Pope, AIDS, Facts
http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSLH936617._CH_.2400
What's interesting is that the pope is just flat-out lying about the effects of condoms. I can understand that the church is against contraception and thinks it's wrong, but that shouldn't give the pope license to distort the facts. He takes the result that he assumes everybody wants (the end of AIDS), and says that the morally "wrong" approach (condoms) will not get us there.
I think murder is morally wrong. But I do recognize that, if we killed every person who contracted HIV, we'd eliminate the disease. I think that's an incredibly shitty, unacceptable way to do it, but I'm not going to say it wouldn't work.
As far as I can tell, this arguing tactic's widespread accepted use seems to be a relatively new phenomenon. For example, abstinence-only sex ed got a lot of support during the last eight years, despite tons of studies showing that it leads to more unwanted pregnancy than comprehensive sex ed. I get it: supporters of abstinence-only sex ed don't want teenagers having sex. But rather than acknowledging, "comprehensive sex ed does a better job but it is morally unacceptable to us," they flat-out deny the data.
So why has this tactic become so widespread? I think moral arguments have become unacceptable in our public discourse in the last fifty years. A heightened sense of cultural relativity means that nobody trusts other people's judgments anymore and that morals have no place in collective decision making. Everyone is looking for cold, hard facts. However, the people arguing still have morals: they still want the solution to be one that meshes with their moral beliefs. But if they can't say that, what can they do? Their only option is to manipulate the data so that the morally acceptable conclusion comes out as the factually supported solution.
And that's fucked up. Because once you mess with the data, the science is gone. That's when "science" becomes a particularly dangerous myth that people cling to because it appears to give objective truth where none has been allowed to exist.
Facts do not have morals. In the decision process, facts must be tempered with morals to determine the best course of action. In an environment where moral arguments are not allowed, morals have become internalized into the pursuit of facts, which turns the facts into anything but. Thus our trust in facts is manipulated. And when we begin to recognize this, our trust evaporates.
What's interesting is that the pope is just flat-out lying about the effects of condoms. I can understand that the church is against contraception and thinks it's wrong, but that shouldn't give the pope license to distort the facts. He takes the result that he assumes everybody wants (the end of AIDS), and says that the morally "wrong" approach (condoms) will not get us there.
I think murder is morally wrong. But I do recognize that, if we killed every person who contracted HIV, we'd eliminate the disease. I think that's an incredibly shitty, unacceptable way to do it, but I'm not going to say it wouldn't work.
As far as I can tell, this arguing tactic's widespread accepted use seems to be a relatively new phenomenon. For example, abstinence-only sex ed got a lot of support during the last eight years, despite tons of studies showing that it leads to more unwanted pregnancy than comprehensive sex ed. I get it: supporters of abstinence-only sex ed don't want teenagers having sex. But rather than acknowledging, "comprehensive sex ed does a better job but it is morally unacceptable to us," they flat-out deny the data.
So why has this tactic become so widespread? I think moral arguments have become unacceptable in our public discourse in the last fifty years. A heightened sense of cultural relativity means that nobody trusts other people's judgments anymore and that morals have no place in collective decision making. Everyone is looking for cold, hard facts. However, the people arguing still have morals: they still want the solution to be one that meshes with their moral beliefs. But if they can't say that, what can they do? Their only option is to manipulate the data so that the morally acceptable conclusion comes out as the factually supported solution.
And that's fucked up. Because once you mess with the data, the science is gone. That's when "science" becomes a particularly dangerous myth that people cling to because it appears to give objective truth where none has been allowed to exist.
Facts do not have morals. In the decision process, facts must be tempered with morals to determine the best course of action. In an environment where moral arguments are not allowed, morals have become internalized into the pursuit of facts, which turns the facts into anything but. Thus our trust in facts is manipulated. And when we begin to recognize this, our trust evaporates.