PZ's Sunday Sermon 07.04.10

PZ uses Jacob Bronowski to attack Catholics first and “religion” in general later on. He admits that Bronowski did not do that in his work, “The Ascent of Man”. But PZ can’t resist doing it himself. It always resolves to this for PZ: Man’s science is good; Man’s religion is bad. Under the Bronowski spell, science acquires art and architecture too.

”But then, aspiring is what we do. It's how we grow as a species, and it's antithetical to religious thought. Where religion thrives on stability and stasis, science thrives on the ragged edge of the known and unknown. Whenever we push back the darkness somewhere, we are killing a little piece of god.”

Revealing his complete ignorance of the function of religion, PZ waxes metaphorical. But it is not possible for PZ or any other scientism-ist to have any effect on the First Cause, whatsoever, much less kill it. PZ and the entire scientifc and scientism community are completely impotent in that respect.

As for the antithesis of religious thought, PZ would not listen if he were told that religion is about personal development of positive traits for individual growth. PZ makes up his own narrative concerning what religious thought is, does, is about. He reads only about religious quackery and uses that to support his own scientistic quackery. For such quacks, religion is just some myth, unattainable to materialism, therefore false. And being defined false, it is content free, also by definition.

He is infatuated with his own tenuous attachment to a tenuous process that he identifies with science, which he sanctifies. For PZ science is evolutionary biology; and he is a science teacher and evangelist for scientism / inferential evolutionism. But he betrays no understaning of the role of science
In human affairs, except through the corrupt lens of inferential scientism.

”A dead civilization is one that has stopped progressing, that ends that dynamism in the stasis of preservation and numbing reverence for the past — when a 2000 year old myth becomes the greatest knowledge worth knowing, we have abandoned the process and begun the contraction into the shells we built while still vital. We must continually break down and rebuild, reduce and reintegrate, disassemble and reassemble to grow. I often hear complaints about "reductionist science" that damn it for breaking the world apart into smaller and smaller units — but those complaints are ill-founded for two reasons. That destruction has always been and always will be a key part of human progress; that contemplation of what is without breaking it to reveal what is within is exactly the failure of the civilizations Bronowski is describing. And further, there is no such thing as purely reductionist science — science always builds again for deeper understanding. Evolutionary theory is a beautiful example of a powerful synthesis driven by insights from reductive analyses. It's also an idea that is constantly being taken apart from within and rebuilt with new insights — it's strength is in dynamism, not stasis.”
[emphasis added]

Scientific reduction always fails if the reduction cuts into or eliminates the core essence of the study target. If the core is not correctly identified, then reduction is not warranted. When it comes to religion, PZ denies that there is any essence or core value that could be defensible; so, warranted only by his own denial, he cuts it down reductively to zombies chanting to a big faerie. It is truly amazing that he gathers so many credulous followers of his own brand of zombieism, because the fallacies he produces are so blatantly obvious that surely thoughtful analysts would shy away from him.

”Blasphemers, heretics, and the sacrilegious are the cutting edge of the hand of humankind. Our eyes turn to everything and take it apart, picking at its bones and tracing the sinews and nerves to understand what makes it work, and the everything we critically analyze includes the dogmas of our religious institutions. The most terrible thing we do to religion is to take it seriously — as seriously as we do a piece of flint, a stone arch, or a cathedral — and aim to take it apart, extract the bits that serve us well, and reassemble it into a tool that will serve humanity better. The chaff will be stripped, the nonsense carved out, the comfortable lies burned away, and what will be left will not bear a trace of the revered superstitions, but a framework of human art and utility.”

But first, religion must be drastically reduced to what it is not. Otherwise it does not fit into the scientism narrative that PZ chants. Religion must first be reduced to a parody, and then again reduced from parody to an absurdity, in order to show that it is absurd. It is this reduction^2 that PZ promotes as his truth. No wonder he defends reductionism without condition; he can’t understand religion without it.

This sort of self-idolatry which PZ produces is just false. Scientists are not blasphemers. Thoughtless, self-involved rebels are; emotional adolescents are. PZ loves to pedestalize himself. But he is not a scientist, he is an Atheist science teacher who loves to use scientism as an excuse for a constant stream of blaspheming, heresy, and sacrilege, as well as personal insults and Ad Hominem assaults. Assaults, including verbal assaults, are the mark of a cowardly weakling attempting to boost his own status somehow through the violence. PZ’s verbal violence is no exception. And those who revere PZ and what he stands for are even moreso.