Scientism Has Nothing to Do with Science

Scientism, the belief that only science can tell us something about reality, is a philosophical theory going back to the early 17th-century, which is going through a period of fashionable revival, thanks to people like Richard Dawkins.

It is important to understand that scientism is philosophical, not scientific.

Science cannot tell you whether anything beyond the laws of nature exists or not, if any form of knowledge beyond itself exists, in fact science cannot even tell you if science exists.

Science cannot talk about itself. All discussion about science, without exception, is not science, it is not scientific. It is meta-scientific, specifically it is part of philosophy of science.

When someone like Richard Dawkins talks about science (as opposed to doing science as a biologist, in which case he will be talking about genes, species and populations) he is talking as a philosopher, for which he is not even particularly qualified.

All scientists who discuss science engage in a philosophical activity. Of course many great scientists historically were also philosophers, but the majority have not been.

Just because somebody is a scientist does not mean that what he says about science - ie talking as a non-scientist - has more validity than what the first person in the street might say.

Everyone is entitled to his own beliefs, and belief in scientism and materialism is an act of faith like many others.

What is deceptive and manipulative, though, is to say or imply that, because you are a scientist, you know more about science than anybody else.

As a scientist you know more about the object of your particular field.

But discussing the nature, role and limits of science, its method, its relationship with other forms of tbeoretical activities, with religion, all this is not the object of any science but of philosophy of science.

So, unless you are qualified as a philosopher or logician, your knowledge and ideas are indeed on a par with the man in the street's.

People should beware of false authoritative claims on this subject by scientists.

There is also a contradiction here on the part of believers in scientism.

If you say that science is the only source of knowledge, you are making a statement outside the realm of science, a non-scientific statement.

So that assertion is either a non-cognitive one, like a poem or piece of music, or there is indeed knowledge which is non-scientific.

Scientific triumphalists, as Melanie Phillips calls them, have somehow managed to convince large parts of public opinion that that, in the intellectual, theoretical sphere, whatever is non-scientific is anti-scientific.

This is not true.

One of the greatest philosophers of science of contemporary times, Sir Karl Popper, created a demarcation criterion establishing that a theory, in order to be considered scientific, had to be capable of being falsified, proven false.

All theories not meeting this criterion he called 'metaphysical' theories.

Yet he showed that many metaphysical theories had been positively helping science and inspired scientific theories.

For example, the 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler, a central figure in the scientific revolution, was a follower of Plotinus.

The neo-platonic theory of Plotinus was the inspiration for Kepler's laws of planetary motion in astronomy by leading him to reject Ptolemy's geocentric theory that the earth is at the centre of the universe and adopt Copernicus' heliocentrism with the sun at the centre. He then refined the latter by abandoning the Copernican theory's circulary orbits of the planets around the sun - which derived from Pythagoras' belief that the circle is the perfect geometrical shape - and introducing the elliptical orbits instead.

Science is only a method. A good, effective method, but there is nothing magical about it that should justify setting it apart, above and in contrast with all other human intellectual endeavours.

Non-science is not bad and can assist science.

Non-science is bad only when it tries to pass itself for science, in a deceiving and misleading manner, as in the case of alternative medicine, astrology, paranormal and other kinds of superstition.

Some Sobering Facts about Women's Vote for Obama

More women voted for Obama than Romney in the last presidential election.

This fact has always been announced by the media as a sign of distinction for Obama.

On the night of the election, for example, during one of the many discussions that punctuated the BBC's all-night coverage, the assertion that people who voted for Romney were predominantly men, white, on average older and richer was always uttered in a way that implied contempt, if not disgust.

Women, minorities, low-income and young people are cool in the semi-open, obfuscated eyes of the media.

But are they in reality?

Let's see what more women than men believe.

Many more women than men, not just in America, believe in astrology, witches, that houses can be haunted and in supernatural communication with the dead.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/19558/paranormal-beliefs-come-supernaturally-some.aspx

These Gallup poll results are also confirmed by everyday observations and the fact that horoscopes are more likely to be found in publications aimed at women than men.

More women than men are attracted to alternative medicine.

Only 13 percent of readers of The Economist news magazine are women.

http://www.economistgroupmedia.com/research/audience-profile/demographics

Many more men than women read the news online.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eJd8ZLlGHJIC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=women+and+men+proportion+reading+news&source=bl&ots=WgGAAIdLlQ&sig=SwArh_P0VbMa-kYxqPtU8sIqJ68&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P6vcUK61KqbL0AXXhYGACw&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBQ

Could it be that women were more likely to vote for Obama has to do with the fact that they are less informed and more suggestionable?

