I'm teasing you and I'm sorry if it is offensive. But your are right that a characteristic of scientific culture is relative flexibility. What I'm saying attention to is where that famous ability to reflect and change fails, and nowhere is that more evident than in confronting the evidence that scientific culture behaves a lot more like religious culture than otherwise. And nowhere is that similarity more evident than in the piles of scientfic cultural proponents who attack anyone who dares to point out the commonality.
In fact, to me the most radical characteristic of science as a cultural reality (a religion) and the most clear proof of it is science's ability to deny that it produces cultural realism. I can sum it up:
Science is the god that claims to not exists.
So when I say something like "your science produces monsters", which is a mythological type language, a science proponent will often freak the fuck out and hide behind the fact that science is only a method. Yet science has birthed multiple technologies with the power to obliviate the planet, and mythology predicted it.
All I'm saying is that it's time to call science what it is: a god.
Asserting that scientific culture has some similarities to religion isn’t some deep insight. All human scholarly cultures have things in common. We don’t use that commonness to argue that they’re all the “same”, it’s not an assertion that provides much value.
Your other arguments about science zealots arguing doesn’t provide any novel insight either. There are zealots everywhere, using them as the focus for describing the culture seems like a rather silly thing to do.
Fair. And agreed it's a weak argument to pick on zealots. I like your argument that all cultures have things in common. I don't argue that are all the same as in not a simpleton. I say that to me there are more similarities than differences between secular and religious culture. I say that the similarities are critically instructive.
Some say there are no novel insights. But we still try. Here's one effort: suppose we hypothesize that fiction is more effective at building political consensus. When I say "fiction" I don't say falsehood. I say fiction to mean representation of reality that aim to be convincing rather than truthful. We all have seen this in action.
Suppose I say this is what religion looks like to me: the ancient study of social and political fiction.
I think modern science has lost its way. It has lost moral context. I think it looks a lot like the advanced institutions of the Roman Catholic Church near the time of the Reformation. Not exactly mind you, but in that it's existing to maintain itself rather than as a responsive, living language of healthy communal culture.
I think it's language that fascilitates rapid change in cultural realities. It's this form of religious realism that interests me in critique of modern science institution. That's not because I like to argue with people on the internet, but because I think there's a novel, applied approach that emerges in looking at the problem that way.
But I don't expect that to be clear, and while it's been interesting I'm not much for basic arguing!
I'm teasing you and I'm sorry if it is offensive. But your are right that a characteristic of scientific culture is relative flexibility. What I'm saying attention to is where that famous ability to reflect and change fails, and nowhere is that more evident than in confronting the evidence that scientific culture behaves a lot more like religious culture than otherwise. And nowhere is that similarity more evident than in the piles of scientfic cultural proponents who attack anyone who dares to point out the commonality.
In fact, to me the most radical characteristic of science as a cultural reality (a religion) and the most clear proof of it is science's ability to deny that it produces cultural realism. I can sum it up:
Science is the god that claims to not exists.
So when I say something like "your science produces monsters", which is a mythological type language, a science proponent will often freak the fuck out and hide behind the fact that science is only a method. Yet science has birthed multiple technologies with the power to obliviate the planet, and mythology predicted it.
All I'm saying is that it's time to call science what it is: a god.