Scientific Hypotheses

 

THINKING THAT SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES AND THEORIES ARE FACTS 

 

Another delusion of the ‘progressive and/or revolutionary’ type mind is that any current opinions and conclusions of science are proven facts and should be acted upon.  One such theory is the Theory of Evolution.  This maintains that living species are derived from non-living matter first and  subsequently evolved as well as diversified into all the species we have today. As a theory one can only respect and be even convinced by.  But taking it as a reason to attack and discredit religious faith is both philosophically unjustified and morally criminal.

 

Sacred scriptures, whatever their individual merits and details, are not meant as scientific expositions, for when they came science did not exist even as a concept. The only concern of their inspired authors was to motivate or morally compel their audience to drop any anti-social attitudes and beliefs of theirs and adopt ones more conducive to social harmony and cohesion in a loving voluntary sense. And they more or less  worked despite any abuses and over centuries made man more civilized and charitable in a statistical sense.  For example nobody can say that despite its certain brutalities the Islamic community of the 10th century, living a prosperous and sophisticated life where law more ruled than anarchy and charity more prevailed than selfishness and peace more than war and justice more than crulelty was a far better society when Islam was not around.  The extremely barbaric Mongols struck and nearly demolished it but eventually were civilized and absorbed by it- almost no trace of them remained. 

 

Similarly the less civilized  Medieval Western Christian world was fare better a society than the societies of the extreme barbarians it conquered and absorbed,  barbarians like the Vikings, the Teutons and the Goths.  Despite all the blows it has been delivered major religions are still around, still rules the lives of hundreds of millions among which are many well-educated people some creditable scientists and often if not always help them to lead more conscientious and charitable lives.  So religions are very valuable and deserve all respect.  Taking their apparent cosmological views as rivals of the scientific versions (which themselves keep changing and even being discarded) and attacking them with venomous scoffs is the most immoral and irresponsible act imaginable in a man of learning or culture.  What is more, throughout ages all major religions produced their mystic savants who did not mince their words in the matter of the allegorical nature of their respective scriptures’  cosmological and even eschatological teachings.  But that does not make the intellectually less well endowed believers’ taking their scriptures literally because that is the most helpful understanding as far as they are concerned.  Their positive contribution to their moral sense and spiritual comfort and contentment is enough justification.  Myths are not lies but moral truths in a language akin to that of the more beneficial dreams.

 

So whether the Evolution took place or not should neither change the fact that we are now fully human and our nature demands a religious form of psychological sustenance with a strong and inalienable ethical orientation. Not every person may have a religious sense but neither all have scientific aptitude. Each needs his own spiritual food and most people need a level of religious support.  It is perfectly possible to reinterpret scripture in a way accommodating Evolution provided it is proven-  and still keep one’s faith with its full commitments intact.

 

What is not on is using science to re-design human nature and society, because these have very many dimensions outside the concern and competence of science and any mad scientists thinking that they can arrogate to themselves the all-sweeping authority of ancient god-kings and temple priests are worthy of all condemnation that may be directed to them.

 

LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE

 

Science is precise in immediates but illusory in ultimates.  Please memorize this motto!   Let us explain.

 

The name science apply to all learning based on research. So it includes the most rigorous and accurate of sciences which is physics at the one hand and very woolly ones like sociology at the other.  Physics is accurate because it deals with simplest tangible and measurable beings the physical objects.  The fall of a steel ball from a measured height takes so much time.  By changing the height we can calculate the acceleration of a free falling object and come up with an equation whereby we can calculate how much time it takes an object dropped from any height to touch the ground.  Chemists make experiments and find mathematical equations enabling them how much air is necessary to completely burn a given amount of a given fuel so that engineers design the most  economic combustion chambers for that fuel. 

 

But when the science is sociology they find it impossible to identify all contributing and quantifiable factors in the causation of an event.  If for example crime is increasing in a neighbourhood who can exactly guess what factors are at play and how much.  Unlike physics, possible sociological factors like unemployment,  bad street lighting and racial composition cannot be quickly or completely changed and measurements made to see how much each contributes.  To this must be added political and idelogical constraints.  While a right wing politician will probably overestimate the bad influence of the immigrants a leftist one will shout at the pitch of his or her voice that it is racism to suspect that  and the factor is inadmissible.  The unemployment need be considered etc etc.

 

But even that is not accurately definable.  Unemployment among which ethnic or age groups or sexes for example.  Interviews both with the residents and ‘experts’ may collect more lies or prejudiced assertations to serve as scientific data.  It is often the case that polls for public opinion elicit more of the unrepresentative opinions of narrow but committed ideological groups and non-committed, mainstream people shy away from public meetings at town halls for example.

