Why are drugs sold by actors in lab coats? What makes a fruit super?
I live in a country where science is paraded, used as tool to spread personal or corporate beliefs, and generally assumed to be correct. I live in a country where people pit science against religions. And I wonder, do I live in a country where science has become a religion?
Picture this. If you take a man, give him 4 years of seminary school and an apprenticeship, put a robe on him, stick him behind a pulpit and let him talk, the people of his congregation will often accept what he says as Gospel. He can control the crowd and influence their decisions. If he says that science or a different religion is wrong, he is believed.
If you take a man, give him 4 years of college and some research study, put a lab coat on him, stick him behind a camera and let him talk, the people watching their televisions will often accept what he says as law. He can control a viewership and influence their actions. If he says that religion is wrong, he is believed.
It is not infrequent to have a conversation with someone who believes something because a scientist said so on TV or in a magazine, was picked up in a newspaper article, or because a semi-related study drew some conclusion. Do humans share a common ancestor with gorillas? Does fish oil give you healthy fatty acids? Does stretching before exercise increase injury? Does a belly jiggling machine help you lose weight and build muscle? The answer to these questions may all be yes, or no, but defending them because a scientist says so is not a good reason. You can find a scientist that is biased towards either. It is the same as believing a priest because of his position. The fallacy is the same. And I wonder if the people in the crowds are the same - would the person who blindly worships science today have blindly followed a religion if born to different circumstances?
I see this a lot in new age religious text. How quantum mechanics or some strange property of light is used to justify their beliefs. The same holds true for health magazines. The mere fact that they are inspired to use science as a way to validate their claims (when the science rarely applies) implies that people are more likely to believe it - if you invoke the word of science, your argument has weight. However, reality is more like this: http://xkcd.com/1240/.
I believe that messages should be considered - thought upon, weighed, compared with personal experience of reality, and then dismissed, accepted, or challenged - regardless of who they come from. For ideas that are not worth the effort, or you don't have the information to judge, then keep them separate from yourself, keep them as other peoples' ideas.
Science is great, and the scientific method is both obvious (now) and incredibly useful. But there is a difference between believing particular statements of science and believing that the scientific method helps us understand our natural world. The first is either faith or conclusions based on judgment of prior experience and the second is a judgment of principles.
Religion can be great and incredibly useful. But there is a difference between believing the teachings of a religion and believing that a religion helps us know truth. Again, the first requires faith or judgments based on experience.
Perhaps because of my background in science, I prefer judgment based on personal experience to faith - a belief based on faith should only be as strong as your trust in the guarantor of the idea, based on your own past experience. This can be applied equally to science and religion.
Believing what we experience is infinitely more important than believing what we've been taught. Prejudices, hatred, and cultural wars are borne of teachings and thoughts. But experience is borne of truth.
ADDENDUM:
After writing this entry and letting it ruminate in my mind, I read the chapter entitled "We've got it all backward" from Steve Hagen's Buddhism is not what you think. In the chapter, Hagen states that people have it backwards: we think that religion is about believing in a set of beliefs and that science is about knowing reality; In truth, religion is about helping people experience reality and science is about cultivating a set of beliefs.
Beliefs are the fuel and output of science. Scientists create beliefs (theorems), develop experiments to test the beliefs, and reject beliefs that do not hold up to testing. Science does not create reality, but creates models of reality that are believed for a while and then replaced.
Religion is about reality. About knowing the truth. The problem with religion today is that it is often distilled into a set of beliefs, and these beliefs are then taught and believed.
Using this idea, which matches a theory I've been working on for a some time, I would say that the problem with science (or, more accurately, the problem with people) is that the public seems to believe the beliefs of science, much as today's religious believe in the beliefs of the religion.
