shanek said:
One of the biggest points of contention on the Politics forum would make for a good panel discussion, I think: "Can political issues and views be approached from a skeptical standpoint?" I say yes, Claus says no. We could get a good discussion going...
No, I am not saying that we can't
approach political issues from a skeptical standpoint. We can approach anything from any standpoint. The key issue is: Can a political ideology be
proved scientifically?
If not, then such a debate has no place at a skeptics' conference. We are seeking to find out whether paranormal phenomena exist or not. We seek knowledge about how the world really is, not how we want to world to be.
Do we want to send the message to the world that we, as skeptics, are seeking to prove a certain political ideology scientifically? We would be seen as political fanatics, hell-bent on imposing our own beliefs on others.
Lunatics. And rightfully so.
I know that shanek is desperately trying to
validate his own political ideas skeptically, but who among people here - even Libertarians - would want shanek's world model to be the only one? It would have to be, because how can you argue with science? It's like trying to argue that the world is flat, right?
We would not have democracy anymore, we would have political scientism. We should argue that, since God is not proved, all religion must be banned. Or, that it is bad for the gene pool to have even the slightest gene defect, so women must be forced to have abortions, if their children carry these genes, and the women should be sterilized. Or, that, since overpopulation is bad for the economy, environment and future generations, we should have mass-sterilizations of whole countries. Or why not nip it in the bud and have mass-exterminations, the same way we spray areas where there are mosquitos who carry malaria?
Science is about the real world. Politics is about how we, as humans, want our societies to look like.
