Creationism and other doctrines. Was Mindforth

[John Doty]

In article <9576bbf1.0212291528.478123c2 at posting.google.com>,
wtanksleyjr at cox.net  wrote:

> Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan at gmx.de> wrote:
>>William Tanksley Google wrote:
>>>Many committers of fraud use beliefs in scientism to do their work
> --
>>>consider the Laundry Beads or Magnetic Cures. Because a scientist
> said
>>>it, it must be true
> 
>>This works very good in a society where people put a divide between
> them and
>>scientists*, and use scientific "results" just the same way as they
> use
>>their traditional sources of superstition. Then, Lem's rule ("any 
>>sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic")
> works the
>>reverse way.
> 
> It's called the "division of labor", and despite the dangers you
> describe, it's a good thing.

There are some sorts of labor that don't divide well. Literacy was once
the domain of specialists, but it's impossible to build a complex
technical civilization without near universal literacy. The scientific
method is 
a key component of the critical thinking that's in such short
supply right now: we live in a fog of information that too few understand
how to evaluate.

It is widely understood that "science" is an essential component of a
modern education. Unfortunately what we teach most students isn't the
scientific method but the dead fruits of that method preserved as dogma.
This is why scientism finds fertile ground.

-- 
| John Doty		"You can't confuse me, that's my job."
| Home: jpd at w-d.org
| Work: jpd at space.mit.edu