A cyber friend brought this article to my attention:
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2004/040902.shtml
Here are some exerpts:
A few days ago George Will wrote a column about the space program that set me thinking. Why is exploring outer space a proper function of the Federal Government, or of government at all?
...In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis observed that the modern schoolboy is conditioned to take one side in a controversy which he has not learned to recognize as a controversy at all. That is, he is trained to assume a materialist and Darwinian outlook, without realizing that materialism and Darwinism have been subject to thoughtful criticisms from their first appearance.
Will, the son of a distinguished philosopher, should know this. He seems to have come a long way from his view of “statecraft as soulcraft.” Or maybe not. Maybe the ultimate in “soulcraft” is explaining away the soul as the product of mere evolving matter. In any case, he hasn’t wavered in his view that old limitations on the role of the state are passé.
If this view is “conservative,” what on earth can the word mean? The space program is fascinating, all right, but is it really the job of government? Why? Does the government’s role now extend to unlocking the ultimate mysteries of life, thereby supplanting centuries of theology and philosophy with samples of rocks and gases from other planets?
If anything is passé, it’s this goggle-eyed worship of physical science. Physical scientists themselves are far from unanimous about materialism as well as Darwinism. If the public has lost interest in space exploration, the likely reason is that we sense that its importance to our lives — and particularly to our defense — has been vastly overblown. Will is unusual, not to say eccentric, in continuing to regard it with a quasi-religious awe.
To expect physical science to crack the secrets of the soul is to commit what some philosophers would call “a category mistake.” Like Hamlet pondering Yorick’s skull, are we to find reflections of our inner selves by contemplating rocks from outer space?
The two major points I would like to point out here are these:
1. Most young people being taught about evolution and the age of the earth and universe have no idea these subjects are controversial among qualified, credentialed scientists. They are taught -- and we have seen evidence of it here -- that anyone disagreeing with what has been taught to them by their esteemed instructors must be somewhere between nuts and insane.
2. Science has no business dealing with anything other than physical phenomena. Anything outside this realm becomes philosphy and religion and cannot be examined scientifically.
I would add, as a retired teacher, the following on my own: the physical phenomena that science does study end up pointing exclusively to the truth of the Bible.