Posted on 01/29/2009 2:04:50 PM PST by Sopater
Exposing Scientism
In his inaugural address, President Obama said he would “restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality.” By this, many suspect he means to spend taxpayer money on embryonic stem cell research, which destroys humans at the embryonic stage.
Evidently, President Obama has been listening to those who want research funded, some because they are driven by greed but many others driven by a dangerous worldview called scientism.
As Nancy Pearcey and I write in our book, How Now Shall We Live?, scientism has its roots in Darwinism. Tufts University professor Daniel Dennett writes that Darwinism, rightly understood, is a “universal acid” that dissolves away all traditional moral, metaphysical, and religious beliefs. For if humans have evolved by a material, purposeless process, then there is no basis for believing in a God who created us and revealed moral truths, or imposing those moral views in any area of life.
Dennett is using a common tactic—using science as a weapon to shoot down religious faith. The standard assumption is that science is objective knowledge, while religion is an expression of subjective need. Religion, therefore, must subordinate its claims about the world to whatever science decrees.
Scientism assumes that science is the controlling reality about life, so anything that can be validated scientifically ought to be done. Other things are subjective fantasy—like love, beauty, good, evil, conscience, ethics.
So science, which originally simply meant the study of the natural world, has in this view been conflated with scientific naturalism, a philosophy that the natural world is all that exists.
Humans are reduced to “objects” that can be inspected, experimented on, and ultimately controlled. In 1922, G.K. Chesterton warned that scientism had become a “creed” taking over our institutions, a “system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics.”
C.S. Lewis warned that the rise of scientific naturalism would lead to “the abolition of man,” for it denies the reality of those things central to our humanity: a sense of right and wrong, of purpose, of beauty, of God.
And if we deny the things that make us truly human, by definition we create a culture that is inhuman—a culture that, for example, embraces moral horrors like the killing of humans at the earliest stage of life on the spurious grounds that doing so might cure other people’s diseases. Or cloning. Or medical experiments on humans, as the Nazis conducted.
Our task is to expose the flaws in scientific naturalism—not because we are against science but because we want it to fill its proper role as a means of investigating God’s world and alleviating suffering within ethical boundaries.
And it’s right that we should be doing this because it was a Christian view of reality that led to the scientific method, investigating all the things God has created.
I hope that the President, in using those words, understood the difference between good science and scientism.
Obama’s science, bought and paid for.
Where do you wish to draw the line of which science should not cross?
When it crosses over to philosophy.
As if there was a hard black line between “science” and “philosophy”!
Generally, this translates into “I don’t like the conclusion, therefore it’s not science”.
Nothing about that is "putting science in it's rightful place."
Science is an ONGOING process of understanding. NOT a policy.
Especially you and your ilk.
1. Whenever the scientific method fails it.
2. Whenever ethical norms are violated.
Darwinism, for example, is fine when it explains artificial selection within the given created species. We observe that with dogs and plants. That’s scientific method. It fails to explain origin of species: we do not observe one complex species mutating into another stable species.
Medical science cures disease. That is fine. Contraception cures no disease, it breaks what works. That is not fine. Abortion and embryonic stem cell research kill human life. That is not good either.
Or crosses over to politics. Evolutionist agitprop in schools, for example, has nothing to do with understanding origins of species, and a lot to do with dumbing down the young.
Colson needs to stop confusing what he sees at 3 AM on The Late Late B-Movie Show with a science documentary.
It adjusts the functioning of the body to the user's wishes, just like any of a thousand other technological advances.
>>As if there was a hard black line between “science” and “philosophy”!
Generally, this translates into “I don’t like the conclusion, therefore it’s not science”.
Traditionally, Philosophy IS a science, the organized body of knowledge that attempts to explain everything in terms of ultimate causes. What in the modern world has come to be regarded as “science” is a subset of Philosophy, that is an organized body of knowledge that attempts to explain natural things in terms of contingent causes.
I assume that you've sent congratulatory messages to the O. J. Simpson criminal jury for doing the right thing?
After all, not a single witness observed him murdering anyone; ergo, he was innoncent.
All the above.
It is science if it is testable. If it is not testable, it is philosophy.
In his inaugural address, President Obama said he would “restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality.”
NewSpeak for a further denigration of religious values, elevation of secular humanism, and an increase in taxes to cover the gamut of Statist programs. This has been a failure everywhere it’s been tried, but it seems that everyone in America these days is intent on ignoring the lessons of history and reinventing the wheel. Santayana comes to mind; however, the intervening disaster will be - and has already become - catastrophic for the nation and its people.