White Colonialism and Predation? Not So Fast

'The black race is responsible for most crimes committed by humanity. Blacks have committed the overwhelming majority of moral atrocities in history'.

If anybody said the above, you would think that this is racist.

Yet many hold this view, with the replacement of 'black' with 'white'.

That white people are responsible for slavery, colonialism, imperialism, the oppression of women, sexism, racism, the destruction of the environment, the exploitation of the Third World and a long list of other calamities and cruelties is so much the received wisdom that large numbers of otherwise intelligent people believe it without questioning it.

History has been rewritten, in pure Orwell's 1984 style, in order to fit this politically and ideologically-driven description.

But history very unequivocally shows that reality is a lot different.

It seems prima facie absurd that a single human race can be so uniquely evil, while all the others are nice and peaceful, lovely to other human beings and in harmony with nature.

Well it seems absurd because it is absurd.

Take a look at some historical sources.

http://islamversuseurope.blogspot.com.es/2012/07/north-african-predation-upon-europeans.html?m=1

http://www.islamversuseurope.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/shocking-display-of-dhimmitude-in.html?m=1

UK Fact-Checker "Full Fact" Is not Impartial

This post is also in Italian: Il Sito di Fact-Checking Inglese "Full Fact" Non È Imparziale


Like me, you may have been attracted to the reassuringly-named Full Fact website and non-profit company.

It's a fact-checking group, whose tagline is "Promoting accuracy in public debate".

After hearing about it from David Dimbleby on Question Time, I was immediately interested in this site, which I believe follows a trend set by Americans whose fact-checking after, for example, televised presidential debates becomes frenetic.

I am a firm believer in evidence-based reasoning in every sphere, using the scientific method of investigation whenever we can.

In politics as much as in health, in sociology as much as in the environmental subjects, empiricism and logic are what we need.

Therefore I welcomed the existence of this British site, and I read it. Certain things in it didn't seem too impartial to me, though, for example about Portugal's drugs decriminalization laws' outcomes.

So I checked who is behind Full Fact. I discovered that its "core funding comes from three independent charitable trusts: the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Nuffield Foundation and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation".

A look at The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust's site reveals that it has a strong focus on "racial justice" and "Islamophobia". Its pamphlet The Quest for Racial Justice has the picture of a hijab-wearing woman on its cover, so we know immediately what kind of "racial justice" we're talking about.

It doesn't take much to realize that this is a charitable, Quaker in origin, but politically not unbiased organization, believing in multiculturalism and seeing things only from the perspective of ethnic groups and immigrants, legal or not, and not the indigenous population of Britain.

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust does not define what it means by "racial justice", probably assuming that it should be obvious, and indeed it is obvious what it intends when you see that it is in full support of the Macpherson Report on the death of Stephen Lawrence, which accuses the police of being "institutionally racist" and contains a pearl like this: "A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person" opening the door to any abuse of the term. Or when you read in The Quest for Racial Justice statements like this:

"Stephen Lawrence died at the hands of racists in 1993... In the meantime, many others have lost their lives in a similar way"

without any mention of the many white victims of non-white racism, about whom the national media are totally silent, a situation so scandalous as to prompt even Muslim multiculturalist and leftist Yasmin Alibhai Brown to write an article whose headline says it all: "When the victim is white, does anyone care?" (The article has then been removed from the website of London newspaper Evening Standard, apparently the only link left is on an online library).

It's clear that for this organization victims cannot be white. Yet, the mentioned article reports, "Almost half of the 58 known victims of racially motivated murders between 1995 and 2004 were white".

Yorkshire Conservative Councillor Roger Taylor called JUST West Yorkshire, a group affiliated with The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, an "ultra-left organization".

Discover the Networks gives this description:

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) was founded in 1904 by its namesake, a prominent Quaker entrepreneur and philanthropist. Viewing the unequal distribution of wealth as a defect inherent in all capitalist countries, JRCT aims to change “the existing power imbalances in society” and create “a better world.” Led by a board whose members are guided by the principles and values of Quakerism, the Trust focuses especially on eradicating the “root” causes of poverty, “social injustice,” and “political inequality”—and not merely on treating “the superficial manifestations” of those problems.

The second major funder of Full Fact, the Nuffield Foundation, has a website that welcomes you with talk of class divide and disadvantaged backgrounds.

The third, finally, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, supports "vulnerable migrants" and "social change".

The jargon is revealing, the picture is clear.

Full Fact is a bit like Wikipedia, pretending to be impartial and just offering "facts", but the people giving this information have a very specific, culturally Marxist, ideology colouring their fact-checking. I suspect that Dimbleby wouldn't have advertised it otherwise.


