Orthodox Science as a (mostly good) religion*
heretics and scam artists
While I was brought up in various Catholic churches, from Roman to Byzantine, and did my time as an altar boy, I was never a truly committed believer, never really convinced. There were just too many contradictions. I was particularly struck by God's "odd" behaviors in a number of situations. Why create a tree whose fruit provides knowledge of good and evil (an presumably everything else) and then forbid Adam and Eve to eat it? Why worry about whether they would eat the fruit of the tree of eternal life? As a parent and a grandparent, and a reasonably curious person myself, God's behavior seemed knowingly pernicious, much like that of a parent giving a loaded gun to a child and expecting them not to play/use it - something that is seen, rightly to my mind, as a crime (1). I found myself equally confused by God's interactions with Pharaoh, Cain, Abel, Esau, Jacob, Isaac, Rebecca, and Noah as well as those who built the tower of Babel.
As it turns out, I found myself moving to another religion - science, particularly the scientific tradition that emerged in Europe, a tradition open to, and built upon the contributions of many peoples around the globe. The orthodox scientific gospel has been widely embraced and has served as the driver of technological advancement, including dramatic effects on many aspects of human well-being. "Orthodox Science" embraces a belief system based on the assumption that we can understand the universe exclusively in naturalistic terms, there is no magic, no supernatural forces involved. Orthodox Science holds, rather dogmatically, to a simple set of Popperian principles to guide the behavior of its acolytes (2). It assumes that all can participate, no need for Popes, Grand Mullahs, Chief Rabbis, or sundry, often self-serving "prophets" and hucksters. It presumes that its disciples are being honest when describing their observations, experiments, and interpretations and that its participants are potentially fallible. Whether or not they are correct will be determined over time by others. The end result of this tradition has been an enterprise that has produced increasingly accurate, predictive, wide-ranging, and actionable models of the world and its components (galaxies, stars, planets, people, atoms, quarks ...). These models are based on the interactions between observable entities of various types (3).
A key component of Scientific Orthodoxy is that its adherents are constrained to talk about observable objects and effects, and to produce models that generate unambiguous and numerically defined and verifiable predictions. These predictions can be tested to increasing levels of accuracy by any of the scientific congregation, a congregation that including all honest, and sane actors (with, of course, the necessary resources). Repeatedly verified outcomes produce a foundation upon which to build a common naturalistic, and mechanistic understanding of the world.
Where the scientific process fails, when ambiguities and exceptions arise, it is clear evidence that something important is missing, something has been ignored or misunderstood. Here is where the religious aspect of Scientific Orthodoxy becomes apparent - there is no a priori guarantee that the Universe is actually comprensible to us. We are, it appears, the product of an multi-billion year long evolutionary history based on accidents, mutations, reproductive success, and chance, surviving a range of environmental catastrophes (ice ages and meteorites) and unforeseeable events, including plagues and predators.
Even though orthodox science is a powerful explanatory system, there are situations where it cannot answer our questions, when it cannot tell us exactly what happened in the past or what will happen in the future. Some things, such as the steps leading to the origin of life of Earth, are intrinsically unobservable and so unknowable. That does not mean that we cannot generate plausible, scientifically-reasonable speculations, but speculations they remain. We cannot visit the past and observe what actually happened. That said, there are scientific heretics who insist that unknowable things are knowable. Consider speculation about theoretically unobservable multiverses. How, exactly, they do they differ from the inaccessible domains of heaven, hell and (for some) purgatory or various supernatural agents: angels, archangels, demons and jinns that might influence us (5). Once someone postulates unobservable actors, they have left the church of orthodox science (6).
