Thank goodness for research and science. In the past four months, I’ve learned all sorts of things.
1. In January, I learned that young adults as well as teenagers drink more under the influence of alcohol advertising. Last month, researchers discovered that children who are exposed to sexual behavior on TV are more likely to engage in that type of behavior.
2. In February, a study found that great abstinence of young people in Zimbabwe probably caused a sharp decline in HIV virus infections in the South African country.
3. In December, I learned that University of Minnesota researchers discovered that rude drivers are often inconsiderate in other areas of their lives.
4. Earlier this month, German researchers discovered that people govern their monetary actions based on awards and punishments.
5. And then last week, the BBC reported that scientists have discovered that men become less adept decision-makers when sexually aroused.
These are amazing revelations, and they only cost a couple of million dollars to figure out. It reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s observation about psychology. Psychoanalysts, he said, “are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are.”
All of the research results listed above are mere common sense. Not surprisingly, every one of those uncovered truths has been recognized by the Catholic Church for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Consider each of them (the numbers below correspond to the numbers above):
1. If you know what a millstone is and how heavy weights work in deep waters, you know that Jesus said youth should be protected from sinful influence. See Matthew 18:6.
2. The Church has consistently condemned sexual excess, from all angles: spiritual, emotional, and physical. No theologian is surprised that illicit sex causes death and suffering.
3. All sin is one: it comes from selfishness, which is another way of saying it comes from a lack of humility. If a person acutely suffers from a particular sin (here, rude driving), he in all likelihood suffers from acute selfishness/pride in general, with the result that it’ll show in other areas of his life.
4. This isn’t necessarily a religious truth, but such basic economic laws were recognized early by the Spanish Scholastics; John Paul II recognized the validity of economic laws (even if condemning their excess indulgence) in his encyclicals.
5. This is nothing less than the principle of connaturality: passion affects thinking. If you’re impassioned, you’re not going to think clearly. This fundamental truth was recognized by the Stoics, carried into Christianity, and universally recognized until the lunacy of modern times.
Why do we need research to teach us such common-sense things?
And the answer is, we don’t.
Yet we keep getting these vapid research results.
There’s a lot of money in it, after all. Governments and private institutions lavish millions of dollars on researchers who come up with a grabber idea to research. There’s a huge market for such things, so the researchers delve into emotional and spiritual areas (instead of restricting themselves to the physical) in order to come up with research projects.
We live in a world where science has gone wild. It’s known as “scientism”: the idea that science can answer all questions, including spiritual ones. From the proposition that science “can” answer all questions, it’s a short step to the idea that science “must” answer all questions.
And when that short step is taken, no truth can be confirmed without the blessing of science, even if our own Judeo-Christian culture has recognized its fundamental validity for thousands of years.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Daily Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
