exDemMom: The Soviet Union had almost no use for science, and executed most of its scientists
Spirited: Wrong. Marxist Communists billed themselves as scientific. Their socialism was scientific materialism, punctuated equilibrium, and natural selection applied to man, the question of evil, the question of who should live and who should die,and how man should live:
” Since Marxist dialectic requires a theory with clashes (thesis and antithesis) and leaps (synthesis), Marxists (had) all but abandoned Darwinism and instead...embraced punctuated equilibrium. “Many people confound dialectic with the theory of evolution,” noted G. Plekhanov. “Dialectic is, in fact, a theory of evolution. But it differs profoundly from the vulgar (Darwinian) theory of evolution.” (Fundamental Problems of Marxism, 1929, p. 145, quoted in The Materialist Faith of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism, L. Kimball, American Thinker, Feb. 2008)
The Black Book of Communism has this to say:
“As master of the knowledge of the evolution of social species, Lenin decided who should disappear by virtue of having been condemned to the dustbin of history. From the moment that a decision had been made on a “scientific” basis that the bourgeoisie represented a stage of humanity that had been surpassed, its liquidation as a class and the liquidation of the individuals who actually or supposedly belonged to it could be justified.” p. 752
The authors of The Black Book of Communism concludes that crimes against humanity are the consequence of a scientific-ideology that strips people of their humanity and reduces them to a “particular condition, be it biological, racial, or sociohistorical.” p. 752
The tendency of evolutionary scientistic thinking is to destroy the vision of man as imageo Dei by perceiving him instead as a creature helplessly driven and primarily determined by laws of matter and force, and this was for GK Chesterton a most vile foolishness:
“Something in the evil spirit of our times,” he wrote, “forces people always to pretend to have found some material and mechanical explanation” for their own evil actions and those of others.
Chesterton concluded that the whole host of materialist fallacies derives from the imperialistic arrogation by scientism of the duties, rights, and truths of philosophy.
By virtue of the West’s “sham science” the:
“stupidest or wickedest action is supposed to become reasonable or respectable, not by having found a reason in scientific fact, but merely by having found any sort of excuse in scientific language.” (The Restitution of Man: CS Lewis and the Case Against Scientism, Aeschliman, p.p. 42-43)
“An age of science is necessarily an age of materialism,” declared Hugh Elliot early last century, “Ours is a scientific age, and it may be said with truth that we are all materialists now.” (Darwin Day in America, John G. West, xiv)
Scientific materialism, naturalism and evolutionary conceptions have virtually displaced America’s founding Christian worldview with the result that materialism is now the operative assumption for much of our government, culture, politics, and law.
According to the inner logic of scientific materialism, “we the people” are nothing but socially-constructed atomized robots “helplessly driven and primarily determined by laws of matter and force,” leaving the door wide open to massive evil-doing by America’s “ruling class,” as Angelo Codevilla calls these evil willed parasites in his book, “The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It.” The “faith” of the Ruling Class consists primarily of “science and evolution” and utter contempt for the scientifically dehumanized masses.
So what can we do about the Ruling Class? There really is only one thing we can and must do. That is to utterly reject and loudly denounce scientific materialism and evolutionism on one hand and on the other to turn back to the supernatural Triune Creator and supernatural creation ex nihilo.
Robert Jastrow (b. 1925), recipient of NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Studies explains there are only two possible explanations for the origin of life: evolution and creation.
“...science has no...answer to the question of the origin of life on earth. Perhaps (life) is a miracle. Scientists are reluctant to accept that view, but their choices are limited: either life was created...by the will of a being outside...scientific understanding, or it evolved...spontaneously through chemical reactions...in nonliving matter...The first theory...is a statement of faith in the power of a Supreme Being not subject to the laws of science. The second theory is also an act of faith (which assumes) that the scientific view...is correct, without having concrete evidence to support that belief.” (Until the Sun Dies, Jastrow, 1977, pp. 62-63)
Ideas have consequences. Good ideas, such as those on which this nation is founded led to good, not perfection mind you, but overall good. Evil ideas naturally lead to evil. And some of the most evil ideas of all are scientific materialism, naturalism and evolutionary conceptions, all of which say at bottom: There is no God but man.
In the link to Popper's speech from my post 529, you'll notice that Popper had a lot to say about Marx including this (emphasis mine:)
The Marxist theory of history, in spite of the serious efforts of some of its founders and followers, ultimately adopted this soothsaying practice. In some of its earlier formulations (for example in Marx's analysis of the character of the "coming social revolution") their predictions were testable, and in fact falsified.[2] Yet instead of accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in order to make them agree. In this way they rescued the theory from refutation; but they did so at the price of adopting a device which made it irrefutable. They thus gave a "conventionalist twist" to the theory; and by this stratagem they destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific status.
Also in reference to my previous post - in an attempt to illustrate why I see historical sciences as inferior to hard sciences, imagine how a jury would react to the summation arguments in a murder trial if the defense said "there is no evidence that my client committed this crime" and the prosecution responded with "just because there's no evidence doesn't mean he didn't do it (the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence)."
Indeed, the judge would have thrown the case out at the beginning rather than waste the court's time.
They may have said they were scientific, but they were not. Just using the term doesn't make it so.
Here's a review of a book on the subject:
Book Description
Publication Date: June 1, 1994
In this book, Dr. Soyfer, a former Soviet scientist who had met Lysenko, documents the destruction of science and scientists under the influence of Lysenko. Contrary to numerous opinions, Lysenko was an poorly educated agronomist who happened to have been in the right place at the right time: In the '30s, "Pravda" wrote him up as a pioneering scientist. Recognizing that newspapers and popular support could fuel his rise to the top of Soviet society, he set about making a name for himself as a scientist in non-academic journals and periodicals. His peasant upbringing and miraculous findings--never empirically proven or duplicated--made him a star proletarian scientist, the kind needed to bring about true Communism.
Along his way to the top, he was assisted by many people who thought him a sincere, but ill preparted, scientist; he later had many of these people purged after gaining the almost total support of Stalin and Khrushchev. His grand claims of producing superior cattle and wheat, among other things, consistently failed, yet no one dared oppose or even question his policies. Whether to propel himself upward, bring down the academics he apparently detested, or protect himself and his "science", Lysenko nearly eliminated all serious work in genetics, agriculture, and biology from the '30s into the '60s. Numerous scientists were exiled, fired, or executed during his reign as the people's scientist; according to the author, the effects still linger in Russia.
An amazing story of how, when politics decrees what science is acceptable and how it is going to work in the political paradigm, the results can be tragic.
The attempt to bend science to an ideology had severe consequences in the USSR (as it also did in China). People were executed, millions starved to death, and those countries are still trying to rebuild their science programs. They send students to the US to learn how to be scientists.
I should point out that it does not matter which ideology you try to cram science into. Science simply cannot function as an ideological support tool.