 

As a result sciences like sociology, psychology and even economics are not exact sciences like physics and chemistry no matter how much figures and graphics, statistics and polls they employ in formulating their findings.

 

But even physics end up in delusion farther away it moves away from home.  For example the origin of the universe is an arcane subject of physics in its various forms like theoretical physics, astronomy, astrophysics or cosmology.  Firstly the Relativity Theory teach that every measurable entity, quantity or concept is not a fixed amount but  is relative and variable, i.e it depends how fast it is moving in respect to an observer watching it.  But this relativity of quantities become perceptible at very high speeds. For example the distance between to points in space shrinks when an object travels faster between them.  Similarly the time passes more slowly the faster an object moves.  The mass of a moving object, say 1 kilogram, increases to 1.1, 1.2 etc kg as it travels at enormous speeds and would become infinite (more than billions of tons) when it nears too close the speed of light.  So a box of chocolates would become mountains of it at a particular high enough speed.   Matter which is the only tangible being in existence can dissolve into intangible energy,  for example a lump of matter totally disappearing and only intense heat or light coming into being. These have been verified by experiments and the atomic bomb proved once and for all to the poor Japanese that a mere few kilograms of a certain metal could blow up a metropolis simply because a few grams of it was annihilated as matter and resurrected in the form of energy, according to the famous relativistic equation derived by Einstein,  Energy produced= amount of matter annihilated multiplied by the square of the speed of light, the number 90,000,000,000!

 

I can give you a much simpler example of relativity by an experiment like this.  A man and woman are riding two open top cars travelling at the same high speed 1000 metres apart.  An observer A  is standing at the roadside watching the cars approaching from his left.  The front car carrying the woman passes from in front of him and when it is 500 metres to his right (and therefore the rear car 500 metres to his left) the two as passengers face each other and shout “kill you!” and fire smokeless guns at each other at exactly the same time like 12 hrs 2 minutes 5 seconds. Almost immediately police stops and questions them and the by-stander witness.  The latter testifies truthfully that woman was the first to threaten and open fire and the other acted in self defence.  How come?  Because the woman was moving fast away from the witness and her voice not only arrived his ears later but it sounded like a man’s voice due to what is called the Doppler effect. The man in the rear car however was approaching the witness and his voice arrived at the ears of the witness earlier and shriller like a woman’s.  As you can  speeds of different objects relative to an observer can make actual events reversed and in the case given cause the wrong person to be accused truthfully!  The whole immense universe is perceived similarly making our beliefs as to what is happening in the universe worthless unless necessary and expert relativistic corrections can be made-  which is next to impossible given the practically infinite size and the complexity of the universe.  

 

So science cannot say any last words whatsoever and forever on the origin and nature and the contents of the universe taken as a whole.  All it says are hypotheses and the vaster the scales a hypothesis is trying to explain less likely it is to explain anything.  So we have both the Big Bang and the Big bang and Big Crunch theories neither of which is really provable in a million years. The universe is simply too vast and not even a billionth of it visible or detectible by the most powerful and sensitive instruments we have or can produce.  The farther we look the less we se see the present time and what we see for example as objects four billion light years away are certainly not there any more but the perceived reality was the reality as it was four billion years ago.  In fact in the vastness of the universe concepts like now, past, future or ‘simultaneous’ have no meaning at all. What we see as ‘universe as it is now’ is an illusion less real than even the silliest dream or stage magic illusion.  Nothing like we see is really out there-  it does not exist!

 

It is not only the macrocosmic science which is doomed to eternal illusoriness.

The biological view of life is also largely illusory.  Usually the modern biologist and philosopher mistakes the mechanical determinism he elucidates in the organism for the lack of a spirit or overall God behind it all.  He may even think that using what he learned he may one day be able to create a simple living being like a virus and then a bacterium etc.  And he may well succeed.  But isn’t he forgetting something?   I think he is.   What he is forgetting is that he himself, being another living being  should also be a mechanical automaton and and the last thing an  automaton needs is consciousness.   A robot, however sophisticated and advanced,  can do all tasks it is designed for to perfection; all its sensors and automatic control and correction systems are in tip top condition and they work entirely on the basis of mechanics and electro- and electronic mechanics and thermodynmics…   and consciousness never comes into the picture.  It is simply not only superfluous but also scientifically a non-entity.  It cannot be defined scientifically,  cannot be detected instrumentally,  there are no either simple units like metre or ampere nor compound units like watts or electron-volts to measure it.  It is simply outside of both the concern and competence of science.  Yet our scientist friend KNOWS that he has a consciousness in which he has his will, his intelligence, his emotions and hopes.  If he can have all these despite his own all-explaining automatism why not other living beings and the universe as a whole?

