Belief vs Doubt

I've often seen White House press briefings, or Senate or congressional hearings where experts are talking. The person being questioned is sometimes asked about information that conflicts with the official narrative, or they are asked for specific details, or they might even be asked how they know that something is the case.

Often the response is to simply "trust the science" because some expert told them that this was the case. In the case of Anthony Fauci, he once said that to not trust him is to not trust the science. As if he was science. As if what he said or says is the authoritative position on what is happening in science.

The responses express the mindset that to doubt an expert is to doubt reality itself. This is ludicrous. This is anti-scientific. This is a religion. The religion of scientism as it has been referred to.

Think about it. What is religion? At the base it's a belief system. Adherence to the religious story or doctrine have faith and trust in that religious narrative. That's what a belief is, to have trust and faith that something is true without actually knowing if it is true. You simply believe that it is true.

Religion is about belief.

What is often portrayed as an opposite to religion is science. Science is supposed to be about a verification and testing of a hypothesis through data in reality. You have to have something in reality demonstrating something which can lead to a validation or invalidation of your hypothesis. That's what the scientific method involves.

The scientific method is a reliable methodology for trying to obtain information, knowledge, understanding and truth about what is happening in reality. Part of that process also requires asking questions in order to verify if something is true in reality.

Asking questions as part of a process of curiosity and doubt. Science at its core is about being curious, asking questions, wanting to know, seeking a confirmation or reputation of a claim about what is happening in reality. Doubt is a fundamental part.

Contrary to that, religion often has dogmatic doctrines which are oppositional to the process of doubt. It simply asks you to accept something as true. You have to simply believe, trust or have faith that is true. Questioning it is viewed as a negative thought process or even heretical.

Whenever you hear someone utter the phrase to trust in science or believe in science, you know that they are repeating a propaganda phrase. Science is not about belief, that's religion.

Certainly, if you hear someone utter these phrases of belief or trust in science in response to someone asking a question about what someone claims is science, what someone claims is happening in reality, then you can know that they are avoiding to answer the question. They either don't know the answer, or don't want you to know it. They just want you to believe as they believe, or simply to believe so that they can keep you accepting the narrative they want you to accept.

I recall a woman at a government press briefing about COVID-19 being asked by a reporter how they know that the variant is there, or how they know the amount of people who have a variant, it was something along those lines. The response from the woman was simply that the CDC told them as she laughed at the question. It was as if the question was absurd to her, or at least she wanted be pretrade as such.

In her follow-up to elaborate on her initial response, she said that the reporter and everyone else merely had to trust the scientists. So her mindset was that you simply have to trust what the scientists say and that's what is what. That's the reality simply because someone else said it was that way.

Forget about how that person, the so-called scientists, obtained that conclusion. What was the underlying methodology or process to arrive at that conclusion, etc. You know, actually applying the scientific method to arrive at a conclusion based on data from reality. That didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was you had to believe.