Individuals with standing in a particular professional field sometimes feel free, or even obligated, to cloak themselves in the authority of their area of expertise and make grandiose statements such as this by a professor of biological sciences:
Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear …. There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That's the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.
Logically viewed, this statement is simply laughable. Nowhere within the published, peer-reviewed literature of biology—even evolutionary biology—do any of the statement of which the professor is "absolutely certain" appear as valid conclusions of sound research. One trembles to think that an expert in the field would not know this or else would feel free to disregard it. Biology as a field of research and knowledge is not even about such issues. It simply does not deal with them. They do not fall within the provinces of responsibilities. Yet it is very common to hear such declamations about the state of the universe offered up in lectures and writings by specialists in certain areas who have a missionary zeal for their personal causes.
