Joe debates reader on science, religion

Dear Joe,

While I concur with much of your lacerating of the business schools and political science schools (there's an oxymoron) I would wonder if you would have the same bitterness towards the "hard" sciences -- physics, chemistry, biology, engineering.

ECONOMICS IS NOT A SCIENCE! Anyhow...

The physicists have been beavering away for years, developing fusion bombs, yes, but also X-rays for broken bones, explaining why solar panels and how televisions work, winning World War II (largely by radar) and exploring the universe.

The chemists have been creating plastics (a dubious benefit) but also things like aspirin, improved metallurgy, the doped silicon crystals that the world's communications now depend upon, and stiff drinks. Yep, the very first distiller (and every one hence) was a chemist.

The biologists have been counting the world's creatures, and trying to understand them, so that we are at least aware of what we're wiping out. Or how they're trying to wipe out us (cf. malaria, smallpox, Ebola Zaire).

The engineers have been at it as well, figuring out car engines that don't explode, even if the diesel fuel in them is. They're making bridges that don't instantly fall, and aircraft safer than crossing the street. Even building a house that doesn't immediately collapse -- a humble carpenter is, in a way, a civil engineer.

But if you want advances in those sciences beyond a simple house, beyond a bridge over a little stream, beyond a mere observation that if a tree falls and hits you on the head, you (and it) are dead, tenure and a research position is the way to go. Many of the most important discoveries were made by people who had a university or other collegiate post and were allowed to fiddle around and just see what happened.

I cannot agree with your lumping these brave and brilliant researchers in with the twaddle-spouting and/or deliberately counter-productive nitwits infesting various campuses under the guises of the social sciences, business, education, law, and economics.

There's science behind the art, you know,

Scrounger

P.S. It's a classic blunder: Slaughter all the "intellectuals" and as well as getting rid of the pundits and the publicists, the mouthpieces, the sycophants, and the elitists for their own sake, you also wind up without the wisest bridge builders, the most experienced engine designers, the best doctors, the cleverest computer wizards, known as "intellectual" not from dogmatic adherence to a half-baked cause, but from actual knowledge and ability in their chosen, valuably productive, field. Whoops.

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Scrounger,

Here's my beef:

The separation of spirit from substance so neatly accomplished by Descartes, Newton and Aquinas and codified by the Enlightenment has caused us to lose the continuity of every component of our cultures and universe. That is the tragedy. ... The neutering life's romance and the masculine scientific rape of the feminine.
-- Rev. Bernard "Father Bernie" Callahan

Personally, I don't mind dying from a falling tree, as opposed to being kept alive on your science's latest million dollar machinery which will cost my widow her entire estate -- which ain't much. We don't need another airplane no matter how safe nor another bridge to stimulate the creation of more ozone destroying traffic. I ain't no Luddite (by the way, Luddites are much misunderstood and purposefully misrepresented by the capitalist rewrite of history) but enough is enough, for godz sake! What we need is to dump 99% of the science and technology which has become our super state religion, and take back the moral and spiritual birthright of the human race, which is the only thing that will at least postpone the obvious end of our ecosystem and civilization.

I don't believe you guys when you say, "Don't worry, we'll come up with a solution." Hell, so far, regarding the 20th Century, all you've delivered is the hopeless earth-devouring mess we are in now. Where are you going to find the material resources in a finite world to do your next "scientific miracle?" Fuck, we're running out of plain old water and your team is singing the glories of nanotechnology and computer chips that dump more cadmium and fuck knows what else into then environment? Of course you aren't spending a quarter of your income like many folks in the Third World just to drink clean water, because you are part of the self-deluding Western World's scientific priestcraft, who are happy enough to pay for bottled water on a planet mostly made of water because you can afford it.

Frankly, much of the world is figuring out out the destructive role you play on behalf of game the world's sociopathic financial system, even when you yourselves cannot (or refuse to). Your sequestered chambers of moral eunuchs and delusionary middle class nerds playing the shell game of so called progress had best stay hidden inside the university research center's walls. The starving millions are fast reaching the point where they will eat you the minute you step outside of your self-congratulatory hubris. The solutions to most of the world's problems are not at all scientific, but spiritual and moral and our American refusal to be our brother's keeper in favor of having air conditioning and HBO and triple heart bypasses for a criminally blind nation.

By the way, congratulations on "winning World War Two". Go tell that to the the 11 million Russians who died in stopping the Nazi advance while we were bitching about eating canned meat and waiting for them to finish the job.

Now go fix Iraq.

Without the slightest sense of solidarity in this instance,

Joe

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Joe,

I'm not quite sure where to begin, but let's start at the beginning.

You wrote: Personally, I don't mind dying from a falling tree, as opposed to being kept alive on your science's latest million dollar machinery which will cost my widow her entire estate -- which ain't much.

No, but the mother whose newborn baby's life can be saved by fifty cents worth of antibiotics, or whose beloved is dying from AIDS he got from being raped might have a slightly different view of modern medicine.

You wrote: We don't need another airplane no matter how safe nor another bridge to stimulate the creation of more ozone destroying traffic. I ain't no Luddite (by the way, Luddites are much misunderstood and purposefully misrepresented by the capitalist rewrite of history) but enough is enough, for godz sake! What we need is to dump 99% of the science and technology which has become our super state religion, and take back the moral and spiritual birthright of the human race, which is the only thing that will at least postpone the obvious end of our ecosystem and civilization.

