Friday, August 01, 2008
Are We At War With Science?
In a recent WaPo column Michael Gerson looks at the press (and liberals in general) declared "war on science." As Gerson points out, there is much more at play than simply scientific inquiry:
It strikes me that life is full of mysteries - there are many unanswerable questions. Religion cannot answer them all, nor can science. Thus, at some point, for our own comfort, we must exercise faith. The question is "Where?"
As Gerson points out, science, untempered by ethics, grounded in religion can lead down ugly paths. Likewise, religion, untempered by reason, and particularly when driven by political power demands, can lead equally ugly places. Simply put - this is not an either/or question - and to cast it as such is precisely the dogmatic approach that gets us in trouble either way.
One of the beauties of Christianity is that it embraces the need for reason. That separates it from all other major world religions.
Why do we so often forget that?
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For the most part, these accusations are a political ploy -- actually an attempt to shut down political debate. Any practical concern about the content of government sex-education curricula is labeled "anti-science." Any ethical question about the destruction of human embryos to harvest their cells is dismissed as "theological" and thus illegitimate.For many, science, or rationality, is viewed as a religious alternative and it is "followed" with religious fervor. And such following generally includes all the irrational and dogmatic kinds of thinking that generally turned such individuals off to genuine religion to begin with - something Gerson essentially points out in the piece by demonstrating an inconsistency.
Liberal views are "objective" while traditional moral convictions are "biased." Public scrutiny of scientific practices is "politicizing" important decisions.
These arguments are seriously made, but they are not to be taken seriously. Does anyone really believe in a science without moral and legal limits? In harvesting organs from prisoners? In systematically getting rid of the disabled?
This last question, alas, does not answer itself. In America, the lives of about nine of 10 children with Down syndrome are ended before birth. In Europe, about 40 percent of unborn children with major congenital disorders are aborted.
All of which highlights a real conflict, a war within liberalism between the idea of unrestricted science in the cause of health and the principle that all men are created equal -- between humanitarianism and egalitarianism.
[...]
But the oracle of science is silent on certain essential topics. "Science, simply put," says Levin, "cannot account for human equality, and does not offer reasons to believe we are all equal. Science measures our material and animal qualities, and it finds them to be patently unequal."
Without a firm, morally grounded belief in equality, liberalism has been led down some dark paths. The old, progressive eugenics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries involved widespread sterilization of the mentally disabled as a form of social hygiene. "Drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon society," argued Margaret Sanger in 1922, "if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupidly cruel sentimentalism."
[...]
The point here is not to catch liberalism in an inconsistency. At its best, the liberal tradition has combined its belief in science with a firm commitment to the equal value of all -- including the disabled and imperfect.
But science can easily become the power of some over the lives of others. And in their talk of a Republican war on science, liberals may be blinding themselves to a very different kind of modern war in which their own ideals are deeply implicated: a war on equality.
It strikes me that life is full of mysteries - there are many unanswerable questions. Religion cannot answer them all, nor can science. Thus, at some point, for our own comfort, we must exercise faith. The question is "Where?"
As Gerson points out, science, untempered by ethics, grounded in religion can lead down ugly paths. Likewise, religion, untempered by reason, and particularly when driven by political power demands, can lead equally ugly places. Simply put - this is not an either/or question - and to cast it as such is precisely the dogmatic approach that gets us in trouble either way.
One of the beauties of Christianity is that it embraces the need for reason. That separates it from all other major world religions.
Why do we so often forget that?
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