Are scientists becoming the new priests?

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | September 7, 2011 | Debra J. Saunders

[Oldeconomybuyer]

"I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy," GOP presidential hopeful and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman recently tweeted. You've got to hand it to Huntsman - he sure knows how to endear himself to folks who won't vote in the Republican primary.

Huntsman has said that he fears that the GOP will be perceived as the "antiscience party." That is, he gave a nod to Democrats' conceit that theirs is the party of science. Why? Because the Dems don't tolerate questions about evolution or global warming.

As then-Delaware state climatologist David Legates told me in 2007, he would tell students who were not global-warming true believers, "If you don't have tenure at a major research university, keep your mouth shut."

Huntsman's reverential tone, however, suggests that university science departments are havens of harmony, with scientists as priest-like figures to whose greater wisdom the public should defer.

With scientists on this pedestal, who needs religion?

And as recent events have shown, not all scientists are above the political fray.

Consider Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist. In 2009, Chu's staff approved $535 million loan guarantee to the Fremont solar company, Solyndra. Within two years, despite half a billion in taxpayer dollars, Solyndra announced last week it was filing for bankruptcy, shuttering its remaining plant, and laying off 1,100 workers. That was one miscalculation. Mistakes happen.

But the biggest blunder was not made by a scientist, but by a politician who so trusted the hollow promises of the climate-change lobby that he bet the U.S. economy on green jobs that never did proliferate. That was President Obama, and you see the fruit of his misguided faith.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I think there are a few, simple rules that any intelligent person can use to determine if something alleged to be scientific is indeed scientific, or if it is a corrupt effort with fake science intended to justify an agenda.

1) Does it use the scientific method, or does it rely on consensus opinion, anecdote, non-repeatable or non-verifiable observations controlled by the individual, data adjustments, incestuous peer review, conclusion-interested funding, conflicts of interest, or in support of strongly voiced opinions on the part of the author?

2) Is the publication just the data and the outcome in a scientific publication, or does it have any of the following: the assumption of controversial axioms as proven, conclusions based on interpolation or extrapolation of data, recommendations as to changes that need to be made to public policy, not just criticism of other criticism but condemnation of other criticism of the subject as illegitimate, publication in non-scientific literature describing conclusions not reached in a previous scientific paper.

3) Use of common Fallacious Arguments.

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html

[Cronos]

This is like Foundation! Any Asimov fans here?

[Alamo-Girl]

If a theory of everything can explain everything, but they still don’t know the purpose of a soul, then the theory would seem to be deficient. The belief or actual existence of a soul would be by itself something that was OUTSIDE the bounds of a simple theory based on mechanics, no matter how complex those mechanics are.

Now on the surface here it sounds like we have a contradiction. But we know mathematically, that there are certain theorems that are simply unprovable. We know they are either right or wrong, but we also know that there is no way to prove which using mathematics.

I would ask a question along the lines of “Does that fact in some manner operate like religious faith? If we believe the theorem is right, does that somehow make it so, even though it is still unprovable through normal modes?”

Outstanding insights, djf!

And I suspect it does indeed make the theorem so in the "eyes of the observer" who sees what he believes.

At the root, man can never become an objective observer because he is part of the observation.

[betty boop]

“What happens if/when we have a TOE (theory of everything) and I am able to use it to explain whatever — how a person voted, why they like a certain kind of food, whatever. WHAT THEN is the purpose of believing in something like a soul?

In a way, he’s answering his own question without realizing it.

Looks that way to me too, djf — great catch! For as you explain

If a theory of everything can explain everything, but they still don’t know the purpose of a soul, then the theory would seem to be deficient. The belief or actual existence of a soul would be by itself something that was OUTSIDE the bounds of a simple theory based on mechanics, no matter how complex those mechanics are.

But it's even worse than that. The way such "thinkers" set up the problem, they don't have to ask what the "purpose" of the soul is, because they outright deny the existence of the soul in the first place.

So the unarticulated first premise of this operation is "no soul." In order to hold this premise it is necessary to hold seven millennia (at least) of universal human experience as "no data."

The "existence of the soul" is not something that science can directly prove. And yet we know from the archeological and cultural records that human beings everywhere, at all times, irrespective of geography, had and have funerary customs and rites. The common-denominator here is that all these peoples were engaging in practices designed to help the soul of the departed in its transit from this life into some other life. Human beings at all times, of all cultures and places, didn't simply dispose of their dead by dumping them into the garbage, as if they were dead "refuse." (We had to wait till the [increasingly Godless] twentieth century to see behavior like that on a wide scale.)

In short, at no time before very recent times did people think human beings were "just" their physical bodies, just a bunch of chemicals, matter in its motions according to purely natural laws.

