Saw this on line & am interested in the comparison and the opinions of the SigForum family.



When the first documented COVID case appeared in the United States 16 months ago, few would have predicted the religious revival it ignited. Unlike the four previous Great Awakenings that expanded American’s spiritual footprint, this revival exposed what now is the country’s most politically powerful religion: Secular Science-ism.

Pollsters have for two decades noted the rise of the "religious nones," people who claim no particular religious affiliation or beliefs. This group makes up less than one-third of the population but skews toward the higher educated, upper income and politically liberal classes. Pew Forum’s research indicates "solidly secular" Americans are 50% more likely to have a college degree and incomes over $150,000 – and 71% of that group identifies with the Democratic Party.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed these "nones" really are not without a religious belief structure, however. Their behavior is driven by the kinds of impulses, demands and leaps of faith they sometimes deride in more traditional religions.

Rejection of the afterlife and focus on this earthly life pulls secular liberals toward caution – perhaps to an extent that risk tolerance drives, rather than follows, political ideology. This zealous pursuit of a no-risk lifestyle leads to ridiculous and self-contradicting requirements like Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s edict that summer campers wear masks while canoeing, or the continued closure of schools after teachers have been vaccinated.

The Science-ism practiced today has its own clergy – epidemiologists, with the Centers for Disease Control constituting a holiest of holies, and Dr. Anthony Fauci as a pope. Left-wing belief in an inevitable positive progression of humanity licenses the worship of our betters, even elevating scientists over science, putting clergy over scripture.

Adherents hung on every word Fauci uttered about COVID, and defended him viscerally, even when his advice conflicted with prior pronouncements or cited evidence. They put up yard signs expressing their witness to neighbors, reading: "In this house, we believe in science," as if it were a creed and not an academic discipline.

A hallmark of any religion is the insistence that devotees make economic sacrifices, and in Science-ism this took the form of economic shutdowns implemented by blue-state governors. Liberals grabbed the moral high ground only affluent perches such as theirs can afford, and with missionary zeal embraced widespread economic harm for the nation and for less comfortable neighbors.

In Islam, Judaism and other established religions, the most orthodox adherents demonstrate devotion by wearing symbolic religious clothing in routine daily life; Christians do it with cross-themed jewelry. Same for Science-ism, whose zealots not only wear masks in crowds, but also while they exercise outdoors, walk their dogs or drive their cars alone, even after vaccination. For them, mask wearing is not merely an attempt to limit exhaled aerosols, it signals a sincere, if irrational, belief structure.

This spring, as COVID case data – real science – indicated the thresholds that triggered mask mandates were no longer being met, Secular Science-ism demanded that data be ignored and sacrifice maintained. President Joe Biden called the March relaxation of COVID rules in Mississippi and Texas "Neanderthal thinking."
Now as even blue-state governors reluctantly rescind mask mandates, liberals who run some local governments and institutions have stubbornly clung to the piety high that only compelling your neighbors can bring.
The real test of any faith is whether an adherent sticks with it once it is confronted with claimed truth it cannot prove – and many secular liberals are powering through those tests, clinging to the myths of outdoor transmission and purification rituals of wiping down surfaces to rid them of imaginary virus particles.

The fundamentalist nature of this secular theology is demanding in a manner more severe than even that of the separatist Amish. The rabid practitioners of Science-ism do not just insist they should be left alone to practice their extreme beliefs; they insist on a theocracy in which all of government’s decisions turn on them as well.

What is unique about COVID that brought this new left religiosity to the fore? Perhaps it was this pandemic’s perfectly layered components – its disproportionate racial impact, its beginnings with right-wing anger toward China, its clean trades between health regulations and economic capitalism, and its policy debate weighing personal responsibility versus forced collective action.

The emergence of this militantly secular religion will not go away as COVID death counts steadily decline. While a coronavirus revealed the political power of Science-ism, the fulfillment its sanctimony gives its adherents will not subside. The personal voids created by the rejection of traditional religion will always demand to be otherwise filled.

Liberals have embraced climate change as their feared apocalyptical Judgement Day. They eagerly impose penance on Westerners for the sins of consumption and growth, in the form of more expensive and less reliable energy; smaller homes, vehicles and families; higher taxes, and restricted diets. They are happy to require sacrifice from others, namely fossil fuel workers and their communities.

