Stephen Jay Gould, "Brief Amici Curiae of Physicians, Scientists, and Historians of Science in Support of Petitioners", Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).
Judgments based on scientific evidence, whether made in a laboratory or a courtroom, are undermined by a categorical refusal even to consider research or views that contradict someone’s notion of the prevailing ‘consensus’ of scientific opinion. … Automatically rejecting dissenting views that challenge the conventional wisdom is a dangerous fallacy, for almost every generally accepted view was once deemed eccentric or heretical. Perpetuating the reign of a supposed scientific orthodoxy in this way, whether in a research laboratory or in a courtroom, is profoundly inimical to the search for truth. … The quality of a scientific approach or opinion depends on the strength of its factual premises and on the depth and consistency of its reasoning, not on its appearance in a particular journal or on its popularity among other scientists.”
You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to re-learn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane. … Do you remember … writing in your diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”? … How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?
Whitaker Chambers, "Big Sister is Watching You", National Review (1957).
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The book's dictatorial tone is its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal ... resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final can only be willingly wicked. There are ways dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. from almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber-go!" The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too, in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture ... At first we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house.
The important point is that since the origin of life belongs to the category of at-least-once phenomena, time is on its side. However improbable we regard this event, or any of the steps it involves, given enough time, it will almost certainly happen at least once. And for life as we know it, with its capability for growth and reproduction, once may be enough. Time is the hero of the plot … Given so much time, the impossible becomes possible, the possible becomes probable, the probable becomes virtually certain. One only has to wait; time itself performs miracles.
If critical race/gender/queer theory is unfalsifiable postmodern claptrap, as I have long contended, how has it conquered so many institutions so swiftly? It’s been a staggering achievement. Critical theory was once an esoteric academic pursuit. Now it has become the core, underlying philosophy of the majority of American cultural institutions, universities, media, corporations, liberal churches, NGOs, philanthropies, and, of course, mainstream journalism. This summer felt like a psychic break from old-school liberalism, a moment when a big part of the American elite just decided to junk the principles that have long defined American democratic life.
No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it’s “Social Justice.” The author Rod Dreher has called it “therapeutic totalitarianism.” The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as “the successor ideology” — as in, the successor to liberalism.
At some point, it will have a formal name, one that properly describes its mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality. Until then, it is up to each of us to see it plainly. We need to look past the hashtags and slogans and the jargon to assess it honestly — and then to explain it to others.
The new creed’s premise goes something like this: We are in a war in which the forces of justice and progress are arrayed against the forces of backwardness and oppression. And in a war, the normal rules of the game — due process; political compromise; the presumption of innocence; free speech; even reason itself — must be suspended. Indeed, those rules themselves were corrupt to begin with — designed, as they were, by dead white males in order to uphold their own power.
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” as the writer Audre Lorde put it. And the master’s house must be dismantled — because the house is rotted at its foundation.
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To understand the enormity of the change we are now living through, take a moment to understand America as the overwhelming majority of its Jews believed it was — and perhaps as we always assumed it would be.
It was liberal.
Not liberal in the narrow, partisan sense, but liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of that word: the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law — and equality under that law — is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad. The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength; that tolerance is a reason for pride; and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy.
Will all people eventually be saved? Will all evil finally turn to good, or does some evil remain fully and stubbornly opposed to God and God’s goodness? Will even the devil be redeemed? The question of the devil’s final salvation has been continuously debated since the time of Origen. This comprehensive book surveys the history of Christian universalism from the second to the twenty-first century and offers an interpretation of how and why universalist belief arose. Michael McClymond explores what the church has taught about universal salvation and hell and offers a critique of universalism from a biblical, philosophical, and theological standpoint. He shows that the effort to extend grace to everyone undermines the principle of grace for anyone.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, [Bertrand] Russell developed the school of analytic philosophy in the early twentieth century. He called this “the philosophy of logical analysis.” Russell rejected the grand, sweeping, sprawling philosophizing of Hegel (who is so often incomprehensible) in favor of the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. This approach is modeled on the accuracy and clarity of good science writing, but it need not address matters of science. Analytic philosophers labor to define their terms carefully, to work on intellectual questions one at a time, have an acute concern for how language works, and to articulate explicitly the kind of argument forms they are offering.
Indeed, we have a duty to fight against the signs of decay and corruption around us.
Even if victory seems nowhere on the horizon, think of the all the soldiers who gave their young lives, all across this planet, during World War II, when the ultimate outcome was by no means certain and the triumph of unspeakable evil seemed very possible. Think of all those who died lonely and ugly deaths in the gulags of Siberia or in the killing fields of Kampuchea, without even a speck of dignity for themselves or a sign of hope of common decency for others in their societies.
Our task is infinitely easier than that, our dangers nothing worse than unpopularity, and our society has already conquered many obstacles and is capable of overcoming many more.
The simplistic “scientific method” we were taught in school is a phantom. C.S. Lewis noted, “Strictly speaking, there is, I confess, no such thing as ‘modern science’. There are only particular sciences, all in a stage of rapid change, and sometimes inconsistent with one another.” (Christian Reflections, 1945) It follows logically that the methods of these particular sciences differ. The historical sciences, for example, cannot replicate how a fossil was buried. Cosmologists cannot repeat the origin of the universe or the formation of stars. The assumptions, methods, and inferences in many sciences do not follow Francis Bacon’s recipe of observation, hypothesis, and testing. Much of science today is done with models, which are simulations of reality, not reality itself. Some can be tested and refined, but others cannot.