Ben Carson: Religion is needed to interpret science because ‘maybe it’s just propaganda’
Source: RawStory
DAVID EDWARDS
01 MAR 2015 AT 13:56 ET
Possible Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson suggested over the weekend that religion was necessary for testing scientific theories because the science could be propaganda.
On Sunday, NBCs Chuck Todd asked Carson, a former neurosurgeon, how science could coexist with his conservative Christian principles.
A persons religious beliefs are the things that make them who they are, gives them a direction in their life, Carson opined. But I do not believe that religious beliefs should dictate ones public policies and stances.
I find, a very good measure of correlation between my religious beliefs and my scientific beliefs people say, how can you be a scientist, how can you be a surgeon if you dont believe in certain things? he continued. Maybe those things arent scientific. Maybe its just propaganda.
-snip-
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/ben-carson-religion-is-needed-to-interpret-science-because-maybe-its-just-propaganda/
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)Worked out pretty good tested by actual fucking reality.
Remember all the science you learned in medical school, all untested by religion, are you wanting all of that to be tested now?
The Scopes Trial is over. You religious freak jobs lost. And will lose again forever and ever, amen.
How does such a person still think himself worthy of leadership of anything other than his tiny religious cult?
How does such a person still be seen by any media as anything other than a viable candidate for a good mocking?
rickford66
(5,528 posts)Panich52
(5,829 posts)rickford66
(5,528 posts)Fred Friendlier
(81 posts)While Carson's beliefs are ridiculous and an utter embarrassment to American Civilization, his tiny religious cult has a lot more adherents and a lot more influence than does atheism. I think we need to take care not to get so caught up in sneering and self satisfaction that we make it easy for the bad guys to eat our collective lunch.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)remotely unpleasant about religion. NEVER! Jamais! Perish the thought!
gregcrawford
(2,382 posts)Then how the bloody blue blazes can any sane, rational person believe this shit?!!?
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)So, O learned physician, if a person has no religious beliefs, what makes them who they are and how are they directed?
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)You made a classic mistake there: You cannot reason with religious beliefs because they are not part of the realm of logic. That's the core of religion: Believing, no matter what the facts say.
I have read an interesting theory that religion would actually collapse if the existence of God were somehow proven. From that point on, believing in him would no longer be a mission, a statement, a sacrifice, a noble deed, a glorious struggle against doubts, a meaning for your horrible hopeless life. From that point on, you and everybody else would know that God exists.
You know that Earth made and supports mankind. Do you worship Earth?
You know that electricity keeps our civilization running. Do you worship electromagnetism?
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)Orsino
(37,428 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)daleo
(21,317 posts)Actually, religion does that rather a lot.
HoosierCowboy
(561 posts)is on a plane to Turkey and will cross the border into the Islamic State....
Gore1FL
(21,151 posts)After all, what body would reject the internal organs of the risen lord and savior?
Maineman
(854 posts)Is this guy Carson an MD? MDs are practitioners who have taken several basic science courses. They are not scientists. Neither am I, but I know what a scientist is.
bananas
(27,509 posts)For example, tobacco industry scientists routinely skewed their results:
Tobacco Company Misrepresented Danger from Cigarettes, Study Finds
Toxicity Levels Obscured, Increasing Risks of Heart Disease, Cancer
By Elizabeth Fernandez on January 06, 2012 | Email | Print
A new UCSF analysis of tobacco industry documents shows that Philip Morris USA manipulated data on the effects of additives in cigarettes, including menthol, obscuring actual toxicity levels and increasing the risk of heart, cancer and other diseases for smokers.
Tobacco industry information cant be taken at face value, the researchers conclude. They say their work provides evidence that hundreds of additives, including menthol, should be eliminated from cigarettes on public health grounds.
<snip>
They also found, after obtaining evidence that additives increased toxicity, that tobacco scientists adjusted the protocol for presenting their results in a way that obscured these increases.
<snip>
The results of Project MIX were first published as four papers in a 2002 edition of Food and Chemical Toxicology, a journal whose editor and many members of its editorial board had financial ties to the tobacco industry. While Philip Morris was trying to get the papers published, the company scientist who led Project Mix sent an email to a colleague describing the peer review process as an inside job.
<snip>
You see the same thing with the nuclear industry, pharmaceutical industry, fossil fuel industries, etc.
That's why watchdog groups like CMD, UCS, and others are so important.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/
http://www.ucsusa.org/
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/04/beyond-coal-plant-activism
bvf
(6,604 posts)and protocols in service of a particular viewpoint definitely ain't science.
Otherwise, I agree completely.
Fred Friendlier
(81 posts)How about "some science" is propaganda - and let us not forget the obvious fact that the bad corporate science was overthrown not by cynical activists but by honest scientists doing better science.
Going down the road of "a lot of science is propaganda" allows people to sneer at results they don't like, simply because they don't like them. Down that road lies disaster: dead people and shattered economies.
Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)its been downhill ever since
appalachiablue
(41,171 posts)He's enjoying this and doing fine.
Panich52
(5,829 posts)Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)I've got nuthin'.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)lastlib
(23,286 posts)No, "Dr." C -Arse- on, it's the RELIGION that's propaganda, NOT science. It's the job of SCIENCE to interpret science, you delusional fool.
William Seger
(10,779 posts)Science is the method that enables us to distinguish fact from propaganda, idiot.
wolfie001
(2,265 posts)Surely the big guy upstairs will point the way. This clown is a complete jackass outside of a medical facility. I'm sure his primary motivation is to remove ANY impediment between his (the doctor's) wallet and the patient. Maximize profits at ANY expense. No way he's that dumb. But the average voter seems to be.....dumb that is.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Angry peon: "MORE WITCHES!!!!"
