Slashdot Mirror
How Our Botched Understanding of "Science" Ruins Everything
An anonymous reader writes "Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes at The Week, "If you ask most people what science is, they will give you an answer that looks a lot like Aristotelian 'science' — i.e., the exact opposite of what modern science actually is. Capital-S Science is the pursuit of capital-T Truth. And science is something that cannot possibly be understood by mere mortals. It delivers wonders. It has high priests. It has an ideology that must be obeyed. This leads us astray. ... Countless academic disciplines have been wrecked by professors' urges to look 'more scientific' by, like a cargo cult, adopting the externals of Baconian science (math, impenetrable jargon, peer-reviewed journals) without the substance and hoping it will produce better knowledge. ... This is how you get people asserting that 'science' commands this or that public policy decision, even though with very few exceptions, almost none of the policy options we as a polity have have been tested through experiment (or can be). People think that a study that uses statistical wizardry to show correlations between two things is 'scientific' because it uses high school math and was done by someone in a university building, except that, correctly speaking, it is not. ... This is how you get the phenomenon ... thinking science has made God irrelevant, even though, by definition, religion concerns the ultimate causes of things and, again, by definition, science cannot tell you about them. ... It also means that for all our bleating about 'science' we live in an astonishingly unscientific and anti-scientific society. We have plenty of anti-science people, but most of our 'pro-science' people are really pro-magic (and therefore anti-science). "
As much as it may hurt _your_ beliefs, GP raises a point that many other "scientifically" minded people have been raising for some time. We can rarely have rational debate about numerous topics, which means that some of our "science" is really just bias. They even provide an example, which I think is a great one.
Science has not answered the question of whether or not the Universe requires something in order to exist. Philosophy has attempted to answer that question for over two thousand years, and any honest Philosopher will tell you the same thing. "There is no proof, but it's a rational conclusion to believe that something did cause the Universe to exist. At least as rational as the thought that a Universe could spring up out of nowhere from nothing."
Many atheists can't, or refuse to, separate Religion from the Philosophical question regarding the origin of the Universe. The second argument from the same or similar set of atheists is a claim "the question does not matter". The former does not follow the Socratic Method or Scientific Method. The latter is about as unscientific as you can get, discouraging investigation and discovery (No, it's not about _you_ it's about discouraging others from pursuing the question). In reality, this one question is an exceptional question for training the mind to think critically, debate, and begin to question ethics and morals.
The question regarding the origin of the Universe is just one question where bias takes charge and science is put in the background. Vaccines, GMO foods, and Global Warming are other areas that are so entrenched with bias that it is nearly impossible to debate any of these topics rationally.
Anyone that dares to challenge the status quo is attacked and ostracized. If they have arguments that are really good, they are ignored and black listed from media. Society has gone through many phases just like this one previously, as a true Philosophy I study everything including History.
I can almost assure you that this post will be censored by people with mod points, and I will receive plenty of attacks (most likely from the anonymous cowards). Not because this post is offensive, in fact I was very cautious in wording, but because it challenges the status quo.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I have a sense of rightness that derives from empathy.
The irony of my own atheism is that not believing I have a sky daddy on my side has left me inclined to turn the other cheek, to be kind to other people, and so on like that. I can't, in good conscience, just dump the fat 45 year old wife who bores me intellectually and sexually, and consumes ravenous quantities of my income in ways that are of no benefit to myself. I can't even put down this wretched old dog who will just stand there looking you in the eye while taking a shit in the living room, who has been limping along in poor health for years, but still has a happy enough life. The dog is 20 years old, the same as the marriage, and I've been waiting for both of them to die of natural causes for the longest time now. I can't bring myself to put either one out of my misery, even though the misery is considerable, and the only real consolation I have is that I'm doing the right thing in martyring myself this way. Somehow the idea of allowing my own happiness to be a priority is a concept that never made its way into my atheistic ethos.
In contrast, one of my best friends is a deeply religious true believer who can attest, with no irony at all, that "every word in the Bible is the literal truth." I've thrown the full weight of the Skeptic's Annotated Bible at him, and he has an answer, an explanation, a dodge, or an excuse for absolutely every last line item. I couldn't believe the things he does if I wanted to, but it certainly has led to a sharply contrasting life. I suppose I keep him around in order to live vicariously through him. When you have Sky Daddy on your side, you can do anything and call it moral. He used to own a brothel in Mexico, and he was involved in sex trafficking operations whereby rural farm girls were lured to the city under false pretenses, and forced to work off their debt in the brothel. He dumped his old fat wife for a fresh young third world farm girl who worships him like a king, and is genuinely happy to do so. That's the hell of it right there. I've talked to his wife plenty of times. I know quite a lot about misery and abuse, and I see none present in her. She's really happy, beautiful, and servile. The only time I've seen her unhappy was when my friend forgot to let her perform some minor service or other for him, and did it himself instead.
The contrast between our lives is amazing. We have the same job and work the same 70 hours a week. He gets worshiped as a king, and I get walked on by a fat woman and then come home to clean up dog shit every day. If I could just suspend my disbelief and embrace this goofy Sky Daddy stuff, then I could become a sociopath too, and as a sociopath, I could be happy to shoot the dog, divorce the wife, and get me one of those servile young slave women from abroad. What man wouldn't want to come home to dinner and a blowjob seven nights a week? Me, apparently. I'd rather let a fat woman walk all over me, spend all my money, and keep me on an eternal debt treadmill, because it's kind thing to do, and the kind thing is always the right thing. That's what my atheist mother taught me; a fat woman who did the same thing to my poor meek father.
Sigh.