Lacking room for grace or redemption, they see humanity needing to save itself, through an economy of scarcity tied to the imposition of strict regulations and higher costs. The most liberal dogma increasingly focuses on structural racism as America’s inherited Original Sin, and insists no baptism can wash away its stain. 
To compensate, educated White liberals have adopted their own self-flagellation, whereby they publicly and constantly confess their irredeemable privilege. They will continue to invent new rituals and sacraments, like the wearing of masks and other virtue signaling, to demonstrate their piety and to give their lives meaning. 
Given their education, income and influence inside the Democratic Party, these religious zealots will stay politically powerful. Unless the rest of us can persuade them to rejoin more time-tested faiths, we’re going to live with this pursuit of a twisted theocracy for decades to come.

Link

Where's the link?

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Link

Where's the link?

Another rule I obviously missed.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinio...bby-jindal-brad-todd

Thank you. Providing a link lets members see the story for themselves, read comments on a page (if applicable) and it lets me and all others reading your news item verify that no changes have been made between the original story and what is posted on these pages. And yes, this has been policy here since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Naturalism, scientific materialism, post-modernism - these world views have been around for a long time. The COVID connection is a stretch - sounds like the author had some space to fill.

Yay, Science! I believe scientific research has brought us many great things. But it has also brought us:
Zyklon B. Originally a pesticide.
D.D.T.
Sarin gas.
Tabun
T.N.T. Originally a dye.
Agent Orange.
Chlorofluorocarbons.
Thalidomide.
I dont think science will ever be a religion for me.

It’s astonishing how many people go around saying/thinking, “I believe in science.”

Admittedly, I’ve never met a scientist who said such things, as they would realize the absurdity of declaring a belief in a means of categorizing observations.

Science is continually evolving. "Science" once thought the Sun revolves around Earth, the human body is composed of four "humors," etc.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: egregore,

quote:

"Science" once thought Earth revolved around the Sun

That has since been proved to be false.

if my dear sweet grandmother was still living, she would simply say "Bless their hearts." If you were raised in the south, you know exactly what she meant when she said that.

quote:

Originally posted by Minnow:
if my dear sweet grandmother was still living, she would simply say "Bless their hearts." If you were raised in the south, you know exactly what she meant when she said that.

Hey! No need to get nasty Minnow!

I am getting so tired of the Progs, Libs, and media throwing out the "Follow the science" quote that often does not, but tries to make their agenda legitimate. Kind of like "In these unprecedented times" that finally died a long overdue death.

Just another version of the "soap opera" mentality. Sometimes it changes with age and accumulated knowledge and experience, but sometimes not!

Actual science is just science.

But ignoramuses can adopt science as a sort of religion when they recite scientific findings without understanding. Or when badly done science leads them astray because they don't have sufficient understanding to know that it is bad science.

I think this is what Aglifter is saying, in another way.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
Science is continually evolving. "Science" once thought the Sun revolves around Earth, the human body is composed of four "humors," etc.

Yes, but so what?

Science takes an observation, makes a hypothesis, tests it, and then confirms or refutes the hypothesis as best it can. Later, further or better observation may show that the original conclusion was wrong. That just means it was wrong, not that science is "bad" or just another belief system.

The earth centered universe is a great example. From earth, upon superficial observation, it does seem that everything revolves around the earth. But later observations, and in particular, the retrograde motion of the planets (when they go in the opposite of their expected direction) lead observers to realize that the earth was not the center, but the sun was. Later still, they were able to work out that the planets orbits were not circles, and so on.

Also, recall that religious (Catholic) interpretation of the bible required that the earth be the center, so there were extrinsic social pressures resisting a change to the original conclusion that the earth was in the center.

So scientific conclusions change as observation is refined. Again, this does not mean science is a mere belief system. Science is supposed to do this. Aristotle cannot be expected to have gotten the nature of matter correct, as we now understand it. He had only his eyes, ears, and other senses. He didn't have microscopes, centrifuges, spectrometers, or particle accelerators. And maybe we'll later be proven to have misunderstood things as we learn more. However, the increasing success in building handy tools, like radios and satellite navigation systems is an indication that we are on the right track, even if we don't yet have a perfect understanding.

So it doesn't matter than science got some things wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Yay, Science! I believe scientific research has brought us many great things. But it has also brought us:
Zyklon B. Originally a pesticide.
D.D.T.
Sarin gas.
Tabun
T.N.T. Originally a dye.
Agent Orange.
Chlorofluorocarbons.
Thalidomide.
I dont think science will ever be a religion for me.

Again, so what?

Science made discoveries. Zyklon B, as noted, was used to kill pests. (Although it isn't much of a discovery - it is cyanide in a handy to use form for filling enclosed space with vapors.) It took Nazis to use it to kill people. That doesn't make science the bad guy - it means the Nazis were the bad guys.

