Garden of Daisies

Arrogance of the scientist

February 1st, 2008

I am frustrated.
I am angered.
I am experiencing visceral and emotional responses to arguments that strike me as unfair, and hypocritically narrow.

It has always seemed patently ignorant, to me, to pit science against religion, or to purport it to be some important step forward we have taken from religion as we progress as a species.

As if science did not depend on leaps of faith. For science to work we need to trust our ability to perform inductive reasoning. We need to trust the theoretical choices and probability assignments we make. We need to put faith in the choices of educated individuals to hold one theory up over another. And that’s okay. That is how it works. And an argument can most certainly be made for using our competency as a species as evidence for our reasoning abilities, and the reasoning of our trained scientists.

But let us not lose sight of the parallels between choosing to hold science above all else, and to take the word of the theorist and the choice to hold religion above all else in taking the word of the theologians. There are differences, absolutely. But, there are similarities, and to deny that is arrogant and ignorant.

*I ended up here because friends of mine had joined a group about it on that evil social network we all use.  And I browsed around this mixture of sometimes rational and compassionate ideals based on mindfulness and wellness yet often arrogant and pigheaded battering of the beliefs of religious others and I got frustrated.  Because hypocrisy irritates me.  You can be dogmatic, and fundamentalist and myopic if you want–but if you’re going to be then leave others to do the same (at least if you’re going to claim ‘rationality’ as your one of your main motivations and inspirations).

Entry Filed under: Spirituality/Religion, Thoughts on other things...