A Biologist Calls "Orthodox Science" a "Religion" and "Belief System"

A recent Substack post by cell/molecular biologist Mike Klymkowsky is entitled "Orthodox Science as a (mostly good) religion." He states this:

"As it turns out, I found myself moving to another religion - science, particularly the scientific tradition that emerged in Europe, a tradition open to, and built upon the contributions of many peoples around the globe. The orthodox scientific gospel has been widely embraced and has served as the driver of technological advancement, including dramatic effects on many aspects of human well-being. 'Orthodox Science' embraces a belief system based on the assumption that we can understand the universe exclusively in naturalistic terms, there is no magic, no supernatural forces involved."

What Klymkowsky has called "Orthodox Science" is better described as Darwinist materialism.  It is a creed that is very popular among scientists (particularly biologists), but the creed is not actually science in the sense of facts established by observation.  The creed of Darwinist materialism can be stated like this:

1. "Earthly biology can be explained entirely by naturalistic explanations such as natural selection and random mutations."
2. "The human mind can be explained entirely by brain activity."
3. "Charles Darwin provided some brilliant insight that eliminated the need to postulate any design or purpose in nature."
4. "Life appeared on our planet purely because of lucky random combinations of chemicals."
5. "Everything is pretty-well explained by science professors who assume there is just matter and energy; so there's no need to believe in anything like souls, spirits, or the paranormal."

Although constantly marketed and branded simply as “science,” Darwinist materialism seems to involve a very large element of faith. In particular, it has never been proven that any one complex visible organism or any of its organs or appendages or cell types has ever appeared mainly because of so-called natural selection, or natural selection and random mutations. We can imagine no mathematically credible scenario under which so-called natural selection could produce the fine-tuned protein molecules upon which life depends. An average human protein molecule has a length of about 470 amino acids, and getting an arrangement of such amino acids by chance to produce the functionality of the protein molecule requires an arrangement with a chance likelihood of less than 1 in 10 to the two-hundredth power (even if you assume only half of the amino acid sequence has to match the actual sequence of amino acids in the protein). It would seem that such "crippled by small changes" molecules cannot appear through any gradually rewarded "each step yields a benefit" kind of process, because half-versions or quarter-versions of such molecules are useless. Yet Darwinist materialism wishes us to accept natural selection as an explanation for most or almost all biology. Since there seems to be a very large article of faith here, it would seem that we should at least be calling Darwinist materialism a kind of faith-based ideology.

But would it be correct to go even farther, and brand Darwinist materialism as a kind of religion? A supporter of such a belief system would immediately dismiss such an idea as an absurdity. He would vigorously argue: religion is some belief in God, and Darwinist materialism does not entail that.

But such a definition of “religion” is too narrow. Let's consider Eastern religions. These include Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. There are certainly major forms of each of these religions that do not require any belief in a deity. One can be either an atheist or a theist, and still follow either Taoism, Confucianism, or Buddhism. In a religion such as Buddhism, there are some sects that pray to some entity that might be called a deity or the equivalent of a deity, but there are other sects that do not do that. Consider also a modern American religion such as Scientology. Again we have a religion which does not have any belief in a deity at the core of its teachings. As a Scientologist, you can be either an atheist or a theist.

It seems, therefore, that defining religion as some belief in a deity or some system of worship is too narrow a definition of the word “religion.” Scholars have offered many conflicting definitions of “religion,” some of which are too narrow to cover some of the known religions such as Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. We need a definition that seems to cover almost all cases of religious belief.  One such definition was given by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. He defined a religion as " a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." 

Here is another rather similar definition: we can define a religion as  a set of beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality and life, or a recommended way of living, typically stemming from the teachings of an authority, along with norms, ethics, rituals, roles or social organizations that may arise from such beliefs. This definition covers Christianity, Islam, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Scientology, religions which stem from authority figures such as Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, the writers of the Bible, Lao-Tzu, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, and L. Ron Hubbard. Interestingly, using the same definition of religion, it seems we should also classify Darwinist materialism as a religion. It is a fundamental way of looking at the nature of life, stemming from the teachings of an authority figure (Charles Darwin).