If the inability of consciousness to be discoverable by scientific method means that it does not exist such non-existence of spirit or God is as good as scientific existence if not better.  The said scientist enjoys his non-existent consciousness in which everything else is recognized as existent and without which none could exist as far as he is concerned.  What kind of unreality this consciousness is that without it it doesn’t matter whether anything else existed or not? 

 

Which means consciousness which may or may not be matter-based (the case cannot be proven either way as all spiritual claims can’t) is the most precious thing in existence as far as we can see and without it nothing matters in the least.

 

The net result of all above is this: Spirit and its universal form or universal beyond is God are both to be admitted as real despite their utter unsuitability for scientific study and verification.  In fact science itself is part of the spirit and the part cannot contain or overrule the whole. Even as simplest whole like a water molecule refuses to be overruled by its parts which are one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms.  None of these atoms can do things water molecule can.  Science cannot be the measure of all things however much some laser beam-minded mental cripples may demand and issue ultimatums for.  More than anything else we men are spirits and relate to our ultimate non-scientific Creator only too aptly and completely and profitably as nothing else. So we stand our ground totally sure of ourselves on the rock of our fully independent inner illumination.

 

ABUSES, ABUSES, ABUSES  

 

The utter misunderstanding about the nature, powers and applicability of science to man’s problems and especially most thinkers’ whether within or outside the scientific community to wrongly assume that spiritual matters are illusions and delusions which fed religious faith and were fed by it in return and they need to have no place in the formulation of public policies from education to procreation and from production to consumption of services and commodities….  this misunderstanding most go. 

 

For even when misunderstood and missaplied religious guidance of personal and public life has its self-correction possibilities.  The sinner may see the error of his ways, repent and change course.  But with no God to consider and respect an atheist can only take his often misplaced secular beliefs and hopes as his guide and play god with everything.  Let us take a broadly but briefly chosen example.  We are born into a world which is producing both us and anything and everthing we need to survive.  A man and woman unite to create a new human being, normally they are very loving and caring to the joint product and with or without more of it they live as a small group of basically happy, decent and charitable family life.  Now there is basically and fundamentally nothing wrong in this arrangement which is natural to most animal species.  Neither there is anything wrong with sowing and reaping crops and keeping certain animals for food the natural way.  All arrangements like these may be improved with our intelligence and industry and at no phase we need to change the basic processes of life to obtain the improvements needed. 

 

So,  creating  human beings by methods which nature did not choose must be a dangerous and therefore immoral thing for multiple reasons.  It is one thing to treat infertility if possible but quite another to by-pass nature and with it social, spiritual and ethical rules in order to satisfy a fancy or curiosity.  For example a woman of almost sixty wanted and was recently made to bear another child despite the fact that she has children and grandchildren already.  Why should she do that?  How good a mother an exhausted old woman can be for a baby who needs all the powers, resources and long enough survival of a young mother?  What Frankensteinian monstrosity it is for a child (the new baby) to be both the sister and aunt of another much older person?  Even worse,  what need do we have for cloned babies who will be the exact replicas of their mothers?  Not human beings even animals need not and should not be created this way.  Scientists are not and should not be regarded above morality and social responsibility. 

 

The same reckless tamperings are also done with farm animals and crops.  For reasons of false economy cattle was fed with their own recyled carcasses only to create a new plague-  BSE!   Totally unnecessary and possibly very risky production of genetically modidified agricultural produce or the preservation of crops by irradiation are likely to face us with grave health consequences. And all this in an age when fertility is tried to be severely curbed (the pill, abortion, family planning etc.),  excessive over-production of food and its equally excessive waste from the farm itself to the dinner plate and the rubbish bin) and new diseases and accidents are proliferating.  No doubt what the West produces in its farms can not only feed itself ten times over even when the said unnatural processes are excluded but the whole third world if waste was prevented.  People unable to procreate naturally even with fertility treatment can easily adopt the loveliest babies they can pick and choose.  They need not to clone their silly selves or use sperm donors and surrogate mothers thereby blowing up all social and family relationships honoured by both time and  God.  Their problem is not where they think it is. It is in their extremely selfish, narcissist and godless and therefore valueless minds.  This mind is another laser-beam mind,  its self-inflicting of atrocities is of the same order if not scale of Dr Mengele’s experiments on human beings discarded by the Nazi laser-beam mind.

