Hey Folks,
I’m not sure about this, but I believe that I might be one of the hardcore science-denialists in the world.
Because I make so many jokes in my writing, some of you may think that I’m joking when I critique science itself. But I’m not. Science is wrong.
Okay, Descartes was right, I’ll give you that. The scientific method, which is a way of systemically disproving false beliefs, may have some useful applications, but the worldview of most scientists today is completely and utterly wrong.
No one has yet to poke a single hole in my arguments against science, but I still get commenters telling me that all of today’s scientists may be corrupt, evil, and/or stupid compliant sheep parroting the party line of “the settled science” yet insisting that the problem is that such scientists aren’t doing “real science”, which is somehow good for some reason.
Basically, they’re doing what communists do when they say when communist states fail.
To be fair to those people, they’re not wrong. I believe that people like Rupert Sheldrake and Denis Rancourt are real scientists, but they are precious few.
For a most part, science is now a joke.
Specifically, I do not accept the “settled science” regarding:
The Big Bang
The “Laws of Physics”
The inevitable heat death of the universe
The existence of viruses
Nuclear weapons
That evolutionary processes are random
Climate change
Black holes
Time
Angels
Death
At some point, people will realize that science has become little more for statists to convince between to “trust the experts”.
People hate the Catholic Church because priests touch kids sometimes, yet apparently don’t even notice the worst crimes against humanity ever were committed by atheists after “the science” got settled.
SCIENCE IS A SUBTLE WAY FOR STATISTS TO DISGUISE THEIR SATANIC IDEOLOGY
Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s a bold statement. If you’re new here, I use overstatement as a rhetorical device all the time. If your goal is to motivate people to try to prove you wrong, it helps to give them a jolt.
I am using the word using simply to mean “that which wilfully and knowingly goes against natural law”.
Here, check out this quote by Science evangelist Bertrand Russell. I think it illustrates my point well.
"Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ...
The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black.
When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."
-Bertrand Russell
In the way I’m using the word, Bertrand Russell’s scientific materialism is about Satanic as it gets. Why would people ever choose to believe in such a bleak ideology? To answer this question, I think we need to understand materialism within its historical context.
As Robert Anton Wilson explains:
The scientific worldview grew up in the west between 1500 and 1750 largely due to mystics who were known as hermeticists, and one of the key figures of that period was Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600 for, among other things, teaching the Copernican theory that the Earth was not the center of the universe....
This hermetic scientific revolution between 1500 and 1750 saw theology as its enemy. And there was no conflict between hermeticism and science. They were both based on experiment—“find out what happens if you do this”—and they were both opposed to the authority of the church.
Shortly after 1600, this began to split and the hermetic tradition faded into the background, and we developed for the first time in history a science that had absolutely no connection with anything except pure reason. The hermetic tradition was that there is no such thing as pure reason, you’ve got to first work on your own perceiving apparatus to correct your prejudices, and the scientist is not separate from what the scientist observes, and the general yogic attitude that you are the master who makes the grass green.
Western science lost that insight, and from Newton onwards we had the idea that it doesn’t matter who you are, if you follow scientific procedure you’ll find the truth.
This began to break down after 1900 due to Sigmund Freud—who pointed out that even scientists are human beings and may have neuroses, and that scientific theories may be elaborate rationalizations for neuroses—and the influence of Karl Marx, who pointed out that no matter what you’re theorizing about, it’s a mirror of your economic status and what your economic goals are.
So, is materialism an elaborate justification for a ruling class neurosis? Or could it be that Lord Russell had a political agenda? Could it be that an elite member of the British ruling class wanted to influence the beliefs of the population for some reason?
One of the main things that any scientist, philosopher, journalist, or spiritual aspirant must do is to be aware of their own cognitive biases. There are many logical fallacies which have been well-defined since antiquity, but the most important to be aware of is the confirmation bias, which the Oxford dictionary defines as:
the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.
Now, as Mark Crispin Miller insightful points out, it is easy to recognize propaganda when it’s coming from your ideological opponents. When it’s coming from someone that you perceive as being on your side, it’s a different story.
And for more than a century, science has managed to convince both capitalists and communists that science is on their side. That’s quite an impressive feat, and I think I know why.