But history can be very inconvenient for people who want to play "no-soul" mind-games like this. So they simply "dispose" of history; they drop it down the rathole of human memory, never to be seen again...they hope. :^)

Kinda reminds me of a recent interview of a doctoral candidate in geology conducted by Bill O'Reilly on his show, though in a slightly different way. Bill invited this "advanced scholar" on to discuss his doctoral thesis, which argues that extraterrestrial intelligent beings might possibly exist; and therefore we can model scenarios describing what forms "contact" by these beings with humans on Earth might take. And we should do this, simply because such contacts are "possible."

Moving from his initial premise that such beings exist, he then goes on to tell us that they would be ever so much more technologically advanced than we are. But here's the pièce de résistance: They will know that earthlings are becoming more powerful and technologically advanced simply by monitoring our carbon emissions. It is postulated that these alien beings would be threatened by a more powerful humanity on Earth. And thus they would swoop in and "punish us" — in effect, for our "anthropogenic global warming."

Both of the above "mind-games" are premised on a "what if?" But it seems to me that a "what if" is a pretty flimsy premise to hang your hat on if it has to carry the day against actual historical evidence, human experience, logic, and reason. Which IMHO is what both these "thinkers" are trying to do.

Anyhoot, the Ph.D. candidate winds up his remarks, and O'Reilly tells him that, were he grading the thesis, he'd give the candidate an "F" — largely, I gather, on the basis of the exacrable logic of the piece.

And I'm still scratching my head: What does any of this have to do with geology?

Anyhoot, it didn't seem to me that the piece re: advanced extraterrestials who fear the rise of a humanity with "hegemonic" inclinations could possibly be regarded as coming within a mile of respectable science....

Science fiction — maybe.

Back to first guy. It seems to me his problem is pretty simple. He simply, flatly denies that he has a soul; and needs to find a scientific "explanation" for how he can still function as a living being without one. And when he does, he'll let us know. Then he'll gladly preach the new, scientifically-blessed doctrine to the rest of us....

Of course, I think both these "scientists" are madmen....

Thank you ever so much, djf, for your outstanding analysis!

[Jack of all Trades]

Science is a method
Religion is a worldview

[bert]

The scientists are not worried about the priests but the priests are threatened by the scientists

[betty boop]

Parts of the universe are known. Parts are unknown. And some of the unknown is knowable. But some of the unknown, we can NEVER know. No matter what we do or believe.

I should have underscored this point in my last.

I not only believe this is true, but — judging from my own capabilities at least — I know it to be true.

Thank you, dear djf, for your splendid insight!

p.s.: I apologize for misspelling execrable.

[Alamo-Girl]

In short, at no time before very recent times did people think human beings were "just" their physical bodies, just a bunch of chemicals, matter in its motions according to purely natural laws.

But history can be very inconvenient for people who want to play "no-soul" mind-games like this. So they simply "dispose" of history; they drop it down the rathole of human memory, never to be seen again...they hope. :^)

SO very true, dearest sister in Christ!

Truly man is not the sum of his physical parts.

"Information theory and molecular biology" should make it obvious but as you say, they like to ignore the inconvenient. LOLOL!

Thank you so much for all of your wonderful essay-posts!

[metmom]

Science is a method Religion is a worldview

The scientific method is a method.

The naturalism that scientists demand that science be based on is a worldview as well.

Science has, in effect, become a worldview.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Here is a good discussion of the subject. An excerpt:

Global Warming: The Campus Non-Debate

I do not want us to shut down economic drive to support false science, and on the other hand, I do not want to leave behind a scorched earth.  …. Let's get the science right!  A better debate and research is needed by honest and believable scientists who study climate professionally.

Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

                                       By Russell K. Nieli

 Is the earth in a global warming phase?  If it is, how severe is this trend? Is the warming primarily a product of natural causes or do man-made factors play a dominant role?  If man-made factors are important, is the main culprit the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced from the burning of fossil fuels or are other factors more salient?  What is the evidence for and against the anthropogenic and CO2 theories of global warming? If we really are in a period of sustained global warming, will this trend prove a net benefit or a net loss to human welfare?  Who would benefit and who would be harmed by an increase in atmospheric CO2, the greater plant growth this facilitates, and a general increase in global temperatures? If the burning of fossil fuels is a major contributor to global warming, and if such warming harms many more people than it helps, is the radical curtailment of fossil-fuel dependence a politically and economically feasible response to the problem?  Is it feasible not only in the developed world but in developing regions like India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil?  If the radical curtailment of CO2 emissions cannot be obtained on a worldwide scale either for political or economic reasons, and if global warming proves to be the serious threat to human welfare that some contend, are there economically and scientifically feasible geo-engineering alternatives that could stop the warming or cool the planet down?  What might some of these geo-engineering alternatives be and how could they be implemented?

