INTOLERANCE: If something does not irritate you, you cannot be tolerating it. Tolerance takes great strength. These, the monotheistic faiths of the World's Great Religions all worship the ONE GOD of Abraham; whose beautiful teachings lead not to grudges, war, and hate... but to forgiveness, peace, and love...

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 Howard David Johnson worked as a scientific research consultant for the University of Texas through the 1970's under the guidance of top Texas Scientists illustrating reconstructions of Paleontology and Anthropology, oddly enough, he then worked under the guidance of the world's foremost Biblical Scholars for the Center for Judeo-Christian Studies. The two dramatically different experiences back to back brought important things to his attention and caused him to wonder...

Has Science become a Religion?

A brief essay by the artist revised and updated in 2007 after being challenged by top academics and scientists

With respect to its great contributions to society, I think it is important to make a case that science is really affecting society more like a religion now than a field of study or a resource base of useful information. Many everyday people do not understand it at all and accept ALL its teachings on faith.

Since most of the attacks on religion by the scientific and academic communities have been directed at The Bible and Judeo- Christianity rather than Islam or World Paganism and they have had an impact on the respectability of all the world's great religions, I shall examine and de-bunk these attacks with scientific and academic methods. The major criticism of science with regards to The Bible has been that it requires a leap of faith to believe that GOD created the world, yet Science also has several leaps of faith of it's own. The Big Bang theory cannot be proven as world renowned cosmologist Steven Hawking has stated and, if it cannot be proven - believing in it - in Hawking's own words requires a "Leap of Faith". 

Until a theory is proven in a lab or in the field, it is Philosophy, not Physics. 

           EVOLUTION IS NOT A LAW OF SCIENCE. Darwin's Theory of Evolution was proposed in 1859 and almost a hundred and fifty years later it has still never achieved the status of a Law of Science. This is because of the Missing Link. There is no proof of a link between man and ape, hence the term "The missing link". This blind faith in Evolution has been taught with religious dogmatism in the public schools for generations and is still merely a theory. The Theory of Evolution, not the Law of Evolution  is a mere UNPROVEN hypothesis, which the dictionary defines as "a mere assumption or guess or a proposition, or a group of proposals, offered as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena."

          Yet this "mere assumption or guess" is taught to children in public schools and young adults in colleges as if it HAD been proven beyond any doubt.  It was once a Law of Science that the atom was the irreducible particle of matter. At Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945 the atom was split and the atomic bomb explosion in the desert blasted that Law of Science out of existence.

             Now, if a Law of Science is so unreliable, I ask you, why is a mere theory like Evolution regarded so highly? Simple. It is about political control, not about truth. 

The Missing Link between Man and Ape

In 1912 A.D. a respectable geologist named Arthur S. Woodward and a lawyer named Charles Dawson offered their new “fossil discovery” to the London Geological Society. The “artifacts” included a thick portion of a human skull, a fragment of an ape-like jaw, some animal remains and some primitive stone tools. These items found in southern England in a place called Piltdown were estimated to be 500,000 years old.

For 40 years the remains were accepted by the academic community as an important part of our evolutionary development. Piltdown Man was declared genuine and called the “missing link” between apes and man by important scientists of the time. Because of this newfound “proof” men of God were openly ridiculed as ignorant and improperly educated. Piltdown man was debunked four decades later by chemical tests proving the jaw and skull were not the same age, nor very old. It was a DELIBERATE fake. The bones had been chemically treated and thoroughly stained to make them appear prehistoric. Recognizable anatomical features were broken off and filed down.

Why did this fraud by lawyer Charles Dawson fool the experts? For many reasons, but it was never seriously questioned because the scientists of the time were delighted by the way it validated their evolutionist beliefs. For more details of the debunking read: ”The Piltdown Forgery” by Joseph S. Weiner, the classic account of the most famous and successful hoax in science. The new and revised 2002 edition is commonly available. Today, the term “Piltdown” is a term of ridicule, used to label fraudulent research, but the impact on the lives of billions of trusting people has had powerful political implications to this day.