In Does Life or Death Govern the Universe?, Matthew Ehret explains the important role that Bertrand Russell, who served an important role in the history of science, naming him the High Priest of Nihilism.
A leading high priest of both eugenics and entropy who took these systems to new heights during he 20th century was a man named Bertrand Russell (1872-1970).
Lord Bertrand Russell had put himself to the task of becoming a grand strategist on behalf of the oligarchical system which he was born into… Russell’s devotion to a closed system of entropic mathematics soon found its full expression in his 1910-1913 three volume opus Principia Mathematica...
This work which proclaimed to reduce the entire universe to a limited set of logical axioms and postulates allowed no space for creative change, or a reasonable living Creator.
Russell’s misanthropic view of an entropy-destined humanity which animated his perverse form of “creative” output throughout his hyper-productive life was clearly seen in his depressing 1903 statement:
“That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand… Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
Nor was Lord Russell by any means alone in this bleak view. Fellow eugenicist Sir Julian Huxley expressed a similar view when he said:
“Nowhere in all its vast extant is there any trace of purpose, or even of prospective significance. It is impelled from behind by blind physical forces, a gigantic jazz dance of particles and radiations in which the only over-all tendency we have so far been able to detect is that summarized in the second law of thermodynamics- the tendency to run down.”
Now, one question is: Did they really actually believe this, or were they presenting ideas for political purposes?
THE MYTH OF RANDOMNESS
One of the things that scientists are big on is the idea that everything happens by accident. The universe began with the Big Bang, which we are supposed to believe happened unintentionally and for no reason. But we don’t really know that. That’s just an article of faith that scientists seemingly never attempt to disprove.
They’re also on the idea that evolution occurs by random genetic mutations. How do they know they’re random? They don’t! They merely avoid asking that question. Proving anything is actually random is literally impossible.
They also believe that the Second Law of Thermodynamics “proves” that the universe will end in what they call “heat death”. But that seems implausible if one considers that the First Law of Thermodynamics clearly states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.
I believe that the original materialists were just afraid of change and made a Devil of chaos, that which cannot be controlled.
But chaos is how the creativity of the universe expresses itself. Just because we cannot control or predict it doesn’t mean that there is no rhyme of reason to it.
There is no logical or scientific reason to assume that the universe itself is not intelligent, a conclusion many scientists have reached.
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?
Intelligence is largely a matter of correcting for ones own cognitive biases.
I´ve thought about this a lot, and this is the conclusion that I´ve reached. The only reason that I can think of why someone would subscribe to materialism is hatred. But hatred of what, or of whom? Religion? God? Mankind? Oneself?
Let´s start with religion. I can definitely understand why some people hate religion, though I have been blessed to have more positive experiences with religion than negative ones.
But I don´t think that the materialism espoused by Bertrand Russell, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Galton was actually inspired by hatred of religion, or of God. I believe that it was inspired by the primal hatred at the heart of black metal, and that hatred has two sides.
One is Misanthropy (hatred of Mankind), and the other is self-hatred. It should be obvious that a human being cannot truly hate Mankind without also hating oneself.
I propose that this might be due to British aristocrats projecting their self-hatred onto the universe itself, and that this self-hatred had a rational cause - guilt.
In the case of Russell, Darwin, and Galton, we must remember that they were members of the British ruling class at a moment in time when its barbarity was unignorable. They were born into a position which required them to preside over the wholesale destruction of entire cultures.
Could it have been that these people came up with a theory that justified their dominion? Could it be that deep down, they felt profoundly guilty for being part of the ruling class of the British Empire, which was responsible for so many horrific crimes against humanity?
Anyway, although I really am just against science, I’ll also make the point is that many of the most highly-regarded scientists of all time were not materialists.
Matthew Ehret concludes Does Life or Death Govern the Universe? with some notable example.
Of Max Planck, he writes:
At the end of his 1935 Philosophy of Physics which extolled high praise on the directed evolution, harmony and creative growth of the universe, the great Max Planck (1858-1947) tackled the problem of entropy in an interesting manner:
“The second law of thermodynamics, the principle of the increase of entropy, has frequently been applied outside physics. For example, attempts have been made to apply the principle that all physical events develop in one sense only to biological evolution- a singularly unhappy attempt so long as the term evolution is associated with the idea of progress, perfection, or improvement. The principle of entropy is such that it can only deal with probabilities and all that it really says is that a state, improbable in itself, is followed on an average by a more probable state. Biologically interpreted, this principle points towards degeneration rather than improvement: the chaotic, the ordinary and the common is always more probable than the harmonious, the excellent, or the rare.”
