They Blinded us with Science: Revisited

THEY BLINDED US WITH SCIENCE REVISITED


MARCH, 24TH 2024      AARON SMITH      SEASON 1      EPISODE 66

SHOW NOTES:

Back in December of 2021, I released an Episode called, They Blinded us with Science. This little talk was about Scientism as a religion, rather than the scientific method being applied to the natural world in order to discover replicable and reliable inferences about the world we live in. I believe that it’s aged well and, since I have picked up many new listeners, I thought I’d bring it forward. I cleaned it up a little and tried to add a little flavor at the beginning and the end for you. So, please indulge me this short holiday. I hope you enjoy this flashback episode. In the very near future, I will be going over some medical information that I’ve come across and I think that this is an important precursor to that.

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THE SUBTLECAIN SPOTLIGHT: DOC MALIK-HONEST HEALTH

Please check out Doc Malik's work. My personal choice for the Spotlight this episode!
"Ex orthopaedic surgeon with 25 years experience Cancelled for speaking up for common sense, medical ethics, and calling out the tyranny. Host of the Doc Malik Honest Health Podcast"
https://substack.com/@docmalik

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Sub-Occane Podcast. I'm your host, aaron Smith, broadcasting from the Aorta of America, beautiful festival city, oshkosh, wisconsin, where we pump out reason and pierce through the propaganda. Here we go. Today is Sunday, march 24, 2024. Weather is warming up, along with the political redrick, as we prepare for another selection cycle here in the United States, Although I can't seem to remember a time now that we weren't hearing about the presidential election.

Speaker 1: 0:43

But you know me, I'm not really all that interested in that particular shadow dance on the wall of the cave. Understand how important people think the president is in all a red team, blue team, and the pendulum swings this way and that, but the technocrats just keep gaining ground. It's not that there aren't more or less policy decisions that help or hurt us in the short term. It's just that the actual decision makers, it seems, are entrenched in bureaucracies and bought and paid for by financial institutions and corporate interests. And I really see a way around it. I wish I could.

Speaker 1: 1:19

On the lighter side of things, my wife and I have been blessed with the ability to take a short vacation together, and it's a much needed getaway, to be sure. So I wanted to ask you to indulge me in something this week, back in December of 2021, I released an episode called they Blinded Us With Science. This little talk was about scientism as a religion rather than the scientific method being applied to the natural world in order to discover replicable and reliable inferences about the world we live in. I believe that it's aged well and since I've picked up many new listeners, I thought I'd bring it forward. I thought it would make sense, I cleaned it up a little bit and I tried to add a little flavor at the beginning and the end for you. So please indulge me this short holiday and I hope you enjoy this flashback episode. You'll have to forgive my somewhat more halting cadence, as I was still trying to learn how to speak in front of a microphone without being so nervous about the outcome and how I sounded and all that. I'm just kind of over that now. So in the very near future, I'm going to be going over some medical information that I've come across and I think that this is an important precursor to that content. So I thought it made sense to bring it forward. If you're new to the Subtle Cane Podcast, thank you for gracing us with your virtual presence. If you're a returning listener, thank you for your continued support. It is much appreciated.

Speaker 1: 2:51

This is episode 66 of the Subtle Cane Podcast, pulled from the archives. They blinded us with science Revisited. Today we're going to talk about SCIENTISM. What is SCIENTISM? Well, scientism as defined by Miriam Webster is number one methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to the natural scientist. Definition two an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation, as in philosophy, the social sciences and humanities. Just as a side note, hate to get off on a rabbit trail right away, but as a side note, the dictionary has been relentlessly reconstructing the English lexicon to fit narratives, with a thinly veiled contempt for us, I think in a truly Orwellian fashion, btw. But I digress. We are speaking of SCIENTISM today.

