Trainee neophyte
Established Member
Your post is like most of yours, as I said previously its a scatter gun of misinformation and logical fallacies making it difficult to tie you down on anything.
Perhaps a journalist writes more clearly than me, then. Of all places, The Guardian has an article saying some of what I have failed to get across: Science: the religion that must not be questioned | Henry Gee
It concludes:
"Why is this? The answer, I think, is that those who are scientists, or who pretend to be scientists, cling to the mantle of a kind of religious authority. And as anyone who has tried to comment on religion has discovered, there is no such thing as criticism. There is only blasphemy."
And that's in The Guardian, so it must be true.
I was trying to make 2 points:
1. There is a tendency to treat the high priests of science as gods amongst men, who must never be questioned, and whose commandments must be followed. NB this tendency is among non - scientists, and used as a method of control by politicians and journalists.
2. From wikipedia: "Sacred cow is an idiom, a figurative reference to cattle in religion and mythology. A figurative sacred cow is a figure of speech for something considered immune from question or criticism, especially unreasonably so."
Whilst all science is the "search for truth", as much as it can be, some truth is self evident, and can not be questioned without incurring the wrath of the heirarchy. Athropogenic Climate Change would be one example, there are certainly others.
Please note that I am not saying that either of these points are proven, immutable, scientifically researched hypotheses with peer-reviewed, double blind experimental evidence to back them up. It is a tendency, amongst journalism and laypeople in general (again with the religious terminology) to ascribe infallibility and ineffability to the great god "Science", and to treat it's high priests as beyond reproach or question. Not to say that some members of the clergy can't be defrocked if they break the rules.