The polluting of what is fact and what is belief have indeed smeared the distinction.

The struggle between belief-ers and fact-ers is pervasive, though the dynamics of this struggle are muddled. More often than not the struggle is waged between real facts vs. fraudulent beliefs, or false facts versus correct beliefs. Thus is the stage set for the repeating themes of human history. A surface belief, explained and promoted by available media, may be widely accepted as true by most people.

Acceptance is not the criteria for facthood. Those few not satisfied with the commonly held truth may seek alternative explanations. When alternative explanations are publicly called for or offered by the few, they find themselves the victims of oppression. Manifestation of this oppression can range from ridicule, to censorship, to annihilation; subduing questioners and removing credibility from their alternatives. The victors then author history as they saw it, leaving "evidence" supporting their explanations and perpetuating pseudo-facts.

A pseudo-fact most profound in its effects, is the theory of evolution. It provides an illuminating example. This theory is predominantly believed to be fact. This is extraordinary in that there exists no way to verify the accuracy of its claims (nor to dispute them)! Alternate creation theories are generally not taught side by side with the theory of evolution. Every media, directly or indirectly, refers to this theory as fact. For instance, a documentary film about a certain country, will inevitably contain references to indigenous fauna "that were millions of generations old before the arrival of man.", or explain a culture as it existed "before man began to use tools".

Leave aside for the moment any dispute of this belief. We cannot. Belief is always open to dispute. Okay, let's believe for a moment that this theory is fact. We cannot. Facts leave no room for deviation, thus belief (and disbelief) are not relevant in any consideration of fact. Belief may be disputed (effectively or not). Facts require no belief. The totally illogical - and very potent - problem is that people can be persuaded to accept beliefs as facts, and to disallow dispute of beliefs by employing pseudo-facts that are nothing more than strongly supported beliefs.

It may seem perplexing that individuals and groups can unquestioningly accept beliefs as fact, but it is very common. Manifestations of this are numerous, including the "fact" that your political and community interests direct your elected representative's vote, or that a paycheck will be provided you at the end of your week of labor, or the "fact" that your savings in a bank are guaranteed available at your discretion.

These beliefs (being supported by however much evidence) are accepted as facts. It can be unsettling to properly consider these examples as beliefs.

The belief in the theory of evolution is much more than unsettling, its acceptance is deleterious. Why? Because this is the ultimate belief struggle. This theory explains how the universe in general, and humankind in particular, came into existence. In so doing it becomes rival to religion, which has been explaining these matters perhaps since humankind came into existence. These scientific/religious conflicts are not simply confined to what happened before we know what happened, they reach into today - and set courses to the future. Believers are at peril.

One need not accept the Creation theory as fact to seek battle with the fact weavers. Simply question evolutionary science and its proponents will trample one another in their efforts to persuade you of their truth, or ridicule you and erode your credibility with well established (and widely accepted!) pseudo facts. They also understand the non-relevancy of belief in facts. Remember, you cannot believe or disbelieve facts, you must accept facts as true. Evolutionary scientists are careful to avoid the "b" word while expounding their pseudo-factual discoveries.

It quite follows that believers of any kind are at a disadvantage in a scientifically dominated world culture that disallows the existence of any thing that cannot be observed or duplicated by experiment. An inconsistency, which is characteristic of fact-weaving, is at play here. Evolution has not been observed directly by any person in written history. "Man is a newcomer to the earth, being preceded by billions of years of developmental evolution", fact weavers state (relying on "factual" knowledge of these billions of years of history). Evolution has not been duplicated by any scientist. While science will not accept the concept of an afterlife without duplicable experiments, acceptance of non-verifiable statements from science (that dinosaurs were cold blooded creatures, for example) as fact is demanded.

The very existence of questions and dispute concerning the evolutionary theory alone establishes the evolutionary theory as a belief. I do not intend to dispute the theory of evolution (I wasn't there either). The example is used here to establish that beliefs can be and are widely accepted as facts, even though true facts allow no room for belief.

Religion is the institute of belief. Likewise science purports to be the institute of fact. History shows that these two sides constantly seek to align followers to their respective sides, fueling disagreements ranging from philosophical debate to bloody persecution. Both of these institutions have at times attempted to present their beliefs as fact. Science uses supporting evidence, religion relies on faith. Both have been guilty of using coercion. Each has been successful at dominating opinion at different times in history. Today religion seemingly coexists successfully within the domination of science. This coexistence is tenuous at best. As we will see, the realm of today's science leaves no room for religion.

