song for theme #5A: Scientific Materialism

                                           “Observe and Reason With Me” by Stephen P. Cook

 to be sung to the tune of “Dream a Little Dream of Me” by Brown, Sutton,  Bennett / The Mamas and Papas

Night time stars offer some clue

Day time sky is beautifully blue

In seeking knowledge of whatever you see

Observe and reason with me

Hot gas and nuclear fusion¹

Makes stars shine—that’s science’s conclusion

And Rayleigh scattering² I’m telling you

Explains why the sky is blue!

To understand what Earth’s about, dear

Take geologic time³

Mindless forces, not God’s hand, steer

Continents in their prime-iimmee!

Say goodbye to superstition

And kiss off your own intuition⁴

And from huckster quacks⁵ please flee

Observe and reason with me

To understand what life’s about, dear

Embrace DNA⁶

Mindless forces⁷, not God’s hand⁸ steer

Molecules at play--aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Say goodbye to God delusion⁹

Kiss off this childish confusion

And from mystic quacks¹⁰ please flee

Observe and reason with me¹¹

SONG—NOTES / COMMENTS

1—Inside stars, where temperatures reach many millions of degrees and pressure is staggering, bare hydrogen nuclei are squeezed

      together to form helium in nuclear fusion reactions which liberate energy.

2—A physical law by which shorter wavelength blue light is scattered more than longer wavelength red.

3 — The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.  Around a dozen large tectonic plates (some carrying continents)  move relative to each

       other on its surface. Except during earthquakes when they may lurch forward suddenly, they move at about the same rate your

       fingernails grow: about one inch per year.  So it takes millions of years for this movement to produce noticeable changes.

4— Intuition can be described as immediate insight that occurs without conscious awareness.  Some think of it as a mystical

      process; others see it as a response to very subtle cues and stimuli received unconsciously.

5—Huckster quacks: those peddling pseudoscience—something that seemingly has a scientific basis, but closer examiniation

      shows does not—and making money from it. With money at stake, data contradicting what they’re selling is often ignored.

6— DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid, the gene bearing double helix molecule, is the primary hereditary molecule.  It’s made up of

      millions or billions of pairs of linked subunits (called nucleotides) that, along the length of the molecule, can be specified using

      letters (only possible designations of each individual link: AT, TA, CG, GC) in composing a long genetic code sequence.

7— Forces are pushes or pulls (repulsion or attraction) of physical/chemical origin that matter experiences due to its proximity to

       other matter. The strength of these forces depend on different variables and can be computed by using the relevant equations.

8— God’s hand is a metaphor (vitalist/spiritual view) along with Him providing vital spark or breathing life into inanimate matter.

9—The God Delusion is the title of a book by biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins.

10—Skeptics dismiss  New Age mystic efforts to connect quantum physics with human consciousness, etc, and see  those folks as

       urging others to believe in magic. (Note: the efforts of respected physicists like Roger Penrose are not so easily dismissed!) 

11—Building the scientific conceptual framework by which our species collectively understands the universe, and our place in it,

        is perhaps the ultimate in learning from feedback exploration. Where will it lead? Perhaps, in the words of T.S. Eliot,  “the

        end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Comment: Unless it is studying them, science generally seeks to separate itself from emotions. Scientists taking data or evaluating hypotheses are taught to behave like machines and leave any (sometimes emotion-ally based) biases behind. Anything in a paper submitted to a leading scientific journal that implies you reject this theme #5A will generally bring rejection. Thus many scientists are faced with separating (or reconciling) their cold scientist side from (or with) their warm, emotional, spiritual side. This can be a challenge!