CS Lewis, COVID-19, and scientism

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 19, 2020

Culture, Intelligent Design, Science}

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Seventy-five years ago, C.S. Lewis published his novel ”That Hideous Strength,” which explored the dangers of government in the name of science. What relevance does Lewis’s advice on the promise and perils of science-based public policy have in the age of COVID-19 and beyond? Political scientist John West, editor of the book The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, explores what we might learn from Lewis about the abuses of science during emergencies and how we might harness the benefits of science while avoiding the drawbacks of “scientism.” This online talk was originally delivered as part of a webinar held by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute on May 16, 2020.

Comments

Muslims have ONE God. The Trinity is not allowed. Jesus as God is not allowed. Unitarians would be considered as MuslimsET_{August 22, 2020
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Are Christians Muslims as well?daveS_{August 22, 2020
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The word "Muslim" means, literally, "one who submits to Allah (God)". That's it. Islam tells you how to submit. Judaism tells you how to submitET_{August 22, 2020
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If he practices Judaism, yes.ET_{August 22, 2020
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ET, Is Benjamin Netanyahu a Muslim?daveS_{August 22, 2020
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All members of Islam are Muslims. Not all Muslims are members of Islam.ET_{August 22, 2020
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ET: Islam is the religion, not Muslim. You can be a Muslim and not be a member of Islam. Jewish people are Muslims. I'll have to check that out. Are you a Muslim then? Oh, maybe Morman? From Wikipedia:
Muslims are people who follow or practice Islam, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion. Muslims consider the Quran, their holy book, to be the verbatim word of God as revealed to the Islamic prophet and messenger Muhammad. The majority of Muslims also follow the teachings and practices of Muhammad (sunnah) as recorded in traditional accounts (hadith).[29] The derivation of "Muslim" is from an Arabic word meaning "submitter" (to God).[30] The beliefs of Muslims include: that God (Arabic: ????? All?h) is eternal, transcendent and absolutely one (tawhid); that God is incomparable, self-sustaining and neither begets nor was begotten; that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that has been revealed before through many prophets including Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, and Jesus;[31] that these previous messages and revelations have been partially changed or corrupted over time (tahrif)[32] and that the Quran is the final unaltered revelation from God (Final Testament).[33]
JVL_{August 22, 2020
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🤔daveS_{August 22, 2020
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Islam is the religion, not Muslim. You can be a Muslim and not be a member of Islam. Jewish people are Muslims.ET_{August 22, 2020
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ET: So not a christian = atheist? Really? Nope, but I just wondered if you were an atheist. You don't seem like a Buddhist or a Jane or a Zoroastrian or a Hindu or a Muslim . . . Jewish maybe.JVL_{August 22, 2020
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So not a christian = atheist? Really?ET_{August 22, 2020
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ET: I wonder is JVL is a troll… Not according to the NHS. Anyway, I seem to remember saying you weren't a Christian so I was wondering if you are an atheist.JVL_{August 22, 2020
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I wonder is JVL is a troll...ET_{August 22, 2020
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1. Anyone who accepts atheism accepts naturalism.
I was wondering how the author supported that premise. Turns out, he doesn't. he says,
(#1 is obviously true),
Uh, what? How on Earth is #1 "obviously true?"William J Murray_{August 22, 2020
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I wonder if ET is an atheist? I'm not sure he's said . . .JVL_{August 22, 2020
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MatSpirit,
The President is NOT a socialist!
No. He is a biological automaton. And so are you. And so am I (according to the corrupt materialist philosophy you automatically love so much). Becsuse hey, that is what automatons do. Teleology anyone?Truthfreedom_{August 21, 2020
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BrunoAr August 20, 2020 at 1:39 pm "We can see what kind of scientists are rising to the top, like scum on stagnant water – narcissistic socialists." The President is NOT a socialist!MatSpirit_{August 21, 2020
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AaronS1978,
But just because of a group of Hominids agree on a conclusion, doesn’t mean that conclusion is correct, it means the group has a surviving gene that brought them to that conclusion.
Or according to evos, it is not necessarily a "surviving gene". It could be one that got along for the ride ("spandrel"), although it had not survival value per se. How can you prove then what is an "adaptation" and what is a "spandrel"? (That's very problematic, since we are talking about events that occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago).Truthfreedom_{August 21, 2020
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Bob O'H, First of all, congratulations on the hard work you've put into your field and the scientific rigor required to have your work published! I think where the problem lies is in the assumption that all previous work in all scientific fields have the same rigor. Many studies in the social sciences and medicine have been found to be irreproducible. This fact has been recognized in what's called the replication crisis.
A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments). In 2009, 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying studies at least once and 14% admitted to personally knowing someone who did. Misconducts were reported more frequently by medical researchers than others. - Wikipedia article, The Replication Crisis
So, with that in mind, should the efficacy of the quinine-like antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, in prevention of COVID-19, be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt before someone with the very real risk of dying from COVID-19 can resort to it under medical supervision? Many articles on the subject adamantly (and correctly) oppose any claim that it cures COVID-19, but they also include a self-righteous fury that President Trump should dare to articulate an opinion on it, much less take it himself. Fine. But the fact remains that both the claims and counter-claims are premature and will take years to determine. All we have is anecdotal evidence, which is notoriously unreliable. So, let me ask you this. If you tested positive for COVID-19 and you were warned by your doctor that you would most likely die from COVID-19 after months of excruciating pain and suffering, what would you do? -QQuerius_{August 21, 2020