Er, NO. Look, would you, at the "moral" and "spiritual" people we have here now? George Bush says he's spiritual enough to get messages straight from God. So does Osama Bin Laden, Pat Robertson, Pope Ratzinger, and Sylvia Browne. These "moral" and "spiritual" people I do NOT want running so much as a hot-dog stand.

How many wars raged across Europe in the Middle Ages when they didn't have our 99% science and technology but did have plenty of that good old time religion? Heck no, technology is not the problem, it's people trying to be "more moral" and "more spiritual" than everyone else that is the problem.

You wrote: I don't believe you guys when you say, "Don't worry, we'll come up with a solution."

We already have. It's called reason, rationality, and science, and it doesn't depend on belief in something unprovable and inarguable. It would be nice if more people were rational and fewer so solidly convinced of their own particular little flavour of spirituality.

You wrote: Hell, so far, regarding the 20th Century, all you've delivered is the hopeless earth-devouring mess we are in now. Where are you going to find the material resources in a finite world to do your next "scientific miracle?" Fuck, we're running out of plain old water and your team is singing the glories of nanotechnology and computer chips that dump more cadmium and fuck knows what else into then environment? Of course you aren't spending a quarter of your income like many folks in the Thrid World just to drink clean water, because you are part of the self-deluding Western World's scientific priestcraft, who are happy enough to pay for bottled water on a planet mostly made of water because you can afford it. Frankly, much of the world is figuring out out the destructive role you play on behalf of game the world's sociopathic financial system, even when you yourselves cannot (or refuse to.)

Irrelevant. I pointed out very LOUDLY that economics is not a science, and so financial systems should very well be viewed as part of the problem, not the solution. Here we're definitely on the same wavelength.

You wrote: Your sequestered chambers of moral eunuchs and delusionary middle class nerds playing the shell game of so called progress had vest stay hidden inside the university research center's walls. The starving millions are fast reaching the point where they will eat you the minute you step outside of your self congratulatory hubris.

After all we've done for them, too. It was genetic engineering that made corn edible. It is nuclear power that makes desalinating seawater practical on a huge scale. It is global communications that tells everyone in the world about tsunami, and it's airplanes and ships that bring people and supplies to rebuild.

And, overpopulation. Not a problem in Sweden, and they're pretty high tech. Problem in Bangladesh. Hmmm ... so the problem of the starving masses is largely due to technology?

You wrote: The solutions to most of the world's problems are not at all scientific, but spiritual and moral and our American refusal to be our brother's keeper in favor of having air conditioning and HBO and triple heart bypasses for a criminally blind nation. By the way, congratulations on "winning World War Two" (Go tell that to the the 11 million Russians who died to stop the Nazi advance while we were bitching about eating canned meat and waiting for them to finish the job.

American refusal. George Bush decided to go forth and become Iraq's keeper, because he thought it was the moral thing to do. Ronnie Reagan was perfectly happy trading guns to Iran to fund war in Nicaragua. And now you want ME to fix? Nah. Make the people who think shooting a towelhead is moral fix it. Make people who think they're talking to God on their grilled-cheese sandwich fix it. Make people who think that the lines on your forehead can tell your future fix it. We're busy enough trying to understand the real world.

You wrote: Now go fix Iraq.

And if you do insist on throwing out all your technology and going back to a "spiritual" life, recall what happened the last time a superior technology came to Central America with their own ideas of "spirituality" and "morality". They called 'em conquistadores. You might consider keeping some of that high-tech stuff, or at least a high-tech ally or two.

You wrote: Without the slightest sense of solidarity in this instance, Joe.

Duly noted,

Scrounger

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Dear Scrounger:

You've convinced me. Or at least 50%.

The main part I disagree with (and who the fuck am I anyway?) is your take on theology. There is a spiritual core to humanity that escapes most scientists.

A scientist will always be a scientist, I guess. Once upon a time as the editor of a major farm magazine, I was privy to a lot of the beginnings of such things as Monsanto's genetically engineered corn. It's whole purpose was to stimulate the sale of Roundup, which the corn required to survive, and then be a sterile pollinator to wipe out the native species of corn. Which it is accomplishing. Etc, etc., etc.

You wrote: George Bush decided to go forth and become Iraq's keeper, because he thought it was the moral thing to do. Ronnie Reagan was perfectly happy trading guns to Iran to fund war in Nicaragua. And now you want ME to fix? Nah.

If we don't, then who will?

You wrote: We're busy enough trying to understand the real world.

So are they. That is the condition of man. I'm sure you understand enough about quantum physics to know that your world, or mine or theirs are equally "real," but just varying results of how we choose to deal wave mechanics. That's why the only solutions are moral and spiritual.

In the end, as you said, financial systems are the main problem. But science seems all to happy to contribute their success.

Let me sincerely thank you for reminding me that just because the Age of Reason has been so subsequently abused, does not mean that every scientist is an abuser (or at least consciously so.) Sometimes my outrage gets the better part of me.

In art and labor,

Joe