Science and Christianity

This blogpost comes from Dr Roy Spencer a former NASA scientist.

Why is it that a bible-believing scientists’ views on science are automatically discounted by some people?

Hypocrisy

First, the hypocrisy. When warmist scientists like Sir John Houghton use the Bible to support action to fight global warming (for example, his book Global Warming: The Complete Briefing) that was OK with everyone. Same with Katherine Hayhoe and Thomas Ackerman.

So, I guess it depends upon whether the bible-believer agrees with them before the warmists decide to trash Bible-believing ways.

The benefits of CO₂

In the case of global warming skeptics, I suppose the accusation is part of the assumption that bible-believers feel that “God is in control”, and so everything will turn out OK no matter what we do. Go ahead and pump all the CO₂ into the atmosphere you want. The Big Guy will take care of it.

Except that I don’t put myself in this class. I readily admit that we have more than enough nuclear weapons to virtually wipe out humanity. I also admit that evidence of human pollution can be found in almost every corner of the world.

We know that humans are capable of creating a huge amount of misery for ourselves, which we have done repeatedly down through history. Catastrophic global warming could, at least theoretically, be just one more example of this.

Except that I view CO₂ as one of those cases where nature, on a whole, benefits from more of our “pollution”. The scientific evidence is increasingly supporting this position.

Not a big stretch considering that CO₂ is necessary for life to exist on Earth, and yet only 4 molecules out of every 10,000 in the atmosphere are CO₂. Venus and Mars have atmospheres that are almost 100% CO₂.

Killing the poor

A critic incorrectly assumes that I support the wording of all of the positions of the Cornwall Alliance, as stated in their Cornwall Declaration. But the Director of the Cornwall Alliance, Cal Beisner, knows I don’t. We’ve discussed it.

Nevertheless, I still support the work of Cornwall. Seldom does the member of an organization agree with all of that organization’s stated positions.

Why do I support Cornwall? The central reason is I believe that current green energy policies are killing poor people.

Anything that reduces prosperity kills the poor. This is the single biggest reason I speak out on global warming, and why the Cornwall Alliance speaks out against policies which end up hurting the poor much more than they help.

Radical environmentalism is interested in seeing more people dead than alive. I don’t care what their press releases say. I’ve debated enough of these folks to know that their biggest complaint is that there are too many people in the world. They have told me so.

They say the Earth would be an absolutely lovely place without any people at all. (Extra points for anyone who can spot the oxymoron there).

Settled science?

On a more superficial level, the accusation is often that the Bible-believing scientist “rejects settled science”, in my case the origin of life. How can anyone trust a climate scientist who rejects “settled science”?

Except this claim reveals an appalling lack of knowledge on the part of the accuser. In general, nothing in science is ever settled. No one knows how life arose from non-living matter. Belief in the naturalistic origin of life is just as religious as the belief in a creator. Even well-known evolutionists have admitted this.

The scientific evidence for a “creator” is, in my opinion, stronger than the evidence that everything around us is just one gigantic cosmic accident. I have no trouble stating that — and defending it — based upon science alone. No need to quote the Bible.

But why should any of this matter for real, observable science, like climate change? Belief in macroevolution is a religion, not science. It is an organizing system of thought, a worldview, which the evolutionist must fit all of their observations into.

The only explanation I can think of for the critic taking a swipe at me is that they are one of the great sea of journalists who has a considerable breadth of knowledge of many subjects, but only limited depth.

They are probably not aware that science is based upon a set of assumptions — unprovable assumptions. That nature is real. That we are capable of knowing its true nature. That nature is unified. In short, the tools of science are based in faith.

The existence of the universe itself violates either the 1st or 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics. That’s why cosmologists must invent physics no one has ever observed to explain how everything came to be.

Is that science? Really?

The critic doesn’t understand that even atheist scientists are also guided by their religious belief that there is no creator. All scientists interpret data based upon their preconceived notions. In Earth science, I find most researchers believe nature is fragile. That is not a scientific position, it is a religious one. No different from my view that nature is resilient.

In short, there is no such thing as an unbiased scientist.

Furthermore, apart from religious considerations, not all scientific problems are created equal. Just because scientists work on a problem doesn’t mean they understand it.

