illuminating science

I was just reading a Facebook post in a Christian group by someone named Billy Joyce. It’s a carbon copy of countless of ignorant people, sadly most of them religious. Here’s what he said:

Recently, astronomers discovered an “old star” (100 billion years old apparently) that was giving birth to “new planets”…this is what a scientist had to say:

“We currently understand planet formation to occur around stars when they are very young…As such, we would never expect a star to undergo planet formation late in its life as the necessary conditions are not present.”

Now a statement like this leads me to believe that their knowledge is only speculation to begin with…obviously the conclusions that they had previously come to were just blown to bits by nature itself. I wonder how many millions of dollars we’ve paid these scientists as a collectivity [sic] to come to the “accurate conclusions” they’ve come to in various fields. And when you look at the overall benefit to mankind in these things, one must wonder just why it’s done at all.

It’s this very thing which drives me crazy - that’s the whole point of science. We don’t know everything, nor do we scientists ever claim to. As countless people before me have said - theories in science are almost always evolving. New observations are either fitted into the existing framework or we develop new theories which do include and explain these observations. Scientists love it when discoveries disprove old theories - it often means there’s a whole new area of science to explore, with who knows what results.

And even then, theories are rarely “blown to bits”. Instead, we realise that our existing theories are only part of the picture. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity didn’t disprove Newton’s theories of motion. Instead, they showed us that Newton’s laws are the “low speed” approximation to a bigger theory. Newton was perfectly right - unless you happen to be going near the speed of light! I’m sure our theories of planet formation will evolve accordingly.

As for “the overall benefit to mankind” - How about antibiotics and the countless other medicines? Chemotherapy? The internet? Solar power? And sure, maybe understanding planet formation doesn’t feed the hungry but it’s part of learning how the universe works, and from that who knows what we’ll discover! (Lasers were initially a scientific novelty - now look at them!) As for evolution - how dramatically did it change our understanding of life on Earth! But Billy, if you’d prefer not to use your internet, TV, car or medicines - feel free!

But this is the sort of thing that religion so often blinds people - the fact that the universe is an amazing, incredible place regardless of whether or not a God exists, and that science is helping us to appreciate and utilise the beauty of it.

Not a loaded question, but pure curiosity: How many lives has the Bible saved over the last 200 years, compared to advances in science over the same period? (And how could you estimate either?)