Fear of science will kill us

Originally posted by Titen-Sxull
reply to post by Exuberant1

 

While I'd be scared beepless for sure by the monsters I don't think I'd be sacrificing anyone. I get creeped out enough just hanging around with my fundamentalist Father for too long, let alone someone as off their hinges as Miss Carmody was in the movie.

I would have made offerings of food and worked my way up.

This might have worked and would probably have strengthened the faith of certain individuals. It would not have worked because I was appeasing the god to whom the food was offered, but because the foodstuffs satiated the appetites and distracted the monsters long enough for the military to move in and save the day.

It would be all too tempting for some to declare that the day was in fact saved by the god to whom I had offered the foodstuffs. Alas.


*So your father was a fundamentalist? How did he feel about science?

I find many aspects of science difficult to understand, but it is still a fascinating subject. I have never understood why some religious people feel so alienated by it. If there is a god then he or she probably made capacitance, osmosis, refraction, microwaves, dark stars and all the other wonders on the wednesday after a particularly nice lunch. So why be frightened of science?

When science kills people, we are mostly to blame for abusing it.

Originally posted by barney808
So why be frightened of science?

Because it contradicts tales of the desert people and most other holy books in so many ways.

Originally posted by Titen-Sxull

Ever see the movie The Mist? It has a good lesson in what happens when superstition takes over our minds and how easily swayed we are by it. Superstition and blind zealotry are bad and scientific progress is responsible for our longer lives and better quality of life ...

Why you disagreed with that is beyond me.

Fair enough, religion without science doesn't solve problems either. We are talking about extremes though; I don't find over-zelous behaviour helps a cause on either side of the religious or science fence. More importantly, it's counter-productive to think of a fence between religion and science. I consider it a false division placed there by bad psycology, then pounded into "fact", and enforced while remaining an illusionary basis point of a thousand arguements.

The usual antagonistic direction is to discover a person practices religion, puts faith in that religion which makes them a "zealot", then gets cut away from any basis of "science" in the minds of those who adopted the lie. To be zelous for a cause simply means enthusiastic or supportive as I read it, but who can tell how damaging it's application really is at dividing people.

One of the most over-zelous causes I see are media moguls putting out the health-trending in articles every day, making fads of health issues and then switching their stances. "Coffee's out this month, and chocolate's back in"! That's such an on-going nuisance, and must be a nightmare for anyone actually trying to live by their swirling eddys of confusion.

reply to post by Northwarden


There's something we can agree on, science and religion do not need to be fighting with each other. In fact most religious folks accept science and some scientists are religious, even the Pope has embraced evolution. Like I said my issue isn't with the average normal man or woman of faith but with those that take it to the extremes.

So you think the fear of science will kill us but not science itself? How many plagues, virus', and weapons will it take to realize that science is used to kill each other and the planet more efficiently? It has helped make our lives so convenient that everyone is obese.

I agree that some advancement has been great to our lives but to think the fear of it will kill us? No, the fear will not kill us. It will allow us to be more cautious when we approach technology that will have the ability to destroy everything in its path. Because if we do not fear then carelessness will deliver the deadly blow.

reply to post by SmokeandShadow

Again, would you take that flu shot if your life depended on it. I didnt get mine either and i am fine aswell. But if it were to save my life i would most definitely take it

Originally posted by djmolecular
reply to post by muzzleflash

 

Did you read the analogy about aspirin??? you could die taking that.

Ok say your terminal so your gonna die. Nothing they can do..

Sorry i would take the needle if i were you. If there was a chance at life my friend.





[edit on 13-4-2010 by djmolecular]

a vaccine isn't life and death. It is a possibility, but not a definitive fact.

if the FDA had any credibility, perhaps this thread would be correct. But the only people hurting science are scientists. Snobbish behavior is the first problem. To scoff and laugh at people who don't have their understanding is an easy way to turn people off. Then pushing medicines that are known to have flaws to market?

Nope. Blame the scientists, and their handlers for any distrust that the public has.