Planck had watched the growth of two false schools that had formed during the rise of the quantum world which he had pioneered. On the one side he watched Russell-connected positivists who promoted the idea that truth must be of a 100% mathematical certainty stand their ground in opposition to the reality that Newtonian rules seemed to break down on scales of the very small and very large. The contrary school then led by Niels Bohr and groups of young mathematical probability theorists recognized the impossibility of Russell’s absurd standard of perfection ever being attained. The reasoning was simple: The universe is a complex and non-linear process who’s very essence is incommensurable with linear systems of mathematical logic.
Throughout his last decades of life, Planck worked tirelessly to break this false dichotomy because he understood both sides were trapped by an absence of creativity, 2) a lack of love of actual truth and 3) an obedience to materialism that prevented either side from recognizing the higher plane of reality that only a creative spirit could understood.
Planck was explicit on this point saying:
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds the most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind.”
The naturalist expressed his understanding of anti-entropy of living and abiotic nature alike saying:
“Nature is not served by rigid laws, but by rhythmical, reciprocal processes. Nature uses none of the preconditions of the chemist or the physicist for the purposes of evolution. Nature excludes all fire, on principle, for purposes of growth; therefore all contemporary machines are unnatural and constructed according to false premises. Nature avails herself of the biodynamic form of motion [self-organization?] through which the biological prerequisite for the emergence of life is provided. Its purpose is to ur-procreate ‘higher’ conditions of matter out of the originally inferior raw materials, which afford the evolutionally older, or the numerically greater rising generation, the possibility of a constant capacity to evolve, for without any growing and increasing reserves of energy there would be no evolution or development. This results first and foremost in the collapse of the so-called Law of the Conservation of Energy, and in further consequence the Law of Gravity, and all other dogmatic lose any rational or practical basis.”
SCIENCE HAS OFFICIALLY EATEN ITS OWN TAIL
Back to Robert Anton Wilson:
Scientists, however, are still believed to be objective. No study of the lives of the great scientists will confirm this. They were as passionate, and hence as prejudiced, as any assembly of great painters or great musicians. It was not just the Church but also the established astronomers of the time who condemned Galileo. The majority of physicists rejected Einstein’s Special Relativity Theory in 1905. Einstein himself would not accept anything in quantum theory after 1920 no matter how many experiments supported it. Edison’s commitment to direct current (DC) electrical generators led him to insist alternating current (AC) generators were unsafe for years after their safety had been proven to everyone else.
Science achieves, or approximates, objectivity not because the individual scientist is immune from the psychological laws that govern the rest of us, but because scientific method — a group creation — eventually overrides individual prejudices, in the long run.
To take a notorious example from the 1960s, there was a point when three research groups had “proven” that LSD causes chromosome damage, while three other groups had “proven” that LSD has no effect on the chromosomes. In each case, the Prover had proved what the Thinker thought. Right now, there are, in physics, 7 experiments that confirm a very controversial concept known as Bell’s Theorem, and two experiments that refute Bell’s Theorem.
DOES BELL’S THEOREM PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD?
If you’re wondering why Bell’s Theorem is so controversial, it’s because it arguably proves the existence of God.
Bell’s Theorem is highly technical, but in ordinary language it amounts to something like this: There are no isolated systems: every particle in the universe is in “instantaneous” (faster-than-light) communication with every other particle. The Whole System , even the parts that are separated by cosmic distances, functions as a Whole System.
Now, such faster-than-light communication seems to be forbidden by Special Relativity, which makes a problem. Bell’s Theorem, however, is inescapable: a theorem in physics is not a mere “theory”; it is a mathematical demonstration which must be true, if the mathematics contains no flaw, and if the experiments on which it is based are replicable. Bell’s Theorem contains no mathematical flaw, and the experiments are replicable and have been replicated several times.
And yet we cannot dispense with Special Relativity either, because the mathematics there is equally flawless and the experiments are legion that confirm it.
