The Promissory Notes of Materialist Professors Are Long Past Due

"The elite struggling to maintain its power is embodied now in our educational institutions - our universities, in particular. The academic bureaucrats are the greatest beneficiaries of the mechanistic myth, as this myth affords them a privileged position in society regardless of whether their activities are useful or not. So it is not surprising to see them defend the mechanistic ideology as fiercely as the church was defending earlier the religious one. ...Today, mechanism is important, so we continue to trust and respect the academic bureaucrats even as the mechanistic theories are failing. As we will see in the following chapters, it is quite easy to prove that these theories are fraudulent; and yet we treat their defenders as scientists, not as charlatans. As part of its power, the academic elite controls education. And it has used this monopolistic position to turn the process of education into a process of indoctrination: all we are taught is what can be explained mechanistically. Thus, while promoting knowledge, intelligence, and creativity, the academic elite has redefined these qualities to mean, not the utmost that human minds can attain, but merely the skills needed to follow the mechanistic ideology: knowledge of the latest mechanistic theories, the intelligence to appreciate the mechanistic principles, and the creativity to accomplish a task with mechanistic methods alone. Mechanism is not just practised - it is enforced."

Andrei Sorin, Sofware and Mind, page 16

Let us imagine a young man named Rick who decides late in his seventeenth year to declare independence from his parents.  That's an age when many a young man often becomes convinced that he is a genius, and that his parents are pretty much idiots. Suppose that at this time Rick declares that he no longer needs his parents for anything, and he can take care of things just fine by himself. 

We can imagine that Rick might have to borrow lots of money to get through college, particularly if he wasn't quite the genius he imagined himself to be, and didn't get much of a scholarship.  We can also imagine Rick continuing to borrow lots of money after leaving college.  Looking forward a few years after his graduation, we can imagine Rick in a state of very serious debt.  He has a big car loan to pay off, and very high amounts of money he has due on his credit cards. There are also his big college loans which he is having difficulty paying off. 

Finding himself rather floundering with all of these debts outstanding, we can imagine Rick starting to tell some lies.  To borrow more money to pay off his overdue debts, he might fill out new loan applications, and be untruthful in his statements on such loans. He might brag to his parents about his fancy car, telling them he's doing great, and failing to tell them about how he is long  overdue on his debts.  Rick might also resort to telling implausible tales to soothe those worried about his debts, such as saying, "My financial woes will be fixed once I sell that screenplay I'm writing, which I'll be able to sell for $500,000."

Rick might also engage in a kind of evidence avoidance, in which he avoids looking at things that might tell him that his plan to become all independently successful has not worked out.  For example, he might avoid checking his credit rating on one of those online sites that tell you your current credit rating.  And getting many bills from his creditors, Rick might stick them in his desk drawer unopened, to avoid being reminded of how things have not worked out as he hoped.  

Eventually Rick might enter a kind of state we might "virtual bankruptcy."  We may define this as a state in which you have no reasonable chance of paying off your debts, but you haven't yet officially declared bankruptcy.  Virtual bankruptcy is often characterized by a kind of charade in which someone pretends to be doing very well financially, even though the actual situation is so bleak that a nasty "day of reckoning" is inevitable. 

We may compare the path of materialist scientists to the path of Rick. Late in the nineteenth century, the community of academic scientists pretty much declared their independence from religion and philosophy.  Religion was largely the parent of academic science, because so many of the universities had started out as religious institutions or institutions created for the purpose of promulgating religion. But around 1880 our professors started saying, "We don't need religion; we can do it all ourselves," rather like Rick declaring at 17 that he no longer needed any help from his parents. 

Just as Rick piled up so many promissory notes, our materialist scientists piled up many promissory notes. These included the following:

• They had no understanding of how a brain could generate thought or understanding, but they promised that this would soon be revealed once the brain was more carefully studied.  In 2005 one scientist stated, "I believe (I know—but can't prove!) that scientists will soon understand the physiological basis of the 'cognitive spectrum,' from the bright violet of tightly-focused analytic thought all the way down to the long, slow red of low-focus sleep thought—also known as 'dreaming.' "  
• They had no understanding of how a brain could store memories, but they promised that such a mechanism would be found, and that memories would be found in brains like letters printed on the pages of a book. 
• Being convinced that minds can be understood by material principles, they predicted with great confidence that intelligent computers would be invented by late in the twentieth century. For example, the most famous AI expert of his time (Marvin Minsky) said this in a 1967 book: "Within a generation, I am convinced, few compartments of intellect will be outside  the machine's realm  -- the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will be substantially solved." Similarly, a Herbert A. Simon predicted in 1965 that "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do." 
• They had no understanding of how life could have naturally originated, but they promised this would be revealed once they learned more about chemistry. In 2006 a chemistry professor predicted, "We shall understand the origin of life within the next five years."
• They had a theory of natural biological origins that was radically lacking in the intermediate transitional fossils needed for it to be well-confirmed, but they promised that such fossils would be found. 
• They had no understanding of how a tiny speck-sized human egg cell is able to progress to become a full-sized human being, but they promised that this would be revealed before long, after more progress was made in biology. 
• They had no understanding of the universe's beginning, but they promised that some natural theory of the universe's past would appear, probably some theory of a universe that had existed forever. 
• They predicted that all the neuroscience research would allow us to increase human intelligence and improve human memory. For example, in 2007 one neuroscientist said, "I am optimistic that human intelligence can be increased, and can be increased dramatically in the near future." 
• They predicted many times starting about 1960 that on the grounds that the origin of life was easy or inevitable, and that Darwinian evolution was inexorable once life began, it followed that searches for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations would soon be successful.  