Originally posted by barney808
I find many aspects of science difficult to understand, but it is still a fascinating subject. I have never understood why some religious people feel so alienated by it.

It's a cultural thing. In the west, it's often phrased as "playing god" (although I notice the ones doing the phrasing don't understand how science is done.) It's a bad thing.

In Japan and the East, the gods welcomed any man (or being) who could approach them in power and knowledge.

This has been a fairly recent thing -- up until the 1970's, the scientist was considered a positive figure. Sometime after the Internet and the "Einstein was dumb! Let me tell you about relativity!" empowerment of anyone being able to publish any theory (without tools or the understanding of the background), scientists and science became something to scoff at in the English speaking countries.

This isn't true elsewhere... and you can contrast the technological development of the societies because of the attitudes. If things continue, America will no longer be the "go to" place for technology education. Japan outstrips us in robotics research in many ways, and India and China seem to be making a push for science (at the expense of a lot of misery among the very poor.)

I wish we were back in the science-positive era of the 1950's... at least in attitude. In ethics of research and theoretical process, I'm glad we've advanced.

The Threat of Mad Science Is Real:
(Trust in Demagoguery Will Kill Us)

This convenient use of the word "denialism" by those advocating "science" come off every bit as zealous in their own religiosity, as any other zealot in theirs. Like all great preachers, they rely heavily upon non specific imagery to sell their ideology, ironically ignoring facts, a decidedly non-scientific behavior, in order to advocate their world view. I would suggest that there are far less who mistrust science, than there are those who mistrust the scientists who hide behind the purity of science, just as many mistrust preachers who hide behind the purity of spiritualism.

When, Michael Specter argues that:

For centuries, the general view had been that science is neither good nor bad-that it merely supplies information and that new information is always beneficial.

Specter chooses to ignore the enduring literary longevity of Frankenstein, as well as its cinematic appeal, and sticking with the cinematic role in drawing metaphorical parallel's to peoples fear of mad scientists and the very real threat they pose to humanity, so while Japan was making movies about Godzilla, the theater's of Europe, and even America were staging plays by playwrights from a new movement called the Theater of the Absurd, where literary giants, such as Beckett and Ionesco would make their mark, while American science fiction films were littered with allegorical and metaphorical scenarios that reflected the modern fear of the mad scientist who preached upon the alter of science.

Even films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which did not blame science for disaster but instead blamed some alien species, and paralleled the sense of doom and dread that came with the Cold War which served as a tangible threat to America's sense of freedom, and while this threat was embodied in the ideology of communism, and tools such as propaganda used to sell the totalitarian state were tangible fears for Americans, the greatest fear of the Cold war lied in the nuclear arms race, a undeniably concerning product brought to us by mad scientists.

Books and films such as A Clockwork Orange reflected a general fear of the scientist bureaucrat, intrusive states, and the dubious rise of fields such as psychiatry and psychology through claiming the mantle of "science". From Mad Max, Bladerunner to Minority Report, films of the science fiction genre continue to reflect the genuine fear people have of science and technology used against them, and their right to live, liberty and happiness.

Specter is clearly wrong in asserting that there have been centuries of a general ambivalence towards science, but his fanciful view of the world doesn't end with a relatively enlightened populace accepting of the good science hath wrought, who have suddenly turned increasingly towards mistrust of not just the institution of science but institutions in general. Specter continues with his flawed premise by stating:

Now, science is viewed as a political constituency that isn't always in our best interest.

While all ready declaring those skeptical of modern scientist methods and motives as "denialists", Specter now points to the primary difference between now and then, that being the strong view that science has become a political constituency, not always working in our best interests. That the field of science has indeed allowed itself to be politicized is evident in the plethora of political organizations, starting with the government ones such as U.N.A.I.D.S., the CDC, and the WHO, there is also the IPCC, a governmental organization that, if not selling us science fiction, it is every bit as scary as the best of science fiction, but those selling it are no doubt a political constituency.

