What is the Scientific Worldview?

PSI Blog 20070627 What is the Scientific Worldview?

 

The popularity of atheistic books, such as Dawkin's "The God Delusion" and Hitchen's "God is Not Great," appear to be a reaction to the religious conflict that still afflicts much of the globe. Reasonable people have difficulty comprehending the absurdities promulgated by belief systems not their own. The contradictions between religions are becoming more obvious as communication becomes increasingly global. Students in Kansas, for instance, can lookup "evolution" and "the scientific worldview" without their relatives finding out. The ideas behind these words challenge beliefs that have instilled and enforced political loyalty for millennia.

 

"The scientific worldview" is bandied about with very little specificity concerning exactly what it is. Until recently, there were only a few books with that title and none focusing on what it really was. Before "The Scientific Worldview," there were two other worldviews that were scientific rather than religious: classical mechanism and systems philosophy. The first overemphasized the outsides of things; the second overemphasizes the insides of things. As modern scientists, we have developed the habit of drawing spheres around the portions of the universe that we want to study  and ignoring whatever is outside them.

 

The Scientific Worldview argues for a combination of these two previous views. This combination amounts to a new universal mechanism of evolution: “univironmental determinism,” the proposition that whatever happens to a portion of the universe is a result of the infinite variety of matter in motion within and without. The upshot is that evolution is occurring to all portions of the universe during every microsecond. What prevented the scientific worldview from being expressed as clearly before, is my beginning assumption of microcosmic and macrocosmic infinity.

 

Infinity never could be completely amenable to the mathematics of Newton or Einstein or to the common belief that the universe had a beginning, just like everything else. The proponents of the Big Bang Theory (BBT) are cock-sure that the universe had an origin. They have forced us to confront the ultimate question: Has the universe exploded out of nothing or has it existed everywhere for all time? The answer to this question will never be known with complete certainty. Nonetheless, the rejection of the BBT and the acceptance of the universe as infinite and eternal remains the last step in overcoming the myopia of our pre-Copernican heritage. It is my fondest wish that "The Scientific Worldview" will play a significant part in that ultimate transition.

My review of Dawkins book, with a bit on why religion evolved and why it continues to be popular:

 

“The God Delusion” Stalking Horse for "The Scientific Worldview"

 

4.0 out of 5 stars

 

This book, written mostly for agnostics, easily achieved bestseller status stemming from Dawkins's great initial success with "The Selfish Gene" and his subsequent anointment as the leading intellectual in Great Britain. It is one of the many popular books on atheism now appearing as stalking horses for the coming intellectual revolution outlined more fully in "The Scientific Worldview". He reiterates, in a generally personable way, all the arguments for and against god. He goes on to calculate that there is a 99% chance that there is no god, but like most systems philosophers, doesn't blink in the face of claims that the universe exploded out of nothing.

 

Unfortunately, Dawkins misses the boat entirely in claiming that religion is a secondary, coincidental, vestigial by-product of evolution. In my opinion, its ubiquity and close association with political organization and warfare makes religion one of the most important products of evolution. Besides having an albeit bogus answer for our existence, its primary purpose is to instill and enforce loyalty. This is why logic is secondary in the minds of theists. Absurdities within a religion are accepted as a matter of course through religious "education" of the most gullible members of society.

 

The religions of other tribes are considered even more absurd. One takes a big chance leaving the safety of the home tribe in an attempt to join some other tribe that may not be accepting of outsiders and their strange beliefs. To belong to no tribe at all verges on suicide. Often, it seems that the more absurd the belief, the stronger the loyalty. Loyalty obviously is necessary for defense against other groups that may forcefully attempt to take scarce resources for themselves. Thus, warfare, religion, and nationalism go hand-in-hand.

 

Globalization at first intensifies the contacts that initially produce economic competition and war, with cooperation and peace eventually being the long-awaited result. Like most of us, Dawkins hopes for and predicts a more enlightened world as well. May the force be with him. For the next step in your education see: The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein

For the latest on no-nonsense physics and cosmology, see:

 

Borchardt, Glenn, 2017, Infinite Universe Theory: Berkeley, California, Progressive Science Institute, 327 p. [http://go.glennborchardt.com/IUTebook].

 

And

 

Borchardt, Glenn, 2020, Religious Roots of Relativity: Berkeley, California, Progressive Science Institute, 160 p. [https://go.glennborchardt.com/RRR-ebk].