In this episode, Trent addresses how Christians should engage extreme views related to science and how to sensibly separate good and bad science.

Transcription:

Trent:

Do you remember when we were told to trust the science during the COVID-19 pandemic? I do. And now I find that many Christians are skeptical, if not downright hostile to the findings of modern science, given how proponents of science acted during the pandemic in dishonest ways. So in today’s episode, I want to talk about how Christians should approach modern science and that we should avoid two extreme positions on the issue. So the first extreme is believing anything A scientist says you should believe. Now this is embodied in Anthony Fauci who served as the chief medical advisor to the president during the pandemic, Fauci had the audacity to even consider himself the science, but

CLIP:

They’re really criticizing science because I represent science

Trent:

Fauci and his partners of the CDC unleashed many draconian restrictions during the pandemic that we now know caused more harm than good. It’s why some writers are now asking for a COD amnesty. They want us to say, oh no biggie to the businesses, school, children’s futures, and even lives that these unnecessary policies ruined during the pandemic. I practiced civil disobedience because I knew many of these so-called scientifically backed recommendations were stupid. For example, I took my children to closed public parks because kids were not at serious risk from covid and playing outdoors is one of the safest things that you could do. Someone even called the police on my family while we were at a park and I asked the officers who responded why I wasn’t allowed to take my children to the park. But thousands of people were at that time allowed to be in downtown San Diego rioting after the death of George Floyd. The police officers said they didn’t have a good answer and they told me to have a nice day. Fauci even admits that they just made up the six foot social distancing rule without any scientific support at all. He says the rule just sort of appeared.

CLIP:

When I made my explanation of what it was, I was saying that there was no trial that looked at 10 versus six versus three versus not even worrying about it at

Trent:

All. And it’s not just the pandemic. In 2015, a Washington Post writer paraded around a single study which downplayed the importance of time that mothers spend with their children. This led to articles with stupid titles like it doesn’t matter how much time parents spend with their kids, but this study was totally flawed. Justin Wolfers in the New York Times noted that this non finding largely reflects the failure of the authors to accurately measure parental input. In particular, the study does not measure how much time parents typically spend with their children. Instead, it measures how much time each parent spends with children on only two particular days, one a weekday and the other a weekend day. So the study was completely flawed. It did not prove what it said that it proved. I remember reading one author who said that white collar liberals were happy to promote such a flawed study because it took away some of the guilt that they had over having jobs that often took away from quality time with their own children.

And of course, this single study contradicts the massive amount of studies that we do have, which say things like the more time parents spent with their children, the higher their children’s wellbeing will be. So that’s one extreme believing anything a single scientist like Fauci or a single study says, and it’s easy to have outrage at bad science that leads you to the other extreme which rejects science altogether. But this is like saying a few cases of bad religion means you’re going to quit religion entirely. And we can see this mistake in extreme in a July Candace Owens podcast episode where she said that she was leaving the pagan faith of science. Owens later clarified her view when she appeared on Don Lemon’s podcast.

CLIP:

This is a clip from one of your shows. It was just last week as we continued this conversation. It’s about flat earth and round earth and conspiracies. Let’s play

CLIP:

This. If there’s a bunch of people that believe something, I now want to know what it is that they believe. And of course he pushed me on this and he was talking about the earth curvature and science and I said to him, listen, I’m not a flat earth. I’m not a round earth. Actually what I am is I am somebody who has left the cult of science. I have left the megachurch of science because what I have now realized is that science, what it is actually think about it is a pagan faith.

CLIP:

Okay, Candace, do you actually believe this stuff or are you saying it because you want to generate outrage and you want more attention and you want people to sort of click on your show? Do you actually believe that? I mean, science is science. What do you mean the cult of science? What do you believe? You’re not a flat earth or a round earth sometimes I think you’re a very bright and very intelligent woman, and I said, is she just playing in our faces? What’s that all about?

CLIP:

Well, first let me ask you, did you watch the full episode or did your producers pull a clip out of context?

