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> Science appears to be growing it's own clergy, demanding deference as opposed to encouraging debate. What are some examples of this? I'm also an atheist (alt

> Science appears to be growing it's own clergy, demanding deference as opposed to encouraging debate. What are some examples of this? I'm also an atheist (although I detest the label) who was raised Catholic and seriously considered joining the priesthood. But a life guided by reason and rationality I've found to be so much more fulfilling than the guilt and fear that made up much of my Catholic life.

Osiris 5y ago
I live by reason and rationality and am also religious. I see "God" as Truth, or a consciousness that knows all truth, and that seeking truth, including natural laws/science, is equivalent to seeking god. The two do (religion and rationality) are not mutually exclusive concepts.
- rackjack 5y ago
  I do not think this is what most people believe the definition of religion or God is.
  - tengbretson 5y ago
    I would recommend the prologue of the book of John to learn more about this.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  > The two do (religion and rationality) are not mutually exclusive concepts. Only if the religion is unfalsifiable. If it can be proven false then it's irrational to believe in it. If it can be proven true there is no need for faith.
  - mbrock 5y ago
    What if believing in it is proven to have significant benefits, regardless of the scientific truth value of the doctrinal propositions? How do you really judge the rationality of that?
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      > What if believing in it is proven to have significant benefits, regardless of the scientific truth... If the beliefs are benign then one could make a case. Even so I prefer believing only what can be proven over ignorance and self deception.
    - mbfg 5y ago
      The issue is, as is amply shown in the United States, is that minds that can accept things without evidence that are considered benign, can also accept things that are harmful. A mind that doesn't consider truth to be an important part of a belief system can believe anything. This "My Truth" is a pervasive virus that is occurring here in the US, and you see it every day destroying our society. If i don't need evidence, I can believe white people are better than black people and take it on faith. I can believe men are better than women and take it on faith. I can believe cis people are better than lbgtq+ people and take it on faith. If i don't have to demonstrate the accuracy of my claims, My claims are as valid as your claims.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  If that's how you see "god" then the only thing we differ on, as such, is the meaning of the label 'religious'. For me, religious means following a specific set of beliefs, behaviours, and traditions - which is somewhat incompatible with the idea of seeking truth inasmuch that some newfound truths may be incompatible with said beliefs, behaviours, and traditions. According my mental dictionary, religion and rationality are mutually exclusive when the religious doctrine is proven irrational.
- mbfg 5y ago
  Believing things without evidence is a core disagreement with science.
ummonk 5y ago
There are numerous examples of this, but I think the most glaring would be on issues relating to the COVID pandemic. At the start, the scientific dogma was that masks don't work, and travel bans don't work, and worrying about COVID was irrational alarmism. Anyone who suggested otherwise was treated as not believing in science (this extended to censorship or at least misinformation banners on major social media platforms). Now, the scientific dogma has flipped, and for example anyone questioning the effectiveness of masks is treated as a science denier.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  It seems like you’ve skipped a step to “therefore there is a science clergy.” Who are these supposed clergy, and how do they resemble religious clergy? A credentialed scientist saying something they knew was incorrect or later learned to be incorrect seems unrelated to the concept of clergy.
  - ummonk 5y ago
    The institutions are the clergy. To a small extent this can include credentialed scientists, peer-reviewed journals, etc., but really it's the government institutions (e.g. WHO, CDC, FDA, Surgeon General) and media institutions (e.g. newspapers, cable news, and social media platforms) that constitute the clergy. The "Science" dogma that the general public is induced to adhere to gets filtered through these institutions.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      This is the part I find scary. Credentialism has given rise to a new clerisy. This is especially evident in fields where “there’s no there there” like social studies.
- olliej 5y ago
  … what? Science changes course as more data comes in. At first there wasn’t evidence that masks worked, once that had been accrued science was pro-mask. The reason people questioning the effectiveness of masks is called a science denier is because there have been innumerable studies on the effectiveness of masks, and every one that has stood up to scrutiny has come out in favor of masks. Calling scientific consensus that is backed but huge amounts of direct evidence “dogma” is nonsense. Dogma is an absolute opinion on something in the absence of (or indeed denied by) evidence.
Animats 5y ago
