How Darwin invented the Internet

Like Bill Nye, he calls himself the “science guy” and he had this to say on a recent online article.

“Funny how the religious fanatics (by which SG means people who reject evolution) seem to forget that without science they would be writing this all on paper and sending via the pony express. Three phase power, transistors, etc…all results of GREAT science.”

I see comments like this one ALL of the time. Some atheist with a cute pseudonym tries to make fun of creationists by reminding them that SCIENCE/evolution is responsible for all of the video cameras, laptop computers, blogs, and youtube accounts that the creationists are using to spread their silly religious ideas. In a debate against three evolutionists high school teachers, Kent Hovind was once treated to a reading of a partial list of the things science is responsible for, and which evolutionists use while doing “science.” It included microscopes, computers, calculators, electricity… WHEW! I was all, “Slow down professor! Some of us don’t know what all of those BIG words mean!” Hovind was not so intimidated.

The Science Behind Birthday Cake

Your Rent a Friend is listening to: Pete Special’s Mozart Street

His Mood is: tentatively snacktastic

Not long ago we had hiked to the end of the Metaphysical Map and discovered that Knowing and Believing are impossible to separate, like duck-tape and leg hair. Along the way, we examined one of the biggest opponents to this idea, which is the position declaring “Science” to be the only real way to discover truth. And of course I pointed out that, if you choose to believe this position, it will not be based on scientific evidence. Sometimes the reasons which compel me to take a side in a debate are not hard to comprehend. This is one of those times.

Science, Faith, and Papaw

Your rent a Friend is Listening to: Snow Patrol’s A Hundred Million Suns

He is feeling: Much better, thank you

I’ve been explaining the difference between belief and knowledge, and their need for each other. Belief and knowledge are like John Lennon and Paul McCartney. You can separate them if you try hard enough, but it doesn’t result in anything worth listening to. It only serves to show how very much they need each other. Thus, anti-faith “scientism” is the Yoko Ono of the Metaphysical world.

The pop culture fight between belief and knowledge (or between faith and reason, or between religion and science, depending on what TV news program you are watching) is actually about the kind of evidence one chooses to accept. The word “Faith” is used to imply a belief based on the authority of the source, as opposed to evidence which is quantifiable (which means you can count them, like marshmallows) or empirically verifiable (which means it’s learned with the five senses and likely to be the subject of one of the lab projects in your science class work-book).

Brain Fat and the Metaphysical Nickel

Your Rent a Friend is listening to: Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald

His Mood is: A little frazzled, a little swingin’ (Which is better than just frazzled)

In order to wrap up our journey across the Metaphysical Map, it is time for us to take a walk around Belief and Knowledge. Get your metaphysical shoes on, strap on your backpack of previous knowledge, and bring some philosophical bug repellant. When we get there, we’ll make hypothetical S’mores!

Let’s recap where we’ve been: GOD creates reality, which includes rubber ducks. I see the rubber duck, and I see it as yellow, which it really is, so what I see is the truth. I have “The Rubber Duck Experience,” which I think was the name of a Jimi Hendrix album. Or it should have been.

My experience of the ducky is now processed in my mind. My experience is chewed thoroughly by the teeth of reason. Reason asks WHY? and HOW? And if it’s classically trained and well versed in Shakespeare, Wherefore art Thou? And then my logic licks the sides of my experience for those tiny flavors of intangible truth which can be discovered with WHAT IF? And then, when I have made connections and met categorical boundaries and defined things according to context and previous experience, my brain takes the step of Faith and swallows my experience so that it can be digested in my memory and metabolized into the muscle of intellect and the fat of useless knowledge which only gets recalled while playing Trivial Pursuit.
If you’ve heard this metaphor word-picture before, I’ll give you a dollar. Suffice it to say, I could continue the metaphor, but let’s all be glad that I did not. It would have used the phrase “Brain Fart.” But I have more class than that.