Blind Faith in Science

From Mystifying science and scientific mysticism on Indranet:

“Edgar Cayce used to say that it is possible to connect with any source of knowledge when our consciousness is expanded to the extent that it can render the Akashic records transparent. In the Eastern mystic tradition as well the access to universal knowledge is a stage which can manifest in the awareness of a person during the evolution of his spiritual path.

In the West, the subject who knows has been separated from the object of knowledge, especially since the introduction of Descartes’ method where the scientist had to separate his subjectivity from the object of research. Modern science, being based on the reproducibility and objectivity principles which are fundamental to Newton’s world of physics, led to an enormous technical and scientific development but doesn’t have the tools to understand awareness, the soul, the psyche itself, or existence. The problem of consciousness which is nagging the neurosciences seems to be elusive to the research method which negates any role for the inner life.

Comte, the father of positivism, affirming that what could not be observed and measured was to be considered unreal, put the basis for the digitalization of the human being, where intelligence became a number of IQ and human qualities became DNA sequences. Science expanded itself to the point of including areas pertaining to wisdom.

It is prestigious to be a scientist, therefore, even psychologists and scholars studying social behavior want their place under the sun and place their subjects in the scientific sector, to prevent being confused with charlatans!

Neil Postman in Technopoly says that George Bernard Shaw affirmed that the average person of today is as credulous as a middle-aged person believing blindly in science’s authority, as before he was believing in that of the Church.

Probably, the situation is even worse. I think that during the Middle Ages a peasant secretly did not care much about the Church, living in a world more connected to reality. Today, it is possible to affirm any nonsense, it is enough to start a speech with, “research has discovered that…” and, as Neil Postman affirms:

“The computer shows…” or “The computer has determined…” it is Technopoly’s equivalent of the sentence “It is God’s will” and the effect is roughly the same (Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, New York: Vintage Books, 1993, p. 115).

The West has excluded the inner channels of exploration from science, leaving them to philosophy or religion but keeping them at a distance from the definition of truth.


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