What are some examples of this? String theory? Read Smolin, who points out that for decades, string theorists dominated physics, despite the absence of experimental evidence. Expert systems? I saw this back in the mid 1980s at Stanford, when the CS department had gone all-in on expert systems. Claims were made that strong AI was just around the corner. This from a technology that doesn't really do all that much. You write simple statements about something in a notation based on predicate calculus, after which you can ask questions. You get out pretty much what you put in. Systems like that still exist, mostly as chatbots for answering the easy questions so customer support doesn't have to talk to you. A programmed FAQ, basically. And those are hard sciences. Economics is hopeless. Psychology is worse. (I made the unpopular comment at the time that expert systems would turn out to be more important than syntax-directed parsing, but less important than relational databases.) As Fred Hoyle once said, "Science is prediction, not explanation". The parts of science that work lead to engineering that works and products that work. Belief is then unnecessary.
- simonh 5y ago
  And yet debate and progress continued. The scientific method doesn’t stop people being people, with all the associated flaws. It just sets a set of standards we can measure against. String theory and expert systems came up short and we moved on, but when you have questions and genuinely don’t know the answers sure, we end up exploring some dead ends. Science is just a heuristics to telling when that’s happening, but it doesn’t stop it happening in the first place.
- warmfuzzykitten 5y ago
  Computing, much less AI, is not a hard science. Computing is an art that gets practical results in limited domains.
brnaftr181 5y ago
Obviously not OP, If we look at the history of the Varna, particularly the Brahmin, if I'm not mistaken... From my fragmented recollection, the Brahmins created increasingly sophisticated and esoteric rituals which began to jointly increase in expense. They were eventually castigated [EDIT: the Vedic religion was actually challenged by a variety of religions, this period, ≈700BCE, gave rise to Buddhism and Jainism.] for this — I'd say science draws a pretty close parallel. It's increasingly opaque, expensive, esoteric, and despite all that it's informing opinion, debate, and policy. It's also a closed circle that is arbitrarily delimited, and given high autonomy and authority in society. Not to mention most people have a poor grasp of the fact that science isn't the truth. It also does little to inform us in the way of morality, yet it appears the "rationalists" (pardon, I've no better term) in usurping religion, have little in the way of an answer for this. Yet the constituent mass that composes it is one of the most trusted groups[1]. Which is easily exploitable if you factor all this together, not unlike religion. And it has been leveraged for maligned purposes, before and will continue to be. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/08/02/trust-and-mistrust-in-americans-views-of-scientific-experts/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/08/02/trust-and-mis...
willcipriano 5y ago
Specific examples can be quibbled about, but I will first say there is still good science occurring everyday. What I am talking about more are people who have donned the mantle of science. At some point along the line, science went from more of a verb to a proper noun (figuratively). We went from doing the science, to trusting or believing the science. Think about the statement "We believe in science in this house". What does that even really mean? As you considered joining the priesthood, you should know there is a great deal of scholarship that priests engage in. Not just religious scholarship, but the study of the natural world. Many of the minds that pushed humanity forward were priests. Priests believe in science, but the people who put those signs on their lawns tend not to agree. That gets me to my point, science isn't a noun to me. Yet everyday I keep hearing how the science has spoken. Often, when I look at the evidence provided and I deem what was said to be correct. Just as often, I find small sample sizes, hacked p values or a logical flaw with the conclusion. If I start a dialog about my findings in the wrong places, I get told I'm anti-science by people who didn't even read the paper. If forced to provide a good example it would the talk of Covid escaping the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This has become a more main stream opinion in the past month or so, but if you wanted to discuss the possibility of this around this time last year, you would've been called a conspiracy theorist by people who reportedly "believe in science" or even be censored by some of the major platforms in the name of science. That is the opposite of the science I grew up with.
- andi999 5y ago
  You only do science on a very small area at most. I mean, if you have a certain bacterial infection do you trust the science that the specific antibiotic is likely to be effective, or do you start to 'do' science?
  - ummonk 5y ago
    Can't speak for GP, but generally I believe there is a not insignificant chance that the treatment I'm being provided by the doctor is ineffective or even counterproductive. I'll still generally follow the doctor's advice at least after doing a brief literature search to confirm that the doctor's advice is aligned with contemporary best practices. Part of science is acknowledging epistemic uncertainty yet still acting on imperfect information.
jimbokun 5y ago
Being an atheist is not automatically tied to reason and rationality.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Osiris 5y ago