 

But we must admit that religion itself have been abused at least as badly as science and that is next.

 

5.  ABUSE OF RELIGION

 

Believe it or not, among the Qur’an’s major subjects is the issue of abuse of religious capacity.  Allah reminds us quite frequently throughout His Book how He always intended to give man the True Religion of His which consists of the truest and simplest creed and the most natural of laws.  The creed is “La ilaha illallah” (there is no god but Allah) which on fully legitimate and justified ampification (as based on the Qur’an and the Prophet’s sws sayings) amounts to the following:

 

This universe which appears outside you and the even vaster world which is inside you one aspect of which is your infinite and often also infinitely fertile imagination are in fact one and the same and has One Creator.  One Creator means One True Law which again come in two aspects.  One is the Physical Law which science rightfully and competently explores and technology exploits and another aspect inside for your mind and heart which is the Shariah Law expounded by Allah and His Prophet sws, regulating our personal conduct and social transactions.  This aspect is in perfect tune with the Physical Law aspect.  So, for example, Islamic Law’s insistence on marriage and responsible procreation and raising of new generations in the loving context of blood relationships and more general context of amicable and just social cohesion and cooperation is entirely natural, the most beneficial and immutable way.   All humantiy are invited to it and shall answer for failing to come into it.  No other religion has this perfection although each may have many merits-  together with many defects as well.

 

So, Allah deplores and criticizes both those who turn a deaf ear to His Call and those who come in but fail to live up to it.  Those who don’t come in are busy abusing their and their fellows religious capacity by leading them to unnatural and unjust ideas and acts.  For example, the Hindu belief that men are created in four immutable ranks/classes (called castes) of the priests, the warriors, the artisans and the untouchables in that order of steady degradation is neither natural nor just.  For example simply because one is born into the top priestly class can mean that he is really superior to others born in lower classes. And this is not a mere theory. Even today if only sometimes, a boy and girl belonging to two different castes fall in love they are killed rather than allowed to marry!  In the much more advanced and egalitarian Christianity divorce,  that sometimes the most inevitable and justified of choices, was, until recently banned and remains banned to Catholics.  Again, unnatural, unjust.  Only Islam’s Law stands up to any examination of naturalness and justice and Allah could not stress this more and deplore the rest more.

But the fact remains that both Islam and other religions have been and are being abused by many.  Why is that so.  There are at least one cause and one reason.

 

The cause is the same laser-beam thinking possessing some religionists, which cause send some scientists and ideologues astray.  The laser-beam-minded believer takes one aspect or spot of his faith, ignores all the rest and campaigns like mad to impose what it seems to require on all.  For example he finds in the Bible the Commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.  End of the matter. It doesn’t matter and it won’t register with him to be told that this can only be a qualified statement and exceptions to it based on the merits of each case must exists and are equally sanctioned by the same God.  Won’t you kill in self-defence?  Won’t you kill an arsonist who is about to blow up an orphanage and kill hundreds of children and their nurses?  Or the Buddhist teaching says that we must not kill any living being and we must not eat meat.  Another too lofty laser-beaming. Shall we not kill rats which are spreading plague?  Shall we not kill bacteria infecting us? Shall we not kill invaders who kill some of us to enslave the rest? 

 

In fact all religions except Islam have their laser-beamings whereby they promote some lofty-sounding exhortations at the expense of making possible a thousand pestilences. Only Islam avoids this trap altogether, even when it requires to break its own injunctions. In Islam utility overrules even the Commandments!  For example, like in Judaism, Islam bans pork. But a muslim facing starvation can eat it without blame.  Talking blasphemies against God is the gravest sin in Islam. Yet if under duress as in the hands of enemy muslim can blaspheme as much as it takes to satisfy the enemy provided inside he remains the same  respective believer.  And all such allowances are right in the Qur’an.  Against this take the laser-beamings of a Christian sect.   Because God in the Bible bans blood as food they will rather die or allow their lovely children to die rather than have a blood transfusion!  There is an apt saying in Turkish “Whatever befalls a man befalls only on account of his (defective) thinking”.  All such defective thinkings leading to defective judgments and acts, acts which unnecessarily sacrifice lives and health and legitimate happiness amounts to abuses of reigion.

