Scientism on the March

So, a new think tank, with the eye-glazing name Center for Inquiry-Transnational, has been started to promote public policy based on “science,” instead of religion. (Naturally, it got a big play in the Washington Post.) But this is nonsensical. Science is a method of obtaining and applying information. In that sense, it is amoral. It cannot tell us right from wrong, good from evil, or indeed, set policy priorities.

Scientism, however, can. Scientism is akin to religious belief in that it presumes that science is the only legitimate source of Truth. As such, it has its own views of right and wrong, and indeed, heresy and apostasy. (Just try to be a scientist with a heterodox view on issues such as cloning or global warming and you will feel like you are facing the Inquisition.)

What the Center for Inquiry-Transnational is really after is the supplanting of Judeo/Christian values as the primary basis of public policy with the utilitarian mindset of religious/philosophical scientism. This actually undermines science by co-opting the justifiable respect people have for the method and mutating it into a controversial ideology, which as part of its dogma, denies the intrinsic value of human life simply and merely because it is human.