PHOTO CREDIT
Pixabay

TV and Hollywood Subtle Hidden Persuaders: The Killing, The Final Destination

Both the television and Hollywood subtly manipulate - in a way reminiscent of the advertising industry with its "hidden persuaders" - what people think to establish a form of cultural Marxism ("political correctness" is nothing other than that) as the dominant ideology, the current orthodoxy.

Subtle, hidden persuasion used in fictional, visual stories is much more effective than direct attempts to persuade through argument. If you see the argument openly, you can also spot its faults by using reason, logic and evidence. But if you are not allowed to see the argument, you are more vulnerable to it via the power of imagery and emotionally-charged human tales.

So viewers are influenced by professional persuaders into buying an ideology or a world view as they would an advertised product or service.

These days we can watch so many shows, films and telefilms for free and in the comfort of our homes. We are lucky, yes, but just as we have to somewhat pay for all this luxury through enduring commercial breaks, similarly we also have to pay for it by being subjected to ideological and political brainwashing, more often than not without even realizing it.

I'll give two recent examples of British TV broadcasts, one of which involves a Hollywood film.

Since I mentioned "orthodoxy", a term often used in relation to religion and whose opposite is "heresy", and remembering that heretics were sometimes burnt at stakes, I'll start with the American movie, for reasons that will become clear.

The film in question is The Final Destination, the fourth in the series, made in 2009. I didn't watch the whole film, but I saw a scene in which a drunken guy, an obvious villain of the piece, calls a black man "nigger". At that point I knew, for having seen a similar thing umpteen times in Hollywood productions, that this chap was doomed. He couldn't say that word in a US film and survive unscathed: he had to die.

Sure enough, he did die. And how is also interesting. The character, Carter, caught fire in an accident involving his truck. The vehicle started moving while he was trying to burn a cross on a front lawn, and as he chased after it, his foot got caught in the chain, dragging him along the road with the truck and starting a fire through friction. So he was burnt alive, just as the heretic that he was, for having used a wrong word according to the Hollywood orthodoxy's diktats.

The important thing to consider here is that the term "racism" has become so broad and all-encompassing in its meaning, and is misapplied to so many irrelevant, inappropriate situations, that it now creates a real confusion in its usage.

Real, serious acts or demonstrations of racism - very rare, now, except those directed against whites - are put by this prevailing liberal (in both senses of abundant and leftist) use of the word in the same category as trivialities, like calling people names in a moment of irritation, so whoever commits the second kind of "offence" is treated with almost the same severity as who is a real racist.

A good instance of that is the case of former England football team's captain John Terry.

My second example from UK TV programs is the Danish detective drama The Killing, Series 3. Here a huge corporation, the biggest in Denmark, shipping and oil giant Zeeland, is the villain. Its owner Robert Zeuthen is a man who has destroyed his family for being too absorbed in his multinational empire. His young daughter is kidnapped and her life is at risk, all because Zeuthen's personal assistant and Zeeland's top executive Niels Reinhardt, a real corporate man who worked all his life for the company and in the drama personifies it, is a paedophile who raped and killed a child whose father is exacting revenge.

In the end Zeuthen, after his daughter is rescued and safe, decides to retire from running the business in order to spend all his time with his now reunited family. The corporation is seen throughout the story as an enormous predator, swallowing the life of the owner's family and then almost eating up the flesh of his daughter, run by men who are corrupt at best and murderous paedophiles at worst.

In the final episode the company seems to be abandoned, like a sinking ship, by its owner who had already squandered lots of its resources in a vain pursuit of his daughter's kidnapper, signifying the unimportance of money and wealth.

His wife is a heroine of the drama, who is against the big multinational from start to finish.

Occupy Wall Street couldn't have got the message across better.

The moral of the story is, among other things, that the corporation ruined the family, and its dereliction restored it.

How many families, in real life, are actually helped, kept together and survive thanks to businesses like Zeeland is naturally conveniently omitted from the yarn, which could have made the hardest-core Marxist proud.

UK Comic Frankie Boyle Donates £50,000 to Help Guantanamo Inmate

The only good news in this article is that buffoon, oops, comedian Frankie Boyle is retiring.

It doesn't surprise me that he is involved in this:

But Frankie Boyle is now using his fame, and wealth, for more serious ends, by donating tens of thousands of pounds of his money to help Britain’s last inmate at Guantanamo Bay to sue the MI6.

Yesterday the Glaswegian comic announced the £50,000 compensation he won from a recent libel victory against the Daily Mirror newspaper, would go towards a landmark legal attempt to sue Britain’s security services over accusations they have defamed Shaker Aamer, the only British resident still languishing without charge in Guantanamo.