 

From the perfection of Islam one would think that it is unabusable.  Unfortunately it is.  This happens mostly in the matter of  ‘jehad’, especially nowadays. Noting in only unconsciously that Islam has great power on its belivers why not use it to win the allegiance of enough number of ignorants, semi-ignorants and laser-thinkers among muslims and found his own sort of kingdom. Accordingly we always find since the earliest days of Islam and also today many self-styled Islamic leaders teaching slogans and preaching Armageddon by accusing other muslims, specially the rulers with impiety and even blasphemy.  For all practical intents and purposes they recreate the Prophet-Sahaba relationship with their followers who must then obey them on the pain of going to hell or even punishment in the hands of the leader here and now.  He taxes them, he may arm and deploy them, he may unleash them on his rivals and whom he regards as his enemies for he thinks that he knows and understands enough Islam as nobody else or even he is Divinely inspired of sorts.  And sometimes they cause a lot of bloodshed and destruction among the muslims with or without triumphing.

Other abusers of Islam are sufi pretenders, magic and incantions dispensers, money grabbing and boot-licking scholars and those who appease the rich and the powerful for personal gain. All these we did have and do have still.

 

But the world champions of the abuse of religion, by their own admission have been from among the Christians.  Not only the clerics and monks but many self-appointed ‘charismatics’  variously adverising as ‘prophets’ or saints or reformers have been since almost two thousand years boiling a cauldron of extremist preachings and provocations and torturing and killing many in the name of the most merciful lambish Christ!  Only Christianity produces so many ‘prophets’ with so many sects and cause so much bloody upheavals and blight so many lives.  Of course none of such are due to the teachings of the holy Christ who muslims equally adore (but not worship) and features so frequently and sublimely in the Qur’an as God’s penultimate great messenger.

 

Today’s abuses of religion are necessarily of lower key and smaller scope because religion is no longer the dominant ideas and behaviour molder even among the muslims.  Today’s greatest form of abuse among the Christians is cultism and among muslims self-styled jehad  groupings.  But both religions suffer also from the other plague, e.g., muslim also have their cults.

 

In the cult there is an ‘infallible’ leader and a tax-paying membership.  Members are strongly urged to recruit new members and thereby increase the income of the leader and strengthen his bargaining as well as hitting out powers against the establishment.  The world capital of cultism is undoubtedly the USA where some cults have become so powerful that their friendship is avariciously cultivated by political parties as their votes may tip the balance in an election. One finds a cult leader feted by a president like a fellow president for only the same man end up in prison for tax-evasion or even murder and extortion charges- and convicted as charged!  Another builds and arms almost an independent city state he sometimes calls Jerusalem and fights of attacks from the forces of law until overwhelmed.  All such abuses achieve no good but only worsen the image of religion as if it hasn’t lost enough ground and enough prestige.

 

Cults often are based on a selective caricaturization of a mainstream religion or on entirely new claims, sometimes a combination of pseudo-science and pseudo-spirituality.  Their customers range from perfectly decent and intelligent looking professionals to obvious nutters and the reason of their hooking is a threat-promise formula which, despite its unlikeliness and even bizarreness somehows clicks into the soul of the person exposed to it.  So one bizarre cult may make Christian Messianic claims while another talk about aliens destroying the world but saving and blessing the cult’s believers.  And all are capable of exacting high taxes and sacrifices from their customers. In the worst cases this may be a mass suicide in the hope that the promised delivery is only accessed by that.

 

Among top cult founders and exploiters in the USA are Hindus.  One somehow reaches the shores of America and impressing an increasing number of the natives with his strange features and dress and even stranger spiritual claims as sometimes assisted by sleight-of-the hand magic or secret information gathering-based cognition feats gradually establish themselves as gods, especially picking the rich and the famous with a heavy predilection for glamorous ladies. 

 

Among Muslims also cults exist and they are almost entirely Sufism based.  A true tariqa may be discerned from a cult by its mainstream teachings and behaviours and its humility of both personalities and finances.  The moment legendary and pompous leaders and dynasties, palaces and protocols, formalities and bureucracies come along we have no sufi tariqa but a criminal gang specializing in the exploitation of the spiritual aspect of man (as prostitution mafias exploit the sexual).  A sure sign of a spiritual mafia is its extreme secretiveness and dynastic and cronyist elitism.  Ordinary members either defer to and obey the elites however scandalous they may seem at times or is expelled.  Vast sums of funds fly around and great financial sacrifices may be asked from the well-to-do and any promises of repayment is usually not honoured and a complaint to that effect is countered by a threat of forfeiting the promised salvation.  Of course non-Islamic cults are far guiltier in such matters.     

 

The lesson to be taken from all above is that one must stick fully to the mainstream in both religion and Sufism and shun groups with unusual claims with  disturbing rumours flying about them as well as palpably obvious nuttiness of te members.  If violence under whatever pretext (e.g. jehad) is part of the picture then it is definitely to be shunned.

 
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