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Science is only as good as the people doing it If you have a crap perception it’ll be crap science By the way peer review doesn’t escape this either this has been proven multiple times But just because of a group of Hominids agree on a conclusion, doesn’t mean that conclusion is correct, it means the group has a surviving gene that brought them to that conclusion. You can think of science can as from of tribalism. Why not everything else is according to scientists I think it would be quite interesting to start doing evolutionary science and psychology on the scientists and the reasons for their conclusions I’m sure there are many genetic predisposition to their conclusions and results And throughout that we must take a very hard materialistic and naturalistic position on the science everyone does Remember everyone including science is based off natural selection and survivalAaronS1978_{August 21, 2020
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Bob O'H
Thank you ET. And we should accept that you’re a capable judge of science… why?
Well, you should ask an a-theist HOW the hell they can consider themselves rational beings and capable of judging anything (and that includes asking yourself such a question if you are one of them): Atheists Can’t Trust Reason — Or Anything
1. Anyone who accepts atheism accepts naturalism. 2. On naturalism, the reliability of human reason is astronomically improbable. 3. Therefore, anyone who accepts naturalism has a defeator for any conclusion whatever reached on the basis of reasoning, including the conclusions of naturalism and atheism. 4. Therefore, atheism can never be accepted by anyone on a rational basis, since every atheist eo ipso has a rational defeator for his own acceptance of atheism. 5. Therefore, all atheists accept atheism on wholly non-rational grounds. 6. Therefore, every atheists just as such places himself outside the sphere of rational discourse. 7. Therefore, it is pointless to attempt to engage an atheist qua atheist within the sphere of rational discourse.
https://wmbriggs.com/post/22122/ A REAL scientist does not despise his/ her own thinking processes (because without them, "science" is dead in the water). But being honest and materialism are sworn enemies.Truthfreedom_{August 21, 2020
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Bob O'H: "I’ve over 100 scientific publications, and am a professor."
And yet Dr Bob, without a shred of empirical evidence that it is possible, believes that mindless processes produced his 'beyond belief' brain,
The Half-Truths of Materialist Evolution - DONALD DeMARCO - 02/06/2015 Excerpt: but I would like to direct attention to the unsupportable notion that the human brain, to focus on a single phenomenon, could possibly have evolved by sheer chance. One of the great stumbling blocks for Darwin and other chance evolutionists is explaining how a multitude of factors simultaneously coalesce to form a unified, functioning system. The human brain could not have evolved as a result of the addition of one factor at a time. Its unity and phantasmagorical complexity defies any explanation that relies on pure chance. It would be an underestimation of the first magnitude to say that today’s neurophysiologists know more about the structure and workings of the brain than did Darwin and his associates. Scientists in the field of brain research now inform us that a single human brain contains more molecular-scale switches than all the computers, routers and Internet connections on the entire planet! According to Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, the brain’s complexity is staggering, beyond anything his team of researchers had ever imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief. In the cerebral cortex alone, each neuron has between 1,000 to 10,000 synapses that result, roughly, in a total of 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies! A single synapse may contain 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A synapse, simply stated, is the place where a nerve impulse passes from one nerve cell to another. Phantasmagorical as this level of unified complexity is, it places us merely at the doorway of the brain’s even deeper mind-boggling organization. Glial cells in the brain assist in neuron speed. These cells outnumber neurons 10 times over, with 860 billion cells. All of this activity is monitored by microglia cells that not only clean up damaged cells but also prune dendrites, forming part of the learning process. The cortex alone contains 100,000 miles of myelin-covered, insulated nerve fibers. The process of mapping the brain would indeed be time-consuming. It would entail identifying every synaptic neuron. If it took a mere second to identify each neuron, it would require four billion years to complete the project. http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-half-truths-of-materialist-evolution/
Though Dr Bob apparently personally believes that he himself is a 'scientist' of a very high caliber since he believes that such unfathomable complexity can, essentially, be an accident, the fact of the matter is that Dr Bob has, in reality, lost his mind
"It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.” - Jay Homnick - 2006 American Spectator
As Professor J. Budziszewski stated,
"Though it always comes as a surprise to intellectuals, there are some forms of stupidity that one must be highly intelligent and educated to commit.” - J. Budziszewski
Verse:
Romans 1 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
bornagain77_{August 21, 2020
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Facts aren't hubris, Bob. I noticed that you failed to answer my question. Very telling, that.ET_{August 21, 2020
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ET -
My scientific skills are in the fact that I know and understand cause-and-effect relationships. I am able to determine the root cause of most effects. Science 101.
I was asking for a demonstration of scientific skill, not hubris.Bob O'H_{August 21, 2020
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Tell us Bob, how can we test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced any bacterial flagellum? And if you can't then tell us why you believe they did.ET_{August 21, 2020
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So what, Bob? You think nature can produce coded information processing systems- all without any evidence or a way to test the claim. You had no idea how different humans and chimps are. My scientific skills are in the fact that I know and understand cause-and-effect relationships. I am able to determine the root cause of most effects. Science 101. I bet your papers are just puff pieces that have nothing to do with actual scientific research.ET_{August 21, 2020
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https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/05/eminence-over-evidence-lancets-covid-19-retraction-14833AaronS1978_{August 21, 2020
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I've over 100 scientific publications, and am a professor. What demonstration of scientific skill do you have?Bob O'H_{August 21, 2020
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Ah, I will take my scientific skills over yours any and every day, Bob. You have yet to demonstrate an understanding of science.ET_{August 21, 2020
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Ah, so not because you have any demonstrable scientific expertise.Bob O'H_{August 21, 2020
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