Speaker 1: 3:59

There's a growing trend that I've noticed, and I don't know if you've noticed this, but there's a new religion in town, haven't you heard? Or maybe not new, but growing? A cult-like adoration for people in the scientific community, an adoration that is greedily lapped up by the clergy of this burgeoning movement. The faithful have the fervor for their belief that shames the most charismatic of Pentecostals and know their God is a God that demands much of them. They are all too happy to kneel in devotion at the altars of their chapels, universities, hospitals, government buildings, corporations. They meet in the vast cathedral of internet echo chambers where they receive the words by which they live or die. This is not the worship of the state that we saw in the Soviet Union or North Korea or 1930s Germany. This is not just socialism or communism, it's SCIENTISM.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Let's take a trip back in history. It's a jumpback. Let's think about the time before Gutenberg and the explosion of technology. That was the printing press. The Christian church was at the mercy of its clergy. Now I'm not here to cast shade on the Catholic church I'm not but I do think that it's pertinent to go over a little history, if only for the sake of context.

Speaker 1: 5:32

We are a largely literate population that enjoys access to an almost unlimited supply of information. It's hard to think that, relative to all human history, it's not long ago that literacy was rare among common folk, and it was mainly the elite and the nobility that enjoyed not only the ability to read but also access to literature. So when the clergy spoke, they spoke for God. The average person had no access to Scripture. They often would sit through entire services in Latin and wouldn't even understand a word of it, or maybe a word or two. But when the clergy made a proclamation about how they should live or what they should believe, the faithful had little choice but to believe what they were told. Then something amazing happened the printing press and people began to have access to literature. The Scriptures were available to more and more of common man and more and more of common man began to read, and the discrepancies between the proclamations of the clergy and the Scriptures themselves found the light of day. And in so doing the Reformation was born. Western thought and doctrine exploded throughout Europe, and the world would never be the same.

Speaker 1: 6:57

There's a whole lot more to all of that, of course, but the advent of the printing press was simultaneously one of the most destructive and creative events in the history of man. Why would I say destructive? Well, technology is always a two-edged sword. We forget that, and I will be returning to that topic to flesh it out some more in a later date, but the business of the day isn't going to allow for that now. Remember, before the printing press we had hand-copied manuscripts. The printing press was an unbelievably transformative invention which fueled the Renaissance, the Reformation, the American Revolution, the advancement of science. It did a lot of good. We recognize this, but do we? Do we recognize what we lost? I'm going to bring a quote from Mr Neil Postman. I've brought him up before. He's an author. He's written some very, I think, important books, like Technopoly or Amusing Ourselves to Death, and the quote goes like this quote technological change is neither additive nor subtractive.

Speaker 1: 8:14

It is ecological. I mean ecological in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars. You have a new environment and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival. The same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything. I think that's an important thing that we forget to consider. New technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything. It's an ecological change.

Speaker 1: 9:14

Now fast forward to the age of technocracy, the information age. Now we have access to more information than we could ever begin to digest. I mean you could spend every day of your life trying to sort through the mountains of data and opinions, and you would never even get close to brushing the surface of all that is available. This, I believe, has given us maybe a sense of a bravado. No, the world at your fingertips. With just a few keystrokes, you too can be omniscient, but we know that we don't really know much. I mean, do we? I'm not excluding myself from this.

Speaker 1: 9:57

We joke around and we say, well, if it's on the internet, then it must be true, right? That's something I hear people say a lot when they hear something that doesn't jive with what they believe, and it's easy to dismiss something as misinformation when it is convenient and then latch onto it like it's gospel truth when we agree with it. That's that confirmation bias that I mentioned in an earlier episode. So what do we do with that problem? I mean, there's some options open to us. We can learn to evaluate the things we hear and read about it in a way that uses reasoning, so that we can spot inconsistencies and therefore dispose of the need to know all of the intricacies of a topic, because we can recognize when an argument is made that uses circular reasoning or self-contradictory statements to support itself, or someone uses an appeal to authority rather than actually making an argument.

