It had been some time since I had been to Seattle. I’m not a big fan of traffic, vaccine passports, and the overall mess of things in Blue Washington’s prized bluest city. But I was passing through this past week and found myself enjoying the lights of the season. One home just off the interstate caught my attention. Festively adorned, it looked out over Elliot Bay. A longer look revealed large lit letters at the base of the home. No Christmas cheer from this residence. The home proudly proclaimed, “Science is God.”
“Wow,” I thought, “the bar for deity these days must be pretty low.” It was not that long ago medical science was prescribing cocaine, heroin, and morphine to cure the common cold and to get rid of that stubborn cough. It was not that long ago leeches and bloodletting were considered a treatment for everything from nosebleeds to pneumonia. And lobotomies were the go-to-procedure to cure mental illness, the belief that hacking away a part of the brain was the solution.
“But science has come a long way,” they say. Has it? Science has had the platform since 2020 preaching how we are to rid ourselves from COVID. Many of us would love the opportunity to sue them for malpractice.
What else have the priests of science been pontifically saying lately? Biology doesn’t determine gender. There is male and there is female and then there is a litany of other genders sandwiched in-between. It is morally acceptable to kill a fetus (their word) in the womb even if the baby (our word) feels pain. That unless mankind drastically changes how he lives and stops climate change, the planet will be destroyed in twelve years. And that injecting the same toxin (Botox) into our faces that produces botulism to rid us of wrinkles for the next three months is trendy, safe, and cool. Yep, the deity bar is low these days.
Journals of medicine and science are fluid. They change through the years as more information and study deems previous conclusions wrong. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is now in its fifth edition. This latest edition replaced the fourth in 2013. The American Psychiatric Association has to publish a new edition every few years because their “science” changes. The sixth edition will come out at some point that will contradict elements of their existing manual.
Our Book does not need an updated edition. God’s Book doesn’t change because He doesn’t. As such, His truth doesn’t change either. “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6). Later in that same chapter, God mocks those who carve an idol out of wood to worship and then, without a thought, takes the extra wood to burn for warmth and bake his bread (Isaiah 44:15-16).
God spoke those jeering words 2,700 years ago. Man thinks he’s progressed through the centuries. Still bowing to man-made idols, are we?
A few centuries back tobacco smoke enemas were used to treat everything from colds to cholera. I kid you not. Kits for purchase included rubber rectal tubes and a pair of bellows. I hope there are no old-school proctologists out there who think this is still a good idea.
But if “Science is God” they have to own their past, too. Some of that past is quite comical. In a few years some of their present will be too. But that does not seem to bother them. They will just print a new edition.
Pastor Rich Hamlin
December 9, 2021