Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uwmcsd1!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!markh
From: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Science IS a religion.
Message-ID: <5201@uwmcsd1.UUCP>
Date: 11 Mar 88 08:40:14 GMT
References: <73600008@uiucdcsp>
Sender: daemon@uwmcsd1.UUCP
Reply-To: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Lines: 49
Summary: Which one?  Zen?

In article <73600008@uiucdcsp> pax@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu writes:

>	All the criticism of Omni reminds me of how I've come to detest NOVA.
>	In the beginning I was an enthusiastic NOVA supporter.  But
>	the more I saw the less I liked it.  The problem is that it presents
>	science half as a cult of personalities and half as religion.
>	The first assertion is probably obvious to everyone.  As to the
>	second, if the next time you are watching it you would simply 
>	imagine the narrator intoning your favorite creed, you will be
>	persuaded by how well that creed fits.  NOVA and religion are
>	appealing to the same emotion.

     Science and religion may overlap in the way they appeal to us and in
     the fact that both seek truth in their own way, but they cannot be the
     same.  Why?  Because there are Christian scientists, Buddhist scientits,
     Hindu scientists, Zen scientists and so on.  Most religions have the
     property that they do not include members of every other religion in it.
     If science were a religion then scientists would not practice those other
     religions.
>
>	Since I first made this realization, two things have happened
>	to further shake my confidence in science as a social institution.
>
>	But the bottom line is that science is not logical and not

Discovery is not logical.  Logic is only used to justify what had already been
arrived at by other means (i.e. through random chance or non-logical thinking.)
It is not used to make truths where there were none before.  Why do you think 
they call it deduction?  So, of course, science is not logical at the bottommost
level.  The measure of justification is there though.

>	impartial but very much driven by politics and personalities,
>	it's a religion complete with dogma and high priests ...

So what's new?  This has already been well known since Kuhn.  The problem is not
the dogma nor the supposedly extraneous politicking that goes on.  The problem
lies in intolerance.  The others can exist without it.

>	It still seems very likely to me that
>	future generations might look on science the way we look
>	on alchemy or might even regard it with the disgust we resevre
>	for slavery and racism.

... or the way the Library of Alexandria was burned down because of a deep-
seated prejudice against people who seek knowledge.

Future (and present) generations will definitely look upon us as primitive,
but they will not possess the obsolete arrogance to regard us in disgust and
contempt. That much will be reformed (today or in the near future).