The Immorality of Science

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psychologist101

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So in my Psychology PHD program, we are required to attend at least 1 conference a year, and since my husband has a PHD in neuroscience, and i have little background in that, we decided to go to the Society for Neuroscience convention in washington DC.

in the main room, there were at least 400 scientific companies, 225 of which i counted that either directly produced human cell lines, or obtained them for use in development. they had pictures, live demonstrations, posters, anything you can imagine about their work.

Human embryonic kidney, liver, heart, cells, CUSTOMLY ENGINEERED embryonic stem cells, custom orders for embryonic cells for a scientists or lab. the list goes on and on.

so in the US, federal money is prohibited from establishing new stem cell lines. so what do some people do? they hold “special” conferences overseas where in the morning they have 1-2 lectures to keep the appearance of a “conference”, and then in the afternoon the scientists work together to create embryos and/or human cell lines, OR they do work with cloned embryos and bring their data back to the US where in many states, cloning is ILLEGAL. even bringing back materials obtained from cloning is illegal, but no one made bringing DATA back illegal. so they basically get around the law.

i cant even begin to tell you about how many conversations i overheard of scientists talking about how “illogical”, and “moronic” the federal funding ban on stem cell research is. this SFN conference has 45,000 people attending too. thats ALOT of people. the international scientists expressed “pity” that we have to “live with such terrible policy”.

i saw a “wanted” advetisement by a company asking “wanted, MD or PHD degree holding candidate with extensive expereince in fertilization and/or embryonic cell establishment, preferably with 2-3 years experience of embryonic cell culture technique”.

you cant imagine the technical advances and abilities that i saw at this conference. my husband was simply awestruck at what humans have accomplished in the last decade. for me however, i felt a little sad.

if we spent HALF as much energy as these scientists spend on their research and work, on expanding the Catholic community and working together to instill real moral values of society, the US would be such a wonderful place. it saddens me that so much time is spent on things like this when it could be put to better use on moral and ethical disease treatment, as well as raising people to be faithful Christians.
 
The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 18)

For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart.” (Isaiah 29:14)

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
but we preach Christ crucified,
a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Greeks,
but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world,
even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,
so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom,
our righteousness and sanctification and redemption;
therefore, as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.”
(1 Corinthians 22–31)
 
We shouldn’t forget that science has benefited humanity in many ways. Might we be more accurate if we lamented the misapplications of scientific knowledge?
 
My daughter is majoring in psychology at uni and she is buying into the material she is reading e.g. we are only animals with animal impulses and our intellect, feelings etc come from electrical brain impulses.

Human reactions are reduced to statistical patterns. Whatever result doesn’t fit in with the hypothesis is disregarded it would seem.

In my ignorance I always thought that science was objective but I am finding that it can be very subjective and yet the ordinary person in the street thinks that ’ if it is scientific, it must be true’.
 
I wonder if they lament about all the data we lost from the Nazi experiments?
 
Did you get to hear the Dalai Lama speak at the neuroscience conference?
 
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yinekka:
My daughter is majoring in psychology at uni and she is buying into the material she is reading e.g. we are only animals with animal impulses and our intellect, feelings etc come from electrical brain impulses.

Human reactions are reduced to statistical patterns. Whatever result doesn’t fit in with the hypothesis is disregarded it would seem.

