Atheist Materialism Has Stunted Science
A dogmatic adherence to matter as the entirety of reality is flawed. It's why our obsession with money and things has failed to satisfy as well as why science is stuck.
This newsletter has been quiet for the beginning of 2024, and for that I apologize. My efforts have quadrupled in refining my debut novel, and as such this Substack has suffered on the vine. I promise more works for your reading pleasure in the coming days and weeks.
For the nature of this post, I intend to poke some holes in the secularist viewpoint driving society forward: atheist materialism. This will be the first in a series of pieces attacking ideologies. I will also write some articles about what positive things you can do, but first we must disabuse the modernly accepted discourse in the world one false pillar at a time.
This is not to attack anyone for being an atheist or to promote a specific spiritual philosophy. Next up will be a dissection of Christianity and other religions. Bear with me, every major belief system will face my wrath; all in its due course.
First off, you cannot find happiness in life through the consumerist pursuit of amassing wealth and physical possessions. Matter does not sustain the soul. If this were the case, the billionaires would be the happiest people in our world, but the inverse is reality: They are sad, angry, and paranoid individuals.
If you are completely wedded to a materialist reductionism, believing there is nothing out there but randomness and matter, I pity you. We are part of a collective consciousness in the universe, a web that binds all living things together, but more specifically, connects all of us humans to one another.
No mathematical formula can wish away the elements of existence that our instruments of measurement fail to capture. Whatever vernacular you prefer to use to describe the inexplicable is up to you, but I beg of you to let me pontificate with my chosen semantics.
The metaphysical exists. This is not up for debate. I will do my best to show evidence that there is more than a simple equation that underpins all of nature, the cosmos, and life. Or, at least I can point you in the right direction.
But before that, let’s do a deep dive into how we got to where we are, the unspoken rules that govern our existence, and where our innate assumptions about the world might come from.
You can’t diagnose propaganda unless you recognize it as such.
History of Post-Modern Science
It is not surprising if you are unaware of the many breakthroughs in science that disprove the current mechanistic view of the world. Since Rene Decartes, a famous French philosopher, most intellectuals have employed a dualistic view of the world. In this view, there are two things: measurable reality (or rationality) and the irrational (or metaphysical I.E. God).
I the four centuries since Decartes decided to only focus on that which can be measured by mathematics and the five senses, the world of academics have hyper-focused on one of his dualistic parameters of the world: matter, and that which can be quantified. We have mutated his dualism to be a monism where the world is a mechanical clock, or computer, that has nothing but immutable laws of science.
All of modern science is based on a Cartesian philosophy: the world can be graphed, quantified, and broken down to an algorithm. This is the basis of our post-modern world. Whether you understand it or not, the idea that we are individual biological machines that function separate from one another in a death struggle to accumulate resources is based on this belief.
Galileo took this to a new level and championed empiricism at the behest of myth, and Copernicus proved his assertion that the Sun is the center of the universe, not the Earth. He is considered the father of modern science, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for challenging the Catholic Church to bring science into the new world. But the capitalists/oligarchs are the new age church holding back discovery.
We made a mistake in our fervor to exclude that which can not be measured by our finite senses. My opinion is simple: Christianity was incorrect in how it described reality, and as a kneejerk reaction, science decided to exclude all aspects of the surreal as being part of reality, but rather, they consider anything unexplainable as an anomaly that will one day be explained by a mathematical equation. Until then, science ignores everything not able to be explained by a mathematical formula (unless it benefits the capitalists, then we will continue using incorrect theories, but more on that later).
We just need bigger computers and better algorithms and we can explain everything in existence via a complex or simple equation. This is what is holding back modern scientific breakthroughs. We have dug ourselves into a hole and refuse to climb out and reassess our situation. To be a scientist, you must subscribe to the dogma of mechanical reductionism.
Now before you call me a quack, I am not saying that you should ignore science. My point is that we know less about the world than we are willing to admit. Science is wonderous and a worthy pursuit, but we have limited our knowledge by an atheistic viewpoint coddled by capitalism.
The world will never be fully explained by simple mathematical equations. The more we discover that challenges the saints of science (Newton and his Clockwork Universe, Einstein and his theory of relativity, Darwin, et all), the further we dig in our heels to ignore the evidence that their framework is flawed.
