#Lies the media tells | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

wanderingthedesertalone · 1 year ago

Text

The Religion of Science: Bad Media Bad Grasp on Reality

Before you bang your fist on the desk and accuse me of being in the theist, deist or in the spiritualist camp let me tell you that I am agnostic at worst and an atheist at best, culturally I am a Jew and have respect for my ancestry but find all The Torah says hard to swallow. The universe is governed by detectable forces that require no deity. Yet, I believe it does take faith to believe in so much that us mortals declare a scientific fact, when facts, especially in recent years, have been nothing more than convenient narratives spun by those in power and sold to the youth who, often, take action on this misinformation.

As a skeptic I have to say that to believe much of what is flown under the banner of science takes a degree of faith. Firstly, one must have faith that the results of scientific inquiry haven’t been infiltrated by politics. These days, one would be a fool to believe such a thing, but such fools do exist. These fools don’t bat an eye at the idea of Big Tech, people who in my opinion have no right to declare what’s scientifically accurate, state that like a loving father they will oversee what information is disseminated and that they are the final word on what is disinformation. But, Big Tech isn’t an unbiased party. They tend to, as an example, dislike Israel, support abortion and the Covid vaccine. Make no mistake about it, censorship is political in nature, the ruling party is always the final word on what’s true. I’m not weighing in on any of the above and divulging political affiliation, I’m simply stating a fact. These days, it’s not a monarch who decides what’s accurate, it’s Big Tech, Big Pharma and Twitter’s Social Justice Warriors. Sadly, inconvenient truths are deemed as misinformation and followers of the religion of science blindly accept, although often against their better judgement, that the verdict passed down by those in power is the best possible answer.

To believe in everything that’s said to be scientific, one must have faith in media integrity. Irresponsibly, at the genesis of the AIDS epidemic, Dr. Fauci announced on air that “perhaps there will be a certain number of cases of individuals who [contract AIDS that] are just living with and in close contact with someone with AIDS, or at risk of AIDS, who does not necessarily have to have intimate sexual contact or share a needle, but just the ordinary close contact that one sees in normal interpersonal relations.” This single speculation inspired hundreds of theories and hoaxes about contracting the virus via everything from soda cans to toilet seats. As a result, many died in hospital beds while nurses were afraid to touch them. Yet, the informed knew that the virus wasn’t airborne. It was just the religion of science that swallowed the pill whole and conscripted this media propelled fear mongering into their belief system.

To believe in all that’s presented as science, one must have faith that the experiments were well conducted. For instance, the DSM III Removed homosexuality from its inventory of assessable disorders in 1980, this was largely due to the shoddily designed research of Alfred Kinsey. Kinsey declared that “ homosexuality [is] more common than previously assumed, thus suggesting that such behaviors [are] part of a continuum of sexual behaviors and orientations,” despite his sample being, intentionally or unintentionally, skewed. His methodology of arriving at a conclusion, popularism, as we can see from the above statement, is transparently flawed. But, it’s not just that his declaration is flawed, his research was most poorly conducted. Kinsey’s sample was limited to only 5000 males. Of those surveyed, a disproportionate number came from prison inmates, many of whom were sex offenders, he only interviewed one African American but his data wasn’t tabulated and he over-sampled people recruited via homosexual-friendly organizations or magazines. Like anyone else, homosexuals deserve all of the freedoms granted in The Bill of Right and this is something, when and if push comes to shove, I would fight until my very last breathe for, but, being deserving of rights makes them no less of a mentally ill fragment of society who’s 12% more prone to suicide than heterosexuals, significantly more likely than heterosexuals to abuse substances and have suffered childhood abuse. Yet, the religion of science insists that homosexuality is a healthy lifestyle. Social Media and the news never disclosed that Kinsey’s study was a sham and pushes the political agenda behind Kinsey’s message. The younger generation, being that they were raised on TV and social media, knows no better. They are our future leaders and those who will continue to perpetuate the religion of science.

Moreover, to become a believer in the religion of science, one must have faith that the answers provided aren’t merely the correlative events that human’s fallible perception can sense. Most who took Statistics in college are aware that there’s more car accidents when bikinis are on sale, but these two events aren’t related. In 1998, British physician Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet, this study proposed a link between MMR vaccines and increasing rates of autism diagnoses in British children. We now know that there’s no relationship between these events. Despite a correlation, the experiment has been proven to be flawed. There wasn’t a causality. Adherents of the religion of science took to this notion and it became, and for some still is, part of their belief system.

Most of the above issues can be ruled out by peer review, but as with the recent covid vaccines not even peer review uncovered some of the dangers with the vaccine and accurate dissemination of information is a must.