The idea that Darwinist materialism may be a religion should not seem unreasonable when we consider the activities of two young men, Rod and Bill. Rod decides to become a minister in a church. He is indoctrinated for years in a regimented minister-schooling environment in which complete allegiance to the belief system of his teachers is demanded. He then spends lots of time standing before assemblies of other people (parishioners), preaching the teachings of his belief system. Using lots of specialized jargon, Rod may also spend a lot of time in scholarly writing to advance the beliefs of his church, contributing to things such as religion journals and theological books. If a heretic arises in his church to dispute the accepted teachings, Rod may chasten such a person by criticizing his belief deviance.

Bill, however, decides to become a professor of evolutionary biology. He is indoctrinated for years in a regimented professor-schooling environment in which complete allegiance to the belief system of his teachers is demanded. He then spends lots of time standing before assemblies of other people (university students), preaching the teachings of his belief system. Using lots of specialized jargon, Bill may also spend a lot of time in scholarly writing to advance the beliefs of his scholastic tribe, contributing to things such as science journals and science books. If a heretic arises to dispute the accepted teachings, such as someone suggesting there may be purposeful design in living things, Bill may chasten such a person by criticizing his belief deviance.  Just as Rod has his miracle stories to tell, Bill has quite a few stories to tell that we might call "miracle stories," stories involving miracles of chance.

Given all these similarities, it seems both Bill and Rod are kind of spear-carriers for a particular belief tribe, products of a sociological structure that encourages regimentation of belief and strongly sanctions deviations from its orthodoxy of belief norms. In this light, the idea that Darwinist materialism may actually be a religion does not seem too far-fetched. Darwinist materialism has a sociological and authoritarian structure strongly resembling the sociological and authoritarian structure of a religion, with evolutionary biology professors and neuroscientists acting like some new priesthood, and members of the National Academy of Sciences or Nobel laureates having a higher authority (just as bishops or cardinals have a higher authority than priests).  The many similarities between scientific academia and the Roman Catholic church are discussed in my post "Why Scientific Academia Is Like an Organized Religion."

In the visual below, we see an authority figure. Is it a minister, a priest, or a scientist?  It's hard to guess, because they act in a such a similar way. 

It is true that the adherents of Darwinist materialism constantly try to brand their belief system as "science," and deny that such a system is a religion.  A religion which positions itself as "science" can be called a stealth religion or a surreptitious religion. 

In his article Mike Klymkowsky tries to "have it both ways." Not candid enough to simply confess that what people such as himself are preaching is a religion and not science,   Klymkowsky tries to get you to believe that it is both science and a religion.  In his article Klymkowsky makes some generalizations about contemporary science that are not correct.  For example, he states this:  "A key component of Scientific Orthodoxy is that its adherents are constrained to talk about observable objects and effects, and to produce models that generate unambiguous and numerically defined and verifiable predictions."  

No, there is no such tendency or constraint within mainstream scientific academia.  Physicists and cosmologists spend endless hours writing about dark matter, dark energy and primordial cosmic inflation, none of which have ever been observed.  Biologists spend endless hours writing about things such as Darwinian macroevolution and a neural storage of memories, which have not been observed. Small-scale changes in gene pools called microevolution have been observed, but no one has observed Darwinian macroevolution.  And no one has ever found a memory stored in a brain by microscopically examining brain tissue.  Theories such as dark matter, dark energy, Darwinism and the theory that brains make minds do not "generate unambiguous and numerically defined and verifiable predictions."   What Klymkowsky calls "Orthodox Science" is a mixture of well-established theories such as the kinetic theory of gases and the theory of gravitation (which do yield precise numerical predictions that match reality) and also quite a few other theories and beliefs that do not yield precise numerical predictions that have been verified, and have not been well-established by observations.  

Klymkowsky makes clear that his religion (which he calls "Orthodox Science") includes no moral component. He states this:

"The principles of Orthodox Science are also abandoned when its disciples start holding forth on moral or ethical issues. Ethics and morals are not part of the Orthodox Science system."