The force of gravity is relatively simple, and we can predict the position of the planets far in advance with great accuracy because gravity is just about the only force that needs to be considered in those calculations.

But the complexity of the climate system, and especially how it varies, is orders of magnitude more difficult to understand. It currently exceeds our ability to usefully predict its future state.

And if scientists ever are able to “create life” in a test tube from non-living chemicals, through all of their hard work and creativity, exactly what will that have proved?

That life could have arisen by chance? Think about it.

Furthermore, life has to do more than just come into being. It has to reproduce. How does that happen by chance? Researchers have computed the probability of it happening to be essentially zero. I’m afraid my faith isn’t strong enough to believe in such silliness.

Discussion

This article was originally written in response to the following criticism of Spencer by Ethan Epstein. He called Spencer a “less-credible climate skeptic than Richard Lindzen and a signatory to a declaration that “Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence—are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting”.

Spencer’s response was subsequently criticized by climate alarmists such as Collin Maesser of Real Skeptic. Maessen criticised Spencer because he “rejects the Theory of Evolution and replaces it with Intelligent Design”. He calls Intelligent Design “pseudoscience” and “ideology”. And he said that Spencer, has “unsupported views on science” and “rejects valid science because of his ideology”. And Maessen disagreed with the statement that “there is no such thing as an unbiased scientist”.

Maessen also rejected claims by the Cornwall Declaration’s statements on global warming that ‘it’s a natural cycle‘, ‘CO₂ limits will harm the economy’, ‘CO₂ limits will hurt the poor’, ‘increasing CO₂ has little to no effect’, and ‘CO₂ is plant food’.

Is nature fragile?

Maessen thinks that nature is fragile, whereas Spencer thinks it is resilient. Maessen’s belief is based on the following.
“Nature is fragile, the evidence we have for that is overwhelming. In our planets history we’ve had at least five mass extinction events, during such an event our planet looses much of it’s biodiversity. And one really stands out: the Permian-Triassic extinction event. In it 70% of all land species, and 96% of all marine species went extinct.

Mass extinction events are the extremes of what can happen with a change in climate. But they do tell us what the worst case scenario could be. We also know that smaller shifts in climate can have severe consequences on ecosystems. Ecosystems we rely on.

The view in Earth science that nature is fragile is correct as this is what the evidence tells us. Life is remarkably resilient in adapting and surviving in new situations, but that doesn’t mean that a current ecosystem (i.e. nature) isn’t sensitive to changes in our climate. Or that changes cannot be catastrophic for current ecosystems.”

So Maessen’s view is based on paleontology (the study of fossil plants and animals), which is a very subjective science. It is also based on an atheistic worldview (Appendix). When based on a Christian worldview, these extinction events were not due to gradual natural climate change, but to a unique act of God – a catastrophic global flood (Appendix).

Then he says that “We also know that smaller shifts in climate can have severe consequences on ecosystems” – but gives no evidence. Apparently this is a faith belief.

Conclusion

The differences of opinion between Dr Roy Spencer and his critics are mainly because Spencer has a Christian worldview and his critics have an atheistic worldview.

Appendix: Differences between a Christian worldview and an Atheistic worldview

Everyone is biased in some way. Your interpretation of past events will depend on your bias. The results of an investigation of past events depend on the assumptions assumed. These assumptions act as boundary conditions in the investigation. Your interpretation of past events will depend on your worldview.

Some features of the two main worldviews are given below.

References

Houghton J, 2009, Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, Lion Books.

Maessen C, 2014, Dr. Roy Spencer, Please Keep Your Religion Out Of Science.

A robust and resilient creation
A robust climate?
Beware of the bias
Christians discovered and invented science

Acknowledgement

This blogpost (except for the discussion, conclusion and appendix) comes from Dr Roy Spencer, a climatologist, author, and former National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientist.  Although it was written about ten years ago, it remains relevant. At this time, Dr. Spencer’s research had been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies: NASA, NOAA, and DOE.

His book “Climate confusion” is about how global warming hysteria leads to bad science, pandering politicians and misguided policies that hurt the poor.

Posted, March 2024