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The maverick rabbi on science as a failed priesthood

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Moshe Averick, author of The Confused World of Modern Atheism (Mosaica Press, 2016), asks us to look at the facts:

For those who lean towards secularism in the Western world, it is the Scientist who has taken over the role of the priest, clergyman, and medicine man. Men and women of Science are looked upon with a sort of awe and have been conferred with something akin to a demi-god status. They are the holders of hidden “mystical” knowledge and perform magical technological and medical feats.

The simple fact, of course, is that scientists are no different than anyone else. …

For those who actually believe that scientists – homo scientistus – exist on a higher, exalted plane than the rest of us poor, lowly homo sapiens, here is a sampling of a few recent articles:

“Why Most Published Research Findings are False” – PloS Medicine, August 2005
“Is Most Published [scientific] Research Really False?” – Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, 9/23/16
“Is there a Reproducibility Crisis?” – Nature 5/23/16 – “More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientists experiments and more than half have failed to reproduce their own “
“Modelling Science Trustworthiness under publish or perish pressure” – Royal Society Open Science 11/1/2017

– Moshe Averick, “From the People Who Brought you the Hydrogen Bomb…..” at The Times of Israel

It’s not at all clear that naturalism (nature is all there is), often called “materialism,” which made science a priesthood, is capable of providing a road to reform. On the contrary, it is actually a disaster for the sciences. It is no help whatever against crackpot cosmologies and claims that consciousness is an illusion or that mugs have minds.

Increasingly, it cannot defend the disciplines of science and math against the assault from the ignorant and self-interested angry “woke” political operatives, seeking to pillage the science side now that they have destroyed the arts side.

See also: Moshe Averick on origin of life as bringing out the illogic of naturalist atheists

and

Moshe Averick in USA Today on the confusion around origin of life

Comments
The good part is that hero-worship of "scientists" is rapidly fading. It was universal from 1945 to 1980 or so. The web has made proper fact-based skepticism more common, as well as the SJW skepticism from the opposite angle. Modern hero-worship is focused on Innovative Disruptors Who Raise Share Value, like Bezos and Musk. These cult leaders are firmly in the same camp as Big Science, but they aren't really classified as scientists.polistra
August 19, 2018
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