“Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.” ― Phaedrus
The reliance on fallacy and attempts to promote assertion over evidence seem to go back at least as far as the founding of something called "The X Club" in the 19th century, which involved a group of largely mediocre scientists from both sides of the Atlantic who disliked the fact that a lot of useful science was being done, for nothing, by clergymen in their spare time, rather than having the church and the taxpayer hand money over to a new class of professional scientists (members of the X Club, in other words.)
Members of the X Club helped each other rise to positions of influence mainly by marking each other's homework rather than by doing lots of groundbreaking work, and because the X Club did very little else other than promote the status of its members, they ended up controlling the flow of taxpayer's and charitable monies to the new class of professional scientists. In order to eliminate the hateful amateur scientists (many of them Christian clergy) they also concocted the "conflict thesis" which held that faith and science were both opposites and enemies and that throughout history faith has tried to suppress science and perpetrate ignorance. There are an awful lot of very famous examples of the church persecuting scientists and suppressing important discoveries throughout history as it is now taught, the only snag being that even the really key examples of Galileo and Copernicus are not, in fact, as they are currently taught when the actual historical source material is referred to!
Every school child in the UK is taught, and firmly believes, that when Christians were in charge the streets were knee-deep in excrement and nobody washed. Almost every intellectual adult in the Kingdom will quote this as fact, but it isn't. Prior to the advent of synthetic phosphate and nitrate fertilizers, dung was too valuable not to be collected and put on the fields!
The fallacies we are being fed over covid and the pandemic, are supported on a much deeper foundation of lies which deny that past scientific progress (which has been demonstrably slowing down since the 1970s if not before) depended on evidence-based argument and the TESTING of ideas, which Christianity, far from suppressing, actually encouraged by developing and teaching the skills of theological argument.
and this book, by Dr Clare Craig, shows not only that this sort of deception is still ongoing in the twenty-first century, but that to some extent even Dr Craig has brought into the core falsehood that faith and science are mutually exclusive.
That's not to say that what she writes is wrong or needs to be disregarded: rather it proves how deeply certain pernicious falsehoods have been embedded into intellectual minds and not just the minds of the masses.
It may be significant that Elon Musk chose to rebrand Twitter as "X", perhaps in homage to the anti-scientists of the X Club?
Perhaps the reason why the establishment in Canada, the Low Countries and increasingly in the UK, want the "economically inactive" to accept euthanasia (voluntary or otherwise, as in care homes during covid) is that such persons have the time and the disposition to read books, which cannot be censored online once a person has them, and they are less likely to get ALL their information from broadcast and social media, where all information is gabbled at them in a way designed to give a constant impression of immediate danger, which is a psychological trick to get the "information" into people's heads, by-passing their critical faculties.
This is probably why Hitler liked films: his only book, Mein Kampf , was bought as a show of solidarity by countless thousands who never read it, and was primarily a mechanism for laundering political donations to Hitler who had only just got out of jail (he was jailed for treason so people didn't want to hand him money directly!. Some supporters bought hundreds of copies, for cash, and gave them away.
One finds that even on biased media like the BBC, READING the text versions of their stories allows one to see what is true and what is not in a way that isn't possible with their broadcasts or their clips on YouTube. Medawar hasn't really watched TV for years: it's okay as entertainment, but it NEVER allows one to carefully absorb and evaluate information to test what might be true and what isn't. And when you can see what ISN'T true, then you get a grasp on what a given group might really be after -and what things they don't want you to know!
The reliance on fallacy and attempts to promote assertion over evidence seem to go back at least as far as the founding of something called "The X Club" in the 19th century, which involved a group of largely mediocre scientists from both sides of the Atlantic who disliked the fact that a lot of useful science was being done, for nothing, by clergymen in their spare time, rather than having the church and the taxpayer hand money over to a new class of professional scientists (members of the X Club, in other words.)
Members of the X Club helped each other rise to positions of influence mainly by marking each other's homework rather than by doing lots of groundbreaking work, and because the X Club did very little else other than promote the status of its members, they ended up controlling the flow of taxpayer's and charitable monies to the new class of professional scientists. In order to eliminate the hateful amateur scientists (many of them Christian clergy) they also concocted the "conflict thesis" which held that faith and science were both opposites and enemies and that throughout history faith has tried to suppress science and perpetrate ignorance. There are an awful lot of very famous examples of the church persecuting scientists and suppressing important discoveries throughout history as it is now taught, the only snag being that even the really key examples of Galileo and Copernicus are not, in fact, as they are currently taught when the actual historical source material is referred to!
Every school child in the UK is taught, and firmly believes, that when Christians were in charge the streets were knee-deep in excrement and nobody washed. Almost every intellectual adult in the Kingdom will quote this as fact, but it isn't. Prior to the advent of synthetic phosphate and nitrate fertilizers, dung was too valuable not to be collected and put on the fields!
The fallacies we are being fed over covid and the pandemic, are supported on a much deeper foundation of lies which deny that past scientific progress (which has been demonstrably slowing down since the 1970s if not before) depended on evidence-based argument and the TESTING of ideas, which Christianity, far from suppressing, actually encouraged by developing and teaching the skills of theological argument.
There is a very good book on this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Popes-Unicorns-Science-Christianity-Conflict/dp/0190053097
and this book, by Dr Clare Craig, shows not only that this sort of deception is still ongoing in the twenty-first century, but that to some extent even Dr Craig has brought into the core falsehood that faith and science are mutually exclusive.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Expired-untold-Dr-Clare-Craig/dp/1739344707
That's not to say that what she writes is wrong or needs to be disregarded: rather it proves how deeply certain pernicious falsehoods have been embedded into intellectual minds and not just the minds of the masses.
It may be significant that Elon Musk chose to rebrand Twitter as "X", perhaps in homage to the anti-scientists of the X Club?
You always provide incredibly interesting insights. TY M!
Perhaps the reason why the establishment in Canada, the Low Countries and increasingly in the UK, want the "economically inactive" to accept euthanasia (voluntary or otherwise, as in care homes during covid) is that such persons have the time and the disposition to read books, which cannot be censored online once a person has them, and they are less likely to get ALL their information from broadcast and social media, where all information is gabbled at them in a way designed to give a constant impression of immediate danger, which is a psychological trick to get the "information" into people's heads, by-passing their critical faculties.
This is probably why Hitler liked films: his only book, Mein Kampf , was bought as a show of solidarity by countless thousands who never read it, and was primarily a mechanism for laundering political donations to Hitler who had only just got out of jail (he was jailed for treason so people didn't want to hand him money directly!. Some supporters bought hundreds of copies, for cash, and gave them away.
One finds that even on biased media like the BBC, READING the text versions of their stories allows one to see what is true and what is not in a way that isn't possible with their broadcasts or their clips on YouTube. Medawar hasn't really watched TV for years: it's okay as entertainment, but it NEVER allows one to carefully absorb and evaluate information to test what might be true and what isn't. And when you can see what ISN'T true, then you get a grasp on what a given group might really be after -and what things they don't want you to know!