Dr Feelgood

Over on Fisking Central, they have thrown down a gauntlet - who will argue against, or more realistically, take the piss out of, this article. The article in question, which must have a possibility of being the most-fascinatingly-incoherent-post-with-most-misguidedly-authoritative-tone ever published, is by a man on the 'Blogs For Bush' site who believes that 'science is dead'. In some respects, this is knocking fruit from pretty low-hanging branches, but what the hey, I've never been above that.

Mr Noonan, for that's who the author is, enunciates surprisingly few examples to prove such a sweeping statement. Then again, why bother with proof? His alternative is faith, and that of course requires no proof at all, and is therefore much more reliable. Don't take my word for it:

'Why did science stray from the path of truth? I think it is because we ceased educating the men of science with a knowledge of religion - a knowledge, that is, of genuine truth, genuine reason, and the relationship of man to creation, and his Creator. When science became a narrowly forcused search for something immediately practical, it was bound to eventually be hijacked by people who wanted to use the cover of science for very impractical efforts.'

'When I went into a field full of blackberries yesterday trying to pick them, it was inevitable I would return home with a handful of stinging nettles.'

He's quite right of course - science is best left in the hands of religious types, who had such a great track record of treating the discoveries of people like Copernicus with such dignity.

Being serious, the reason his article makes no sense whatsoever, and is blinded by factual inaccuracies and tautological theories, is his total lack of understanding on a grand narrative scale. If you read his piece, it becomes clear that he treats 'science' as if it were a club with a set number of people and a manifesto for its existence, like the Freemasons or the Liberal Democrats or the Wang Chung Appreciation Society or something. In some respects, that's slightly understandable, because he's religious, and that's kind of how religions work. Just as in the Wang Chung Appreciation Society, most think that 'Dancehall Days' was their greatest hit, and some reckon 'Everybody Have Fun Tonight' was better, so in religion, most reckon gay people shouldn't become bishops, but some reckon they could. However, despite minor disagreements, these groups are defined by their own (sometimes unwritten) manifestos - the WCAS decide their favourite song according to whether or not Wang Chung recorded it, while religions decide their rules based upon interpretations of a holy book, or the speeches of a great leader.

In other words, these organisations are structures. Science isn't a structure, it's a very loose word for processes. Imagine that I'm sat in front of the computer, trying to write a witty blog post that people will actually care about. It's really hot. I think to myself - it's hot, so global warming must be happening. Bollocks, right? Because you can't extrapolate a trend from a single result. It isn't science because the process is flawed. The conclusion may or may not be right, but it's irrelevant. It's still not scientific even if it is right. This is why comparing science and religion is totally daft - you're not comparing the same things. If Mr Noonan remains this unaware of the difference between a structure and a process, he'll end up going to his Blogs For Bush meetings in the nude, unable to comprehend the differences between the structure of his suit and the process of trying to decide whether to wear the suit, the hatstand or last month's tiramisu.

He illustrates his point with examples of 'scientific' hoaxes - Piltdown Man, ALAR etc - but these are a list of hoaxes or incidents of bad methodology, which were subsequently later revealed as such. Science the process discovered that they were wrong. As a result, they weren't science, but pseudoscience. I find some of his claims hilarious:

'The main thing was that science could only thrive as it did from about 1650 until 1850 when everyone agreed on the rules.'

Maybe his laptop is powered by moonbeams. Hold on, I'd forgotten that God handed electricity to Thomas Edison in an earthenware jug.

In the comments, he contradicts himself:

'So, the Age of Science is dead...it died between about 1850 and 1950. Never again will such a man-centered construct, I think, be held up as a paradigm...and good riddance, if you ask me.'

Because the moon landings happened when God threw down a celestial rope ladder for Armstrong and Aldrin to climb up.

Another classic:

'From what I understand, no educated person has held the world to be flat for at least 3,000 years...as that time frame includes all of Christianity, and therefor all educated Christians, we would have to say that never, not even once, has an educated Christian thought the world flat...'

Well, he's only wrong by a factor of ten. In fact, most people still believed the earth was flat at the time of Columbus. This lot still do. By the way - there's a reason why their slogan is 'deprogramming the masses since 1547'.

Or this:

'The real destructiveness of the Darwinists comes in where they demand that nothing but Darwinism be taught, and that no questioning of Darwinism be allowed - this is a negation of science.'

I have no problem whatsoever with you trying to find scientific alternatives to evolution through, you know, processes and evidence. Good luck with that.

Even better:

'It is good to keep in mind, Georgia, that we're no smarter than the ancients - indeed, we may be less smart than they were. We know more because we've had a longer time to gather and transmit information, but we're no more clever than they are. Do you really think that they, looking up at the spherical Moon, couldn't conceive of a spherical earth?'

No, that's right, we're much more stupid than people thousands of years ago. Well, at any rate, he is.

You just have to love this discussion. More to the point, you have to love even more a writer who continues to insist throughout a comments section in which even the sort of right-wing Republicans who regularly hang out on a site with a name like 'Blogs For Bush' are accusing him of being obscurantistly stupid, and yet after several hundred comments he's still going:

'That is the precise problem - science has de-coupled itself from religion; reason has refused to work with faith. We have half educated people.'

'I try to look at the whole picture - not just bits of it and, worse, take those bits and try to extrapolate them in to the whole.'

And all the while a fellow by the name of 'Jeremiah' is shouting IN CAPITAL LETTERS!:

'God says - " I am the ALPHA and the OMEGA"

'Which translates into - The BEGINNING and the END!
THE FIRST AND THE LAST!'

'He also says: "There was NO ONE BEFORE ME, and there will be NO ONE AFTER ME!"'

'Because God - Is FOREVER AND EVER!!!! ETERNITY!'

'GOD IS EVERYTHING!'

'WE WERE CREATED IN HIS IMAGE!!'

'Get it?'

Uuuuuh . . . . no?

His writing style reminds me of something. Hold on, let me tune in my radio:

'But when she was walking on down the road
She heard a sound that made her heart explode
He whispered to her to get on the back
"I'll take you on ride from here to eternity"

[Chorus: (2 times)]
Hell ain't a bad place
Hell is from here to eternity'

Iron Maiden, 'From Here To Eternity'.

Oh my God - he makes less sense than Bruce Dickinson.

Oh, by the way, I hear God just loves MORE FEMALE NUDITY ON TELEVISION! After all, he did create Eve, and I'm pretty sure he was chuffed afterwards. He revealed it to me himself, so I expect the nation's TV programmers to get on the matter as fast as possible. The DIVINE ALMIGHTY can't wait long!

One final interesting thing to note is his selectiveness about what science qualifies as good and what doesn't. He uses the opening date of 1650 for a reason - Copernicus was obviously all right. Yet surely the same criticisms of today's scientists are true of those in the Middle Ages? Were they not also motivated by personal gain and glory? Of course, the real reason for this harking back to a mythical golden age of science is his a very modern objection that when people talk about matters scientific these days, they tend to pay little attention to those who approach the table waving the Good Book, and for that I say 'amen, brother'.

*The Dandy Warhols, 'I Am A Scientist'