I am not discounting these paragons of modern science, but merely pointing out that we’ve made them into demigods whose assertions can not be challenged. This has held back scientific discovery.
“You imagine that I look back on my life's work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.” Albert Einstein, March 28, 1949
(Quote from Einstein: A Centenary Volume)
Niels Bohr proved Einstein’s spacetime theory of general relativity did not hold true on the microscopic level with his work in quantum theory (now called quantum mechanics) in 1917, building off the back of Max Planck who discovered it. Other great scientists worked on this theory, including Albert Einstein, but it is still a field in flux over one hundred years later.
The quantum mechanics field of science is heavily researched, and it is worthy of the focus it receives. Still, one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science is the disconnect between quantum mechanics and general relativity. They are two groups of equations that do not comport, and actually contradict one another.
Charles Darwin discovered natural selection via evolution in his The Origin of Species, and all of modern biology uses his works as their Bible. Evolution is real, but it isn’t the only force acting upon the biological reproductions of species. We will get to that shortly.
There has only been one breakthrough in science in the 21st century: the discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle in 2012. That is it. We found a new material inside an atom trying to prove that dark matter exists.
Dark matter is just a fudging of numbers to make Einstein’s theory of relativity work with the measurements we have made with our new computers that don’t fit. Science did this before, as in order to disprove Galileo’s thesis that the Earth was the center of the universe aether was used to explain away the measurements that disproved the heliocentric theory.
Ironically, Einstein’s theory of relativity finally ended the luminous aether period in science, but since history likes to rhyme, it has found new life as dark matter. Dark matter does not exist, it is magical fairy dust.
To be fair, mechanistic reductionism has allowed some great breakthroughs in science: germ theory, chemistry, DNA and genetics, plate tectonics, and more. There is an absolute need for empirical, provable science that deals with matter and things we can measure. But it is limited to our sensory perception, and thus, it will never fully explain the machinations of the universe.
Look no further than at physics, neuroscience, or cosmology for prime examples of fields that have been stuck for years. String theory has gone nowhere in physics despite the billions of dollars dumped into it. Despite a multitude of studies to try and prove the mind is a supercomputer (we just need to map it better), we are nowhere closer to explaining consciousness. Cosmology keeps making up “dark” things to explain away how their theories don’t track with the data.
We are still trying to retread old theories instead of inventing new ones, because if you stray outside the atheistic materialist framework of mathematical reductionism, you will be called a pseudoscientist and lose funding. Obey the capitalistic mechanistical framework or be shunned.
Rene Decartes said “I think, therefore I am.” He taught us to reject perception and accept only deduction. If you can’t measure it, it isn’t science. Sound like something you would hear today? He died in 1650.
Scientific Theories at Odds with Mechanism
There are plenty of heterodox scientists out there who are not quacks trying to push the bounds of science inquiry. Most of them are hand-waved away by the scientific community for not complying with the mechanistic dogma.
Morphic Resonance
Chances are, you probably have never heard of Rupert Sheldrake or his Morphic Resonance theory. The fact that he has a PhD from Harvard is irrelevant, for he is at odds with most of modern science. He engages in parapsychology and challenges the saint of evolution, Charles Darwin.
Morphic resonance theorizes that formative causation can happen via a telepathic effect or sympathetic vibration. The past can affect the future or things conceived in the mind of one person can arise in another.
“Morphic resonance is a process whereby self-organizing systems inherit a memory from previous similar systems…Memory need not be stored in the material traces inside brains…and biological inheritance need not all be coded in the genes; much of it depends on morphic resonance from previous members of the species. Thus each individual inherits a collective memory from the past members of the species, and also contributes to the collective memory, affecting other members of the species in the future.”
(From Rupert Sheldrake’s website.)
Rupert Sheldrake has decades of experiments that have attempted to prove his theory, and many of them have been successful and submitted to peer reviewed scientific papers. These are all consistent with psychic phenomenon, which is why he is not allowed in the cool kids club.
He has many books published such as Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, The Sense of Being Stared At and Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. To say that he is controversial would be an understatement.
But still, he conducted several experiments that proved people could predict who was calling them more accurately if they knew them, scientifically. He also has shown that synthetically produced chemicals tend to have an increase in melting point over time whereas natural occurring chemicals do not.