I know what you’re thinking, science is rooted in fact and requires no faith, people don’t believe in science, science, because of the ways in which it investigates measurable occurrences is just correct. I agree, mostly. Yet, there is a religion of science. Adherents of the religion believe anything that fits into the zeitgeist or aligns with their own worldview. For example, The Bell Curve reports this on racial differences in IQ score, Blacks score lower, on average, than Whites. Adherents of the religion of science don’t like this fact and those who tout this may be subject, especially in certain European Countries, to fines and prison terms. I’m not disputing the uselessness of IQ scores, I myself find them of little use and see that there are flaws, although I disagree that the flaw is in the wording of questions (Ebonics and Texan aren’t uniquely codified dialects mutually unintelligible from their mother language, besides, all Americans were educated in the same system and should be able to code switch between ethnic slang and standardized English, as an example, I’m not British but possess the critical thinking skills to infer meaning from unknown British vernacular, but then again, inference in post Enlightenment systems of thinking is considered slanderous assumption). I believe in the science when the science is void of politics.

What caused there to be a religion of science? This phenomenon was caused by the gullibility of man, lack of time to research everything that is presented as science, the how political parties are to use “science” to push their narrative and flaws in methods of research. To be clear, the scientific method is the best we’ve got. Moreover, science isn’t something that requires faith, when done correctly and unadulterated by politics. But, the combination of the above causes there to be a pseudo religion, and even at times religions that exist under the banner of science, of science, like Scientology, blurring the lines between science, science-fiction and pop psychology. Despite my tirade against Gen Z, I don’t honestly expect everyone to sift through scientific articles to find the truth.

The real problem is that the religion of science stifles inconvenient data, data that might be used to find better answers to current questions. Best put in words by Kurt Vonnegut, “new knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become Breakfast of Champions.” As a society, we must be granted, through the education system, media disseminating information with integrity and freedom of speech, the intellect and ability to question all things supposed by the socio-political machine that backs the religion of science, only through this means can we progress. Yet, we are living in an era of retrograde. Empiricism and systems of Enlightenment era thinking have gone out the window for feeling and truthiness (as coined by Stephen Colbert). America is Rome in the final days and the religion of science will be her downfall.

The fact is this, honesty in Big Tech ran media has gone the way of the dodo, Gen Z is gullible, the educational system has let them down, time constraint makes it so that most people can’t read every scholarly article, media readily mixes pop psychology, untested hypothesis along with anything that fits the contemporary narrative, even to the point of changing definitions, and packages it, whether that’s by putting it into law or just causing panic if said new scientific fact isn’t obeyed, and calls it all science. Facts are suppressed by the media for easily digested narratives or those who align with the current cultural zeitgeist.

How are us mere mortals supposed to sift through the sea of information and sniff out that which is accurate and hasn’t been filtered through the cultural-political machine? Besides, we live in an era in which a healthy dose of skepticism might brand one as an outcast and render them unable to work. If one questions the popular narrative they might be branded a Right Wing Conservative. We’ve heard it all before: “mask up, take the jab, join the new religion of science, no question, please.” Those who had questions like “what about herd immunity” or “why do definitions keep changing for immunity” were outcast. Often, it pays to fiend Gen Z gullibility.

But I have a few questions. Was it vaccines that put an end to previous pandemics or was it changing attitudes towards bathing, the fact that most people lived in rural communities and herd immunity that ended past epidemics? There are some observations that make these hypotheses worth looking into. During the Bubonic Plague, for example, it was observed that mortality was significantly lower in the Jewish Ghettos than in Christian populations. The “causes of this more favorable situation, which is very well documented from the end of the eighteenth century, are certainly many, ranging from compliance with hygiene standards prescribed by religion, rooted in moderate customs for eating and drinking, the low incidence of venereal diseases, and an economic level on average higher than average. I’m not suggesting that I know that hygiene is the cure for a viral pandemic. In fact, another author noted that “nor should it be forgotten that, if the environment in which Jews lived in the era of the ghettos was particularly unhealthy, the trades they exercised were among those with lower risks of morbidity and professional mortality, and that their living arrangements, pursuant to religious requirements, were particularly favorable for increased resistance against causes of lethality. Was it a complex combination of standards of hygiene in a filthy ghetto that caused Jews, during the Bubonic Plague, to be less susceptible to death, I don’t know. But, asking questions like these go against the new religion of science. One must blind themself to complexity and nuance: “shut up, masks and jabs work, if you have any doubts you’re just as naïve as those who believed vaccines caused Autism.”

The religion of science, because our youth was raised on all things instant and extreme, is filled with extremely binary false dichotomies. How many times have you heard “get the jab or everyone dies” or “wear a mask or everyone dies?” Sadly, it’s not only the foolish who fall for these, these false dichotomies, the kind that never account for any sort of nuance, are disseminated through media and, more often then not, align with the ruling party. The past 2 generations, Millennials and Gen Z, have been primed to accept extremes without question, this is the era in which racism allows for a Black president after all. Unscientific false dichotomies, like the above, readily intermingle with hard science and become part of what culture perceives as scientifically accurate.