Darwinist materialism is a moral disaster. To properly understand how great a moral disaster it has been,  read my post "The Poisonous Effects of the 'Struggle for Life' Ideology." Darwinism helped pave the way for bloodshed, cruelty and oppression in a variety of ways:

(1) Creating the myth that human origins had been scientifically explained, Darwinism helped paved the way for totalitarian atheism, which in Russia, China and Cambodia proved to be history's most enormous engine of mass murder and oppression, cropping up many tens of millions of dead bodies at the hands of people like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, along with millions of others who were put in the living hell of places such as the Soviet gulag prison camps. 

(2) Creating the very absurd myth that humans did not fundamentally differ from animals, a ludicrous claim taught by Darwin himself, Darwinism paved the way for people to slaughter their fellow men while thinking they were doing something not much worse than killing animals. 

(3) Centered around phrases such as "struggle for existence," "the preservation of favored races," and "survival of the fittest," Darwinism provided an ideological underpinning for systems such as Hitlerism, Leninism and Maoism that were based on the cruelest exploitation and oppression of the weak by the strong. 

(4) Darwinist materialism has often been taught by free-will denialists teaching the poisonous nonsense of determinism,  a doctrine that offered wrongdoers the idea that they were not to blame for their crimes. 

All of this was so unnecessary, because a proper analysis of biology would have been centered upon things such as cooperation and harmony and organization and component teamwork and mutual interdependence, which are all necessary in mountainous amounts for organisms and ecosystems to exist. A careful study of such things will tend to lead you in the opposite direction of some emphasis on a brutal "struggle for existence," and also lead you away from all boasts of understanding how we got such marvels. But rather than studying the gigantic levels of cooperation and harmony and coordination and organization and component teamwork and mutual interdependence within nature, which were things defying his boasts, Darwin shunned a study of such key facets of nature, focusing on only things that fitted in with his explanatory boasts.  

If you do something that biology specialists such as  Klymkowsky almost always fail to do, which is to make a long and very diligent study of brain physical shortfalls, extraordinary medical case histories, human minds, human mental capabilities,  and human mental experiences ( in all their strange variety), you will find such a study tends to lead you towards the belief that mentally humans are a reality utterly beyond the explanations of biologists.  Reading the posts of this blog (and reading the long series of posts here while continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right) are a good way to get started on such a study. The person making such a study (and studies of additional topics such as cosmic fine-tuning) will tend to end up thinking that every human is a soul to be respected, a soul with some transcendent source.  The person failing to make such a study may be left trapped in the conformist enclaves  of Klymkowsky's morality-absent religion, where he may keep telling himself silly morally destructive claims such as that humans are "animals" as Klymkowsky claims, or that humans are mere aggregations of atoms.  We should not be surprised to learn about massive levels of dishonesty all over the place within the religion that Klymkowsky suggests has no place for morality.  You should not expect rigorous honesty from those saying that ethics and morality are not part of their religion. 

Klymkowsky tells us that "Orthodox Science holds, rather dogmatically, to a simple set of Popperian principles to guide the behavior of its acolytes...It presumes that its disciples are being honest when describing their observations, experiments, and interpretation...."  Conversely, in an interview  this week a physicist suggests such a presumption may be naive and unrealistic. He says this:

"We, as a community of scientists, are so obsessed with publishing papers — there is this mantra 'publish or perish,' and it is the number one thing that is taught to you, as a young scientist, that you must publish a lot in very high profile journals. And that is your number one goal in life. And what this is causing is an environment where scientific fraud can flourish unchecked. Because we are not doing our job, as scientists. We don’t have time to cross-check each other, we don’t have time to take our time, we don’t have time to be very slow and patient with our own research, because we are so focused with publishing as many papers as possible. So we have seen, over the past few years, an explosion in the rise of fraud. And different kinds of fraud. There is the outright fabrication — the creating of data out of whole cloth. And then there’s also what I call 'soft fraud' — lazy science, poorly done science. Massaging your results a little bit just so you can achieve a publishable result. That leads to a flooding of just junk, poorly done science."

In this site's posts you will find very many examples of such junk science, mainly produced by neuroscientists, who these days tend to have very poor research habits.