We Are Becoming a Culture of Idiot Savants

We have these "debates" over Intelligent Design that paint a bleak picture of the state of the modern mind.

Scientists, who are very well trained in their fields, look at the ID folks and they see a whole pack of scientific retards. One might seem reasonable, but then his comrade will turn out to be a "scientific creationist," which is thinking at such a low level, that one wonders how these folks remember to breathe. And the smart ones in the ID set look to the scientists and see a whole bunch of metaphysical retards, fundamentalists, if you will.

"Science says it, I believe it, that settles it."

As to why they believe what they do about the material universe, this is about the bottom line. Some of them, like Dawkins, gussie it up a little bit, but this is just about where it all ends.

So, instead of debates, we have dimbulbs shouting past each other. And the wagons get circled, and strange bedfellows have to be chosen. Or not. But it seems politically expedient, so they are chosen.

Then, with the wagons being circled, nothing is left to debate, because in a liberal democracy, everything ultimately is oriented towards the mass media. And you don't win points in the mass media with reasonable debate.

Which brings us to this morning's California Report on the The Bloated Pig of a Public Radio Station. They had on a senior researcher for the Kalifornia Mengele Institutute (or Institute for Regenerative Medicine), who was probably chosen because focus groups thought that her voice reflected authenticity and integrity, was asked, "well, if in ten years there are still no cures, what have the voters of California gotten for their money?"

Fair question, sort of. The interviewer completely ignored issues of the what exactly is the human person and how does this all fit in with how the human person is to be treated, but that is par for the course these days. And, when it comes down to it, it is not unreasonable for pioneering research to take a couple of generations for the pay-off. So, it is a slow pitch right down the middle sort of question.

What was entertaining was this line from the scientist:

"In science, it is the unexpected that surprises us."

Really? I would have thought that it was the predictable that shocks, I mean absolutely shocks! us.

Guess what, California? I will not be surprised when it turns out that we frittered away $6 billion on brutal human experimentation with zero gain beyond what will have already been achieved with licit sources of stem cells.

Posted by erik at December 7, 2006 9:04 AM