Speaker 1: 10:58

And that last one, that's a doozy the appeal to authority. It's the hallmark of scientism and technocracy. The clergy absolutely love that one. And when I say the clergy, I'm talking the clergy of scientism. The religion of scientism is what I think of it as, because, not unlike the clergy of the bygone past, the clergy of scientism are the only ones allowed to interpret their academic scriptures.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Here's an example I recently spoke to a professor about the Omnicron variant and I know, please, aaron, please, no more Rona, but bear with me. I asked her if the apparently weakened and more transmissible variant might potentially be an indicator that the pandemic is drawing to a close. By the way, that's typically how it happens A virus mutates into a weaker, more transmissible variant that peters off into endemic insignificance. That's what happened to the Spanish flu, for instance. This professor, by the way, who is an amazing woman and very kind and very passionate about what she does, but this professor is a doctorate level public health nurse with 40 years of experience in the field and with a straight face. She disregarded all of her education and training, all of her experience, and could not even answer me with a potential affirmation and said I mean seriously, said this quote oh, I don't know, we'll have to wait and see what the CDC tells us to think about that End quote I was, I was literally dumbstruck. I said what? This is what I'm talking about. I recognize that we need people to specialize in areas. Right, specialization has its place. Experts are necessary. It's a necessary part of a modern society. We can't all know how to do everything. We need specialization. But but this is an important lesson that someone with this much experience and this much understanding of how epidemiology works, as a public health nurse with, with over 40 years of experience, like I said, at a doctorate level, couldn't even Bring herself to trust her experience in her education enough to say well, that's typically what happens, or that could be it. It was honestly like a blank stare and Wrote memorization of the line she was supposed to recite, which was I Don't know, we'll have to wait and see what the CDC tells us to think about. That Unbelievable, this reliance on, on the quote-unquote experts. Neil postman said something about this too, quote we must keep in mind the story of the statistician who drowned while trying to wait across a river with an average depth of four feet and Quote. I got a kick out of that.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Now there's a difference between education and indoctrination. Okay, education and indoctrination. Education teaches us how to think. Indoctrination teaches us what to think. Honestly, we're not. We're not being Educated in our schools and universities. I mean to some extent, but for the most part we're not being educated in our schools and universities. We're being indoctrinated. We're not being taught how to think. We're being taught what to think. The clergy has Asserted itself in our society in a terrifying way, but we have the tools to avoid it or at least mitigate it. You know, we can learn to reason. We can learn to recognize Inconsistencies, challenge authority and never let an appeal to authority end the discussion.

Speaker 1: 15:10

I'm not a scholar. I'm a middle-aged man with a modest level of formal training, but I try to teach myself what I can, and I read. I'm a voracious reader. I'm trying to help in what little way I can To share information I come across and then leave you to come up with your own conclusions about it. I care about you, all I do. I know it sounds a bit sentimental, but but I do this because I see the people around me and I can sense a hunger For something more than just the narratives that are being fed to them. I think people want more, but, but it's hard. It seems like from every angle there's another person waiting to tell you what to think instead of teaching you how to think. There are many people More qualified than me to do this, and many are. Many are. But. But I have this hope, this goal, that even if I only make a difference for for one of you, that all of my work will be well worth the time. You know we got to keep our minds sharp. Short break here.

Speaker 1: 16:13

The subtle cane podcast operates on a modified and almost a rational value-for-value system. If you receive value from what I am doing here, I ask that you not return that value to me, but to someone else who is actively engaged in the arena of ideas. Sometimes my guests or or producers provide me with suggestions for who to put in the spotlight. This time, I'm personally shining the subtle cane spotlight on the gifted and effervescent doc Malik. Dr Ahmed Malik is one of the brave doctors who have lost their careers for simply speaking up and asking Valid questions about the medical tyranny we witnessed and many more things. He's been putting out a lot of fascinating and informative interviews with a host of interesting guests and I've been really blessed by his work. I wanted to Bring him to your attention. If you are not already aware of him, I myself am a paid subscriber to his sub-stack and I feel confident in suggesting him as a person to pay careful attention to. You'll find links in the show notes to his work. I'm not asking you to support him financially, necessarily, but I am asking you to check out his work and make up your own mind about him and see if that is somewhere where you would like to put your resources.

Speaker 1: 17:35

Let's get back to it. We gotta be brave and we gotta question everything you know, suspend your belief and sift and winnow through the information you take in. You have the power to change your life and in so doing, you will be a light to others. People watch other people, don't we? We watch other people, and when we stand up against the rising tide of totalitarianism and choose to speak truth to power, it causes a ripple effect that can change the course of history. Two grandiose Maybe, maybe, but I promise you this the more you learn how to think, the harder it will be for them to tell you what to think. The more you learn how to think, the harder it will be for them to tell you what to think.