Cave men killed other cave men with sticks. That doesn't make tree limbs or the people who broke them off a tree bad.

Yes, this should remind us not to fetishize science, but that science sometimes creates dangerous tools or tools that have been misued is no reason to dismiss science, either.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jhe888,

Science boils down to two things.
Facts (information), and then the correct interpretation (opinion) of those facts.
Sometimes the truth is declared before all the relevant facts are discovered, and other times people misinterpret those facts for any number of reasons.
Real scientific advances have brought us from the stone age to where we are now.

Paraphrasing a meme, but the following fits for me:

"Look, no one has all the answers, but I'm going with the folks in lab coats that don't make me dress up once a week to hang out with people I don't like."

quote:

Science boils down to two things.
Facts (information), and then the correct interpretation (opinion) of those facts.
Sometimes the truth is declared before all the relevant facts are discovered, and other times people misinterpret those facts for any number of reasons.

Yes. Science requires critical thinking. It is never "settled" because advances are made by challenging conventional thinking.

Here's an interesting discussion of this topic with Doug Casey.

Doug Casey on Why Most People Outsource Their Thinking to “The Experts”

International Man: Thanks to the internet and modern technology, the average person can now access information on almost any topic with relative ease.

But it seems people are doing less critical thinking than ever.

Why do you think that is the case?

Doug Casey: Technology is a double-edged sword when it comes to critical thinking. It’s paradoxical that something so associated with knowledge and research is often at odds with wisdom. I think that’s partly because today’s technology offers instant answers—no thought required. You can go to Google, and an answer is at your fingertips. It doesn’t require research or thought—the answer just appears. It subtly obviates the need for contemplation.

Let’s first define what critical thinking is. I’d say it’s the process of questioning the validity of the assumptions and the accuracy of the data for everything. A critical thinker never assumes or takes anything for granted.

We can’t always be sure what the quality of a googled answer is, but most people assume it’s honest and correct. However, considering the nature of the people who run Google, Wikipedia, and websites of that nature, I prefer to assume that the quality of many answers is low.

In fact, the volume of data available through computer technology is so great that there’s a tendency to confuse all that quantity with quality. When the world, and the data stream, is moving very quickly, it seems you have less time to contemplate its meaning. You can get lost in it and lose perspective.

It reminds me of a scene out of the original Rollerball movie from the 1970s with James Caan. Books no longer exist. All knowledge is contained in an all-powerful computer. The scientist in charge of the computer is talking to another character and says, “Yeah, for some reason, we’ve lost the 13th century,” and he kicks the machine. It’s the only source of what used to be in millions of books.

We’re almost in a situation where everything comes from one source—basically Google—rather than researching books, getting answers from a dozen points of view, and thinking critically about their meaning. Sure, Google gives you many references. But how many others have been “cancelled?” How many considered politically incorrect are buried as deep as the 13th century in Rollerball?

International Man: Whether it’s finance, economics, politics, and many other areas, it seems almost everywhere you look, people are looking to the so-called “experts” to tell them what they should think about a given topic.

Where does this come from? How did most people come to trust the “experts”?

Doug Casey: As the amount and complexity of data grows, it’s natural to want an expert to sort it out for you. But experts are known for knowing a lot about a little, not for having broad, integrated knowledge. People understandably look to them to make decisions for them. That’s foolish. Better that you go to a philosopher than a technician when the time comes to decide on something important. But philosophers are in short supply today, so people listen to celebrities.

A celebrity is someone who’s famous for being well-known. People automatically assume that famous people must know something they don’t. The public doesn’t know much, but they know more about some celebrities than they do about their own friends, neighbors, and relatives. And that engenders trust. People trust a celebrity who endorses something he knows nothing about because they think they know him. It’s another consequence of mass media. The average person is much more likely to accept Google’s, or Wikipedia’s, or some celebrity’s opinion than to research something themselves. Critical thinking is hard work, and questioning authority doesn’t usually make you any friends.

I see it in the newsletter business all the time. Somebody who’s glib and can present well can be transformed into an instant expert, even though he knows very little—as long as he’s good at presenting and gaining people’s confidence. We see that with the talking heads on TV as well. They’re really just actors who don’t know anything, but they’re good-looking, well-promoted, and have a nice social veneer, so people trust them.

It makes no sense, and neither does the public’s obsession with credentials. Something like a third of Americans have a college degree—which today only means they’ve spent a lot of money to be indoctrinated over four years. It’s no guarantee of expertise—forget about wisdom or judgment. Over 13% of graduates have master’s degrees or PhDs. That doesn’t prove they’re critical thinkers.