The principles of Orthodox Science are also abandoned when its disciples start holding forth on moral or ethical issues. Ethics and morals are not part of the Orthodox Science system. We find ourselves to be self-conscious social animals. We (often and hopefully) "matter" to ourselves and each other. While orthodox science can describe the evolutionary origins of nervous systems and social organization, as well as their benefits and challenges, it does not help with the inevitable compromises and accommodations involved in human existence. These are based on the emergence of self-consciousness. To navigate social realities, we need new, non-scientific stories to make sense of our experiences, particularly their emotional effects. These stories are based on their own unprovable presumptions. One of these is that we are endowed with unalienable rights, at least if we are lucky enough to live outside of the growing number of totalitarian dictatorships. We believe we have a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" while other also have these rights, and all that that implies. We recognize the need for the compromises inherent to being part of a social group. Those who disagree are free to separate themselves from human society, and all its benefits, although they may come to regret it.
The justification for claims of inalienable rights? they are self-evident! This is similar to the claim that the world is intelligible in purely naturalistic terms. While there may be more "data" for the naturalistic presumption, in practice that does not make it more important than the claim of inalienable rights. The value of moral beliefs are seen constantly; they enable individuals to interact in a humane manner. These social beliefs provide the ground rules by which to navigate difficult decisions, to make compromises for the greater good. Ignoring them, for example when the boorish behavior of a range of "celebrities" goes socially unpunished can be toxic, because it erodes acceptance of the idea that the "rules" and the underlying beliefs that they are based on apply to all. I dream, with Martin Luther King, that my children (and grandchildren) will be judged not "by the color of their skin" (or who their parents were, what company they started, or movie they made) but by the content of their character”. It involves a commitment to "self-evident" ideals, distinct from those of orthodox science.
Orthodox science does not exist in a vacuum, its practitioners live in a world of complex interactions between various socioeconomic and interpersonal factors, The history of scientific-sounding pronouncements involving "race" and genetic determinism have led to grotesque distortions of observable realities and abhorrent and scientifically absurd positions and horrific actions. Consider (rather superficially) the idea of a set number of human "races", use to justify a hierarchy of oppression and privilege. The reality is an underlying and overwhelming genetic unity and diversity associated with the hundreds to thousands of interacting populations (7). The diversity of human populations in Africa speaks to the absurdity of the idea of a "black" race. Such intellectual fantasies have been used to hijack scientific prestige to justify socioeconomic inequities and racist ideologies (8). Orthodox Science can help us understand the roots of "us vs them" social (political) behaviors, and help us overcome their effects - but abandoning such "animal" behaviors requires moral beliefs. There are reasons why calling someone an animal is not generally considered a complement.
o what is the benefit of thinking about science as a religion? Most of all it helps us recognize when scientists are acting like scientists and when they are not. When scientists act in their own self/ego-driven interests or when hijacking the prestige of science to advocate for racist policies, eugenic interventions, and various forms of quackery. In a similar vein, we need to dispassionately evaluate calls for expensive projects, weighing, as a group, the social "value" of such projects (9). These are calculations that need to be made dispassionately. Similarly, when we consider scientists we need to remember their human frailties. Albert Einstein was no saint and a range of geneticists were no demons. In contrast to religious figures, whose revelations may or may not be due to feverish, psychotic, or drug-induced hallucinations, the ideas of scientific prophets can be tested, revised, reinterpreted, and where appropriate ignored without regard to their personal failings. We can take what works and cautiously apply it to current challenges. While it is not possible to prove that the world is governed solely by naturalistic processes, in many situations that assumption works well. But orthodox science fails when it claims to tell us what is morally right or wrong. It cannot be used to justify inhumane behavior (force sterilization, population-based discrimination, and genocide); when it does it is turning its back on its own beliefs.
After posting this, I started to re-read Richard Lewontin’s (1991) Biology as Ideology - lots of resonances.
footnotes:
For more extended discussion, see the preface of biofundamentals, page 7-9.
for a refresher, see the movie "Dogma"
old but relevant: M. Gardner. 1957, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.
Donovan et al., "Toward a more humane genetics education: Learning about the social and quantitative complexities of human genetic variation research could reduce racial bias in adolescent and adult populations." Science Education 103, no. 3 (2019): 529-560. see also: https://bioliteracy.blog/2019/09/04/avoiding-unrecognized-racist-implications-arising-from-teaching-genetics/
Hossenfelder: Prominent Physicist Misleads Public about Prospects of Expensive Particle Collider