It is now very long after such promises were made. But none of these promises has come true.  Specifically:

• Despite well over a century of neuroscience study with increasingly powerful scientific instruments, we still have no idea of how a brain could generate thought or understanding.
• Despite well over a century of neuroscience study with increasingly powerful scientific instruments, there is still no understanding of how memories could be stored in brains, nor any physical evidence that they are stored in brains.  
• Despite 70 years of origin-of-life experiments, scientists have made no real progress in understanding how life could naturally originate.
• The great wealth of intermediate transitional fossils promised has not been found, and there is still no understanding of how there could have occurred events such as the Cambrian Explosion, when almost all of the animal phyla appeared in a relatively short time.  
• There is still no understanding of how a tiny speck-sized human egg cell is able to progress to become a full-sized human being, and the failure to find any sign of anatomy-building instructions in DNA has made this mystery all the more puzzling. 
• Scientists have not established any theory of an eternal universe, and the theory they have of the universe's origin (the Big Bang theory, a theory of a sudden beginning to everything 13 billion years ago) offers no explanation for how such a beginning occurred.
• Despite lavish funding for very many years, all attempts to detect radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations have failed. 
• Despite all the billions spent on neuroscience research, no one has been able to produce any device or medical technique for increasing human intelligence or expanding human memory.  

Just as Rick's promissory notes became long overdue, the promissory notes of our materialist scientists are long overdue. And just as Rick began to lie to try to smooth over the crisis caused by his overdue debts, materialist scientists long ago started to lie to smooth over the crisis caused by the failure of their promises to materialize. 

Such lies come in many forms:

• Having failed to find any blueprint for anatomy in human cells, or anything like a program or recipe for constructing a human body, many scientists told the big lie that the DNA molecule was such a thing (DNA actually contains only very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up a protein). 
• Having failed to produce life through any artificial method, and having failed to even produce any of the building blocks of life (protein molecules) or even any of the building blocks of the building blocks of life (amino acids) through any experiment realistically simulating the early Earth, scientists repeatedly bragged about experiments merely producing the building blocks of the building blocks of life in experiments that did not realistically simulate the early Earth, trying to portray such defective experiments as some progress on origin-of-life research. 
• Having failed to actually produce any such thing as artificial intelligence, the shortfall has been covered up by pitchmen  simply using all over the place the words "artificial intelligence" or the equivalent acronym AI for what is merely computer programming that does not involve any such thing as understanding inside a computer. 
• Groundless speculations about the origin of the universe were passed off as some progress in explaining how such a thing could have occurred. 
• Poorly replicated and extremely dubious mouse experiments done with all kinds of procedural defects were passed off as progress in understanding a neural basis for memory. 
• A never-plausible Darwinian theory of biological origins that was unproven was passed off as a great scientific success (despite its utter failure to credibly explain things Darwin knew nothing about such as a multitude of different types of fine-tuned protein molecules and the magnificent organization and purposeful-seeming biochemistry of cells), based on shoddy  grounds such as the number of scientists who supposedly accept it or the academia speech custom of claiming that the theory was a triumph.

Just as Rick might have resorted to implausible tales to soothe those worried about his debts, our professors have resorted to ever-more-implausible tales to help soothe those worried about their explanatory failures.  Such tales include a whole bunch of wild stories such as tall tales about monkeys rafting across the Atlantic Ocean millions of years ago (designed to help explain  fossils found in embarrassing locations), the tale that there is some infinity of other universes (lamely designed to try to help explain away evidence that our universe is fine-tuned for life), and the tale that thousands of different types of protein molecules each accidentally appeared by chance  (each such event being as unlikely as a typing monkey producing a small working computer program).   

Faced with mounting signs that things have not worked out as he hoped, Rick engaged in evidence avoidance such as failing to check his credit score, and sticking creditor bills in his desk drawer, unopened.  Faced with mounting signs that reality does not work as they thought, materialist scientists often engage in similar evidence avoidance. They fail to seriously study the evidence for paranormal phenomena, evidence that shows their assumptions about reality are not correct.  They also fail to study case histories and neuroscience findings that defy their assumptions about how reality works, such as cases of people who thought and remembered well after half of their brain was removed, and findings showing brains are too slow, noisy and unstable to account for human mental phenomena. 

So where does scientific academia now find itself? We may call its current state a state of virtual bankruptcy.  Just as a person in virtual bankruptcy has no hope of being able to fulfill his financial promises, and needs to undergo a drastic reordering of his affairs,  scientific academia has no realistic hopes of fulfilling its promises, and needs to undergo a drastic reordering of its affairs.  If Rick were to move from virtual bankruptcy to actual bankruptcy, he would need to do the equivalent of humbly saying something like, "I screwed up really bad, and now I need to make great changes to set my affairs in order." If the swollen heads in scientific academia were to do something equivalent, they would say, "We science professors screwed up really bad, and need to do a drastic reordering of our affairs and our publicly stated positions, to restore public confidence in our statements."