Big bang meets the iron triangle

By Jim Surber

Do you ever wonder what influences people to believe some things and disbelieve others? I’m not referring to gossip, rumors, or even news reports; but specific universal beliefs or findings.

Last month, an AP poll asked people to rate their confidence in several statements about science and medicine, and found broad acceptance of some statements and skepticism or outright disbelief in others.

Of those polled, only 4 to 8 percent doubted that smoking causes cancer, that mental illness is a medical condition, or that we have a unique genetic code inside our cells. Many more (15 percent) have doubts about the safety and effectiveness of childhood vaccines.

Almost 4 in 10 have little confidence or express outright disbelief that the Earth is warming as a result of man-made, heat-trapping gases, or that our planet is 4.5 billion years old and life evolved through a process of natural selection. A slight majority—51 percent—disbelieve the Big Bang theory as the origin of the universe.

The poll results upset many of America’s top scientists, who called the tested statements “settled scientific facts.” One scientist stated the poll results highlighted “the iron triangle of science, religion and politics.” Another stated that with respect to public opinion, “most often values and beliefs trump science when they conflict.”

The results clearly showed science to be the weakest leg of the triangle.

Political values and affiliations were closely tied to the respondents’ views, and their confidence in evolution, the Big Bang, the age of the Earth, and climate change generally split clearly along ideological and party lines. Confidence in the four concepts also declined sharply for those polled who expressed a strong faith in a supreme being. Those who regularly attend religious services or defined themselves as evangelical Christians expressed much greater doubts about scientific concepts they viewed as contradictory to their faith.

 “When you are putting up facts against faith, facts can’t argue against faith,” said Prof. Robert Lefkowitz of Duke University. “It makes sense now that science would have made no headway because faith is untestable.”

Other professors, including a former Priest and an evangelical Christian, asserted that all these concepts are compatible with God, except to Bible literalists. They further stated that, “The story of the cosmos and the Big Bang of creation is not inconsistent with the message of Genesis 1, and there is much profound biblical scholarship to demonstrate this.”

Is it reasonable for people to form battle lines between religion and science? Probably a lot more so than between politics and science, but these days it is difficult to determine which standoff is more contentious. If religion and science are both searching for truth and the answers to life, should one’s perspective be limited? What then is politics searching for, surely not truth or profound answers?

Many humans have a tendency to seek the truth of the world and their existence, but truth is not limited to the natural world. Perhaps science and religion are not as mutually exclusive as many think because they both minister to man’s craving for the truth. Science can only explain the natural world while religion digs deeper to explain the purpose and meaning behind it.

When considering questions like “what,” “where,” “who,” “when,” “how,” and “why,” few could be answered or explained by either science or religion alone.

Those who insist that evolution is anti-religion would arguably be more correct if they said it is anti-their-religion. Pope John Paul II, who is considered to have been a deeply religious man, said that evolution is an established fact. Is evolution then perceived as anti-religion by only the narrowest of fundamentalists? It is also obvious that science cannot be considered atheistic, since it takes no stand on the existence, or lack thereof, of a God or gods.

Whether you believe that life originated from complex chemical reactions occurring on ancient Earth, or was breathed into existence by God, evolution would take over after that moment. Similarly with the Big Bang--- science now does not know how the Universe came into existence at that moment, but a tiny fraction of a second after that event, it does a respectable job of explanation.

One might conclude that, beyond religious beliefs, the respondents’ views were tied to what they can see with their own eyes such as smoking and mental illness; but that does not explain their acceptance of the existence of a genetic code.

A previous survey revealed that one in four Americans didn’t know that the Earth orbits the Sun. While 51 percent knew that antibiotics do not kill viruses, 42 percent believed astrology was either “very scientific or sort of scientific.”

While public opinion will never determine answers to these profound questions, one thing is very certain. If the universe did indeed have a beginning, logic dictates there had to be an agent, separate and apart from the effect, that caused it. If God is truly that creator, perhaps he can only be revealed through that which he has created. Science, not religion or politics, is the tool that can uncover these wonders.