What have new technological tools allowed us to see that have substantially shifted the debate and why is this debate not being held publicly in the mainstream?

What recent discoveries are threatening to topple the dominant views of physicists, chemists and biologists for the major part of the last two hundred years?

And, we can’t forget that science has tremendously influenced philosophy, which, itself, is a building block for worldviews that govern thought and behavior.

Some big questions.

I’ll say it again because it really deserves repeating.

We are talking about the things that scientists are discovering that are leading to the unraveling of basic tenets that have governed the assumptions of the general scientific community for generations.

This is not theology. This is not the Bible Belt proclaiming their traditional beliefs. This is not seminaries or missionaries or pastors at the Sunday pulpit. This is high level science being conducted objectively using the very methods used by scientists such as Darwin and Einstein.

Some disclaimers with explanation:

I’m not a scientist although I’ve long been fascinated by what it has to tell us about the physical world. And, I’m quite familiar with a thing we can call “scientific method,” having studied it both formally and informally.

I’m about as far away from a mechanical engineer as you can get but I love reading about and listening to how things function, especially really big things like stars and galaxies and very little things like particles and waves.

I’m not a mathematician but I love numbers and logic and their perfect symmetry and how it all orders reality.

I’m not a linguist but I’m fascinated with how language operates, sequencing together seemingly random letters to create symbols we call “words,” then piecing them together to communicate the most amazing concepts that can change the destiny of nations or touch the deepest parts of our souls.

I’m not a neurobiologist but I love learning about the brain and how it operates, while also trying to figure out the difference between Brain and Mind.

I’m not a psychologist but I have studied most of the famous ones and am not unfamiliar with their beliefs and practices.

I’m neither an economist nor an anthropologist nor a sociologist, although I can probably speak at least somewhat intelligently for a few minutes on the disciplines of each.

I’m not a computer engineer or programmer but I get what code is and how computers function and what they do.

I guess I’d qualify as having some recognized expertise in education theory and practice, leadership theory and practice, history, political science, philosophy and theology.

I share this long-winded disclaimer because I think at least some variation of it can encompass all of us.

So, while we may not feel we are adept at understanding this or that because it appears daunting, I suspect we’re doing ourselves a disservice. We ought to pay attention and ask questions, especially when it comes to really important stuff.

Like I did, as an undergraduate history major taking a course in Microbiology taught by a professor who we were told was the runner-up for the Nobel Prize in biology for his work in the study of virology (or viruses).

I can remember like it was yesterday when he drew a picture on the blackboard of a T4 Phage virus and explained its function. It blew my mind on so many levels. I learned that this insidious little thing was neither really dead nor alive but sort of lived in between. It is one of the most incredible things in biology. While the professor’s graphic was 2D in chalk in 1974, I’m including a link to a very brief contemporary YouTube animation and narrative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFXuxGuT7H8

It didn’t feel all that dissimilar to when I looked through a small telescope in our backyard and clearly saw the differentiated rings of Saturn, right in front of my eye, filling a good part of my field of view.

In each, I experienced a sense of wonder and it is that wonder, like so many other experiences that have grabbed ahold of me, that have placed in me a desire to know more.

So, with that little detour, what exactly has happened, via new technologies, that is transforming the discussion and threatening the edifice?

To be grossly simplistic, we’ve developed really big and powerful telescopes to look into the furthest reaches of our physical universe. We’ve developed incredibly gigantic machines to explore the nature of minute particles and forms of energy. And we’ve developed the most sophisticated microscopes and related equipment that have allowed us to dive into the most incredible and miniscule parts of organic (living) chemistry.

In other words, the tools we use in physics, chemistry and biology are developing in sophistication far more rapidly than ever before, allowing us windows into the physical world almost unimaginable not that long ago.

There has been this fundamental tenet in computer science, called Moore’s law (around since the 1960s) that computing power doubles and the price of such computing power is cut in half every 18 months or thereabouts. This is a phenomenal observation but easily recognized by the power of the computer in our hands (that we can talk through) compared with similar computing power relatively recently.

One of the direct results of this phenomenon is that new technologies, which are really just tools (such as hammers or stoves or automobiles), are radically changing the landscape of what we can discover in the various sciences. Features that have previously been unavailable to us are now cascading into our consciousness and bringing us to newer levels of understanding about what we really are and where we came from.

And this, like it or not, has created a newly-opened door through the wall.

Chance or Design? Where is the evidence leading us?