Science’s New Guard

I recently watched “The Golden Compass,” a movie based on Philip Pullman’s novel Northern Lights.  It confirmed two facts to me:

firstly, that there a burning desire in the heart of our society for mythological-like depictions of a great struggle between good and evil;

secondly, and the point of this entry, that the new guard of science consistently misunderstands themselves in relation to the rest of the educated world.

In “The Golden Compass,” a magical world is governed by an academic elite called the magisteria.  A young girl named Lyra has been placed under the care of this elite.  Lyra’s father, Asriel, who is a free thinking explorer and scholar, has discovered a type of supernatural dust that would challenge the magisteria’s authority.

Knowing something of Pullman’s biography and personal beliefs, as well as academic interpretations of Northern Lights, clearly the magisteria represents religious organizations such as the Catholic Church, and the free thinkers represent the scientific guard.  The scientific guard is an established group of academicians consisting of Dawkins, Dennett, Sam Harris and countless others.  These men are inheritors of a profession constructed by forbearers like Thomas H Huxley, George Gaylord Simpson, Monod, Mayr, and other 20^th century and late 19^th century thinkers.  These men are actually the minority in science, but they have a loud voice, which makes them seem like the majority.  Their aim is to purge religion from society, especially the intellectual world.

The point these men have fundamentally misunderstood about themselves is that they are the “free thinkers” or “skeptics,” that they alone are the challengers of repressive intellectual regimes.  In my observation the most repressive group of thought police is this scientific guard, who are intolerant of other points of view of reality other than their own hard materialism, who refuse to acknowledge facts and truths that contradict their own point of view, and who to seek to destroy all systems of thought that exist outside their own narrowly constructed box.

Having spent the past 10 years of my life in academia, both in England and America, I can assuredly say that the greatest threat to free thought right now is not religion or religious institutions, but an oppressive form of scientific materialism that is enforced by a small but fanatical group of scientific popularizers.  I believe that if academic scholars want to preserve what little free thought they now enjoy, they must call the bluff of science’s new guard of dogmatic materialists.  They are not skeptics.  They are not free thinkers.  People like Dawkins, Pullman, Dennet, Sam Harris, etc. are wolves in sheep’s clothing:  they claim to love and support rationalism, free inquiry and the tools of critical thinking, but in fact they seek to suppress rational thought, they seek to undermine all forms of freedom, they seek push down free thought so that all people will unquestioningly accept their authority.