One false religion has quite transparently gripped Americans and citizens worldwide this last decade. Here, I attempt to throw him down.“Science” as a master cannot stand. As a biology major at UCLA, I have seen the power and passion of some of the world’s leading experts in various scientific fields, and I am here to tell you, it is religion to them.In this Age of Enlightenment and humanism, there is a real temptation to consider ourselves gods. We who sail through the stars, who harness the lightning to do our electrical will, who split atoms and become death to millions, who are as King Solomon with the world’s knowledge one Google search away.And when humans fail, as we so often do, we turn to make gods of gifts that modernity has brought us by bloating the tool beyond its natural bounds but endowing it with responsibilities it was not designed to solve. As John Calvin said, “The human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols.”But this pride cannot persist if we wish to be a healthy people. To see and think clearly, to act as self-governing individuals, we must not be slaves to such cruel masters. False gods must be ground into dust like the golden calf if we are to stand before the throne of grace.Consider two scientific narratives of the recent past that demonstrate the reign of Science: the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. “Listen to the Science,” we were told ad nauseam for the better part of two years. While science in its uncorrupt state would have served our country greatly through data collection, infection and transmission tracking, therapeutic novelties, and even vaccine development, we made it an idol by asking it for too much. SEE ALSO: 1,200 scientists, scholars agree: “There’s no climate emergency” We allowed it to answer the questions put to us concerning church attendance, family gatherings, and education. We allowed it to master our lives when we ought to have been the master of it.How did we come to a place where government health agencies were barring us from polite society, or society at all? Why did we bow to mandates that prohibited worship mandated by God? Why did we sacrifice months or years of our children’s education to an establishment that did not care for their minds, but only for their survival?These questions and their answers, wherever you land, transverse far beyond the dominion of scientific thought. It begs us to consider man as a body and a soul, a discussion for philosophers and theologians.Similarly, climate science should be respected for its honest research, interweaving studies that paint a picture of the state of our planet. However, it should not be allowed to contribute anything more than hard facts and figures. When the conversation turns to action, Science ought to take a seat. Here is the floor for the philosopher, the theologian, the entrepreneur, the average citizen. For these policy questions are not concerned with outlining facts through observation and experimentation but translating knowledge into wisdom.This distinction became painfully clear to me this week while sitting in a conservational biology class at America’s number one public university. My professor preached to a lecture hall of 400 plus young men and women that the most effective way we can help heal the planet in our lifetimes is by having no children. Her Science lists overpopulation as a leading contributor to climate change and concludes that in order for life to go on, we must kill ourselves off. I don’t know about you, but that sounds an awful lot like a religious claim to me.Science is a cruel master. May it not be yours.Catie Robertson is an intern with the Convention of States Project, a project of Citizens for Self-Government.