Let's examine one who is, say, a Christian minister - the epitome of a believer. He resolves the conflict between Creationism and Evolutionism by rationalizing that the "sacred words" he subscribes to and advocates are primitive humankind's childlike attempts at describing their origins. He feels that rather than disagreeing with evolution, Genesis supports it. Two very disparate beliefs are thus assimilated to near fact by a single mind. The symbols of one are ascribed to another. The loss is that alternative or additional meaning for these symbols is removed from consideration. Our believer has resolved a symbol conflict by accepting evolution as the instrument by which God created the world.

One day a deer leaps from the brush along the highway into the path of the minister's automobile and dies. The shaken minister pauses to wonder what fate he may have possibly crushed, or how the world's destiny will be altered, if only by an infinitesimal degree, by this action. It crosses his mind that perhaps the deer's death and his involvement were unavoidable fates set in the concrete of destiny. These kinds of philosophical considerations are acceptable, indeed commendable characteristics for persons dedicating their lives to the belief in a God that is the creator of all life.

Because he has accepted the evolutionary theory as fact, the minister entertains conflicting thoughts as well. The death of one deer, he may reason, is inconsequential given their present number. Considering the number of deer in the evolutionary estimates of years of deer evolution, one deer death is meaningless.

He shudders to think that his accidental victim may have been human. Turmoil sets in. The same explanations discounting the death of the deer can be applied to humans under the laws of science, but not under the laws of religion. "Oh, that would be different", he reasons, "God created man in his image." Then he considers - if evolution is fact, there is no special purpose to humankind. Humankind created by evolutionary accident, cannot be created in the image of God. If we sprang from evolutionary development, what connections do we have to a God we cannot prove exists? What God-promised destiny can we seek after death, if God played no part in our creation? How can prayer be used for intimate communication with God, if we are but one grain of sand in the universe?

These conflicts are present within most people, not reserved simply for our example minister. The problem is that a belief is accepted as fact. Taken as fact, not properly identified as belief, it diminishes other belief systems.

Disputes over issues clearly identified as beliefs do not diminish the beliefs of the opponents. Indeed, countless wars have been the result of such disputes. An example of a current belief struggle is the issue of abortion. Pro-abortionist believe that abortion occurs before life occurs. Anti-abortionist believe that life begins with inception. As with any belief struggle neither side will be victorious unless one of these beliefs becomes fact.

However, the belief in the theory of evolution is improperly regarded as fact, and belief must surrender to fact, pseudo or not. This repeats the ironic example of the once "factual" (and religious supported idea) that the earth is flat and the center of the universe. In this case religion and science were on the opposite side (the dominant side always indicating the relative power of control over the populace), but both were dealing with beliefs. The dominant belief was accepted as fact until true facts, requiring no belief, were forthcoming.

The theory of evolution is a belief. How and what you believe is entirely up to you. Characteristic of belief debates, opponents on either side are not likely to change their respective beliefs. However, each person should be informed that this theory is most probably in direct opposition to whatever religious beliefs they have. Then they may fairly consider the beliefs and decide which belief system, if any, agrees most with their own.

To present a belief system as factual science is devious, and in this example its effects are staggering, because the theory of evolution is the belief system to end all belief systems.

Those who believe they are the creation of a Higher Power who has provided them and all humankind with immortal souls, are going to have different notions of how to "treat others as you would like them to treat you", than those believing the Golden Rule is a good framework for living in society, but do not believe in gods or souls.

Lack of religious belief unavoidably reduces self-value, thus equal treatment given to others is also reduced. The Golden Rule is merely social rule without belief in God. This is why scripture says eternal life is gained by loving first "the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind;", and second, "and your neighbor as you would yourself."

Contrast this with Evolutionists who must believe that one race of humankind is superior to all others. Of course, few will voice this opinion but adherance to the "logic" of evolution demands this way of thinking.

A final note is in order. Those who state that God created the universe as fact also destroy individual belief choices. This has happened in the past. Alternate thinking was violently persecuted. Religions that preach salvation through faith, err when they state their dogma as fact. Facts require no faith. Therefore those who preach religious belief as fact rob their followers of the salvation they say is granted through faith...

This piece isn't intended to represent my views concerning the ongoing Evolution vs Creation debate. I'm not a Creationist. It's simply absurd to believe that the Earth was created less than 8000 years ago. Evolution is a workable theory - indeed it seems to be the best we have. However - it is a theory, not a fact. My problems with the ramifications of this theory are that it is taught as fact, and that it disallows any other ideas to supplant or even coexist with it. For instance, in my belief system the world is a product of evolution. However at some stage in this evolution humankind was affected by an outside force in a way that provided us with intelligence and spirituality that evolution has failed to explain to my satisfaction.