The prover proves what the thinker thinks and prejudice and political power seem more important than the truth or the consistent practice of the scientific method. If truth were important to them, they would use the scientific method when criticizing The Bible but they do not. The scientific method requires going to the source. Yet for these famous disparagements they use the King James version instead of the original Hebrew. Translated in 1611 by non-Christian King James of England for political reasons the K.J.V. is one of the Colossal monuments of English Prose. The King James Translation is not at all accurate enough to use as the sole source for the defense of the Biblical Text. 

         Consider this example: One of the greatest conflicts between Science and the Bible is the teaching that the world was created in six solar days of 24 hours each. The word " yom" in the source, the original Hebrew text, which was translated as "Solar Day" had 56 other choices. Modern English has more than 60,000 words. Biblical Hebrew had 3,000. The average English vocabulary has 6,000. My favorite choice of the 56 other options:" an unimaginably long but complete period of time" harmonizes with science perfectly. Another choice is: "time itself". So as we can see, going to the source and using the Scientific Method brings very different results than not going to the source.

           Getting past this, the order in which life appeared was identical to the theory of evolution's claims in the Book of Genesis, leaving us to discuss the stars, the next main source of conflict between Science and the Bible. The Hebrew text says "a swaddling band around the Earth dissolved, revealing the stars. The Prover proves what the thinker thinks. Here's a fun thought - What if GOD is in control of evolution? What if it's his hobby? What if there is really no conflict between Science and Religion? The scientists cannot disprove the existence of GOD any more than they can prove the Big Bang happened. 

   Albert Einstein saw no conflict between science and religion. Like Galileo, Newton and other immortal greats of science before him, Einstein believed in GOD.

        Therefore, I present to you this idea: Modern Scientific beliefs are based upon a leap of faith in the big bang theory. It has become a belief system based on faith and therefore another form of religion. Scientists, like priests can explain their beliefs but the everyday people accept it all on faith. Scientists and doctors are the priests of this new religion, getting angry and crying "heresy" when anyone respectfully disagrees with them. I once had one of my supervisors in the UT anthropology department explain to me for three hours on a research expedition in mathematical terms how something could have ALWAYS existed, needing no beginning point. When we agreed that the math was good he then made a COLOSSAL leap of faith, saying "This proves the Universe has always existed and there is no GOD." In one second I countered;" I could just as easily jump to the conclusion that this proves the existence of an eternal GOD." It is this "jumping to conclusions" or  as Steven Hawking put it; "making leaps of faith." that infuses philosophy with their physics. Then there is the infusion of politics; a perfect example is 

The Myth of Carbon 14 dating: 

Educated people know that carbon 14 dating is totally irrelevant to the theory of evolution. Scientists never state that carbon 14 dating offers proof for the theory of evolution. Ignorant evolutionists, however, believe carbon 14 dating proves the theory of evolution, and stubbornly make that claim based on faith in what they were told in our learning institutions. They were DELIBERATELY lied to to gain and maintain POLITICAL POWER. I will explain; Carbon 14 dating is ONLY reliable for five thousand years as even its creator himself admitted in 1972. Carbon 14 or Radiocarbon Dating was first devised in 1949 by Dr. Willard Libby. It is based on the rate of decay of carbon 14 or its "half-life" of 5730 years. This method offers reliable dates up to 5,000 years ago, but its results require correction since Dr. Libby's belief that the levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere were identical through the ages has long since been disproved. Volcanoes and floods for example skew the results to the point where guesswork or leaps of faith are required even in dating organic material from historic times. Dr. Libby once expressed his shock when he found that radio carbon dates for human artifacts extended back only 5000 years and older dates were found to be unreliable. [W.F.Libby, `Radiocarbon Dating', (Chicago, 1952), pp. 4-9]  [CRSQ, 1972, 9:3, p. 157] By this time tens of thousands of C-14 dates had been published from tests in laboratories around the world. The textbooks and curriculums have yet to be revised. Instead, a MYTH is being taught in our schools.  There are exciting new methods but wild guesses about the amount of Carbon 14 in the atmosphere do not PROVE anything. Believers in GOD are called foolish and ignorant on the political strength of this deliberate lie that Carbon 14 dating proves evolution.

