
The cult of science - jxub
https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/6bi4ho/i_think_im_done_with_bill_nye_his_new_show_sucks/dhn89le/
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Cogito
It seems like so much of these discussions come from attempts to position
'belief in science' as faith exercise. These attempts appear to be taught in
various communities as defence against the rational, and as a tool when
evangelising.

If someone questions your beliefs, saying you have no reason to believe them,
a common thing to fall back to is that you believe them on faith. There are
lots of ways to argue against that from a rational point of view, such as by
showing they could just as easily believe on faith an opposing view, but the
believer doesn't even need to entertain those arguments if they simply say
'but your beliefs are based on faith as well'.

Similarly, if you can convince someone that they believe 'science' on faith,
it becomes easier to stretch that to have them believe other things on faith.

It's not always obvious when someone is believing some thing about the world,
claiming they believe it because 'science', if they believe it on faith or
not. This is why I think the 'faith based science' arguments have been so
successful.

For me the counterargument to 'belief in science is on faith, too' is fairly
simple, and comes in two parts.

\- No idea of 'science' is held sacred, and will be replaced as soon as we
have reason to replace it. Science changes its ideas to fit the world. Faith
ignores the world when those ideas are contradicted.

\- No authority of 'science' is held sacred, assumed to be infallible or
incomprehensible. Whenever science makes a claim it is possible to verify that
claim and the assumptions the claim builds upon. Any faith based claim
eventually reduces to 'because this thing/person claimed it' \- often a
specific person or book.

~~~
beaconstudios
I think the "cult of science" argument still holds up even if you take it out
of the context of someone countering in a faith-related argument. I've seen
plenty of the rituals and iconography mentioned in the article play out in pop
culture ( with reddit being especially bad for "fuck yeah science" type
nonsense). Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson being the atheist televangelists
strikes a chord.

It's not that faith in science is wrong (it's the best tool we have available
right now), but that the way many people treat science is exactly the same way
they would have treated religion if they were fervently religious. They didn't
pick up the skepticism and rationalism that's meant to come with a scientific
mindset, it's just "science TV man says X so X is true". We even get cargo
cult science on HN (not a big surprise given this place is just a more formal
reddit) where people demand a citation to a journal to back up arguments, but
if one is provided the argument is dead in the water because the requester has
no idea how to read the jargon of the field 9/10 times.

~~~
kkarakk
nye and tyson are not considered "scientific atheist televangelists" by anyone
who even casually researches their qualifications and temperaments. both are
products of pop culture and are treated as such. both face heavy mockery in
less PC social networks frequented by folk that have relatively scientific
mindsets(for eg /sci/).Both make heavily egregious comments that are forgiven
by their fans coz everyone makes a mistake sometimes.

as for the second part of your argument, yes HN does get some ignorant
arguments but that is the price of becoming more popular - you attract people
from all segments of the technically inclined population.

this is yet another "the popular thing of the day is actually bad coz human
beings are stupid and do not seek out opposing viewpoints" argument thread

~~~
erezyehuda
It seems like you read more cynicism and hostility in the previous comment
than was actually there.

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mr_toad
This whole debate (and the TV shows) seem peculiarly American.

> Yes, the conflation between atheism and science is very frustrating, and
> harmful to science's image.

In particular, this attitude seems to be prevalantly American. Being an
atheist carries less of a stigma outside the US, and the correlation between
scientific understanding and a tendency to irreligious beliefs is taken for
granted.