These are just some of the questions that need to be asked and debated in the ongoing controversy about global climate change.  Alas, they are rarely asked today on college campuses due to what can only be described as the stifling dominance of a smug orthodoxy that is so cocksure of itself -- and of the general ignorance and malevolence of its critics -- that genuine debate and interchange between divergent viewpoints rarely takes place.  So dominant is this orthodoxy that many college students today have never heard the case made by a responsible scientist against what we might call the dominant Gore-Hansen Model of anthropogenic global warming -- the model so effectively propagated by former Vice-President Al Gore in his 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and by physicist and global warming activist James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  While many critics of the Gore-Hansen Model would love to debate its defenders on college campuses, they are almost never asked, and the science on the issue is simply considered settled and incontrovertible. Critics of the reigning orthodoxy are arrogantly dismissed as crackpots, tools of the oil industry, or the climatological equivalent of Holocaust deniers.

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2011/09/global_warming_the_campus_non-.html

[Mind-numbed Robot]

How long until High Priest Algore demands we throw virgins into volcanos to appease Goddess Gaia?

Before or after he demands a massage and that they, "Take care of this!"

[Little Ray]

“Back off man. I’m a scientist.”

Didn’t work for Venkman, doesn’t work with me, either.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Greenhouse gas theory is settled and CO2 increases will cause some slight warming. Manmade CO2 releases cause most of the observed atmospheric CO2 increases.

Then why was the CO2 level 10-15 times higher during the Little Ice Age? No men and no warming. Go tho the link I left above for some good info.

[djf]

Please don’t get me wrong about Albert, his book “Quantum Mechanics and Experience” is very, very interesting, and I suggest getting it if you can.

Not that his conclusions are any different from the standard model.

But his methods and examples are very refreshing. I have always been quite a student of heuristics, partly because of course it helps us learn about the outside world, but also because it gives us insight into our own thought processes and leads us a little bit closer to answering the question “What is knowledge??”

In my mind, the biggest question of all.

I am currently chewing on “Beyond Einsteins Unified Field: Gravity and Electromagnetism Redefined” By John Brandenburg.

Apparently, if the shorts and premise of the book is correct, we now have a complete unification theory of gravity and electromagnetism.

Which might be telling us a little bit about why they retired the shuttle...

;-)

[YHAOS]

"Science is a method"

A method of what?

[palmer]

CO2 wasn’t higher in the Little Ice Age and certainly not 10-15 times higher. There were prior periods in earth’s history when CO2 was 10 times higher or more and I believe some of those were cold (or at least not excessively warm). Those were millions of years ago. So there is paleohistorical support, but not historical support (although there are cases of spot measurements made in the 1800’s being high from local conditions).

[Mind-numbed Robot]

From the link I provided:

The atmospheric CO2 concentration was many times higher than today in almost all earlier geologic periods when no runaway greenhouse effect occurred. For example, during the Jurassic period the CO2 concentration was at least 10 times higher than today, and during the Cambrian period it was at least 10-15 times higher than today. Interestingly, during the late Ordovician period the earth experienced an extremely cold glacial period despite the fact that the CO2 concentration was at least 10 times higher than today.

Do you disagree with that? I am not exactly sure which part of that was the Little Ice Age but CO2 was extremely high during long periods before man ever entered the scene.

I first responded to this comment by you:

Greenhouse gas theory is settled and CO2 increases will cause some slight warming. Manmade CO2 releases cause most of the observed atmospheric CO2 increases.

The link provided disagrees that greenhouse gas theory is settled. In fact, the purpose of the discussion is to explore why it was quickly declared settled without the normal scientific inquiry and why those who did not want to rush to judgement are vilified. Why were many scientists who were listed as in agreement later to declare that they were never asked nor do they agree. Also many of the scientists listed as in agreement are not scientists in that field at all. That deception itself raises doubt about the conclusions of the AGW crowd.

I encourage you to go to the link. It is not a political blog. It is a scientific one.

I am also not sure of why you are distinguishing between historic and geologic records. Surely certain historic records are as questionable as interpretations of geological data.

[palmer]

From your link: "For example, during the Jurassic period the CO2 concentration was at least 10 times higher than today, and during the Cambrian period it was at least 10-15 times higher than today"

That is also my understanding.

[palmer]

Here's a decent plot

I think we are on the same page about CO2 concentrations, only that "The Little Ice Age" is defined as sometime in the 1800's more or less.

The link provided disagrees that greenhouse gas theory is settled.

Technically true. But lots of parts of it are settled like the warming action of GHG. But it is also true that there is dispute over whether the current rise in CO2 will cause any warming (some argue cooling). Personally I believe the physics points to some warming as shown by line by line models.

[Gene Eric]

>> Huntsman has said that he fears that the GOP will be perceived as the “antiscience party.”

While the jerk instructs NASA to focus on Islam.