Power defends power
Berezow at RCS pulls together some quotes from "theologians" that conveniently favor Big Science in its current form. Unsurprising. Berezow always defends Big Science.

Two of the quotes strike me as particularly noxious.

"No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power."
--C.S. Lewis (The Abolition of Man)

Nope. Nobody in science "loves truth". Many working scientists are deeply fascinated by the pursuit itself; fascinated by atoms or octopuses or curing disease. That's not the same thing as truth, and the structure of academia doesn't select for truth. It selects for currently fashionable theories. "Founders" by definition love power. Anyone who tries to set up a new discipline or department is trying to push the old fogeys out of power. Not always bad. In some cases the old fogeys are wrong and deserve to be pushed out. This is exactly how truth happens: accidentally as a side-effect of power.

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes."
--Pope John Paul II (Letter to Director of the Vatican Observatory)

I won't argue with the cans. These purifications could happen in some ideal world. They never actually happen in THIS world. Science as a public force considers ALL religions except Gaia to be errors because non-Gaian religions compete for the attention and money of politicians. Genuine religion does try to oppose the idolatries of science (eg evolution, Global Warming, economics, "social" "science", quantum shit), but religion as a public force is fully aligned with those idolatries. The public agents of Protestant and Catholic churches ferociously support those idolatries, with occasional reservations about certain details of economics. Public religion works WITH public science to accelerate the evils caused by those idolatries, and to oppose genuine religion.

Labels: Alternate universe, Carbon Cult

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