Two solutions have been proposed and both assume that the “communication” involved in Bellian transmissions does not involve energy , since it is energy that cannot move faster than light. Dr. Edward Harris Walker suggests that what does move faster than light, and holds the Whole System together, is “consciousness.” We may eventually be forced to accept this, in which case physics will have justified pantheism or at least panpsychism. The other alternative, proposed by Dr. Jack Sarfatti, is that the medium of Bellian transmissions is information .
Pure information, in the mathematical sense, does not require energy; it is that which orders energy. It is the negative of entropy , that which brings disorder to energy systems.
Dr. Sarfatti explains his theory as follows:
“Imagine that your brain is a computer, as modern neurology suggests. Now imagine that the whole universe is a big computer, a mega-computer , as John Lilly has proposed. Then imagine that the sub-quantum realm, the realm of what Dr. David Bohm calls ‘hidden variables’ is made up of mini-mini-computers . Now, the hardware of each ‘computer’ — the universe, your brain, the sub-quantum mechanisms — is localized. Each part of it is somewhere in spacetime, here not there , now not then . But the software — the information — is non-local. It is here , there and everywhere ; now , then and everywhen.”
Here’s a simpler explanation: God Exists, Magic is Real, and Science is Wrong. We are embedded in an energetic matrix that is ultimately far too mysterious for us to truly understand. It makes far more sense to worship this Whole Energy System that to attempt to reduce it to a set of mathematical formulae, which is a fool’s errand anyway. The map is not the territory.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
Oh yeah, I forgot. You guys worship at the altar of Expertise, and I’m a diagnosed schizophrenic who believes in leprechauns. You’re not going to take me seriously just because you can’t prove me wrong, and the names Robert Anton Wilson and Matthew Ehret probably don’t mean much to you either.
I’d better throw in some quotes from some universally-respected super-geniuses. How about Piaget, Godel, Graeber, and Bhaskar? Would that convince you?
Here’s a passage from David Graeber’s The False Coin Of Our Dreams:
Piaget insists that the basis of any system of knowledge is always a set of practices: Mathematics, for example, is not derived from the “idea of number” but from the practice of counting. The abstract categories, however important, never come first. The second, that a structure can always be seen as a set of transformations, based on certain invariant principles (this can be as simple as a matter of moving pieces across a board, which stays the same): the defining feature of such transformations being that they are reversible (the pieces can be moved back again).
The crucial thing point is that what we call structure is not something that exists prior to action. Ultimately, “structure” is identical with the process of its own construction. Complex abstract systems are simply the way actors come to understand the logic of their own interactions with the world. It’s also crucial to bear in mind that the process of “reflexive abstraction” is open-ended. Piaget does not believe that development is simply a matter of achieving a certain level and then stopping; there are always new and more complex levels one could generate.
Here Piaget invokes the German mathematician Kurt Gödel, who managed to show that no logical system (such as, say, mathematics) could demonstrate its own internal consistency; in order to do so, one has to generate a more sophisticated, higher level that presumes it. Since that level will no be able to demonstrate its own principles either, one then has to go on to generate another level after that, and so on ad infinitum.
“Gödel showed that the construction of a demonstrably consistent... theory requires not simply an “analysis” of its “presuppositions,” but the construction of the next “higher” theory! Previously, it was possible to view theories as layers of a pyramid, each resting on the one below, the theory at ground level being the most secure because constituted by the simplest means, and the whole firmly poised on a self-sufficient base. Now, however, “simplicity” becomes a sign of weakness and the “fastening” of any story in the edifice of human knowledge calls for the construction of the next higher story. To revert our earlier image, the pyramid of knowledge no longer rests on foundations but hangs on its vertex, and ideal point never reached, and, more curious, constantly rising!” (Piaget 1970:34)
THERE ARE NO LAWS OF PHYSICS
Roy Bhaskar and those who have since taken up some version of his “critical realist” approach (Bhaskar 1979, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1994a, 1994b; Collier 1990, 1994; Archer, Bhaskar, Collier, Lawson and Norrie 1998) have been trying for some years now to develop a more reasonable ontology. The resulting arguments are notoriously difficult, but it might help to set out some of his conclusions, in shamelessly abbreviated form, before continuing:
Realism. Bhaskar argues for a “transcendental realism”: that is, rather than limiting reality to what can be observed by the senses, one must ask instead “what would have to be the case” in order to explain what we do experience. In particular, he seeks to explain “why are scientific experiments possible?,” and also, at the same time “why are scientific experiments necessary?”