I live by reason and rationality and am also religious. I see "God" as Truth, or a consciousness that knows all truth, and that seeking truth, including natural laws/science, is equivalent to seeking god. The two do (religion and rationality) are not mutually exclusive concepts.

rackjack 5y ago
I do not think this is what most people believe the definition of religion or God is.
- tengbretson 5y ago
  I would recommend the prologue of the book of John to learn more about this.
paulryanrogers 5y ago
> The two do (religion and rationality) are not mutually exclusive concepts. Only if the religion is unfalsifiable. If it can be proven false then it's irrational to believe in it. If it can be proven true there is no need for faith.
- mbrock 5y ago
  What if believing in it is proven to have significant benefits, regardless of the scientific truth value of the doctrinal propositions? How do you really judge the rationality of that?
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    > What if believing in it is proven to have significant benefits, regardless of the scientific truth... If the beliefs are benign then one could make a case. Even so I prefer believing only what can be proven over ignorance and self deception.
  - mbfg 5y ago
    The issue is, as is amply shown in the United States, is that minds that can accept things without evidence that are considered benign, can also accept things that are harmful. A mind that doesn't consider truth to be an important part of a belief system can believe anything. This "My Truth" is a pervasive virus that is occurring here in the US, and you see it every day destroying our society. If i don't need evidence, I can believe white people are better than black people and take it on faith. I can believe men are better than women and take it on faith. I can believe cis people are better than lbgtq+ people and take it on faith. If i don't have to demonstrate the accuracy of my claims, My claims are as valid as your claims.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
If that's how you see "god" then the only thing we differ on, as such, is the meaning of the label 'religious'. For me, religious means following a specific set of beliefs, behaviours, and traditions - which is somewhat incompatible with the idea of seeking truth inasmuch that some newfound truths may be incompatible with said beliefs, behaviours, and traditions. According my mental dictionary, religion and rationality are mutually exclusive when the religious doctrine is proven irrational.
mbfg 5y ago
Believing things without evidence is a core disagreement with science.

ummonk 5y ago

There are numerous examples of this, but I think the most glaring would be on issues relating to the COVID pandemic. At the start, the scientific dogma was that masks don't work, and travel bans don't work, and worrying about COVID was irrational alarmism. Anyone who suggested otherwise was treated as not believing in science (this extended to censorship or at least misinformation banners on major social media platforms). Now, the scientific dogma has flipped, and for example anyone questioning the effectiveness of masks is treated as a science denier.

tshaddox 5y ago
It seems like you’ve skipped a step to “therefore there is a science clergy.” Who are these supposed clergy, and how do they resemble religious clergy? A credentialed scientist saying something they knew was incorrect or later learned to be incorrect seems unrelated to the concept of clergy.
- ummonk 5y ago
  The institutions are the clergy. To a small extent this can include credentialed scientists, peer-reviewed journals, etc., but really it's the government institutions (e.g. WHO, CDC, FDA, Surgeon General) and media institutions (e.g. newspapers, cable news, and social media platforms) that constitute the clergy. The "Science" dogma that the general public is induced to adhere to gets filtered through these institutions.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    This is the part I find scary. Credentialism has given rise to a new clerisy. This is especially evident in fields where “there’s no there there” like social studies.
olliej 5y ago
… what? Science changes course as more data comes in. At first there wasn’t evidence that masks worked, once that had been accrued science was pro-mask. The reason people questioning the effectiveness of masks is called a science denier is because there have been innumerable studies on the effectiveness of masks, and every one that has stood up to scrutiny has come out in favor of masks. Calling scientific consensus that is backed but huge amounts of direct evidence “dogma” is nonsense. Dogma is an absolute opinion on something in the absence of (or indeed denied by) evidence.

