XPost: alt.atheism, alt.society.liberalism, alt.global-warming   
   XPost: alt.politics.conservative   
   From: markp@NOSPAMmail.com   
      
   On 2/9/2014 3:12 AM, thomas p. wrote:   
   > "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.   
   >   
   Shawn Otto and thomas p each win my applause.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)