What should scientists do if an unexpected discovery steps on someone else's philosophical toes?
Other technolocal advances enhance an existing function: we move faster by plane, see farther with communications, etc. Contraception would be similar to a technological “advance” such as a ball and chain on the leg.
And what of the philosophers that will not let it be?
I'll take fossil evidence just like the O.J. jury should have taken the forensic evidence. Trouble for the evo faithful is, the fossil evidence points away from their theory: distinct species are found, a continuum of transitional species is not found.
Wrong. A distinct continuum of transitional fossils is found. Intellectually dishonest creationists respond to each B discovered between A and C by proclaiming that there are now two “gaps” (A-B and B-C) in place of one (A-C).
In fact, it is similar to decongestants (disabling the natural but inconvenient production of mucus when afflicted by a rhinovirus), analgesics (disabling the natural but inconvenient pain of an injury after one has done what one can to heal it), diet food (disabling the natural but inconvenient calorie content associated with natural sweet tastes), et cetera.
C.S. Lewis warned that the rise of scientific naturalism would lead to “the abolition of man,” for it denies the reality of those things central to our humanity: a sense of right and wrong, of purpose, of beauty, of God.
I'm not sure. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, but it's hard to ignore the torches and pitchforks, too.
Maybe there are two gaps. To prove transition one needs a statistical continuum:
100% A zero B
90% A 10% B
...
10% A 90% B
...
0% A 100% B
, each group should be in roughly the same number, and the 10% increment should be observedly surmountable. To find something similar to both A and B, yet distionct from both A and B is not that.
For example, most cars on the road are pretty much alike. That is because they have an intelligent designer who works toward similar design goals. A Ford sedan is pretty much like a Chevy sedan. If one had a hypothesis that Fords get together on top of each other and make a car that is a Ford but it is a little bit like a Chevy we need evidence of such transition step by step.
Excessive mucus, obesity, etc. are diseases. Pain is a componenet of a disease. Pregnancy is not a disease at all.
What scientists did the church throw into prison? The term “scientist” was not even used until about the turn of the 19th century. Before then people who engaged in research about nature were just another class of philosophers, called “natural philosophers.” And what relevance does something which allegedly happened centuries ago have with today’s situation? No one today is seriously threatening science, which is now a multi-billion-dollar enterprise employing tens of thousands of people.
The National Socialists also elevated “science to its rightful place,” conducting medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Some of those experiments really were intended to promote health, or at least such things as survival of German pilots downed in frigid waters. So 0bama is not the first socialist to advocate sacrificing helpless people in order to improve outcomes for the favored class.
Actual, in some branches of philosophy, like logic, a proposition can be tested according to the rules of the system, just as in math.
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Learn the difference between slander and libel first, pinhead.
Thanks Val.
True. The difference is that Philosophy tests ideas while science tests the physical world.
Nope. Mucus production is a natural line of defense. Fat storage is a natural bodily process for surviving famine. Pain is a natural warning signal. If there is no moral objection to forestalling them, there can also be no moral objection to forestalling any inconvenient bodily reaction.
No.
Now, sue me.
Another example of the failure of your argument is the various forms of boner pills. Sorry, but by your argument a man is ahead of the game just by living to be 60 — being able to keep getting it up at that point just isn’t natural.
But mucus would not be there if the disease were not there; obesity would not be there if famine were not in the genetic memory. Both flu and famine are bad things. As we fix bad things, part of the spectrum is to fix the aftereffects of the bad things.
Erectile disfunction is, again, a disfunction, by definition.
No analogy to contraception.
Someone without mucus in his respiratory system would be in far more misery than a mere cold.
obesity would not be there if famine were not in the genetic memory
So? Pretty much every feature of the body is there to overcome the difficulties of survival in an unfreindly world. For example, if food just wandered by, no means of locomotion would be required (and, in fact, there are sessile creatures that do just fine in environments where food does just wander by).
Both flu and famine are bad things.
As is unwanted pregnancy.
Erectile disfunction is, again, a disfunction, by definition.
Being unable to get it up at age 70 the way one could at 20 is no more a "dysfunction" than being unable to run a five-minute mile at 70 the way one could at 20. (Actually, with the advance of medical technology, aging may eventually be overcome... to the loud protests of people who consider artificial anagathics to be as "unnatural" as artifical contraception.)
Unwanted pregnancy is not bad thing. It is a good thing that is unwanted.
My wife and I recently talked, what would we do if we won a large house in a TV contest. We discovered that the tax obligation would probably bring us to financial ruin. That would be a good thing that is reasonably unwanted.
Aging and disease, in contrast, are bad things.
Just like fat and nasal mucus.
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