Educate Yourself

This article is an introduction to J.M. Koenraadt’s book ‘Eternal Struggle: Exposing the Scientific Worldview’. The book can be purchased here.

Why do progressive liberals believe their views are scientific, but everyone else’s “uneducated”?

During the mid-nineteenth century, the physical sciences adopted the Marxist belief that everything in existence in the universe is matter in motion. And so, Marxism became ‘scientific’, and the belief in progress became a ‘scientific worldview’. But it denies the existence of a free will, human consciousness, a soul, and God.

What Is Science?

Science is scientia, or perhaps: awareness. Doing science means becoming aware of the laws and constants governing our universe. The scientific worldview assumes that these laws and constants are immutable—unchanging and fixed.

Science has never offered evidence for these fundamental assumptions about our reality. German philosopher Martin Heidegger noted that science cannot provide such evidence, not with its tools and methods. “Science doesn’t think,” he said.

Scientists can use their equipment to measure time in ever smaller units, but only a philosopher can ask: What is time? What is space? What is motion? Scientists don’t know what space or motion are. They don’t know what time is. They assume these things, and all of science’s equations rely on this deliberate oversight.

What Time Is It?

Heidegger also noted that people use the word ‘time’ in different ways. Time is money, for example. Time can mean the chronology of a series of historical events. Having the time of your life is an emotional state.

But in reductionist science, time refers to the duration of a motion from point A to B, such as a trip from Amsterdam to Rotterdam. Is this version of time a physical particle? Then how come the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has never found evidence for the existence of a time particle? 

The peculiar truth is that it never crossed the minds of the staff at the LHC to even look for a time particle. As I mentioned, scientists assume the existence of time. They don’t question it, for questioning the nature of time means to deconstruct the scientific worldview that relies on it.

What’s the Matter?

A material science must explain reality in terms of material particles and the energies that set them in motion. How did motion come from Nothing? Well, with a Big Bang! By doing away with a divine First Mover, a God, scientists have reduced our reality to a lifeless material thing.

The message is: People should subordinate themselves to the unquestioning authority of the physical sciences. As a philosopher, it’s my job to question authority. If time isn’t a particle, if time and space were rather part of a spiritual or mental dimension, i.e., of our collective imagination, then we must revolt against the modern scientific world.

Heidegger asked, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” If not all that exists in the universe is matter in motion, then there must be something more. Or as Winston Churchill said, “The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. … We are spirits, not animals.” We are men, not machines.

Debunking the Universe

What’s your source, bro? Are there any valid arguments against the scientific worldview other than my uneducated opinion? In my book, Eternal Struggle: Exposing the Scientific Worldview, I offer several arguments debunking materialism. These include:

1. The so-called unchanging laws of physics are really a changing grammar of physical phenomena. The laws of physics are constantly changing in order to describe a changing universe. We know this because the scientific consensus about these laws has always been changing. We have gone through several big paradigm shifts from Euclides to Newton to Einstein. There is no reason to suggest that scientific paradigms will ever stop shifting.

2. A physical universe from Nothing could not have emerged with complete knowledge of its laws and constants at birth. There was (and still is) no hard-drive or Mosaic tablet to inscribe these laws on. The laws of physics governing our universe must, therefore, have evolved over time (as a grammar of phenomena).

3. It is easier for a thinking mind to imagine material reality than for a material reality to randomly give birth to thinking minds. A thinking mind is more likely to come from Nothing than a brick-and-mortar universe, since thoughts, like the Nothingness, don’t require physical reality. (People who have had out-of-body experiences will agree.) The universe we are living in is, therefore, more likely to be of a mental origin.

4. A mental universe from Nothing has a greater chance of survival than a physical universe from Nothing. A physical universe, after all, needs to be born with the perfect laws and constants. It has a chance of 1-in-infinity to exist and survive for 13.6 billion years. A thinking universe, however, can use trial-and-error to prevent itself from falling back into the Nothingness.

(I don’t think the universe is a computer simulation. Rather, the universe is a thinking mind, or possibly a collection of minds: ours!)

Mind over Matter, Matter in Mind?

Near the end of his life, Heidegger broke with his seminal work Sein und Zeit, calling its academic direction “a mistake”. Instead, he now favored a belief that everything in existence in the universe is perception and imagination. People merely imagine the matter in motion.

Modern man has grown tired of the laws and constants governing his economic life. We have been raised to be professional desk-sitters waiting for upward mobility. But modern man himself first imagined the laws and constants that now restrict him. To put it bluntly, we have built a prison around God. 

It’s time to plan our escape. We have the power to imagine the world differently. The traditionalist Right can deconstruct the materialist worldview by forcing a paradigm shift, namely by demanding that scientists finally reveal the sources for their unproven assumptions.

Destiny of Man, Man’s Destination?

The scientific worldview with its utopian-Marxist belief in progress has served an economic purpose. Materialism helped humanity produce tremendous wealth. However, “machinery that gives abundance has left us in want,” said Charlie Chaplin.

We have been obsessed with economics at the expense of our spiritual well-being. We have been traveling faster than ever without reaching any destination—because we were running away from it. A return to spirituality means a return to humanity. A return to tradition means to start thinking for ourselves again.

Material science, in the end, was a tool in the service of life, not the other way around. We have been educated.