by Everett Piper
April 18,
2021
from
TheWashingtonTimes Website
Everett Piper
(dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist
for The Washington Times, is a former university president
and radio
host.
He is the author of
"Not a Daycare: The Devastating
Consequences of Abandoning Truth" (Regnery) and,
most recently,
"Grow Up: Life Isn't Safe, But It's Good" (Regnery, 2021) |
Fauci Mask
Illustration by Greg Groesch
The
Washington Times more
Scientific 'progress'
unrestrained by sacred principles
is fraught
with dangers...
On April 13, the editors of National Review opined:
"More than a
year ago, Americans welcomed [Dr.] Anthony Fauci into their homes as
a sober scientist who was helping them make sense of a deadly
new virus.
But he has worn out
that welcome."
William F. Buckley's heirs are absolutely right, and here's why.
Anthony Fauci is no longer viewed as our nation's sober
"scientist"
because he's not one. Instead, he has shown himself to be a
political opportunist and our country's new high priest of
"scientism."
In my new book, "Grow Up! Life Isn't Safe, but It's Good," I offer
the following:
In the early 1900s,
G.K. Chesterton spoke of the
unavoidable consequences of worshipping science above the sacred...
Observing that the naturalists of his day were only too willing to
turn their science into a philosophy and then impose their new
religion upon all of culture with near fanatic zeal, Chesterton
said,
"I never said a word
against eminent men of science.
What I complain of is
a vague, popular philosophy which supposes itself to be
scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion
and an uncommonly nasty one."
Recognizing that science could never presume to compete in the moral
arena, Chesterton went further.
"To mix science up
with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost
all its ideal value and a science that has lost all its
practical value.
It is for my private
physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It
is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be
killed."
Chesterton knew science could answer the questions of mathematics
and medicine, but he was likewise keenly aware it had little to say
about meaning and morality.
He warned that,
scientific "progress"
unrestrained by sacred principles was fraught with dangers.
"Survival of the fittest,"
...he contended, may be an interesting
academic discussion when applied to a vegetable, an animal or a
mineral, but when practiced on people, its consequences are nothing
short of horrifying.
C.S. Lewis also spoke of Western society's diminishment of God's
created order while elevating personal power to fill the chaotic
void.
Predicting the rise of what he and others labeled
"scientism,"
Lewis warned of a dystopia where public policy and even moral and
religious beliefs would be dictated by oligarchs only too eager to
assume the role of our new cultural high priests.
In his novel "That Hideous Strength," Lewis asks an obvious
question:
After two world wars in which technology has brought us
the "advancements" of the mass slaughter, ballistic missiles, and
the atomic bomb, how is our new man-made god of "scientism" working
for us?
"The physical sciences," said Lewis,
"good and innocent in
themselves, [have] already … begun to be warped. [They have] been
subtly maneuvered in a certain direction.
Despair of objective truth
[has] been increasingly insinuated into a concentration upon mere
power …"
Lewis knew that scientists, unhampered by any objective
moral restraint, would always reach for, what his friend J.R.R.
Tolkien called the "one ring to rule them all," and he cautioned his
readers accordingly.
The list of those who warned of the inevitable consequences of
"scientism" over science is long.
Chesterton, Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien,
T.S. Eliot and many more, both before and after them, all knew that
when we supplant God's Created order with man's political
maneuvering, there are always dire consequences.
Chuck Colson, the late founder of the Colson Center for Christian
Worldview, summarized it well:
If we start with the assumption of
Divine order, then there will be freedom within those boundaries.
If
we deny such order exists, truth becomes meaningless, and right and
wrong [and even science] becomes nothing more than power plays and
social constructs.
Lewis, Chesterton, and Colson all warned of this brave new world
where material comforts would be all that mattered, a world where we
would all gladly sacrifice our freedom for the sake of safety.
They
knew that when we decide to worship the god we see in "scientism"
rather than the God who is the author of science that we will
inevitably bow in subservience to men such as His Holiness
Dr.
Anthony Fauci, not because of his grasp of reality but simply
because he clutches the ring of power.
But all is not lost. There is a remnant...
Millions of us are waking
up from the bad dream, and, like Frank Baum's Dorothy, we have
pulled back the curtain and see the wizard is a fraud.
Yes, the good doctor is wearing out his welcome, and the reason is
that,
Americans finally recognize that
he's the science-denier, not
us...
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