The case against science
For the common belief in the beneficial nature of science rests on an underlying assumption that knowledge of all truth is desirable in all circumstances. But this is far from settled, as intellectuals from Plato to Daniel C. Dennett have frankly expressed their doubts on this score. Even lesser thinkers who have witnessed a child losing its innocent illusions or a family torn apart by the exposure of a long-hidden secret might well share this skepticism.
For if all knowledge is inherently good, then it is a moral imperative to scientifically determine the relative intelligence of Asians and Zulus once and for all. But is everyone really comfortable with the possibility of determining that men are, in scientific fact, intellectually superior to women? Or vice-versa? The cowardice of scientists regarding such controversial subjects, their nominal dedication to absolute scientific truth nothwithstanding, is powerful evidence of their lack of faith in the inherent beneficence of science.
Moreover, for a group of individuals claiming a right to act as a secular priesthood on Man's behalf, scientists demonstrate an aversion for personal responsibility that would shame a child. Consider how the same militant atheists who claim that religious individuals are somehow responsible for the past actions of other religious individuals who do not even happen to share their beliefs simultaneously assert that scientists are not responsible for their personal actions even when those actions provide the means of mass murder or the motivation for embarking upon mass slaughter.
If "religion" is to be held culpable for the Inquisitions and the jihads, "science" is certainly no less culpable for the historical ravages of scientific socialism, the gassings of World War I, the National Socialist Holocaust, the fire-bombings of Tokyo and Dresden and the American abortion atrocity, to say nothing of the possibility of nuclear devastation as well as the inconvenient perils of global warming.
Vox Day
Wow. Nice one, Vox.
Science junkies will miss the subtlety of this one, reacting, as they will, like a fundamentalist Southern Baptist who has just been told that "once saved, always saved" is scripturally questionable. So-called "secular" science is no less a religion than any other faith-based activity. That being the case, why should it not be subject to the same framework of skeptical scrutiny as Christianity or Buddhism?
For if all knowledge is inherently good, then it is a moral imperative to scientifically determine the relative intelligence of Asians and Zulus once and for all. But is everyone really comfortable with the possibility of determining that men are, in scientific fact, intellectually superior to women? Or vice-versa? The cowardice of scientists regarding such controversial subjects, their nominal dedication to absolute scientific truth nothwithstanding, is powerful evidence of their lack of faith in the inherent beneficence of science.
Moreover, for a group of individuals claiming a right to act as a secular priesthood on Man's behalf, scientists demonstrate an aversion for personal responsibility that would shame a child. Consider how the same militant atheists who claim that religious individuals are somehow responsible for the past actions of other religious individuals who do not even happen to share their beliefs simultaneously assert that scientists are not responsible for their personal actions even when those actions provide the means of mass murder or the motivation for embarking upon mass slaughter.
If "religion" is to be held culpable for the Inquisitions and the jihads, "science" is certainly no less culpable for the historical ravages of scientific socialism, the gassings of World War I, the National Socialist Holocaust, the fire-bombings of Tokyo and Dresden and the American abortion atrocity, to say nothing of the possibility of nuclear devastation as well as the inconvenient perils of global warming.
Vox Day
Wow. Nice one, Vox.
Science junkies will miss the subtlety of this one, reacting, as they will, like a fundamentalist Southern Baptist who has just been told that "once saved, always saved" is scripturally questionable. So-called "secular" science is no less a religion than any other faith-based activity. That being the case, why should it not be subject to the same framework of skeptical scrutiny as Christianity or Buddhism?
posted by Anonymous | 12:13 PM
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