The Mantle Science Should Not Bear

The title of the World Magazine blog post, written by Lynn Vincent, is "Science v. Bush," but the main point--at least to me--is the continuing politicization of science. This echoes cautions I raised in a BreakPoint article a few weeks ago: when science becomes our god, and its priests allow it to be pressed into service for other ends, it is science that will suffer.

Vincent wrote,

"Today, not only is Science the Ultimate Good. Those who see science as servant and not master, as a way of understanding the created order and not reordering it to our liking, are quickly becoming the Ultimate Bad."

One manifestation of this: to oppose embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) is Bad, because it is Opposing Science. The same logic could have been applied to Josef Mengele, of course. If on moral grounds you had opposed his horrific experiments on humans during Nazi days, you would also have been Opposing Science. The fact is that Mengele's methods led to discoveries that could never have been made within more humane ethical standards of research. You can find fairly recent articles asking whether it's right to make medical use of that ill-gained information. And if I recall correctly, the last article I read on that was written by a scientist.

So one can oppose certain modes of scientific inquiry without Opposing Science. It makes sense that we could support science while opposing immorality; for there's plenty of room for research within accepted moral guidelines. The question then becomes whether ESCR falls outside those boundaries. Read enough on the subject and you're sure to come across someone who will say that science has answered that question; for example, that science has shown that ESCR has potential to save or improve thousands of lives, so it must be moral. Less commonly, but occasionally, you may see it said that such research is morally imperative just because it increases basic scientific knowledge.

Lost in both assertions is the fact that neither is a Conclusion of Science. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that ESCR could demonstrably save millions of lives over the next 50 years. That's something science could conceivably tell us. It still calls for the question of whether the research subjects being created and destroyed--the embryos--are human persons with their own moral rights; and whether we support such treatment inflicted on the most helpless such persons of all. These are not questions of science; they are questions of philosophy and theology.

To jump to the conclusion, then, that those who oppose ESCR are Opposing Science, seems to be at least premature and probably very politically calculated. And as Vincent points out, it involves an emotional appeal to the Goodness and Rightness of Science. This is a mantle science cannot bear. It is a tool, not an independent moral good. To ask it to support this burden is to risk crushing its rightful authority under the weight of an additional, illegitimate authority it should never be asked to bear.

Posted: Thu - August 9, 2007 at 04:15 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

The Mantle Science Should Not Bear

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson