Skeptics, But Only When It Suits

Skeptical atheists proclaim that they "believe in science," faulting others for not doing so. That proclamation is misleading, although it helps to shut down debate with qualified dissenters from a official position, if you value that sort of thing. (I don't.) What self-identified skeptics really believe in -- unskeptically, you'll note -- is not science itself but the pronouncements only of certain approved scientists and not others who are often equally credentialed. Why do the skeptics take the word of one group of reputable scientists "on faith" rather than others? (I say on faith because I doubt most of the skeptics have verified their favorite scientific claims.) Criteria, if you please.

I'll take the skeptics more seriously when they question the word of government-anointed scientists as much as they do the qualified mavericks, who also believe in science. Science isn't about consensus or head counting; its about truth-seeking through dissent, open debate, and transparency. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Impossibility of Illogical Thought

Thought can never be of anything illogical, since, if it were, we should have to think illogically. It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an 'illogical' world would look like. It is as impossible to represent in language anything that 'contradicts logic' as it is in geometry to represent by its a coordinates a figure that contradicts the laws of space, or to give the coordinates of a point that does not exist.... In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic.... Self-evidence, which [Bertrand] Russell talked about so much, can be dispensable in logic, only because language itself prevents every logical mistake.--What makes logic a priori is the impossibility of illogical thought. --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus   3.03, 3.031, 3.032, 5.473, 5.4731 (H/T: Roderick T. Long )      
Read more

Is He Having a Laugh?

According to the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, the government is God's appointed agent on earth, and each of us owes it allegiance and obedience. If that's so--and I for one don't believe either part of that statement--I'd like some believer to explain what God had in mind when he arranged things so that one of the two major-party clowns running for president will be elected in November. Is He having a laugh?
Read more

Happy Passover, 2024

In an earlier incarnation many, many years ago, I would be getting ready to celebrate Passover . This is the holiday that commemorates Yahweh's liberation of the children of Israel from enslavement in Egypt (long before the Arabs got there). Yahweh did this, according to the Good Book, by inflicting collective punishments on the Egyptian people -- ranging from turning the Nile River and other water sources into blood, to sending swarms of frogs, gnats, flies, and locusts throughout the land, to killing all first-born persons and cattle, even those of slaves (non-Israelites, presumably) -- 10 "plagues" in all. As unjust as that collective punishment seems, it was Yahweh's response to the recalcitrance of Egypt's absolute ruler, the Pharaoh. According to the story, he repeatedly changed his mind about "letting [the Israelite] people go" after promising Moses he would do so. That's why Egypt, that is, all Egyptians, kept getting hit with plagues.  Howe...
Read more