The science community ignores him because he doesn’t believe everything in the world is built like a clock, or a computer. He attempts to explain psychic phenomenon that the majority of science wishes to pretend is simple randomness and not reality to prove his theory, such as telepathy. Also, he believes in God, so he is persona non grata.
The stunning results from his experiments are irrelevant to science. His theory is outside of the bounds of the mechanistic reductionist model, and as such, it is not worthy. If he proves that genetics is not solely encoded in the DNA, it will not make a corporation billions of dollars, so his theory is left on the fringes, as there are already major players trying to monopolize the genetics coding business.
Truth is not the pursuit of modern science, but rather a monopolization of new technology for certain corporations or governments is the goal. They want to commodify everything.
Michael Levin & Bioelectricity
If you don’t know who Michael Levin is now, you will eventually. He will most likely being winning the Nobel Prize for Biology in the near future. If he doesn’t, it will be a bigger crime against humanity than giving Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize after he bombed multiple countries.
Michael Levin is a professor at Tufts University and is leading research in bioelectric fields in biology. He has a genetics PhD from Harvard Medical School.
Unlike Rupert Sheldrake, he is part of the scientific in crowd and is heavily cited in research papers. He is at the forefront of some groundbreaking research about how organisms actually grow and disproving that genes are the sole thing in the formation of species.
He has created new species in the lab from singular cells, grown limbs in the wrong place on amphibians to have them resort where they should be, regrown limbs on frogs, and made many chimeras of plenary flatworms.
His latest experiment has shown that embryos signal each other to collectively learn, at a distance, to avoid contagions and toxins. The team of researchers assembled by him are making tremendous strides in biology.
The reason Michael Levin is not ostracized from the scientific community is multi-faceted: he knows how to play politics (be an atheist, ground everything in data, etc.), he is producing tons of research papers (which is how you remain relevant in academia), and he is researching in a field that could lead to billions of dollars for pharmaceutical companies.
His research could find a way to easily treat cancer, regrow limbs on humans, or even stop the aging process. The work being done on bioelectric fields by Michael Levin and his staff could make a lot of rich people even more wealthy.
In fact, one of his latest experiments that hasn’t been published yet was in regards to growing cells off of humans of varying ages to be able to develop drugs/treatments that are custom designed for each individual patient. If they are successful, one of the biggest hurdles in medicine (stopping the immune system’s natural response to foreign pathogens) could be mitigated.
Needless to say, I am certain that he will get that Nobel Prize in due time. There are very few people so on the cutting edge of new discoveries, like him.
Summary
The time has gotten the best of me, so I will end this screed here. I wrote this to highlight some of the underlying assumptions that underpin modern science so that you can be better educated about how to catch preconceptions that are baked into modern discourse that are limited.
We have been herded down a very narrow path for a long time, and it isn’t just the fault of capitalism, or Republicans, or Democrats, or whatever boogeyman you prefer. Even the supposed rational field of science is based on many assumptions that stifle a truly unfettered discourse.
As long as certain topics remain taboo to discuss in polite company, the search for the truth will always be limited. We, as a species, should be doing our best at researching all aspects of reality, including those that make people uncomfortable.
My point of this is not to make you question science, far from it. I am simply trying to show you that the hubris we have as humans extends to all aspects of life. It isn’t just relegated to social media and politics.
I will leave you with a famous quote that has been twisted from its original meaning by people interpreting the interpreters and not going to the source material:
“God is dead.” by Frederick Nietzsche.
That is not the full meaning as he explained later in The Gay Science:
“…that the belief in the Christian God has become unworthy of belief.”
Nietzsche wasn’t saying that there is no god or gods, he claimed that the metaphysical was dead in philosophy. He made a critique that liberalism had killed the notion of any divinity. All that remained was self-aggrandizement until we are demigods, or the Übermensch as he called it.
He announced that all gods were now dead, for materialistic reductionism had killed them. This wasn’t what he championed, Nietzsche lamented that philosophy had died. 150 years later, it looks like he was a psychic.
An attack on a specific religion, Christianity, has morphed into nihilism that there is no greater purpose in life. Why? Well, it sure helps sell more useless things to people who are isolated, lonely, and hopeless.
Stay curious, and don’t let materialism suck the soul out of you.