The Dark Side of Science And Religion

I have posted the following comment to an American Thinker article on "The Dark Side of Science":

Both science and religion -- as practiced by human beings, who are ignorant of far more than they are knowing -- may be classified as "fake news" (to take advantage of a current idea): Science as practiced is not necessarily good reasoning, and religion as practiced is not necessarily good in spirit (or "spiritual"). Both are, more often than not, not what they are supposed, or meant, to be.

Good reason and spirituality are the objects to be desired; science and religion are at best tools to those ends, and mankind has seen enough value in both to have made them institutions, necessary for civilization -- but also capable of holding mankind back (as religion has repeatedly done throughout history, and science is increasingly doing, for the last century and a half, with the rise, and current general belief, in scientific materialism, most famously represented by Darwinism, or undirected evolution of the world and all of its life).

The key, of course, is learning, and the institutions of both science and religion are -- at least, they are meant to be -- institutions of learning.

We are not here to love one another, for example, because we make ourselves unlovable, in our selfish ignorance; we are here to LEARN to love one another; we can argue over just how great a majority -- if not all -- of us NEVER learn it very well. It helps (immensely) if we are taught the lesson by example from earliest childhood, and consistently until we grow up to reason for ourselves. Religion CAN help provide that, but the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and if that weakest link is our parents who teach us, or the morally weak (or even false) religion they practice, we grow up mentally deficient, relative to those of us who were taught better.

There is new knowledge that mankind needs to learn, which would correct fundamental ignorance in both science and religion. The "experts" -- so-called -- in both fields don't want to hear of it (nor do their followers, the unquestioning believers in the consensus, in either field). It will replace the currently ruling paradigms in both science and religion.

Here is a gentle example of what the new knowledge can provide:

advice to a truthseeker

How To Save Science

The "Climate Etc." blog of Dr. Judith Curry has a post on the fundamental problems with peer review. Instead of adding a comment there, I offer the following:

Scientific fundamentals like peer review are broken because science has not been self-correcting, but figuratively adding epicycles to planetary circles, for a long time, so that incompetence proliferates instead of the expertise that is advertised and expected. Materialistic scientism (dogmatically opposed to religion and, by false logical extension, to a higher meaningful reality than the merely physical) is leading science on a dead-end street; the "undirected evolution" paradigm is a failure, but that is largely unknown, especially among self-proud, cloistered academics. I am already showing the way to correct science--by identifying and focusing upon the definitive evidence that disproves key scientific errors of understanding. All scientists have to do is be willing to have even their favorite theories and supposed understanding undone, when the definitive facts say so. Science should be organized learning, first , last and always, not memorized, ritualized explanation.