Today a more apposite figure than the Mad Hatter is the mad scientist. I have rather lost faith in scientists as a group. The Royal Society behaves more as a public relations agency for the Greens than an institution dedicated to objective truth, and the holder of the Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University appears to assert, in his book promoting militant atheism, that no true Christian is or can be a good scientist. As a result, all kinds of journalistic hobbledehoys are putting out stuff saying there is no God, and the supply of clever teenagers taking science at school is dwindling. We live in the age of the Mad Scientist’s Tea Party, and what gets talked about there makes Alice’s experiences seem credible, indeed prosaic. Scientists still claim to rule the intellect but the lessons they teach erode confidence -- as the Gryphon said, 'The reason they’re called lessons is because they lessen from day to day.'
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
QOTD
Historian Paul Johnson in the August 18th Spectator (U.K.):
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I love Johnson. While I admit I likely have a large selection bias for my observation, it does seem that if you let many of the academic elite talk long enough, they reveal how far off the rails they are.
There is a similar phenomenon on one of the other sides, in which if you let some (not all) of the Intelligent Design people keep going, they reveal themselves as stealth creationists. Yet on the secular left, this sort of extension is a commonplace. People who seem at first to be concerned with carbon emissions reveal themselves in chapter two to be lite marxists or Luddites who want nothing more than to change us into that special type of person that they are. People who raise legitimate questions about faith and reason show up at the next conference seething with anti-Catholic rage.
Such things put all discussion on a false footing, as we know intuitively that contrary facts are going to be rejected, and simple statements of reason are going to be rationalised out.
I suppose it's our job to attempt it anyway, but it does grow tiring.
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