CLIP:

No, I did not watch the full episode. But I’m asking,

CLIP:

Lemme put it into context, context, context. I’m happy to put it into context because that’s the beauty of the media. It’s just always a clip and then people go, oh, what’s going on here? So that was an episode we were talking about birth control. I was sharing, I’m very passionately against the birth control because of all the women who in my life are suffering side effects. We can’t get pregnant. And I realizing that inserting copper IUDs into your body over time can have an impact. And women were sharing their stories online about how the doctor told ’em it was safe and effective and it obviously wasn’t safe and effective long-term because people just simply accept what the experts tell them without thinking, well, the experts say six piece social distancing works. And so everyone starts walking around with six feet social distance between them. So fauci comes around like he did recently and say, yeah, we kind of made that up.

Trent:

So once again, I agree with Candace that a lot of the so-called Science during the pandemic was wrong, but the way we know it was wrong is through science. For example, we can use scientific studies to see that countries which did not implement lockdowns like Sweden fared just as well or even better than countries that did use Lockdowns. Owens also gave the example of friends who were told that IUDs were safe, intrauterine devices, contraceptives, but they’re now permanently infertile. But something can be safe, generally safe and still have risks. Childbirth in the United States is safe, but some women still die while giving birth in the United States. How many women who use IUDs become permanently infertile? Well, it’s not 0%, but it’s also not a hundred percent. Only science can tell us what that percentage actually is because we need data to reach a conclusion on the matter or maybe we don’t need data. Here’s Owens sharing a clip from Andrew Tate and what he’s has to say about data.

CLIP:

I think it was maybe just me and the Tate brothers. He’s the second most Googled man in the entire world and a lot of people feel that they don’t understand why he has the platform that he has, but I found this clip to be extremely interesting. Take a listen.

CLIP:

One of my habits now is ignoring all data.

Trent:

If you’re listening to this on podcast, please know I’m trying hard to not bust out laughing because Andrew Tate is basically in his underwear in front of a sports car desperately trying to prove his own insecure masculinity. But go on Andrew.

CLIP:

If you even look at data nowadays, you’re a dumb ass. You should just know street smart people don’t need data. We’ve just been around. I’ve just been around. I just know things because I’ve just been around.

CLIP:

Honestly, that is so relatable to me. I can’t even explain it.

Trent:

Sure. Let’s just get our advice on understanding the world from a guy who the closest he’s come to a PhD is the pimping hose degree he offered as part of his hustler’s online university course. The

CLIP:

Only art that matters in this world is pimping, and I’ve got a PhD, explain PhD, if you don’t mind, a pimping hose degree, a doctorate.

Trent:

The problem is that while there are some things we can know with common sense in many other cases we need data from specialists, common sense can be misleading. In fact, in some cases science helps Christians when non-religious people prefer what they think is common sense. Common sense might tell them that the universe is just a huge empty space that’s always been here. But science points towards the beginning of the universe coming out of an expansion, the Big Bang, which was pioneered by the Belgian physicist, Monsignor George LaMere. It was later derisively called the Big Bang Theory by critics who thought it was a case of religion intruding into science. Owens also said this,

CLIP:

And this is sort of what happened when on Monday I did this whole long episode about why I am now rejecting the cult of science. So many things that they’ve lied to us about vaccines, birth control, people that are being injured and we just accept everything the experts say and we’re sacrificing our own bodies. It just feels strange. It feels wrong when you look further in the history. They just keep lying and getting away with it. What I said was that science has become a pagan faith. Yes, that’s what I actually believe. And I said if I don’t get it from the Bible and I can’t observe it with my own eyes, I don’t stand it as the truth.

Trent:

So is Candace Owens going to stop believing in Adams or viruses because she can’t see them with her eyes and they’re not found in the Bible? Maybe she will. I don’t know. I hope she doesn’t. But many people appeal to common sense or their own eyes and will say things like A two celled embryo is not a human being. And what do pro-lifers say? Well, we say no, science reveals what your human eyes may not see. Things like DNA, which you can’t see with your own eyes that proves this human embryo is a complete human being. And what’s interesting is that even when scientists are totally biased on a question like the issue of abortion, the truth still comes out in their research. In 2018, Steve Jacobs surveyed over 5,000 biologists on the question of when life begins. He said, as the usable responses began to come in, I found that 5,337 biologists or 96% of the survey affirmed that a human’s life begins at fertilization.