Moreover, the religion of science demonstrates cult like behaviors. Those who lack reasoning skills often become, loudly and sometimes violently, the adherents of the religion of science. I for one have enough skepticism in my blood to question all things flown under the banner of science. I vow to listen to others with an open heart and judge their words based on the information I have and in the case that I don’t have any information on said topic, I will look for case studies because new knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth I have to work with, the richer I become.

The believers of the religion of science take these things to be scientific facts:

1) Concepts, although incorrect, that are easily digested and perfectly fit in with the current zeitgeist as touted by the media as scientific facts. As an example, many shouted wearing a mask is harmless although it was obvious to others that continual mask wearing is dangerous and recent study states that a “significant rise in carbon dioxide occurring while wearing a mask is scientifically proven. Fresh air has around 0.04% CO2 masks bear a possible chronic exposure to low level carbon dioxide of 1.41–3.2% CO2 of the inhaled air in reliable human experiments.”

2) Artefacts from popular psychology, those wivestales about mental health that sound correct but aren’t.

3) Concepts from psychology and the social sciences that are either only understood by the masses in part, taken out of context or never were correct but because the fact that they fit into the era’s zeitgeist they were adapted by the masses. For example, the alpha/beta man paradigm, which was discredited by the duo who first discovered it or that Dr. Money indisputably proved that gender is a spectrum.

3) A general misunderstanding of science. For example a belief in miraculous things like superfoods and that said superfoods are scientifically tested. This goes hand in hand with things like natural medicine (the greater the dilute the greater the efficacy), the healing powers of meditation (aside from a placebo effect) or any other sophistry that may have been shown somewhat effective in studies because they have the potential of improving outlook by increasing hope.

4) A belief that studies with few participants have the end answer. We saw this with things like priming and the covid vaccine efficacy.

5) Confusing and mixing philosophy with science. For example, although Pascal’s Wager may be completely rational to some, it isn’t science.

At times, science has been a cultural phenomenon that aligns itself with the current zeitgeist and those in power. This is just one of those times. It’s not a monarch these days who decides what’s accurate, it’s Big Tech, Big Pharma and Twitter’s Social Justice Warriors. Sadly, inconvenient truths are deemed as misinformation and followers of the religion of science blindly accept, although often against their better judgement, that the verdict passed down by those in power is the best possible answer.

In brief, faith in accurate results, along with accurate dissemination of results, is something hard to come by. In reality, this isn’t an article about science, it’s about media integrity and the naivety of the masses. To illustrate my point by returning to the notion of vaccines and Autism, the media in the UK rushed to publish the notion that vaccines cause Autism despite strong evidence refuting it. Moreover, at the beginning of the Pandemic Dr. Fauci said “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is,” but media preferred to report a panic inducing and loyal religion forging and are defending mask wearing until this very day. Even pro-mask studies, like the one conducted in Bangladesh, prey on the masses’ inability to understand basic math. Ten percent efficacy wouldn’t be an acceptable number for anything else. Yet, the religion of science, sycophants for Big Tech, Big Pharma and those who currently run the country, conscripted these false claims into their belief system falsely claiming “it’s the science!”

Bibliography

Brown, M. (2021). Yes, Childhood Sexual Abuse Often Does Contribute to Homosexuality. The Stream. https://stream.org/yes-childhood-sexual-abuse-often-contribute-homosexuality/

ERLC. (2020, June 11). Alfred Kinsey: A Brief Summary and Critique — ERLC. https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/alfred-kinsey-a-brief-summary-and-critique/

Foa, A. (2000). The Jews of Europe After the Black Death. Univ of California Press.

Lovering, N. (2022, January 28). Can Vaccines Cause Autism? Psych Central. https://psychcentral.com/autism/do-vaccines-cause-autism#where-did-this-myth-start

Mph, J. D. Q. M., & Larson, H. (2018, February 28). The Vaccine-Autism Myth Started 20 Years Ago. Here’s Why It Still Endures Today. Time. https://time.com/5175704/andrew-wakefield-vaccine-autism/

Researchers Find Disparities in Suicide Risk Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adults. (2021, November 9). National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2021/researchers-find-disparities-in-suicide-risk-among-lesbian-gay-and-bisexual-adults

RudeBoyPadilla. (2022, January 24). Fauci, saying kids can get AIDS by just being close to someone with AIDS. Yet people trust this guy! [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj-0woKO0c4

Siegel, E. (2017, April 12). The Real Problem with Charles Murray and “The Bell Curve.” Scientific American Blog Network. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-real-problem-with-charles-murray-and-the-bell-curve/

Staff, R. (2020, October 8). Fact check: Outdated video of Fauci saying “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” U.S. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-video-masks-idUSKBN26T2TR

Substance Use and SUDs in LGBTQ* Populations | National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2023, February 24). National Institute on Drug Abuse. https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/substance-use-suds-in-lgbtq-populations