Posted on 09/14/2016 12:00:07 PM PDT by Heartlander
Psychology professors from Claremont McKenna, Yale and Berkeley have just published a study that should be “disconcerting to those interested in promoting an accurate understanding of evolution.” Specifically, they’ve identified an insidious factor that has crept into science films and videos, undermining the ability of viewers to be good Darwinists.
Awe is the culprit, they say. All those jaw-dropping nature documentaries have been messing with our minds.
Most wildlife shows are packaged with the usual Darwinian narrative, spoken in an authoritative tone that isn’t supposed to be questioned. But it seems that wildlife itself, in stunning visual display, is conveying a different message — more powerfully, in fact.
Everyone is awed by life, and experiences that accentuate this awe seem to affect us, whether or not we believe in God. The new study suggests that these experiences affirm a sense of faith in theists and a sense of purpose-like natural order in atheists and agnostics, both of which cause problems for instructors wanting to churn out good Darwinists.
Maybe “good” isn’t the right word there. I mean, if something as obviously good for science as awe works against a “scientific” idea, wouldn’t that suggest this idea isn’t really so good or scientific in first place? How good can a way of viewing life be if excitement about life undermines it?
Common sense provides the clearest take-home message here. Since awe and wonder have always drawn people to scientific exploration, any form of teaching that calls for policing those emotions can’t possibly be in the best interest of science.
As clear as that seems, the people who did the study don’t see it that way. This is a perfect case of academic researchers being so constrained by their materialistic worldview — so convinced that the physical world is all there is — that they can’t see the implications of their own work clearly.
In fact, they can’t even get their heads around awe itself. They assume everything boils down to physics, which physicists have fully explained. There should be no surprises, then. No occasions for wonder. Our jaws should never drop. Awe is an anomaly — a hiccup. In nerd-speak: “Awe involves an ‘immediate failure to assimilate information into existing mental structures,’ and accompanying states of uncertainty trigger motivations for explanation and meaning-making.” In English: Awe is nothing more than mental panic.
So that feeling you get when you see a baby being born or a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, or when you drive your kids far away from the city lights to lie on the roof of the car and take in the full night sky — what that feeling really amounts to is: Oh pooh! I thought F=ma explained everything, but now I’ve got a sinking feeling it doesn’t.
Now, if you happen to be a materialist, maybe that is where awe and wonder take you. And maybe you should follow them. Maybe your head needs to pay more attention to your heart. But for those of us who see all of this as a God thing, awe is the complete opposite of an anomaly. And that has always been good for science.
The authors of this study think “awe drives theists away from scientific explanations,” but they only say that because they’re using a distorted definition of science. To them, anyone who doesn’t see science “as a superior, even exclusive guide to reality” is unscientific. They assessed this by asking participants in their study whether they agree that “we can only rationally believe in what is scientifically provable.” According to these professors, then, the very definition of science marks people of faith as scientific outsiders.
Hmmm.
Perhaps this only shows how ignorant that definition is. Do these psychology professors honestly think that reason is a product of science? Do they think someone in a white lab coat somewhere has proof in a test tube that science is the only reliable source of truth? Do they not detect a hint of absurdity to that logic?
As a person of faith, I can assure them that their does-not-compute interpretation of awe is entirely foreign to people of faith, many of whom are scientists. When we behold the wonders of God’s handiwork, we’re not at all driven away from studying these wonders and making them known. Quite the opposite. Like so many scientists before us, we’re driven toward those activities, seeing them as part of our very purpose in life.
That, I think, is science in its purest and most compelling form, which may be why the inscriptions at the entrance to one of the world’s greatest centers of physics — the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge — have since 1874 quoted Psalm 111: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.”
Douglas Axe is director of Biologic Institute and author of Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed. His research uses both experiments and computer simulations to examine the functional and structural constraints on the evolution of proteins and protein systems. After a Caltech PhD he held postdoctoral and research scientist positions at the University of Cambridge, the Cambridge Medical Research Council Centre and the Babraham Institute in Cambridge.
Yeah, what’s there to be in awe of? :)
The Greatest Miracle in The World by Og Mandino.
Just read the God Memorandum online if possible, it’s the last several pages of the book.
NO ONE will walk away without being totally dumbtruck with awe at the beauty of God’s creations.
That’s kind of the attitude in grad schools across the nation. Awe is unprofessional.
This has been one of my beliefs, that when we took the star-filled infinity of the night sky, we lost one of the ancestral foundations of the divine; "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" (Psalm 8:4). When we started lighting up the night, we forgot that look of the infinite and, in the USofA, places to go that have that view are becoming ever more scarce.
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re: When we started lighting up the night, we forgot that look of the infinite and, in the USofA, places to go that have that view are becoming ever more scarce.
I believe you are right.
As soon as one of those shows mentions global warming I switch it off, and I like wildlife shows.
“They assume everything boils down to physics, which physicists have fully explained.”
Umm, one not-so-small quibble there. Physicists have NOT fully explained physics. Not by a long shot!
I almost started a thread this morning about science.
SOMEBODY - actually, just about EVERY GEOLOGIST owes Jim Berkland an apology.
Berkland, who just recently died, had a theory about earthquakes being caused (well, at least having more EQ’s) by the positions of the Sun and Moon.
I have known this very thing since a 1968? eq in Los Angeles happening on the very same night and time as a lunar eclipse.
Lately, I mean in the last three weeks or so, there has been alot of press being given to a “new” scientific finding that shows in fact Berkland was correct.
And the b*stards don’t even acknowledge him. Don’t believe me? Check out Berklands entry on Wiki. It’s still unchanged and it STILL calls him a kook!
I have always trusted in and believed scientists. But this is changing very, very quickly.
I wonder how many other things that science has “proven” will turn out to be totally opposite of what reality is.
How awful (pun)
Science is a wonderful servant. It is quite unfit to be a master. Awe steps up and says “you’re not running this whole show and you never will.”
Without awe life isn’t worth living...
It sounds rather plausible, given gravitational tidal effects on the body of the earth, not just on the oceans. I don’t know why “science” would have a problem seeing it as a hypothesis to follow up on.
And anyone who thinks they have is certainly NOT a physicist.
Definitely. The effects are small, but certainly seen. Sometimes it takes just a small effect to “snap” a point where the Earth has gotten hung up on.
And it would explain the findings that it’s not so true for small quakes... but for large, earth moving quakes, there is a correlation.
BTW, full moon on Friday and a lunar eclipse at the same time...
My whole point though was to recognize how “political” science has become. Just about everyone else I ever heard talking about Berkland called him a crank. Even people here.
There’s the mean kind of awe that is projected by the devil, and then the kindly kind of awe that is projected by the Lord.
The devil gets angry just to get angry. The Lord gets angry to make way for His kind kingdom.
Most scientists refuse to acknowledge that the theory (model) is not the thing itself.
Reality is greater than any theoretical model.
Yup... the servant has been placed in the master’s shoes and the result is literally preposterous.
OK ....
Lunar eclipses need full moons. Solar eclipses need new moons.
There’s a difference. The devil’s awe is like “I HAAAAAATE YOU”; God’s is like “Let’s have some justice here!” Awe is close to fear, but it isn’t 100% coincidental because of the implicit moral quality.
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