The Thinking ‘Kat: When Right is Wrong and Wrong is Right
With apologies for the lengthy title, and with thanks to the evergreen Bruce Gerencser for providing the inspiration, in this post I’m delving into a murky realm, a place where facts meet with dogma, and the evidence around is challenged not by additional evidence, but with the unreliable element of human interpretation.
Bruce’s post highlights the problem of unhinged fanaticism overriding evidence and logic, and what’s worse, this was used to unreasonably persecute a teaching assistant who merely graded a student in accordance with the requirements of the test. The student had not followed guidelines and subsequently failed the test, but did not accept this outcome, protested under the unreasonable lines of ‘religious persecution’, and got the instructor suspended as a result. There is a serious case of entitlement on show here, and unfortunately this is far from an isolated case.
The expectation that facts should give way to indoctrination is not a problem unique to organised religion, but you can bet that organised religion is one of the chief driving forces behind eroding common sense educational needs, and it is certainly among the most powerful movements aimed at undermining good science. I have written before of the desire of some Christians to replace logic-driven, evidence-based teachings with rigid, literal interpretations of holy texts, and these rather close-minded fundamentalists do not stop to consider the cost of this. If we had kept to such blind devotion, humanity would never have escaped the Stone Age.
Our willingness to challenge, to learn, to observe and to study is why we have longer lifespans than ever before. It’s why we can survive injuries and illnesses that would have inevitably killed our ancestors. Now, some people might say ‘but you still can’t cheat death!’, but that would be beside the point. I am not saying we can render ourselves immortal and turn back entropy. However, that has nothing to do with how we are better placed to fight diseases and injuries.
Quality of life has improved too. If not for a willingness to learn, we would never have developed tools to make growing and preserving food easier. It would still take days to travel across a country, and weeks or months to travel between continents, assuming we could safely make the journey. What makes this all the more ironic is that the very people who are loudly decrying science, and bemoaning persecution, enjoy all the fruits of science, yet as sure as night follows day they will list out anything negative they can think of, without pausing to reflect that they throw the baby out with the bathwater in their little rants.
Can scientific endeavour be used for harm? Yes. Is that a reflection on science itself? No. What would do far more harm is to encourage deception in education. Letting irrelevant answers with no relevance to the topic take precedence over facts, logic and evidence does a lot more damage to our progress as a species, and to then whine of persecution? The irony is high, and the lack of self-awareness is even greater. You have to shake your head in disbelief at the cognitive disassociation on display.
‘Kat Comments