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Essay 4 |
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| Intellectual Dishonesty | ||
| By RW Spisak Jr. I heard the return to the dark ages last night, sitting in a full house, in the auditorium of a local high school. “POOF” once there was science, “POOF”, now there was TRUE BELIEF… “POOF” Now you heard references to science and even… scientists. Then, “POOF” – then we were led away, away from science that has taken us, from the darkened nave of the medieval church, to today’s world of computers, and space travel and the technology of today, to face the inscrutable face of the INTELLIGENT DESIGNER’s first cause JE-HO-VAH. The problem with TRUE BELIEF is that it suffers no test, requires no confirming data appropriate to scientific inquiry. Ah, the appeal of certainty and unquestioned simplicity in a complex world. If you listened, which is more than the churchmen did for Galileo and Copernicus, you could hear actual scientists mentioned. You heard again and again how well traveled, and literate our presenter was, and you also heard a refrain that especially grated on my ear. “We all have the same information”. Which was and is patently false. The scientific literate, and the scientific illiterate, demonstrably do not have the same information. Our presenter would seem to quote his favorite “scientists”. Men, with reported scientific credentials and again and again he turned to the covers of “pop-science” magazines to further his argument. That must be science. The difference, which our presenter never did mention, although he clung to his favorite bits of the tattered cloak of pseudo-science to mask his appeal to anti-intellectualism, the difference is that his conclusions, come not from rigorous scientific inquiry, but they arise in complete contradiction from no tested, verifiable facts but instead, arise full born and certain. These religious views, which are inferred arise spontaneous, fully formed and unassailable, from his own mystical vision, and his personal interpretation of selected religious tracts and ULTIMATELY …the unquestionable source of all INTELLIGENT DESIGN REVELATION… by (personal) DIVINE INTERVENTION. While he dismissed evolution, because as he explained it, evolution was dependent on a “POOF” moment. He never contrasted that “POOF” moment with the GRANDEST POOF of all… THE GREAT POOF… “POOF” there is The Universe. And “POOF” GOD, made boy-Adam, in the image of euro centric man. About midway through the meringue of mixed metaphors, pseudo science and bringing “near” science to attack REAL science he paused to make a couple of his salient subplots visible. His audience was not the great, great, great grandchildren of “POND SCUM”. Because, he dramatically stated, if they were, there was no defined morality and thus IT IS BECAUSE of EVOLUTION, we have the problems of the world today. Then as he warmed back to his purloined particles of science, mentioning in passing, scientific men, like Gould, Sagan, and others he explained that it was evolution that we have to thank for racism and slavery. One of my seat-mates pointed out that placing the blame of slavery on the results of a new scientific understanding of the mid-1800s seemed to fly in the face of the facts of slavery which had existed as a fact of European commerce for hundred of years. But once again, there was no place for science here. The second part of the lecture really represented the GREAT LEAP that this speaker was capable of, truly a creationist… He offered this explanation of, as he put it… the problem with dinosaurs… He suggested (completely erroneously) that there have never been any large dinosaur fossils ever found. He suggested also erroneously that all dinosaur bones are found buried in a great flood. He suggested that the EVOLUTIONISTS, (Feel Free – to substitute, GODLESS ATHEISTS, SONS of POND SCUM here) evolutionists have trouble explaining the extinction of dinosaurs… and yet despite his repeated assertion that we all have the same facts; he didn’t have any. He insisted that the REAL explanation of the mystery of dinosaurs is that they perished in THE GREAT FLOOD. Not some great flood, or an, great flood, but THE GREAT FLOOD! The one in most versions, of most translations, of the few select Dead Sea scrolls. The ones which comprise most Bibles. Which flood, that one. Well, whether Jonah, who lived some 900 years, we were told, skipped that page of his loading manifest, he seems if our speaker was correct, seems to have overlooked the “TERRIBLE LIZARDS”. You see, he explained to the science challenged and incredulous in this filled auditorium, dinosaurs are the dragons of prehistory. I only wonder, does this mean that the evidently reptile-blind Jonah also overlooked the fish men of the Middle East, and the Cyclopes of the Mediterranean, and the gorgons, and chimera, and unicorns? And elves and gnomes? Ultimately the problem with turning from the scientific method, to the mysterious and intuitive faculties for ultimate or otherwise answers, is that all too often, as real history, has shown, the door to inquiry is shuttered and locked. I reiterate… we do not, all, have the same facts. I lament that the auditorium, of an educational institution was used to debase real science. Pseudo-science with its simple answers again attempted to turn society from the methods of scientific inquiry, to the headlong flight back to primitive cult-based cosmology. Hopefully come the next divine flood, the reptile – challenged Noah, won’t forget your tribe. your science reporter RW Spisak Jr. 2/1/06 |
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