Dave Pollard reviews a book I’ve been wanting to find the time to read, The Science Delusion by Curtis White. He writes:
The book takes on a whole horde of fervent adherents to scientism, technophilia, the myth of ‘progress’ and simplistic ‘theories of everything’. It courageously deconstructs the ludicrous arguments of the “new athiests” (Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking et al), the dumb-it-down science ‘journalists’ and pop neuroscience cultists (Jonah Lehrer, Damasio, Seung, Huxley, Pinker, Florida, many marketing ‘gurus’ and linguists, and many of the TEDTalk performers). The collective message of these groups is, in White’s words: “The human mind is a machine of flesh, neurons and chemicals; with enough money and computing power the jigsaw puzzle of the brain will be completed, and we will know what we are and how we should act”.
. . . and he offers up a definition of science that should be useful should I ever get into a bar argument about what science is after three or four beers.
Science is, after all, nothing more than the creation of approximate, limited and ever-changing models and metaphors of some aspects of reality, that are often interesting and sometimes (enormously) useful.
. . . and I’m thinking of writing a comment and wonder if there is some way to work in Shroud Science. It never hurts to work that in. So I’m searching for a quote from this year’s news, perhaps from Eastertide, and I encounter this in the New York Times (Elisabetta Povoledo, March 29, 2013)
Scientists have struggled to explain the image of the man on the cloth, which has markings compatible with the wounds of someone who was crucified. Mr. [Giulio] Fanti said he thought the image could have been created by a “very intense burst of energy,” which could have mutated the percentage of carbon-14 in the linen, leading some scientists to wrongly date it to the 13th century.
Shish. Shush. No comment.
Finding the truth, about the Shroud or anything, is difficult. I can think of several reasons: 1)History (and science) are written by the winners. 2) Many people are capable of telling many lies and half-truths. 3) We all often deceive ourselves through our own desires and biases.
Sounds like an interesting book in an age where science is treated as if it were absolute and a replacement for religion, when in actual reality, there is no conflict between the two.