Re: Evolution is a LIE!!!

On 2005-08-26, Werebat <ranpoirier@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> It's obvious, the Bible says so! Please stop this madness! You are
> corrupting the youth of America and damning them to HELL with your
> insidious lies!!! I have a little son and I'm NOT going to stand idly
> by and watch people DAMN him to HELL!!! I love my boy and I am not
> going to let the GOVERNMENT force-indoctrinate him into the lies of
> evolution, Charles Darwin, sickness!
>
> STOP the MADNESS!!!

This may be a troll, and probably is a troll, but not necessarily.

A goodly segment of the U.S. population believes thus. They are the
most consciencious voters, hence the budding U.S. theocracy. The result
is that we are all now under threat of theocratic domination.

I may be an old curmudgeon, but my experience tells me that this is all
about people and the sort of social roiling and boiling produced by an
array of competing bids for power. No different than it has ever been
down through history.

Science has been "had", and through no fault of either science or its
practitioners. Knowledge is power, and power tends to corrupt; science
is corrupted by the requirements forced upon it by the culture it
serves. In order to work, money is required, which is earned by
producing results; any kind of marketable results will do. Publish or
perish; give bang for the buck to get funded next time; etc.

Part of the profit from this comes from an exploitation of the resultant
technology, and that's to be expected. Another part of the profit is
the aggregation of more power by larding the reputation of the powerful:
a steady stream of "results" are fed the public via the media and
specifically science writers. Scientific findings are presented as
miraculous "breakthroughs" whenever possible, and almost always not far
short of that in any case.

Part of the process of marketing is the use of testimonial flacks. In
this case, the flacks are scientists who can be bought, and who are
advertized as "experts", (yeah, the TV ads feature actors, but written
testimonials require the real thing). Once thus presented, the
scientist is now termed a "representative of science" and paid, either
in money or enhanced "reputation", as a marketing flack.

One of the marketing ploys is the touting of "science" as the be-all and
end-all of human achievement, the sole saviour of mankind, etc, etc.
Here, the "experts" are given free reign to spew their angst against
"unscientific thinking", etc. All of which has created the religion of
Science: Scientism.

The public, though, was quite willing to buy this line whole cloth, a
yard wide, and many railroad cars full at a time. After all, was it not
science that had produced the technology that yielded the labor saving
devices, appliances, toys, etc? All well and good.

But then, the marketers began promising more than science could deliver.
Standard marketing strategy: do not allow a window of opportunity to go
unfilled, even if "vapor-ware" is all that is available. Keep the
public's attention on that space where (promises of) the latest
miraculous goodies will appear, and the public will continue to act as
the vast uncritical gullet of consumption it seems to have always been.

Doesn't take overly long before unfulfilled promises began to be noted,
and dissatisfaction to begin to build. Long unbroken litanies of
promises poorly filled, with an endless stream of the latest miracles of
science that never turn out to be as advertized, and the public,
reasonably enough, begins to turn elsewhere, disillusioned.

And so it is that the public has turned away from what it perceives as
the cause of its ills. Marketing cleverly avoids detection, having made
"legitimate science" the source and scapegoat, whilst scientists stand
perplexed and the agents of Scientism natter on and on with increasing
hysteria.

Who is the beneficiary of the disillusionment? Yep, the older
powerbrokers who were so threatened by the rise of science: the
institutions of religion.

Science and scholarship, cynically exploited for profit for most of a
century, have now become the "causes" of all of human misery, because
they "failed to deliver what they promised" Fact is, they failed to
deliver what the exploiters promised, and they take the blame. Here,
human knowledge has been put to use to benefit those who can pay for it,
and at the ultimate expense of everyone else.

Is it any wonder that religion rebounded to retake the "hearts and
minds" of its erstwhile flocks? Aping the appearance of "science" as a
rational and therefore trustworthy guiding force, religion now
aggressively pushes its own agenda: the establishment of a theocracy via
education of the young. Creationism and ID in the publically funded
schools.

No, science is not to blame. Scientists are not the source of the
problem. Science must now reach for the high fruit, the more accessible
having already been taken, and that costs money. The deep pockets
effectively write the rules and they are the only game in town, so
scientists either join their game or not play at all.

To some extent, I think all of this is inevitable, but there are some
aspects that are not. One of those is the "experts" who become agents
of Scientism. And scientists as a lot are particularly vulnerable to
this.

Scientists who produce have to have enough will, determination, etc to
keep on "keeping on" when the going gets rough. Such folk usually draw
from their own sense of self, their egos, to produce what it takes to
succeed. No different from any other field of endeavor, where basic
humanity and its foibles are inevitable.

In science, the sine qua non of achievement is the establishment of a
top-drawer reputation. Problem is, in whose eyes? For most, it is the
eyes of one's peers that is required. But what if other eyes offer more
in return? What if one's reputation in the eyes of one's peers isn't
enough, either quantitatively or qualitatively? If the insufficiency is
quantitative, it might be that the peer regard isn't enough to get the
individual to the playing table he/she seeks: the really big projects
and large grants, etc? If the insufficiency is qualitative, perhaps
peer regard isn't enough, and public regard is also sought.

In these cases, the scientist is a ripe candidate for exploitation, and
all too many of them are seduced. Straight to the seminary for the
priests of Scientism!

But there is yet another level of activity here. Science is a rigorous
process, more so the more specific the work. Those who work in science
have all been exposed to the harsh attitudes of those who are fulfilled
by enforcing that rigor proactively: the academes. For those who work
in science and have no discernable reputation, having not produced
seminal work, it's quite tempting to don the garb of "learned academia"
and present oneself as a "member in good standing" by taking all
opportunities to display that harsh rigor of criticallity.

It's tempting to call these people "wannabes", but that's unreasonable,
I think. These folk are acting, in their own eyes, as agents of
legitimate science. They don't realize that their attitude is relevant
only within their discipline, as a judgment of other scientists. The
result is that they appear as harsh elitist snobs in the eyes of the lay
public; though there are no doubt those who are seduced by such
behavior, most people are repulsed.

In this venue, such behavior plays right into the hands of the
theocrats, who leap at such opportunities with delight. Snobbish
elitist "scientists" sneering at the salt-of-the-earth, God-fearing
public... well, they used to trumpet this, but mostly they're more
sophisicated now. They just smile tolerantly and let their sock-puppets
do the dirty work.

Like the OP here, for instance.

Yep, another long post, but I've laid it all out as I see it, with no
real blame placed anywhere it's not warranted. I say we're engaged in a
real struggle here, and one that appears to be surfacing all over the
world, though perhaps not as visibly as in the U.S. That means it's
time to get over the personal agenda and trivial behavior, because the
game here is for keeps and it's for all the marbles.

Longfellow

.

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