July 20, 2007

And a Little Truth Slips Out

Well. Turnabout is fair play, I guess.

Over at Telic Thoughts, there's a raging comment thread erupting over something PZ Myers said. One of the commenters cleverly takes his diatribe and turns it around:

"Science is a force for evil, or to say it in the most optimistic and sensitive way possible for a decent person, there is absolutely no evidence that science isn’t a force for evil…..You've got crazy-ass megalomaniacal scientific kooks telling people to hate their Jewish/black/gypsy/gay neighbors, you've got mobs believing them, you've got people electing Chancellors on the basis of how fanatically they will wage a war against inferior people, and you've got even more swooning with the vapors at anyone who criticizes scientific belief. Science makes you nuts. It makes ordinary people create atomic bombs that cause untold suffering, it turns them into caterwauling flibbertigibbet idiots at any slight to a dead Englishman who has never done a thing for them, and it makes them center their lives around creating toxic chemicals and weapons that pollute the earth and water, poison the atmosphere, and are bound someday to wipe us out as a species altogether.

You've been given your prescription, people of science: you believe in a lot of evil, stupid, ridiculous ideas. You can resign yourself to them if you aren't strong enough to part from them — I'm not going to follow you to your laboratories and drag you out with a choke-chain — or you can wake up. It's all up to you. One thing you don't get to do is silence the people who point and laugh."

Of course, she was engaging in hyperbole, pointing out how ridiculous the whole discussion is...but that particular comment, while it made me laugh, had more than a little ring of truth.

1 comment:

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