Jacobs also said that 85% of the biologists were pro-choice, 63% were non-religious and 92% of them identified as Democrats. Yet the data could not be contradicted that the life of a human being begins at conception. Now it’s true that science has been used to justify evils like lobotomies, eugenics and so-called sex change surgeries, but science can also catch up and be the tool that exposes these lies, which we’re seeing in Europe where the data has moved lawmakers to ban. So-called sex change surgeries for children. Now that science has shown how harmful they are. So we have the one extreme that treats all of science as being infallible even when it’s just a single study or a single scientist’s opinion, and we have the other extreme that treats all of science as being an unreliable pagan faith. Both views are wrong because it treats scientific truths as if they all have the same level of authority.

It treats keeps six feet of social distancing and the earth is round as all having the same authority coming from the pagan faith of science. But that’s wrong. For example, the earth is not technically a sphere. It’s actually an ellipsoid or a spheroid. The earth looks like a basketball someone sat on and causes the middle the equator to bulge. This LED science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, to say the following, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger. Then both of them put together. Likewise, if you think science is just believing some pagan faith and so thinking that six feet of social distancing is as sketchy to believe as the earth is round, then you are wronger than wrong.

Not all science is equal. So our attitude towards scientific claims cannot be either extreme acceptance or extreme rejection. So those are the extremes to avoid. But what’s the sensible middle ground? Well, there’s no clear answer to know which science you can trust and which you can’t because there are so many different circumstances where scientific findings come up. So in this episode, I just want to offer a few tips that I hope will guide Christians and really anyone listening to this episode towards fruitfully navigating science. Number one, reject scientism. Scientism is the view that all truth or even the most important truths only come from science. The physicist Stephen Hawking and letter M LA know wrote in their book The Grand Design. What is the Nature of Reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

Philosophy is not kept up with modern developments in science, especially physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. The arrogance in this quote is astounding because philosophy is what distinguishes science from pseudoscience. Science can’t even tell us what science is. Philosophy also grounds assumptions like the uniformity of the laws of nature or the reliability of our senses that make science even possible. This also comes up a lot in ethics, such as in the atheist Sam Harris’s book, the Moral Landscape which tries to ground morality completely in science, the book was widely panned even by atheists because science only tells us what is not what ought to be. When people try to use science to say certain behaviors are normal, your alarm bells should definitely be ringing. Science can only say what is statistically normal or what is commonplace.

Science can also tell us what is normal for the biological function of an organ, for example. But science cannot tell us which common behaviors are morally good or morally evil. Which ones make you a morally good person or a morally bad person? Science may be able to explain why people commit evil acts such as mental illnesses that lessen their moral culpability, but science cannot tell us which moral acts are evil and which are not. So if science tells you an intrinsically wrong act is normal or right, then it’s the science that’s wrong in that case. Number two, distinguish scientific facts from political applications. Just as science cannot answer philosophical questions or ethical questions, science can’t answer political questions during the Covid pandemic. Some people said that science says we need lockdowns and vaccine mandates, but science cannot answer the question of what public policies are best for society because that’s not a scientific question.

For example, science says that you’re far less likely to die in automobile collisions under 25 miles per hour, but that doesn’t mean science says we need a universal 25 mile per hour speed limit that would reduce the harm of traffic deaths, but it would cause many more harms. It would cause greater harms in disrupting traffic and commerce shipping. So we don’t do that. All public policies involve trade-offs and science cannot tell us which trade-offs are worth it because that’s a value question, an ought question. It’s not a science question, it’s not a question of what is. It’s a question of what ought to be. Now, just because some political proposals during the pandemic were dumb, that doesn’t mean that science is dumb. As we saw some of these proposals, like the six foot rule had no scientific backing whatsoever. So don’t blame science, blame bureaucrats and in other cases mandates for things like vaccines.

They might’ve been imprudent or wrong, but they don’t tell us whether the vaccines are effective or not. What’s important to remember is that science could be right about something, but the implementation of that scientific truth could be wrong or it even could be evil. Every scientific innovation needs to be examined on a case by case basis and thank God he gave us rational minds to create so much lifesaving medicine. The Book of SERAC puts it Well honor the physician with the honor, do him according to your need of him. For the Lord created him. The Lord created medicines from the earth and a sensible man will not despise them. Number three, watch out for black and white thinking. Some people think there are only two sides to an issue. So for COVID-19, you were either on the side that wore three masks and got 18 booster shots or you were on the side that thought Cvid 19 was just the flu and there was no grave danger to anyone.