In most cases, those degrees prove little, other than the recipients think it’s a good idea to spend a lot of time and money for a credential. Credentials should be suspect; critical thinkers don’t assume they’re worth anything. They’re often a camouflage for mediocrity. In today’s world, their main value is to intimidate by making the public assume you know what you’re talking about. They trust the credential, the way they’ve come to trust Google or Wikipedia.

People are comforted to believe that if they don’t know the answer, someone with a degree does. And they should be in charge. I suspect most higher degree holders think they should be in charge, too. It’s a bad tendency across the board.

International Man: The COVID hysteria has only accelerated this trend.

Throughout the pandemic, most people believed the “health experts” robotically and even attacked those who brought forth logical information and data which challenged the established narrative.

What is your take?

Doug Casey: The media and the Establishment have selected a set of credentialed health experts, promoted them, and told the public that they know what they’re talking about. Take Anthony Fauci—he has lots of credentials. Like everyone high up in government agencies, whether or not he was ever a competent scientist, you can be sure he’s a very competent political operator. And apparently quite wealthy, with positions in companies under his purview.

In any event, he’s a life-long government employee. A professional bureaucrat, previously invisible but now elevated from nowhere to near-dictatorial control.

Meanwhile, there are people that have written numerous peer-reviewed papers, done serious lab work, and are currently dealing with patients with boots on the ground whose views are cancelled because they disagree with Czar Fauci.

The average person never hears about them, and when they do, they’re cancelled by the mass media. The perfect example of this is the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in countering the COVID virus—apart from the fact the supposed pandemic itself is greatly overrated.

Anyone who’s “vaccine hesitant” or—God forbid—a COVID denier is painted as anti-science, a conspiracy theorist. My view is that there are legitimate reasons not to take any experimental vaccine. Especially when there’s a possibility the supposed cure is much more dangerous than the disease itself.

I’ve met exactly one person who’s gotten symptomatic COVID. He was sick for two days with the flu and fully recovered. So where are all the dead bodies? The casualties have strictly been very old people, very sick people, or very fat people. Occasional anomalous young, healthy, slim people die from it—assuming it was the actual cause of death—just the way young, healthy people occasionally die from the ordinary flu. So, is it a conspiracy? I don’t know. I’m just confident this era will go down as one of the most stupid and embarrassing in world history.

International Man: Politicians, bureaucrats, and the intelligence community are obvious members of the ruling class that seek power and control.

Are the “health experts” new members of the political ruling class?

Doug Casey: Sickness and fear of death get the public’s attention even more than sex and money. And, for what it’s worth, the public has been prepped for decades by loads of sci-fi books and movies featuring a virus wiping out most of humanity. And not without cause. In fact, the chances are overwhelming that biological warfare will be a major element in any future conflict with China.

Telling people that they’re going to get sick and die, endangering their loved ones, is a powerful motivator to get them to do as they’re told. Still, COVID is 90% hysteria. If someone is old, obese, or sick, they might want to isolate themselves, but it’s insane to lock down the whole planet to unsuccessfully safeguard a few people in danger. And, it’s equally insane for everyone to take risky vaccines against a non-threat.

Let the people who are worried risk getting the vaccine; although, there seems to be some serious question about how efficacious the vaccine itself is.

International Man: Where do you think this will all lead, and what are the implications?

Doug Casey: I’m afraid it’s all leading toward a many-tentacled police state.

The people who run the State have control of the money supply, the economy, the education system, and the media. They’ve gotten control of the medical system. They’re replacing traditional religion, as well, with what amounts to new secular religions; that’s an interesting twist.

Christianity is on its way out. It’s already a dead duck in Europe and is hanging on in the US only among the lower classes. The elite no longer believes in traditional religion. It’s being replaced by updated versions of Marxism, which was always a secular religion, even though it claimed to be “scientific”—like Greenism and Wokeism.

The bad guys—by which I mean the statists and collectivists—have mounted a war on many fronts, and they’re succeeding mightily. They’ll use the Greater Depression to create a genuine police state—a kinder and gentler version of the old USSR, East Germany, but with a higher standard of living and more TV channels.

The ruling class will blame the collapse of the economy on COVID. As the depression drags on, they’ll also blame it on global warming, not their stupid economic policies. COVID and the Global Warming scam are wonderful deus ex machina devices to allow the bad guys to dodge the blame for what’s coming.

Marxism, statism, and collectivism will once more evade the blame for the consequences of their idiotic economic ideas and evil ethical notions. That’s largely because critical thinking has vanished from the West.

https://internationalman.com/a...king-to-the-experts/

She blinded me with science.