       The gross disrespect and intolerance I have seen of certain members of the scientific and academic communities and their disciples toward anyone who disagrees with them is just as arrogant and abusive as racial, sexual, religious, or any other kind of prejudice. 

 After the newspapers reported the missing link fraud (The Piltdown Man) to the world as fact, around 1912 and for decades afterward in educated circles it was considered a mark of ignorance to believe the Biblical record. There was little scientific evidence available then to support the Bible's claims and academic circles decided that was the end of the matter and as the decades moved on, the scientific and academic communities stubbornly ignored tidal waves of new SCIENTIFIC evidence. 

One excellent example of cover-up that still has tremendous political implications is in what the Bible says about Abraham.  In the early 20th century experts in the field of archaeology insisted that no civilization even existed in UR of the Chaldeans when the Bible records that Abraham lived there. On the basis that no evidence was currently available they declared Abraham a mythical character. 

        20th century evidence however has proven beyond any question the existence of an advanced civilization in UR of the Chaldeans during the 21st and 20th centuries B.C.-That was Abraham's day! Abraham's historicity is also confirmed by ancient inscriptions that bear the names of almost very town mentioned in Ch. 12-14 of Genesis and one even has his father's name. Archeological discoveries also show these towns were in existence until about 2,000 B.C.- but not later! 

No longer can the Bible's or Koran's critics get away with accusing believers of being naive or foolish today when they believe what the Bible says about Abraham like they used to in the 20th century. 

This is critical to the belief systems of the world's great monotheistic religions Islam, Judaism and Christianity who all claim ascendancy from Abraham. Why isn't this commonly taught in schools? Many scientific professionals openly abuse the authority of their positions to push their personal beliefs and ignore the confirmed scientific data to hold on to political power. Other Biblical confirmations from modern Archaeology include: Date and manner of Jericho's fall, The exodus from Egypt, Major characters from the book of Daniel and many others. The SCIENTIFIC proof is all there waiting for you if you take the time to look it up. 

           Certain scientists and academics like to act like they know everything about the origins of the Earth. They don't. Many of our long taught ideas about planetary science have recently been proven completely wrong. Did you know that The Gas Giants on the outside of our solar system and the surface of the Planet Venus are DRASTICALLY different than what I was authoritatively taught about them as a boy in school?  If they can't even tell us reliably how the solar system is today how can we rely on their ideas about its distant unobservable origins? Yet even in the face of constantly changing SCIENTIFIC evidence most scientists are prone to UTTER DOGMATISM about their belief system. Science is supposed to be the sum of the best knowledge we have at the time - incomplete but always learning, always growing- but sometimes making serious mistakes. Why admit things were COMPLETELY wrong about planetary science within the solar system but NEVER MENTION the discovery of the unreliability of Carbon 14 dating or the discovery of archaeological evidence of Abraham being a historical figure? Simple. There is no danger to the foundation of the belief system of this new religion or it's social and political power base. 

         Mankind's only hope for continued survival on this planet is to learn to tolerate each others differences and live in peace with one another and in harmony with the environment. We're all in the same boat...

   I do not believe that scientists should be exempt from this challenge to be tolerant, since they created the very things that could well destroy us, such as thermonuclear weapons & pollution.

We all have a lot of work to do if we are to survive. I write this in defense of my faith and of the faiths of others which have been disparaged by these attacks on the sacred writings of the  world's great religions...If we're going to have a better world we're going to need both better leaders and better citizens.

 I personally believe that any belief in a higher power that must be answered to makes us better citizens than if we believed that we are the ultimate life form in the Universe.

~ H D Johnson 2007

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