Speaker 1: 18:25

I had. On several occasions now, I have had fellow students that I have never spoken to before stop me outside of classrooms and I'll be honest, I'm pretty quiet in the classroom, but there are certain things that I just have to I have to comment on, and I do it respectfully and I do it in a way that I think will be productive to the conversation and with empathy. But but I do challenge some of the things that are brought to the classroom and I've had several fellow students stop me outside the classroom now and say to me thanks, thanks for speaking up, thanks for saying that, thanks, thanks for asking that question. You know you're not alone and you and you help me feel like I'm not alone because I agree with you. I just don't want to say anything. We got to get past that. I just don't want to say anything because there's more of us out there. You are made to feel isolated. You are made to feel alone because of the way the narrative is pushed through media, through social media, through all the various ways that we are being censored on various platforms. It's important to remember that.

Speaker 1: 19:42

Let's get back to scientism. Scientism is not science. It is the religion and worship of science as as the only tool we have for understanding the world around us. Science is truth. That's not a scientific statement. It's a creed spoken by a member of the clergy who wants you to believe that his words and actions are infallible. Utter this sacred mantra and all notion of rational discourse is to be scorned as sacrilege. Never mind the fact that the search for truth is a process that should never be complete, and the humility it takes to conduct real scientific inquiry is entirely missing from these technocratic minders of humanity. Never mind that the dynamic and mysterious nature of the world is constantly confounding the greatest minds, and never mind the many fundamentally disparate opinions of those in the scientific community that don't conform to the majority.

Speaker 1: 20:46

I'm telling you, scientism is mob rule and it shouts down the opposition not from a position of righteous indignation, but from a position of power and collaboration. You know, in the entire history of man's search for knowledge, it has only ever been the disparate voices that have furthered our understanding of the natural world. That's the truth. It's only ever been the ones who were brave enough and crazy enough to challenge the narratives that have propelled us into the future. If it was not so, we would not be able to drive, to work in our cars or perform surgeries or use antibiotics to fight infections. We would be as we were. No progress is made by the stagnant and strict adherence to dominant narratives. I'm not saying it's all been good. On the contrary, as I stated earlier, all technology brings with each gift a price. The silencing of opposing views is only ever the tool of tyrants to seek truth. We must not allow these zealots to turn science into a monolith of unchallenged orthodoxy. We just we cannot let that happen.

Speaker 1: 22:00

I repeat a quote that I have brought to you before from Mr Neil Postman, and this reiterates what I was saying earlier about education and indoctrination. Quote once you have learned to ask questions, relevant and appropriate and a substantial questions, you have learned how to learn, and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know. End quote Educate yourself, don't let people indoctrinate you. Recognize the difference between science and scientism. And there you have it. I really appreciate you allowing me the luxury of a week off, and I have some really exciting guests coming up, and I also will be discussing a scientific paper I found in a medical journal about a very concerning proposed connection between mRNA injections and prion disease. I'm going to get further into that in the very near future. I remember Andrew Hoffman once paid me the compliment of saying that my episodes are more or less timeless in that they are not connected necessarily to current events, and hopefully that is the case and that you benefited from this review of the religion of scientism. Please do take some time and check out our subtle cane spotlight feature, dr Ahmed Malik and his Doc Malik honest health sub stack and podcast.

Speaker 1: 23:28

I end with this quote from Yoast Mirlou's Rape of the Mind. I want you to think about the religion of scientism and the way it asks us to deny what our own ears and eyes tell us in place of the orthodoxy of their clergy. Quote the task of the totalitarian propagandist is to build special pictures in the minds of the citizenry so that they finally will no longer see and hear with their own eyes and ears but will look at the world through the fog of official catch words and will develop the automatic responses appropriate to totalitarian mythology. I repeat, mythology. For all you listening, you are valued, you are loved and you are worthy. God bless and good night Like a fear, as a world that love turns to ashes here.