Science and sin; or, whatever happened to science?

A popular book of years ago asked 'whatever happened to sin?" Now we need to ask; whatever happened to science? Scientists have become the great usurpers; they no longer seem to think in terms of limits. They don't seem to know the difference between rocks and people. Reductionism has become imperialism and given us falsehood and misunderstanding. (Empiricism has turned into reductionism; method has become worldview.) The idea matter is all there is, isn't an empirical observation, it's a philosophical claim. The idea reductionism can explain all things isn't empirical or scientific, but philosophical.

Quotes and comments;
1. '...McMaster University researchers decided they would find “scientific solutions to sin.” Is their solution theological? Are they suggesting moral teachings, or offering psychological counseling? No; their working assumption is that all sin has molecular underpinnings.
"Most people are familiar with the seven deadly sins – pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed and sloth – but could there be molecular solutions for this daily struggle between good and evil?" By getting students to think outside the box, the aim was to come up with the best molecule and design for a drug, or remedy, that counteracts sin.' [1.]

- This is more academic game playing and silliness. What's their definition of sin? Does it exist? (some say no) How can we know? How can we know what it is? How can we know we're right? Is sin one thing or many things?

Why are materialists accepting the Catholic church's definition of sin? Seems a tad odd doesn't it?

The pretense behind this project is the idea all problems have technical solutions; that since all is matter in motion, all problems have material solutions. (ie. man as a bag of chemicals.)

2. Definition of sin;
1. 'A transgression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate. [modern]
2. Any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. (Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism.)

- If there is no creator god there can be no sin in the biblical sense. So why do materialists need a remedy for sin, when sin doesn't exist? There can be no sin unless there are moral absolutes. It makes no sense for materialists to speak of sin. Their worldview, if it were to be consistent, would not contain sin.

Sin depends on a certain freedom of will. So does man have free will? The materialist to be consistent must say no. Again, to talk of sin makes no sense. (This would be a big problem if materialists were to take philosophy and consistentcy seriously... but of course they don't.)

If man is just an animal (as the judge in the Dover case insisted) then it makes no sense to speak of sin. Do animals sin? Again, the materialist can't be consistent. He must speak out of all orifices at the same time... with each giving a diffeerent message.

The key question here is who defines what is sin? The PC agenda insists that only our secular professors have the right to define sin. They also have the right to have the State enforce their (finite, fallible, fallen) views on the general populace. Is that a scientific idea? Was it discovered with one of the new powerful microscopes? Was it discovered in a Hadron Collider experiment?

What's at stake here is a view of man. My concern is that the PC crowd will define what a 'proper' person is, and then the scientists will be given the job of producing this person. They might use drugs, or they might use genetic engineering. (PC man is coming to a town near you folks. In fact he might already arrived; e.g. 40 percent of people living in montreal are on anti-depressants... or so I remember reading.)

So what happens to science without a sense of sin? Materialism can't offer anything but an arbitrary definition, and science can't offer any definition at all. Scientific enterprise is thus dependent upon non-scientific sources for its moral and ethical directives and ideals. This means that at bottom science is a moral enterprise; that it must have a moral foundation. If man is just a bucket of chemicals in a meaningless universe, it makes no sense to insist he must behave in a certain way. Ethics and morality aren't scientific, and they never can be.

Mike Johnson

Notes;
1. The science of sin; Creation/Evolution Headlines