In 2017, Charles Eisenstein addressed the SAND (Science And Non-Duality) Conference on our "obsession with measurement." A clip of that talk, published in 2019, put forward the question Is Science a Religion? Charles answered yes, offering a number of supposed parallels.Only—most of them don't hold water. Derek responds to his talk, breaking down Charles's analysis point-by-point. He also bookends the episode with clips from a thinker who brilliantly drew parallels between science and religion without conflating them: Oliver Sacks.Show NotesIs Science a Religion? — Charles EisensteinOliver Sacks on Humans and Myth-making
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Hello, Matthew here from the Conspirituality Podcast Team.
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Now, let's go through a little lightning round through his claims about how science is now a form of religion.
Now, science itself says, no, no, no, we're not a religion.
We are the opposite of a religion.
Religion takes things on faith, but we ask the world.
We perform an experiment.
We don't take anything on faith.
We're objective.
What goes missing here is that this objectivity is based on-- it's based on metaphysical assumptions that are unprovable, just like any religion.
Among them, objectivity, that there's a world outside of ourselves that is separate DM me if you find an answer.
of the questions that our questions don't change the reality that we ask about.
I'm sorry, but I tried to understand what the hell that last word salad meant, and I'm going to leave it to you to rewind and give it a go.
DM me if you find an answer.
That said, metaphysical assumptions that can't be proven?
Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world, which is effectively my biggest problem with conspiritualists in general.
They pretend that experts outside of their own domain don't know what they're doing.
Hey, Joe Rogan.
Good science is the opposite of metaphysics, and if you really don't believe that, then Charles, don't ever take an antibiotic, a pain reliever, or any sort of medicine again.
I have to move on because that whole claim is just absurd.
That an experiment is repeatable.
That the intention of the experimenter is irrelevant.
That There's a division between observer and observed, and that the observed is constant in relation to the observer.
This is such bullshit.
If the researcher and the subject are both blinded, there's no observed until after the experiment is over.
Next.
Another metaphysical assumption is that everything that is important or worth knowing can be Measured and quantified.
So data analysis is obviously not a science then, nor are any of the mathematics.
Every single dosage recommendation on the boxes in your medicine cabinet, every round of chemotherapy that's ever saved a life, hell, every homeopathic pooven ever created is bullshit, says the poet-philosopher.
Well, the homeopathy one is.
There's a lot of other ways in which science is suspiciously similar to a religion.
It has a canon of holy texts.
Well, you know what?
The organon of the healing art is still required reading by every homeopathic student today, but we've also established that's not an actual science.
As far as I'm aware, medical students aren't required to read the Hippocratic Corpus, except perhaps as historical knowledge, not as applied sciences.
Yeah, the Hippocratic Oath is kinda timeless, and I hope it remains that way.
Specialized, mysterious language that only initiates can understand.
This is true.
And it's a continual problem.
Social media has helped out a bit by putting forward better science communicators, though you have to follow them to understand that.
And I get the need for specialized language in every science, but when it trickles down to the public, it can be very confusing.
And I really hope that scientists and doctors will continually work on that.
It has an initiation ordeal called graduate school.
Um, upon which you finish and you get a ceremonial name change?
That's pretty funny, I'll give him that.
Although, if we're being technical, it's either a prefix or a suffix, not a name change.
So, look, Charles is starting to make a little sense here.
And then?
It has a system for the indoctrination of youth.
What?
You mean an education?
I don't even know what to do with this.
But it actually lines up pretty well with the child fixation that Charles' Austin crew is currently going through from Mickey Willis' medical freedom family documentaries or whatever and J.P.
Sears' fundraising for Tim Ballard's QAnon-related controversial sex trafficking efforts.
It has deified saints and martyrs, you know, Galileo, Newton, Einstein.
Sadly, every time humans create groups, they deify people.
We love celebrity.
I don't think of this as religious in any way.
Whenever I see Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian trending on Twitter, I don't think, oh, Christianity!
So, while he's right that science deifies, Everything deifies.
It has schisms, heretics, it has the faithful lay believers who actually don't understand the esoteric knowledge of the religion, but they believe in it anyway.
Yeah, I didn't understand everything about testicular cancer before I got it, but I trusted the experts at the UCLA oncology team to know more about it than I do.
I kind of want it to be that way.
If we all had to become an expert in whatever disease we got when we were afflicted, there wouldn't be many of us around.
But speaking of heretics, it brings to mind Ignaz Semmelweis, the German-Hungarian physician and priest, I mean scientist, who had this strange observation in the 1840s in Vienna.
When doctors delivered babies right after cutting up cadavers, a lot of those babies died.
Very heretical, in fact, since he was basically laughed at for suggesting that these stately men wash their hands after reaching inside of dead bodies.
Semmelweis first made this suggestion in 1847, and 18 years later, he suffered a nervous breakdown thanks to all the ridicule he received.
Then he was put in an asylum where he was beaten by guards and died within two weeks.
He never actually lived to see the implementation of what we consider today common sense, which is washing your hands after you see other patients.
It has a divinatory practice for the attainment of truth called experimentation.
Oh Jesus Christ, well...
There's your divination.
Yes, every respectable scientist I know doubles as a wooder-dowser.
I've already covered experimentation in this analysis, and there's nothing metaphysical or divinatory about it.
Experimentation requires much more work and rigor than Charles will ever have to do in his life, which might be why he loathes it so much.
It has a body of ritual built on top of it, That's called technology.
Well, we've reached the end of Charles Eisenstein, which I was able to source on this mystical machine that plays videos, record the audio with a metaphysical construct known as Audio Hijack, speak in tongues into this strange phallic-shaped instrument, recorded in a wondrous program called Logic, which obviously, too, must be religious.
Look, I know it's been Charles Overload lately, and I'd like to promise you that's a wrap, but it's probably not given the Austin crew he's running with now.
Honestly, to me, none of this is about Charles.
I don't know the dude, and I don't really care to know him.
As with everyone we cover on this podcast, it's not really personal to me.
I mean, I know some of them take it that way, given how they reply to our criticisms, but it's what they're actually saying, and even more importantly, the fact that people believe them is what gets me, because that's where the danger really lies.
I mean, look, I remember plenty of potheads from my days studying religion who would spout all sorts of crazy shit that made no sense.