Animats 5y ago

What are some examples of this? String theory? Read Smolin, who points out that for decades, string theorists dominated physics, despite the absence of experimental evidence. Expert systems? I saw this back in the mid 1980s at Stanford, when the CS department had gone all-in on expert systems. Claims were made that strong AI was just around the corner. This from a technology that doesn't really do all that much. You write simple statements about something in a notation based on predicate calculus, after which you can ask questions. You get out pretty much what you put in. Systems like that still exist, mostly as chatbots for answering the easy questions so customer support doesn't have to talk to you. A programmed FAQ, basically. And those are hard sciences. Economics is hopeless. Psychology is worse. (I made the unpopular comment at the time that expert systems would turn out to be more important than syntax-directed parsing, but less important than relational databases.) As Fred Hoyle once said, "Science is prediction, not explanation". The parts of science that work lead to engineering that works and products that work. Belief is then unnecessary.

simonh 5y ago
And yet debate and progress continued. The scientific method doesn’t stop people being people, with all the associated flaws. It just sets a set of standards we can measure against. String theory and expert systems came up short and we moved on, but when you have questions and genuinely don’t know the answers sure, we end up exploring some dead ends. Science is just a heuristics to telling when that’s happening, but it doesn’t stop it happening in the first place.
warmfuzzykitten 5y ago
Computing, much less AI, is not a hard science. Computing is an art that gets practical results in limited domains.

brnaftr181 5y ago

Obviously not OP, If we look at the history of the Varna, particularly the Brahmin, if I'm not mistaken... From my fragmented recollection, the Brahmins created increasingly sophisticated and esoteric rituals which began to jointly increase in expense. They were eventually castigated [EDIT: the Vedic religion was actually challenged by a variety of religions, this period, ≈700BCE, gave rise to Buddhism and Jainism.] for this — I'd say science draws a pretty close parallel. It's increasingly opaque, expensive, esoteric, and despite all that it's informing opinion, debate, and policy. It's also a closed circle that is arbitrarily delimited, and given high autonomy and authority in society. Not to mention most people have a poor grasp of the fact that science isn't the truth. It also does little to inform us in the way of morality, yet it appears the "rationalists" (pardon, I've no better term) in usurping religion, have little in the way of an answer for this. Yet the constituent mass that composes it is one of the most trusted groups[1]. Which is easily exploitable if you factor all this together, not unlike religion. And it has been leveraged for maligned purposes, before and will continue to be. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/08/02/trust-and-mistrust-in-americans-views-of-scientific-experts/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/08/02/trust-and-mis...

willcipriano 5y ago

Specific examples can be quibbled about, but I will first say there is still good science occurring everyday. What I am talking about more are people who have donned the mantle of science. At some point along the line, science went from more of a verb to a proper noun (figuratively). We went from doing the science, to trusting or believing the science. Think about the statement "We believe in science in this house". What does that even really mean? As you considered joining the priesthood, you should know there is a great deal of scholarship that priests engage in. Not just religious scholarship, but the study of the natural world. Many of the minds that pushed humanity forward were priests. Priests believe in science, but the people who put those signs on their lawns tend not to agree. That gets me to my point, science isn't a noun to me. Yet everyday I keep hearing how the science has spoken. Often, when I look at the evidence provided and I deem what was said to be correct. Just as often, I find small sample sizes, hacked p values or a logical flaw with the conclusion. If I start a dialog about my findings in the wrong places, I get told I'm anti-science by people who didn't even read the paper. If forced to provide a good example it would the talk of Covid escaping the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This has become a more main stream opinion in the past month or so, but if you wanted to discuss the possibility of this around this time last year, you would've been called a conspiracy theorist by people who reportedly "believe in science" or even be censored by some of the major platforms in the name of science. That is the opposite of the science I grew up with.

andi999 5y ago
You only do science on a very small area at most. I mean, if you have a certain bacterial infection do you trust the science that the specific antibiotic is likely to be effective, or do you start to 'do' science?
- ummonk 5y ago
  Can't speak for GP, but generally I believe there is a not insignificant chance that the treatment I'm being provided by the doctor is ineffective or even counterproductive. I'll still generally follow the doctor's advice at least after doing a brief literature search to confirm that the doctor's advice is aligned with contemporary best practices. Part of science is acknowledging epistemic uncertainty yet still acting on imperfect information.

jimbokun 5y ago

Being an atheist is not automatically tied to reason and rationality.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]