A sensible middle ground position might be that early strains of COVID-19 were more dangerous than the flu for some people like the elderly. So for some of these people, the risk of the disease outweigh the risks of getting the vaccine and this justified them voluntarily getting vaccinated even if it didn’t justify mandating the vaccines for everyone. I’m not saying you have to hold to that view, I’m just saying that you should watch out for debates over science that devolve into two extreme positions that leave out more sensible middle ground positions or consider climate change. For some people you either think climate change is a gigantic hoax or you think that if we don’t all buy electric cars next week, the world’s going to end in 12 years.

CLIP:

The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change. And your biggest issue is your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it?

Trent:

But in my dialogue with Tony Ant, on the subject of Catholics and climate change, I outlined a middle ground position. I said There is good evidence that the climate is changing, humans are causing this and it will have positive and negative impacts. However, climate change is an apocalyptic and many political proposals to combat climate change are wrongheaded and actually harm human flourishing. You can check out our dialogue in the link below and stay tuned for a future episode that I’m releasing on what’s wrong with so-called Green Energy and why Catholics don’t have to support it. Once again, I’m not saying you have to hold my view on climate change, I’m just saying that it’s a middle ground position which often gets overlooked, which brings me to point number four. With great freedom comes great responsibility. We shouldn’t follow scientific claims that contradict what the church teaches, which happens most often when science tries to do ethics, but many scientific claims have nothing to do with faith and morals, so Catholics are free to accept or reject them and we should respect people’s freedom.

For example, I’m personally convinced that life on earth evolved over the course of billions of years. However, God made our first parents and gave them immortal souls. The church allows you to believe this, but the church also allows you to reject evolution and believe the earth is only thousands of years old. So we should respect the freedom. Catholics have to reject scientific consensus. They don’t have to follow science like they have to follow church teaching. On the other hand, if you choose to publicly go against the consensus and especially if you ridicule people who follow it, then you should be prepared to explain why you’ve done that because the scientific consensus is usually correct. That doesn’t mean it’s always correct, but science works and so we should at least give it the benefit of the doubt. If you’re going to go against the consensus, especially when it involves issues where people’s lives and health are at stake, then at a bare minimum you should examine a good defense of that consensus position and be able to say what you find lacking in it.

So for evolution, you might read Don P’s book Evolution, what the Fossils Say and Why it Matters and say Why you’re not convinced Or for vaccines. You might read Paul OITs book Deadly Choices. When I ask atheists what’s the best book defending God’s existence and what’s wrong with it, many of them can’t give me an answer. They haven’t bothered to engage the best defense of the historical consensus among humanity on God’s existence that atheism is false, and that makes me question if they’re really open-minded truth seekers, but that means Christians should be willing to model that same open-mindedness at least on matters related to science, where there isn’t a divinely revealed answer. And so we have to follow evidence apart from magisterial guidance. Number five, avoid unnecessary conflicts between science and faith. In 1870, the first Vatican Council said the following, even though faith is above reason, there can never be any real disagreement between faith and reason since it is the same God who reveals the mysteries and infuses faith and who has endowed the human mind with the light of reason God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be an opposition to truth.

The appearance of this kind of species contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either the dogmas of the faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church or unsound views are mistaken, the conclusions of reason. So notice that one source of the alleged conflict is holding a mistaken view about what the church teaches and saying that mistaken view contradicts science not what the church actually teaches. In the Summa theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas said something similar when he said that a superficial reading of the book of Genesis could lead one to think there was an infinite body of water above the heavens, the firmament, and he says this is false. There is no such infinite body of water above us. And so Genesis could not possibly be saying that it’s a misinterpretation of Genesis to say that it’s saying that and what Aquinas said about that matter can also be applied to other mistaken interpretations of scripture if it could be shown to be false by solid reasons, it cannot be held to be the sense of holy scripture.

It should rather be considered that Moses was speaking to ignorant people and that out of condescension to their weakness, he put before them only. Such things as our apparent to sense. One modern case of this would be applied to geo centrism. There are Catholics even today who believe that the plain sense of scripture and older magisterial teaching mean that we must infallibly believe geo centrism is true or that the earth does not move and that ... Read more on Catholic.com