XPost: alt.atheism, alt.society.liberalism, alt.global-warming   
   XPost: alt.politics.conservative   
   From: gudloos@yahoo.com   
      
   "Jihad Jeffy"  skrev i meddelelsen   
   news:v-CdnZrq7ar1PWvPnZ2dnUVZ_vGdnZ2d@earthlink.com...   
   > [Note: Pay special attention to the fourth and fifth paragraphs.]   
   > _______________________________________________________________________   
   > America's Science Problem   
   > By Shawn Lawrence Otto   
   > Scientific American, Nov. 2012   
   >   
   > [Excerpts]   
   >   
   > "The Founding Fathers were science enthusiasts. Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer   
   > and scientist, built the primary justification for the nation's   
   > independence on the thinking of Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and John   
   > Locke -- the creators of physics, inductive reasoning and empiricism. ...   
   > Based on this foundation of science -- of knowledge gained by systematic   
   > study and testing instead of by the assertions of ideology --   
   > the argument for a new, democratic form of government was self-evident."   
   >   
   > "[S]ome 236 years after Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence,   
   > several major party contenders for political office took positions that   
   > can only be described as 'antiscience': against evolution, human-induced   
   > climate change, vaccines, stem cell research, and more. A former   
   > Republican governor [Jon Huntsman] even warned that his own political   
   > party was in danger of becoming 'the antiscience party.'"   
   >   
   > "Such positions could typically be dismissed as nothing more than   
   > election-year posturing except that they reflect an anti-intellectual   
   > conformity that is gaining strength in the U.S. at precisely the moment   
   > that most of the important opportunities for economic growth, and serious   
   > threats to the well-being of the nation, require a better grasp of   
   > scientific issues. By turning public opinion away from the   
   > antiauthoritarian principles of the nation's founders, the new science   
   > denialism is creating an existential crisis like few the country has faced   
   > before."   
   >   
   > "Ironically, the intellectual tools currently being used by the political   
   > right to such harmful effect originated on the academic left. In the 1960s   
   > and 1970s a philosophical movement called postmodernism developed among   
   > humanities professors displeased at being deposed by science, which they   
   > regarded as right-leaning. Postmodernism adopted ideas from cultural   
   > anthropology and relativity theory to argue that truth is relative and   
   > subject to the assumptions and prejudices of the observer. Science is just   
   > one of many ways of knowing, they argued, neither more nor less valid than   
   > others, like those of Aborigines, Native Americans or women. Furthermore,   
   > they defined science as the way of knowing among Western white men and a   
   > tool of cultural oppression. This argument resonated with many feminists   
   > and civil-rights activists and became widely adopted, leading to the   
   > 'political correctness' justifiably hated by Rush Limbaugh and the 'mental   
   > masturbation' lampooned by Woody Allen."   
   >   
   > "By falsely equating knowledge with opinion, postmodernists and   
   > antiscience conservatives alike collapse our thinking back to a   
   > pre-Enlightenment era, leaving no common basis for public policy. Public   
   > discourse is reduced to endless warring opinions, none seen as more valid   
   > than another. Policy is determined by the loudest voices, reducing us to a   
   > world in which might makes right -- the classic definition of   
   > authoritarianism."   
   >   
   > "Postmodernism infiltrated a generation of American education programs, as   
   > Allan Bloom first pointed out in 'The Closing of the American Mind.' It   
   > also infected journalism, where the phrase 'there is no such thing as   
   > objectivity' is often repeated like a mantra."   
   >   
   > "Reporters who agree with this statement will not dig to get to the truth   
   > and will tend to simply present 'both sides' of contentious issues,   
   > especially if they cannot judge the validity of scientific evidence. This   
   > kind of false balance becomes a problem when one side is based on   
   > knowledge and the other is merely an opinion, as often occurs when policy   
   > problems intersect with science. If the press corps does not strive to   
   > report objective reality, for which scientific evidence is our only   
   > reliable guide, the ship of democracy is set adrift from its moorings in   
   > the well-informed voter and becomes vulnerable once again to the tyranny   
   > that Jefferson feared.   
      
      
   Wonderfully written, horribly accurate.  I have noted the irony of this   
   insistence that every position is just a matter of opinion in many of the   
   posts to alt.atheism, irony because, as the author Shawn Lawrence Otto   
   points out, it comes from people who insist that their opinion is   
   undisputable fact making their opponents morally suspect.  It turns every   
   controversy into a football game in which "both sides" cheer for their side,   
   and nobody pays attention to reality; which very rudely refuses to go away.   
   --   
   thomas p   
      
   Ignorance is the mother of devotion.   
      
   David Hume   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)