In Answer to Protecting the People Part 1

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Murk has said there are two groups that are fighting for the hearts of minds of the average person in the national political debate; one based on pure religion and one based on pure science.

This is based on the fallacy that there aren't a huge number, the majority as a matter of fact, of people with a science background who still have some degree of spiritual faith. And that they are not capable of looking at the world using logic while maintaining a compartment of their mind for the emotional buffer that belief in a higher power provides.

That's what you have been led to believe by the media, and popular culture, and by the Religious Right; that you can't have any faith and still be scientific in your thinking. That if you are a proponent of rationality and scientific literacy and secularism that you must be a cold logical unfeeling Vulcan.

Now if all your saying is that there are people on both isdes who are just as extreme, then I say that is about as interesting as staing the sky is blue. What matters is how much influence these two "groups" have relative to each other in shaping the debate.

Seriously Murk, how may scientists have you seen trying to convert us all to pure cold logic and discounting God in all things, other than the occasional and I mean occasional mass market book like that recent silly one by the otherwise brilliant Dawkins. You make the false equivocation that science advocates and religious advocates are the same. How many science lobbying groups are there that are trying to turn the world into a steel gray amalgam of numbers and facts?

Most science advocates don't try to destroy your faith in a higher power, they DO try and push agendas that are based on scientific research such as stem cell research, environmental awareness, and evolution. And they DO use their training to educate the public on what they know, not based on pure dogma but based on actual evidence they and others have worked hard to find. They aren't trying to destroy faith. There is no science based lobby in the government that is trying to get religion banned. Can you make the same claim of religious based lobby groups?

If you say scientists are trying to destroy region by advocating actions based on empirical evidence instead of blind emotion, then the same thing can be said about any group whose job it is to study facts and present a course of action that seems logical based on the facts. In other words; plumbers, accountants, financial advisors, doctors, exterminators, auto mechanics or any other respectable profession. They all are expected by you and everyone else to use their skills and knowledge to investigate a problem and then advise you on the appropriate course of action using empirical evidence instead of blind faith.

If your plumber, after spending an hour looking for the reason why your sink isn't working, comes up and just says "Well looks like you need to pray to God if you want that pipe unclogged", would you follow his advise, or tell him to take a hike and get a real plumber who will use his skills to find the real cause and solution?

If you are going to make a comparison, be honest when doing so. Just because you say two things are the same doesn't make them so.


Of course there are examples on internet discussions of people who push for a complete abandonment of relgion in approaching the world. It can be said that I am one such person. But a few cranky atheistic scientists do not equal a political movement. However, there is a very powerful and active religious based movement in the US and other parts of the world that have used their power to try and destroy logical debate and mold society into one of blind obedience based on nothing more than their particular brand of faith. Our own President has routinely ignored the scientific advisors in the EPA and the FDA and has also publicly put his weight behind teaching creationism to our children in the science classroom, all to appease the religious lobby.

And the tactics of some of those who push for faith based politics are very diiferent from secularists. The Judge who ruled against the creationists in PA has received death threats. How many scientists or advocates of secularism and science do you know are likely to make death threats against those who publicly disagree with them (other than that psychopath Dr. Mantodea)?

I know many scientists who go to church, and I know many atheists who don't know jack shit about science. The world in which a powerful group of Science Only advocates work feverishly to obliterate any trace of religious faith exists only in fiction. The problem we have is that their ISN'T a powerful counter to the Religious Right. If there was such a creature, then we would be in far batter shape. But the battle is decidedly lopsided right now.

Anti-scientific thought has been steadily growing the US for the last couple of decades. In the industrialized world our average citizense are currently only ahead of Turkey in the level of our scientific literacy.