There are just about billions over trillions over zillions of better ways to spend one's money than to help a man whom the US military Joint Task Force Guantanamo believes led a unit of fighters in Afghanistan, including the Battle of Tora Bora.

Repeatedly, ex-Guantanamo prisoners have led militant groups and have been suspected of terror acts after their release, including Sufyan bin Qumu, who may be involved in the attack on the Benghazi U.S. Consulate that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on the last anniversary of September 11th.

Even Boyle seems to realize there is something "random" about this whole affair:

Even Boyle, who is best known for his performances on BBC panel show Mock the Week, admits his involvement in the case sounds a little far-fetched. “I remember reading [the US pop star] Usher crashed a hot air balloon into something, and I thought ‘this is just a random word generator’”, he told The Independent yesterday. “It feels a bit like that.”

Clive Stafford-Smith, the director of Reprieve, admitted the libel action untested legal formula but said there was important legal ground that needed to be explored.

Peter Hitchens, Will Self and Gay Marriage on Question Time

On the BBC's political debate program Question Time last night, panellist Will Self lived up to his auto-referring surname (the only thing that it's not his fault) by doing his best to shut up everyone who dissented with his views by calling them "homophobic" or "racist", according to the subject under discussion, whether it was same-sex marriage or mass immigration. When the argument was about drug policy, his tactic was slightly different: since the words "addictophobic" or "substancist" (discriminating against those who take illegal substances) have not (yet) been invented, he accused those with different ideas of simple, old-fashioned ignorance of the data.

Will Self is a writer and a Professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University, which is a very sad illustration of the standard of what these days passes for college brainwashing, sorry, education.

Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens was the only one of the five panellists with something intelligent and sensible to say, beyond the ideological irrationality (Will Self), political interests (MPs Justine Greening and Stella Creasy) or simplistic platitudes (Lord Bilimoria).

Hitchens' first intervention, about PM David Cameron's ill-conceived backing of "gay" marriage in church, was not very forceful, though. He just dismissed the subject as unimportant and preferred to concentrate on attacking Cameron more generally. But after two people from the audience spoke out clearly against it, he must have found the courage he lacked at first in the culturally Marxist environment of Question Time, very hostile and aggressive to his positions, and regained the dignity of expressing deeply politically incorrect views.

But the real highlight of the program was the two members of the audience, a white man and a black woman, who had the courage to declare their opposition to homosexual marriage and even more, in the woman's case, to openly state that love of God is the basis of her opposition, facing derision, laughter among the crowd, and isolation.

I haven't seen this kind of thing for some time, and only recently I've noticed people who stand up for Christianity in a public way, like for example X-Factor star Jahmene Douglas, who professed his Christianity on the show, and said he wants to raise the moral standards in pop music.

What is interesting are also two observations.

One is that many of these Christians without fear, like Jahmene and the woman in the Question Time audience, are black or have a black parent. In our politically correct times, this gives them an advantage over whites (although it's obviously unfair, and whites should be treated with the same consideration too): it's much more difficult for "ethnic Europeans" to argue aggressively with blacks. In the case of the lady opposed to same-sex marriage, for example, to call her "homophobic", the usual reply PC people resort to, would make them feel uncomfortable because that could clash with their feeling that they are probably racist in calling a black, particularly a woman, names.

The second thing to note is that the two members of the Question Time audience who stood up for Christian values were not treated with the same intolerant derision. The black woman got a better reception than the white man, and for that I have already given a reason in the paragraph above: PC.

There is, however, another reason. The guy was apologetical. When asked about his views, he started by saying: "With the greatest respect to homosexual couples", then he rested his position on the argument that same-sex marriage is "ontologically impossible", a philosophical argument which does not hold much water but - this is my hypothesis - he thought would give him a defence against charges of homophobia, based, as it seemed to be, on higher grounds than prejudice.

The woman, instead, did not refrain from using the name of God and the Bible to support her views, and did not try to diminish or compromise her positions.

I believe that, as the recent disaster of Romney's defeat in the American presidential election shows, we should stop apologizing for our opinions and stop feeling that we have to defend ourselves.

People who have politically incorrect views that run counter to the current dominant orthodoxy, which generally speaking is cultural Marxism, should not make any attempt to dilute them: that is a losing strategy.

If you think something, say it loud (metaphorically) and clear. Others are more likely to take what you say seriously if you do not sit on the fence and, who knows, there may be some-one among them who was just waiting to take the plunge him/herself or somebody who wants a real alternative to the current climate of thought oppression and free speech censorship.