In order to know what I'm talking about, you'll have to read this article.

I think that we can all agree that this guy has a screw loose. What I find interesting here, though, is that we - with our Scientistic worldview - find what this guy did is totally ludicrous. Many militant atheists would even say that this is proof that there is no God (I won't go into it here, but there is another flaw here and that is that simply saying "If God exists he will give me super powers" is no way to prove or disprove the existence of a diety).

However, consider what we'd think if this man had instead yelled "Science will save me" and then jumped into the lion's den. We might still think he's a looney, but at least we'd believe that it's possible. And this is the point at which I see a problem. You see, God didn't save that man, but neither did science (more specifically medicine), and yet we're far more apt to believe that science could save that man than we are to believe that God could.

Now, it's mostly the logic of this that bothers me. We seem to believe that, just because science has made such huge strides in the relatively recent past, it will continue those great strides and it will have figured everything out. I believe, however, that science will let us down eventually just like religion has let many people down. In fact, I believe science is already letting us down, we're just too in awe that we don't yet see it.

I saw a movie with my wife (I don't remember what it was called, but it was about a Chinese emperor who was chased into hiding by the communists) and in one of the first scenes some mystics analyzed the solid waste of this infant emperor to divine the future. Now, to us this would seem absolutely silly. But when we took our dog to the vet and they asked us for a sample of her poo, I realized that science hasn't really gotten us too far beyond those old mystics. Think about it: How many times have you gone to the doctor and they've stuck you with a needle and drawn blood, or asked you to pee in a cup? Then they take this fluid and analyze it, just like mystics were doing centuries ago. Admittedly, the techniques have changed, but the fact that we must drain a fluid from our bodies in order to determine what's in them is barbaric, really.

"Well," you may be thinking "science just hasn't found a way to determine what our blood is made of without removing it from our bodies yet". OK, and yet we can tell the makeup of a star billions of light years away. I'm not saying that we CAN know what's in blood without drawing it and we CHOOSE not to, I'm just saying that science hasn't taken us as far as we give it credit for.

If you feel the nagging urge to add the word "yet" to any of the following statements, then you may be suffering from a worldview distorted by too much faith in science (i.e. Scientism):

- Science hasn't found a cure for cancer
- Science hasn't found a cure for AIDS
- Science hasn't told us how life began
- Science hasn't told us if other life exists in our universe
- Science hasn't told us how the universe was created

I'm sure there are many more, but you get my point. These are things that we truly feel are discoverable at some point in the future. What I'm saying is that if we excuse science for not answering the questions above because "it's just not there yet" then we're giving science way too much credit. At this point in time, science is no closer to a solution to these problems than religion is, and yet we readily believe that science can find an answer when religion can not. We're effectively running into the lion's den screaming that science will save us.

Maybe science can, but the logic here is flawed. Just because science has been sucessful recently and religion not-so doesn't mean that an answer will be found by science (and I must add that it likely won't be found by religion either, but the point is that faith in science or religion on matters such as these is equally flawed).

I just realized I went off on a bit of a tangent, but to finalize my point, I believe that science will let us down a lot like religion has let many people down. Eventually, when science DOESN'T explain the origin of the universe, or when science DOESN'T find a cure for cancer
(please note I said "cure", not "treatment") we will be truly disappointed. The foundation of our worldview will be shaken and science will have failed us. More to the point, when our wonderful scientific discoveries and inventions (nuclear weapons, CFC's, the ability to over-fish, excess carbon dioxide, lead in gasoline.... hell, gasoline itself) destroy our environment and make our planet uninhabitable, we will cursing science and all the pain and misfortune it has laid upon us.

When that day comes, someone will surely be there to say "Science, where now is thy God?"