Mile Zero
no matter where you go, there you are
Jul 11, 2006
Science is not a religion. It's not equivalent to a religion. It's not a belief system. It's very annoying when people claim that the two are the same sheep in different wolves' clothing.
What's the difference?
The snarky answer, which is abrupt but no less apt because of it, is that science actually works. Science gave you television and the Internet. Religion put people on television and the Internet who say that Jesus needs money, and he takes Visa.
I started thinking about this because Chris at Only a Game had written a silly, self-congratulatory post on what he considered skepticism. I don't usually read Only a Game, because people who use Greek terms to discuss video games annoy me. In this case, I was surprised to see a review of the philosopher Paul Feyeraband on gameblogs, and clicked over. Putting that review aside, Chris claims that skeptics exposed scientific "belief" when they raised the possibility of fraud in the laughable Ganzfeld telepathy experiments.
Confused? I don't really follow that either. Because the experiments (which still have a methodological hole a mile wide due to their reliance on experimenter interpretation) could be faked, the problem is science? The only way you reach that conclusion is if you've already decided that ESP is real and the experiment was perfect. In which case, why were you experimenting in the first place? Don't you have a seance to get to?
Now you might be asking, why get all bent out of shape over this? After all, Only a Game is a pretty nutty blog. In that same skeptic post, Chris also insinuates (and I paraphrase) that James Randi and Carl Sagan had someone killed for discovering mystical "orgone" energy! And I agree, that's pretty far out there. What bothers me about it is not this specific incident, but the recurring devaluation of scientific thought, of which his post is just one example.
The assertion of which, by the way, is not scientific. My claim to observe some kind of general trend from anecdotal evidence is exactly the kind of ridiculous and unfounded assertion you'd expect from a journalist trained in Intercultural Communication, not in science. Guilty as charged.
But on the other hand, 42% of the population told the Pew Center last year that life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time--they don't say, but I'm guessing for a lot of those people "the beginning of time" is only 6 thousand years away. Of the 48% who admitted a prediliction for evolution, 18% of them still figured that it was divinely guided. Homeopathy--literally selling people water that's had other substances waved at it--is a multimillion dollar industry. Chiropractics, another debunked psuedoscience, has billions in revenue even though it can be actively harmful to your health.
I mean, don't treat it as gospel, but that looks like a problem to me.
Now, in a liberal society it's important that people have freedom to do whatever they want, within reasonable limits. The people who alter their bodies and post pictures at BMEZine, for example, could easily be considered strange and disturbing. But if they want to jam pieces of metal through themselves, that's their right as long as they don't make me watch.
Yet people are actually hurt by unscientific ideas. They take homeopathic remedies instead of seeking treatment for medical problems. They get their spines cracked by chiropracters. And they get fleeced by fake psychics and astrologers, losing money and making bad decisions on flawed assertions. Someone is profiting by the exploitation of another person, a deeply immoral proposition. It is this exploitation that most self-labeled skeptics find most offensive, not just a call to truth.
Science isn't a belief, it's a method. Specifically, it's a method of knowing--and unlike other methods of knowing, like ESP and religion, it produces reproducible, useful results. You can critique the policies surrounding it (such as the problem of global warming) or its cultural position (it's still too dominated by white males), but it's impossible to seriously dispute whether or not we are healthier and made more capable thanks to that method of experimentation and falsifiability.
It's true that science requires us to believe in an objective reality, where something can be "true" in that it accurately predicts outcomes. But why would we want it any other way? While considering the subjective/objective debate makes for a good intellectual bull session, when people begin being harmed or exploited (as they are) then you have entered the realm of policy--and that requires you to prioritize some policies as better or worse within an objective framework in order to make good decisions. Science is our best--I would say our only--reliable means of making those prioritizations. It should be our primary method of knowing for policy purposes.
So by all means, go ahead and believe crazy things. Consult astrologers, read your bible, and cleanse your aura. But let's not pretend that those methods of knowing reach the same level of quality as science. Clearly, from any pragmatic perspective, they don't. If you disagree with that, it's your right to head out into the forest sans flashlight, manufactured clothing, or botanical reference. Have the courage of your convictions and leave science behind.
I doubt we'll see a lot of takers on that one.
