The Cult of Science is Settled

I’ve noticed an odd trend regarding the sciences in the last few years. People treat it with unquestioning deference.  Even non-scientists like Bill Gates, a college dropout/computer programmer/businessman, and Bill Nye, the fellow who only has a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, are treated like infallible wizards when it comes to fields like climate change and sexuality.  It’s even more cultish when one considers that even people who have science backgrounds, like Dr. Rand Paul, are treated as bigots for questioning the increasingly mainstream view of giving puberty blockers to children.

In any event, don’t you dare disagree with either of the Bills. You’ll be labeled a science denier or a bigot or otherwise viewed as unintelligent.  This is interesting because there are quite a few issues in science that are primarily faith-based.  For this article, I want to focus on half-lives and gender.

Half-lives are the most interesting and most misunderstood.  We’re taught in school that certain materials decay over time into other materials at a constant rate and therefore you measure the ratios of substances to determine how old the thing is.  For carbon-dating, Carbon 14 degrades into Nitrogen and you measure the ratio of Carbon 12 to Carbon 14 in the substance.  Essentially, when organisms die, they cease taking in new Carbon, so the stable Carbon-12 remains and the Carbon-14 dissipates. 

Carbon dating can’t properly be used in the future because of the amount of pollution today.  Human pollution has pushed a bunch more Carbon-12 in the atmosphere, so the ratio of these isotopes are disrupted.  While I could joke about this supporting the Phantom Time hypothesis, the big takeaway is that these dating systems are obviously susceptible to unexpected changes in the environment. 

I don’t want to spend too much time on this dating topic, but I will say that it strikes me as odd how accepted the idea that Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years has become. I don’t doubt that the ratio of the different substances was measured correctly at the time, nor do I doubt that the scientists were able to replicate the data using the same formulas or equipment.  The problem is that all the scientists are using the same devices (such as spectrometers) to replicate the study, so if there is a flaw in the device design itself, the results will be equally flawed.  Additionally, the fact that we know that half-lives can be shortened or lengthened (such as by shooting radioactive atoms through a particle accelerator), it doesn’t seem unreasonable to question the idea that over 4.5 billion years, many things could occur to disrupt the ratios, calling into question the veracity of the dating method itself.

The second topic is more surprising.  There was a consensus for most of human history, up to a few years ago, but is now open to confusion.  Aside from the occasional person with a measurable birth defect, you have men and you have women.  Now, if someone believes they were born in the wrong body, we’re supposed to support them taking chemicals and surgery to look more like it (rather than encouraging biological women to take more estrogen or biological men to take more testosterone and counsel them away from their feelings).  The guys behind the Simpsons are undoubtedly going to have to apologize for their mockery of these issues, as will the Monty Python crew.  Even the Science Guy’s show said your sex is determined by your chromosomes, but now he has changed his view.  While people can pretend the science is settled, don’t forget that the notion of “gender” is alternatively attributed to Magnus Hirschfeld, a gay sexologist who oversaw what was probably the first transgender surgery ever done, or John Money, a man who is most notable for the case study of David Reimer, a boy raised as a girl who later killed himself.

Ultimately, “the science is settled” is just a way of silencing dissent and refusing to engage with ideas.  It doesn’t take a master scientist to recognize that men and women are different. We have people who “f**kin’ love science” who cannot accept their own biology. The existence of intersex people (people born with both genitals and/or extra chromosomes) is somehow meant to imply that the standard metric needs more nuance but that doesn’t make sense.  There are people born with extra fingers, but there is no issue saying that human beings have 10 digits on their hands and 10 on their feet. Exceptions to this general taxonomy does not change the reality.  It’s just like the people who pretend that race isn’t real, but ignore that 1) blood donation centers need people to donate based on race and 2) anthropologists are able to accurately determine a person’s sex, race, age, and sometimes even social status based on their fossils.

The cult of science is such that you’re supposed to accept it unquestioningly.  Sure, Dr. Fauci  lied to the country and told them they didn’t need masks, then changed his mind and now the CDC is pretending you need 2 masks, but if you question these people or their motives, you’re a kook.  You must accept draconian measures for a virus that is only 10X deadlier than the flu.  The police state is fine with anonymous sex, but don’t you dare shake your lover’s hand.  None of this should be surprising from a guy who visited gay saunas in the height of the AIDS crisis for “research.”  You’re supposed to accept it all, because someone claiming to be a scientist said it.  This is no matter how absurd the idea is, even if it’s that heterosexual relationships are bad for us.

I want to repeat the point about those who say, “the science is settled.”  The idea that “all the scientists say x, therefore x is true” is a terrible argument. Just as something does not become moral simply because everyone does it, something doesn’t become true because everyone believes it.  For most of the time since the Bronze Age Collapse, people in general and then historians agreed that Troy didn’t really exist.  This was until Heinrich Schilemann funded the archeological excavation in the late 19^th century. 

I can say, with some certainty, that these theories are going to get even more extreme.  When you look at the insanity of the transgender nonsense, or how some people are adding scientific language to bathing in the blood of virgins, it becomes even more clear that this is becoming more of a cult.  It’s lab coats rather than robes and beakers rather than cauldrons, but it’s just as faith based as the magic of old.