Bulletin Articles
“Falsely Called Knowledge”
Categories: Iron sharpens ironO Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith.
(1 Timothy 5.20-21, KJV)
Even in childhood I loved science, so it was alarming to find God condemning it. It didn’t help that I only read from the King James Version, and foolishly thought other versions like the New American Standard, New International, or even the New King James, were dumbed down Bibles for people too stupid to understand the real word of God. I grew up and realized how ridiculous that was, and was relieved to reconcile science with faith through better translations such as, “contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge’” (v20). That’s it, the problem isn’t science! The problem is when people think they know something, but really don’t.
This was further explained by the etymology of science, which comes from the Latin scio, meaning “I know.” But later still, I realized that—although for woefully wrong reasons—my childish interpretation of this passage hadn’t been all that far off the mark.
Take, for example, the recent history of teaching kids how to read. The traditional method was to sound out words, one letter at a time; but in the 80s and 90s it was widely replaced with a new style, “cueing.” We can decipher all sorts of nonsense, as long as we have sufficient contextual cues.
Do yuo uednratnsd tihs snetecne?
You probably didn’t have much trouble with it. As long as the first letter is in the right place (and ideally the last one), you can guess what jumbled words are supposed to say pretty well. I’d heard of kids reading this way, and thought it was just laziness—a failure to apply the lessons given by teachers. But no, cueing was the accepted institutional method to teach reading, for the last several decades! I don’t remember being subjected to this drivel myself, but my mother had taught me to read before I entered kindergarten, so I daydreamed (or read) through those lessons.
Yet I’ve also heard of several peers who reached 3rd or 4th grade, at which point their parents had to re-teach them how to read, one letter at a time, because this newfangled curriculum was so terrible. How did this happen? Well, a language scientist named Ken Goodman formulated a theory based on his research, and other scientists like Marie Clay and Lucy Calkins developed curricula based on that theory and their own related research. These scientists had concluded that cueing was a better way to teach reading. Despite every tradition reaching back to the invention of writing around 3,000 BC, modern science had found a better way!
Of course, literacy plummeted. I could bore you with statistics, but for a more visceral demonstration, read a children’s book from the mid-20th century or before—say, C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Orwell’s Animal Farm, R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island, or Kipling’s Jungle Book. All of these were aimed at upper grade school aged children, and you’ll probably find them more difficult than most adult-oriented literature produced in the past twenty years. It’s not just outdated diction. The vocabulary was larger, the sentences longer and more complex.
Eventually people started noticing this. Other scientists tried to raise the alarm, but nothing happened, until covid lockdowns put parents in the same room as their kids during Zoom school. Parents were shocked, and raised a fuss, finally creating enough momentum to legislate this trash out of most classrooms. A more scientific approach is becoming more common. What is that more scientific approach? It’s the same one people used ever since the invention of writing, until science messed everything up in the first place.
What’s the point of this little story? Simply that a generation of scientists rejected the wisdom of their forebears, and made a rotten mess of the very thing they promised to fix. Parents—representatives of tradition—saw what was going on, and exercised common sense to diagnose the problem and fix it; and then it was proclaimed that science had won out over ignorance! How absurd! Real science and knowledge are wonderful! But many people have rejected God, and pledged their devotion to science instead. By its very nature, science is a process of trial and error, slowly uncovering the truth; yet whatever new ideas scientists proclaim are immediately accepted by those who have set up science as an idol to replace God. Scientists blunder, and in time are corrected; in the meantime, great mobs are led into folly. Often these idolaters will mock those who disagree, calling them stupid. When the science comes back around to proclaim what the holdouts always knew, the idolaters still mock them for not having previously believed what they themselves now acknowledge to be false—if science itself was wrong, why should I be embarrassed to have been likewise mistaken?
These idolaters worship a god that can contradict itself with impunity and fail repeatedly without losing its worshipers’ trust. It deserves the same contempt Elijah had for Ba’al and his worshipers.
“Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”
(1 Kings 18.27)
Knowledge is wonderful, and science has its place; but they are tools to be wielded, not gods to be worshipped. Worship the Lord,
who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever…
(Psalm 146.6)
Jeremy Nettles
