Christopher Hitchens on Science and Reason
Christopher Hitchens (ed.), The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press, 2007), xxi.
This one kind of goes off the rails a bit toward the end, the paragraph concluding with a point that is tangential to the one with which he began. But one gets the point (or, points, as it were…).
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There is…no special reason to credit “science” as the father or godfather of reason. As in the case of the doctors mentioned earlier [ed. note: e.g., Nazi physicians, etc.], a commitment to experiment and find evidence is no guarantee of immunity to superstition and worse. Sir Isaac Newton was prey to the most idiotic opinions about alchemy. Joseph Priestly, the courageous Unitarian and skeptic who discovered oxygen, was a believer in the phlogiston theory. Alfred Russel Wallace, one of Darwin’s greatest collaborators and progenitors, was a dedicated attender of spiritualist sessions where “ectoplasm” was produced by frauds to the applause of morons. Even today, there are important men of science—admittedly a minority—who maintain that their findings are compatible with belief in a creator. They may not be able to derive the one from the other, or even to claim to do so, but they testify the the extreme stubbornness with which intelligent people will cling to unsupported opinions.
This one kind of goes off the rails a bit toward the end, the paragraph concluding with a point that is tangential to the one with which he began. But one gets the point (or, points, as it were…).
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Follow @WTravisMcMaken
Comments
Science doesn't produce rationality -- one can still judge the rationality of scientists by their opinions. Clearly Hawking is more rational, and proves it over and over again by attempting to tear down belief in a creator deity through application of physics. He applies his perfect rationality through science to do away with superstition in pursuit of the truth about the universe.
Now, Polkinghorne claims explicitly that his practice of physics and his practice of belief in a divine creator cohere. That they are compatible, and that religion and science are compatible doxastic practices. But Newton also practiced alchemy along with math and physics, and you could likely say the same about many more examples than he gives. Holding two incompatible beliefs at the same time without perceiving the conflict is irrational. And science won't save you from irrationality -- it doesn't prevent the scientist from irrationally holding incompatible beliefs, much less acting scientifically in the pursuit of the irrational one. The whole setup is designed to paint theistic belief in a creator as the equivalent of phlogiston, ectoplasm, and alchemy -- and more distantly to connect it with the ideologies of far less rational scientists. All are people who claim that the results of two patently incompatible doxastic practices are coherent, even though they could not possibly derive the results of one from the other. (For Hitch, at any rate.)