In my ignorance I always thought that science was objective but I am finding that it can be very subjective and yet the ordinary person in the street thinks that ’ if it is scientific, it must be true’.
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The problem with modern science is the huge assumptions that it makes. Rather than claim that science cannot be applied to the Spiritual, scientists are now claiming that the spiritual does not exist. I believe that such a conclusion is outside the realm of science. It is up to deductive logic to determine the existance of things Spiritual and I believe that deductive logic has shown that God does exist. The problem is this though: scientists believe that empericism is the only path to knowldege. But this is a self contradictory philosophy. Did they arrive at the conclusion that emericism is the only way to truth empirically? No they did not. They make a baseless assumption to come to this conslusion. Thus their thinking is not internally consistent which makes their philosophy invalid. Another problem with science is it method of reasoning. Science is based on inductive logic in which one reasons form specific examples to create universal principles. The problem with this will be seen in the following example. Imagine that I see a flock of white ducks. This happens to be the only flock of ducks that I see in my entire life. Thus I conclude that all ducks are white. Do you see the problem? I have concluded erroneously because inductive reasoning can be invalid. This is the method used by scientists. They see something happen in a little experiment, or think they find evidence for some idea in some little rock and then they develop universal principles about these things that they assume apply to every case that is even remotely similary. This is fautly reasoning. Rather, deductive reasoning begins from inescapable universal principles and reasons down to the specific examples. For example, Universal principle: every event has a cause. Reasoning to specific examples: my car turns on, so their must be something that causes it. This is valid reasoning. The last problem of science is the problem of a complete disregaurd for the etymology of the word science. The word science was once used to desrcibe any logical and systematic study. For example, there used to be a quote that stated, “Theology is the queen of the sciences and philosophy is her handmaid”. But emericists have hijacked the word science in oreder to make any person who is intelligent enough to believe in God look stupid, so that scientist can play god, controling the way we think and the environment around us. It is all about control for the modern day scienctific establishment. It is control of persons and control of the world, just like the ancient “witches” of old sought control. Modern scientific philosophy is nothing more than superstitious witch craft returned to haunt us. Now as for the virtuous study of our natrual world, I have no problem. Such study has brought modern society countless benefits, such as electricity, better health care, warm homes, safer food. That is wonderful. But it is the those who subcribe to the religion of empericism and sacrifice the unborn on their altars that are evil. May the modern scientific establishment not force their unfounded materialistic philosophy that they propogate soley for the purposes undermining morality that make difficult demands on their life.
 
I was taking a sociology of religion class at the seminary when the professor, her self a PhD in a scientific field, made note that in reality Science is a form of modern Witchcraft or Magic. Her reasoning behind this is that at the root of her statement was that both Magic and Science have the same end which is control.

I personally hae expanded on this idea and believe that there is a firm distinction between what could be called the “Science of Investigation” and the “Science of Manipulation.”

The Science of Investigation is about knowing. It is the investigation of the inner workings of the natural world with an eye on applying this knowledge to the betterment of the human condition. The Science of Manipulation also has an eye on the betterment of the human condition however its means to that end is the problem. Rather than pure investigation guided by moral precepts it is interested in changing the natural order in any way that will casue that end to be met.

While the Science of Investigation is about knowledge for the sake of itself the Science of Manipulation is about power over the natural order and the recreation of man in man’s image rather than being in the image of God.
 
Interesting thought process, but you need to keep working at it. You just effectively declared all engineers witches/warlocks!

As an engineer, I take umbrage! 😃

There are legitimate ways to apply learned knowledge and there are ways which are inherently evil. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
 
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manualman:
Interesting thought process, but you need to keep working at it. You just effectively declared all engineers witches/warlocks!
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You mean, they’re not???😃
 
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manualman:
Interesting thought process, but you need to keep working at it. You just effectively declared all engineers witches/warlocks!

As an engineer, I take umbrage! 😃

There are legitimate ways to apply learned knowledge and there are ways which are inherently evil. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Click to expand...
Well of course I was just summarizing the thinking but even in the field of engineering this holds true. The “Science of Investigation” does not deny the application of the knowledge used but rather is bound by moral constraints whereas the “Science of Manipulation” is bound by the idea that science cannot be bound by arcane moral axioms.
 
It’s still problematic terminology though.

I use scientific knowledge to determine how much rainwater runoff is likely to result from converting farmland into subdivisions with roadways, home roofs, driveways, sidewalks, etc. Based on this knowledge I calculate the amount of stormwater runoff that must be captured and held in a pond before being released at a slow rate so that downstream property owners are not flooded by the increase in runoff.

This unavoidably must be described as a science of ‘manipulation’ of the world we live in, but I would suggest that it is not an evil one. The alternative is basically to kill off enough of the world’s population so that the rest of us can fit into the available caves…
 
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manualman:
It’s still problematic terminology though.

I use scientific knowledge to determine how much rainwater runoff is likely to result from converting farmland into subdivisions with roadways, home roofs, driveways, sidewalks, etc. Based on this knowledge I calculate the amount of stormwater runoff that must be captured and held in a pond before being released at a slow rate so that downstream property owners are not flooded by the increase in runoff.

This unavoidably must be described as a science of ‘manipulation’ of the world we live in, but I would suggest that it is not an evil one. The alternative is basically to kill off enough of the world’s population so that the rest of us can fit into the available caves…
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I think the word manipulation is one that is proper in this sense. Manipulation tends to have a conotation of something sinister in the common lexicon. In your work your means are bound by moral principles and thus there is no sinister agenda.
 
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