Nonsense from Prof. Kohl

I found this today, a very silly article by a Professor at South Dakota State University spouting nonsense about atheism and science. I really have a problem with bullshit, especially when it comes from people who should know better, and I think a PhD should know better. Oh well, what can you do?


It is indeed disappointing to see those with "PhD" after their names indicating that they have in fact undergone a rigorous degree of study and work in the field of science seemingly have no understanding of the underpinnings of science or the intent of scientific inquiry. Professor Kohl would have us believe that science currently is an atheist tool to deny a creator god and that science actually owes its existence to Christianity.

The notion that scientific inquiry has grown from a religion which promotes belief not just in lieu of evidence, but even in spite of evidence to the contrary, is patently absurd. Prof Kohl cites Bacon, yet when did he publish his Novum Organum? 1620. The religion responsible for scientific inquiry took some 1300 years after the solidification of it's beliefs at Nicea in 323 to give us this gift? Please. It's more like it took 1300 years to shrug off the suppression of scientific inquiry by Christianity before it could even be possible for Bacon to publish his ideas, and sadly, he wasn't even completely free of the shackles.

As George Henry Lewes pointed out in Birth of Modern Scientific Methods, Bacon and Descartes, Bacon didn't fully embrace observation and experimentation over faith:

That he had really but vague and imperfect conceptions of scientific method is decisively shown by his contemptuous rejection of Copernicus, Galileo, and Gilbert, and by his own plan of investigation into heat.  One sentence alone would suffice to show this, namely, his sneer at Copernicus as "a man who thinks nothing of introducing fictions of any kind into nature, provided his calculations turn out well." Bacon did not understand, what Copernicus profoundly saw, that the only value of an hypothesis was its reconciliation of calculations with observations.

Over two centuries later, Darwin still faced criticism along the lines of Bacon's, criticism largely inspired by refusal to accept what's observed over what one wished to be true, and sadly we still face this still in the 21st century. Religious assertions of faith over scientific inquiry has a long history of impeding the development of mankind. Bacon wasn't completely immune, Galileo certainly suffered, and how many discoveries have we had to rediscover after Christians slew Hypatia and destroyed the library of Alexandria?

Logic and scientific inquiry have a long and storied history of peaks and valleys, from the Ancient Greeks through the Indus Valley, through the Muslim world in such works as Alhazen's Book of Optics, through Bacon, Descartes, and Darwin we should be inspired by the fact that no matter what stands in their way, they cannot be suppressed. The inadequacies of faith, the distaste of ignorance and the facts of observation are just too much to allow them to be suppressed forever.

Prof Kohl spoke of the "philosophical assumptions of science", as if materialism is simply a whimsical choice which having been made, shackles one to it, preventing any other possibilities, including allowing "a Divine Foot in the door." It is, in fact, the assumption of the supernatural, of creator gods and other unsubstantiated beliefs which shackle the mind and restrain inquiry. Science does not set out to deny a creator god. On the contrary, it would welcome him or anything else which it has reason to accept. It would be even more irresponsible to accept claims of creator gods and other elements of the supernatural which have no evidence for them than Prof. Kohl's assertions that science came about as a result of Christianity when there's a multitude of evidence to the contrary.


I thought I'd also include this little gem I saw recently...