The propaganda by Specter is only starting, and in the very same paragraph he declares a new age in mistrust of scientists, he hopes to demonize and dismiss the growing movement towards the use of supplemental dietary goods to support health as being a part of this "denialist" movement. He say's:

We live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically modified grains. Childhood vaccines have proven to be the most effective public health measure in history, yet people march on Washington to protest their use. In the United States a growing series of studies show that dietary supplements and "natural" cures have almost no value, and often cause harm.

While Specter seems to be agog at the notion that vaccines are being questioned for their safety, he is equally agog that people would show an interest in natural supplements, such as herbs, vitamins and minerals, in an effort to promote health and longevity, declaring it a useless practice. Never mind that in science the Placebo Effect is taken seriously, and there are numerous hypothesis and theories suggesting placebos and the power of belief, and that a reliance on herbs, vitamins and supplements with the firm belief they will support health and longevity, could easily avoid uselessness through this so called placebo effect, Specter has an agenda, a political agenda.

Herbs, vitamins and minerals, remain largely unregulated in The United States by the FDA, so it should come as no surprise that a search engine using the key words harm caused by dietary supplements, brings up few medical claims on the first page of Google, but does offer a lawyers firm relying on the general term "dietary supplements" to demonize their lack of regulation, by pointing to liver damage, and a site called Quackwatch, dedicated to exposing fraud in medicine. It should not be so hard to understand, that while a deeply ensconced medical establishment, filled with organizations such as AMA, and other powerhouse associations intent on keeping the public "informed", there are also the subset of organizations such as the National Council Against Health Fraud, that are all taking swipes at herbs, vitamins and minerals that have been trusted healing devices for centuries, why people are mistrustful of this modern medical establishment.

The Quotes I offered of Specter are from his website describing his book Denialism. I have not read his book, so at this point I can only go by what his own website say's about the book, and that brief blog betrays a political agenda. The modern day medical establishment has been in full support of strict government regulation on health, which is by nature a very controversial issue. How much jurisdiction a government can actually hold over an individuals health is becoming more and more hotly debated, and to reduce this debate to a religion versus science dichotomy is hardly scientific, to say the least.

While modern day science has predicated much of its advancement and "knowledge" on established theories assumed to be true, (and what is faith if not that?), those who advocate it tend to draw the battle lines with faith based believers, and are every bit as willing to engage in vitriolic attack of their opponents as their opponents are of them. So comfortable has the modern day scientist become with presuming truth behind the conventional wisdom of theories, they too advocate theories that soon themselves become presented as fact. Consider the current HIV/AIDS paradigm, that while remaining a theory, and in spite of the many changes made to continue justifying this shifting paradigm, the so called global pandemic, never quite seems to match the numbers of predictions made by those political organizations who stand to profit the most from this medical syndrome.

If a rigorous adherence to a scientific method was used in the advocacy of HIV being the primary factor causing AIDS, the history of that advocacy by scientists such as Robert Gallo, and the great controversies that followed, coupled with the "triumphs and failures" of this advocacy, and the genuine confusion that came with viewing HIV as a virus or retrovirus, lend credence to showing some concern about this HIV/AIDS paradigm, particularly if the pandemic being sold by government organizations is to be trusted, but thanks to the thousands upon thousands of political organizations advocating the HIV paradigm, those who question it are "denialists".

There is a reason for the mistrust in the modern scientist.



[edit on 15-4-2010 by Jean Paul Zodeaux]

I think our common fear of science stems from our every day experiences which so often show us that the water we drink is poison yet called good for us. The fact that our foods and drinks slow kill us and or cause organ and diseases and cancers which slow kill the victim. The air we breathe is contaminated with the chem-trail chemicals and so when I hear of people having a fear of science, what I guess people are afraid of is that science is being used criminally to help kill us.

Science and medicine or any profession that is a respected profession should be respected, but we see too many willing to be bribed to create false studies and false data that will be used to deceive and undermine public safety.

Fear of science is a valid concern. Remove the corruption and greed motivation and we could return to a more relaxed society, but until then, I fear most people will fear science because too often its used to help depopulate instead of benefit and prolonging the lifespan of mankind.

Thanks for the posting.