Potentiality. His conclusion: while our experiences are of events in the real world, reality is not limited to what we can experience (“the empirical”), or even, to the sum total of events that can be said to have taken place (“the actual”). Rather, Bhaskar proposes a third level (“the real”). To understand it, one must also take account of “powers”— that is, define things in part in terms of their potentials or capacities. Science largely proceeds by hypothesizing what “mechanisms” must exist in order to explain such powers, and then by looking for them. The search is probably endless, because there are always deeper and more fundamental levels (i.e., from atoms to electrons, electrons to quarks, and so on), but the fact that there’s no end to the pursuit does not mean reality doesn’t exist; rather, it simply means one will never to be able to understand it completely.
Freedom. Reality can be divided into emergent stratum: just as chemistry presupposes but cannot be entirely reduced to physics, so biology presupposes but cannot be reduced to chemistry, or the human sciences to biology. Different sorts of mechanisms are operating on each. Each, furthermore, achieves a certain autonomy from those below; it would be impossible even to talk about human freedom were this not the case, since our actions would simply be determined by chemical or biological processes.
Open Systems. Another element of indeterminacy comes from the fact that real-world events occur in “open systems”; that is, there are always different sorts of mechanisms, derived from different emergent strata of reality, at play in any one of them. As a result, one can never predict precisely how any real-world event will turn out. This is why scientific experiments are necessary: experiment are ways of creating temporary “closed systems” in which the effects of all other mechanisms are, as far as possible, nullified, so that one can actually examine a single mechanism in action.
Tendencies. As a result, it is better not to refer to unbreakable scientific “laws” but rather of “tendencies,” which interact in unpredictable ways. Of course, the higher the emergent strata one is dealing with, the less predictable things become, the involvement of human beings of course being the most unpredictable factor of all.
If anyone wants to take the “Science is Right” position, I’m always down for a good debate!
And remember, folks, science is all about disproving your own beliefs. If a scientists doesn’t take genuine pleasure in being proven wrong, they’re not a real scientist!
For sure some aspects of the modern scientific approach are nothing more than scientism supported by a belief in the result of abstruse mathematical equations. An examination of Halton Arp's work on discordant redshifts in connected and related cosmological objects (galaxies, quasars, X-ray sources, etc) shows that not only isn't the universe expanding, it is instead growing out of itself. There is sufficient scientific detail in his work (his book Seeing Red is a great overview) to verify this to an honest appraisal. He was vilified and castigated for his pioneering work and insights, he was told to 'recant'. Also, black holes are nonsense. Oh, they took a picture? Check out Dr Robitaille's work on astrophysics, black holes, CMB, etc, on his Sky Scholar YouTube channel. Of course you will find his critics, but the depth of his knowledge and details of research give rise to consideration of his perspective if not blinded by the reigning paradigm. Many good insights in the electric universe and plasma universe camps. Naturally, much more to this, just a few examples. The reductionist approach can only examine pieces, and the whole of living beings and processes of Nature can never amount to a sum of the parts that scientists pull from them.
I love this stuff, and it's definitely not confirmation bias. I'd know it if it was.
The "laws" of thermodynamics apply in a closed system. The universe, as we keep finding out via silly expensive telescopes, just keeps getting bigger, ie, open.
"Imagine that your brain is a computer, as modern neurology suggests." Erm, it isn't. You are confusing organism with mechanism. Again. If you need to make shit up to make your argument valid then you are full of something. That's you also, Dawkins. Your selfish gene book got thrown in the bin after I read that you redefined what a gene "is" to fit it in your prejudiced notions.
"Laws" in this case are explanations of perceived phenomena, and our perception is limited. See "umwelt" for why. My other word of the week is superorganism. We cannot, and never will, understand anything. Just get over it and sit in the sun with a beer with some friends if you have any, and stop poking demons.
I wish I hadn't read The Matter with Things, but I did and now think everyone is a cretin except for me and people I like.