Unseen Branches & False Constants: The 10 Dogmas of Modern Science

Modern science is based on the principle: "Give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest."--Terence McKenna

"... And the one free miracle is that all the matter and energy in the universe and all the laws that govern it came from nothing in a single instance."--Rupert Sheldrake

Tom Huston writes,

"TED's Chris Anderson censored Rupert Sheldrake and removed this video from the TEDx YouTube channel. They dared question the Scientistic Orthodoxy, and for that they have been publicly castigated and defamed."

BIO: "Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. (born 28 June 1942) is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and ten books. A former Research Fellow of the Royal Society, he studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he was a Scholar of Clare College, took a double first class honours degree and was awarded the University Botany Prize."

TEDx Talk: The Science Delusion

"He then studied philosophy and history of science at Harvard University, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow, before returning to Cambridge, where he took a Ph.D. in biochemistry."

"He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, where he was Director of Studies in biochemistry and cell biology. As the Rosenheim Research Fellow of the Royal Society, he carried out research on the development of plants and the ageing of cells in the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge University."

"From 2005-2010 he was the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project funded from Trinity College,Cambridge. He is a Fellow of Schumacher College , in Dartington, Devon, a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences near San Francisco, and a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut."

"From 1968 to 1969, based in the Botany Department of the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, he studied rain forest plants. From 1974 to 1985 he was Principal Plant Physiologist and Consultant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad, India, where he helped develop new cropping systems now widely used by farmers. While in India, he also lived for a year and a half at the ashram of Fr Bede Griffiths in Tamil Nadu, where he wrote his first book, A New Science of Life."

"While at Cambridge, together with Philip Rubery, he discovered the mechanism of polar auxin transport, the process by which the plant hormone auxin is carried from the shoots towards the roots."

"He lives in London with his wife Jill Purce and two sons."

"He has appeared in many TV programs in Britain and overseas, and was one of the participants (along with Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Dennett, Oliver Sacks, Freeman Dyson and Stephen Toulmin) in a TV series called A Glorious Accident, shown on PBS channels throughout the US. He has often taken part in BBC and other radio programs. He has written for newspapers such as the Guardian, where he had a regular monthly column, The Times, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Sunday Times, Times Educational Supplement, Times Higher Education Supplement and Times Literary Supplement, and has contributed to a variety of magazines, including New Scientist, Resurgence, the Ecologist and the Spectator."

Rupert Sheldrake states,

"The Science Delusion is the belief that Science already understands the nature of reality in principle leaving only the details to be filled in. This is a very widespread belief in our society. It's the kind of belief system of people who say, "I don't believe in God. I believe in Science."

"Since the late nineteenth century science has been conducted under the aspect of a belief system, or worldview, which is essentially that of materialism: philosophical materialism. And the sciences are now wholly owned subsidiaries of the materialist worldview. I think that as we break out of it, the sciences will be regenerated."

"It's a belief system that has now been spread through the entire world. But there is a conflict in the heart of science between science as a method of inquiry based on reason, evidence and hypothesis and collective investigation, and Science as a belief system or a worldview. And, unfortunately, the worldview aspect of Science has come to inhibit and constrict free inquiry which is the very life blood of the scientific endeavor."

Sheldrake continues,

"The Ten Dogmas, or Assumptions of Science, the default worldview of most educated people all over the world, are first:"

1. "Nature is mechanical or machine-like. The universe is like a machine. Animals and plants are like machines. We're like machines. In fact, we are machines. We are "lumbering robots," in Richard Dawkins vivid phrase, with brains that are genetically programmed computers."

2. "Matter is unconscious. The whole universe is made up of unconscious matter. There's no consciousness in stars, in galaxies, in planets, in animals and plants, and there ought not to be any in us either if this theory is true. And so, a lot of the philosophy of mind over the last 100 years has been trying to prove that we're not really conscious at all."

3. "The Laws of Nature are fixed. The laws of nature are the same now as they were at the Big Bang and they'll be the same forever. Not just the laws, but the constants of nature effects, which are why they are called constants."

4. "The total amount of matter and energy is always the same. It never changes in total quantity, except at the moment of the Big Bang when it all sprang into existence from nowhere in a single instant."

5. "Nature is purposeless. There are no purposes in all nature and the Evolutionary process has no purpose or direction."

6. "Biological heredity is material. Everything you inherit is in your genes or in modifications of your genes. It's material."

7. "Memories are stored inside your brain as material traces. Somehow, everything you remember is in your brain in modified nerve endings and proteins. No one knows how it works, but nevertheless, almost everyone in the scientific world believes it must be in the brain."

8. "Your mind is inside your head. All your consciousness is the activity of your brain. Nothing more."

9. "Psychic phenomenon are impossible. It's illusory. People who believe these things are deceived by coincidences or wishful thinking."

10. "Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works. That's why governments only fund methods in mechanistic medicine, and ignore complimentary and alternative therapies. Those can't possibly work because they are not mechanistic. They may appear to work because people would have gotten better anyway or the Placebo Effect. The only kind that really works is mechanistic medicine."

Sheldrake concludes,

"This is the default worldview which is held by almost all educated people all over the world. It's the basis of the educational system, the national health service, the medical research council, governments. It's just the default worldview of educated people."

"Genes are grossly overrated. They can account only for the proteins an organism can make, not the shape or the form or the behavior."

Metrology is the science of measuring (supposed) constants, but according to Sheldrake based on its own records:

"The speed of light dropped between 1928 and 1945."

"Big G is the term used for Newton's Universal Gravitation Constant. It has varied by as much as 1.3% in recent years."

"If there are constants, then there is no reason to look for changes."

"A dogmatic assumption inhibits inquiry."

 "Science simply cannot deal with the fact that we are conscious."--R.S.
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While not a creationist (as far as I know) Sheldrake makes some interesting points about dogmatism in modern science that I know from experience applies to church practices regarding its view of truth. It is interesting to notice how the larger world influences the Christian thinking process, often without us realizing it.