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)Hell, if he ran as a GOPer just ten years ago, he wouldn't have to sink this low in order earn support.
It's clear, if anything, that he's trying to out-crazy the craziest fucking Teabagger because he doesn't want his own blackness to cast doubt on whether he's worthy enough to support.
He must have made a conscious decision to look like he's lost his fucking mind.
immoderate
(20,885 posts)He is a Republican. That's how they think. If anything, I sense that he's reigning in his wackiness to seek the nomination. Herman Cain and Alan Keyes are also smart guys. Are they "pandering to the nut jobs" also? I think they say what they mean. Being smart does not preclude wacko.
Please note that I have been DU for long time, and this is the first time I have found reason to express disagreement with you.
--imm
MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)So any disagreement here is no problem.
Neither one of us really know what's going on in that head of his.
immoderate
(20,885 posts)But I still think he's a wacko.
--imm
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Buchanan. Buchanan was Reagan's Director of Communications. Buchanan was a candidate that year, along with Ron Paul, Harold Stassen and David Duke he lost to George HW Bush who was then supported by Republican but defeated by Democrat Bill Clinton. I voted for Clinton. Republicans back then were fully bat shit crazy, Duke, Paul Buchanan crazy. They were not 'moderates' back then and voting for them then was the same as voting for them now. Same.
Here are some excepts from Buchanan's 92 RNC speech. This is what anyone who was a Republican in 92 was responding to:
"George Bush is a defender of right-to-life, and lifelong champion of the Judeo-Christian values and beliefs upon which this nation was built. Mr Clinton, however, has a different agenda.
At its top is unrestricted abortion on demand. When the Irish-Catholic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, asked to say a few words on behalf of the 25 million unborn children destroyed since Roe v Wade, he was told there was no place for him at the podium of Bill Clintons convention, no room at the inn.
Yet a militant leader of the homosexual rights movement could rise at that convention and exult: Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history. And so they do.
Bill Clinton supports school choicebut only for state-run schools. Parents who send their children to Christian schools, or Catholic schools, need not apply.
Elect me, and you get two for the price of one, Mr Clinton says of his lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary believe? Well, Hillary believes that 12-year-olds should have a right to sue their parents, and she has compared marriage as an institution to slaveryand life on an Indian reservation.
Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.
Friends, this is radical feminism. The agenda Clinton & Clinton would impose on Americaabortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combatthats change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call Gods country."
http://buchanan.org/blog/1992-republican-national-convention-speech-148
I suggest all Democrats review that speech when they feel like claiming that Reagan/Bush era Republicans were somehow 'better'. Revision of that history is not acceptable.
Monk06
(7,675 posts)knowledge.
That process does not require you to believe anything.
Science is demonstrative not contemplative.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)proves them wrong.
That can't be done with a religious belief.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)when confronted with new data; constant objective testing is the crux of the scientific biscuit. Religion has been the same old tired horseshit for centuries and never changes or corrects itself no matter how overwhelming the evidence conclusively falsifying religulous claims about the world.
Fred Friendlier
(81 posts)Reading and understanding the Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a good step down the road to Wisdom.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)back into it, and the notion of an irredeemable conflict between science and religion is a canard debunked by anyone who's studied the matter for more than 5 seconds (and is currently held by the sort of chap that thinks Bush was too soft on the Muslim world); usually those preaching trying to tell us otherwise is insisting that technocracy is hale and hearty while showing us nothing but its dead bones
but, no, Ben. just, no
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)Turbineguy
(37,365 posts)writes its self with these guys.
bvf
(6,604 posts)that there are actually people out there who eat this bullshit up and ask for more. Carson and his ilk wouldn't spout such crap otherwise.
Half-Century Man
(5,279 posts)At the least stop his ability to write prescriptions, I'd swear he found out how to write one for mescaline.
Cary
(11,746 posts)I just don't know who sickened me more Carson or Todd.
Doctors are not scientists. They have studied science and they use things that science has uncovered in the art of the practice of medicine, but they aren't scientists. Ben Carson is a serious idiot and I would not let him anywhere near me with a scalpel.
valerief
(53,235 posts)Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)Hey, Ben. Go jump off the top of the sears tower and if you're right, you've got my vote.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)it doesn't even deserve to be called wrong.
YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)shenmue
(38,506 posts)Duh.
Fred Friendlier
(81 posts)Ben Carson is a religious person.
Therefor, all religious persons are idiots. QED
Also, too, Raw Story.
truthisfreedom
(23,155 posts)We all know exactly what "propaganda" means. We also all know what science is. The search for truth will go on, despite the bizarre things happening in our society right now.
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)propaganda (n.)
1718, "committee of cardinals in charge of Catholic missionary work," short for Congregatio de Propaganda Fide "congregation for propagating the faith," a committee of cardinals established 1622 by Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions. The word is properly the ablative fem. gerundive of Latin propagare (see propagation). Hence, "any movement to propagate some practice or ideology" (1790). Modern political sense dates from World War I, not originally pejorative. Meaning "material or information propagated to advance a cause, etc." is from 1929.
Look up propaganda at Dictionary.com
So these yokels who invented the concept of propaganda are worried that science may be propaganda?
How absurd can you possibly get without cracking a smile?
HoosierCowboy
(561 posts)...now for a GOP Candidate for President to just kiss Fundies on the backside, now the ante is up to a rim job. Which GOP candidate will be the first to put their tongue in???