Anti-sceptics dance on reason’s grave

As society technologically advances there is an equal and opposite pull by some to lapse in to magical thinking where cause does not precede event - thinking more reminiscent of the Dark ages.

This is the world of Camelot, of runes, where divination and the personification of data to “prove” an ideological point coupled with radical assertions of population growth and rising sea levels - to name just a few - have produced “media facts”. These “media facts” congregate and become “proofs” for a radical vision of a dystopian future.

While there has been some fine science carried out on global warming, it has now become a media war between the pro and con sides, leaving the bulk of the population in the dark. I dare any pollsters to conduct an Australia-wide survey and ask people how global warming works or how a carbon emissions trading scheme would operate.

I suggest that most Australians are, by definition climate sceptics. They do not side with the climate warmers nor do they side with the doubters. They are simply undecided. And one cannot blame them.

It’s the opposite of Abraham Lincoln’s dictum that, “with public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed”. With a bamboozled or cynical public, scrutiny falls by the wayside leaving the door open for magical thinking or mischievous policy. So we turn to the media for help.

The wild love child of this thinking is the conspiracy theory (Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedy’s, the Apollo moon landings as a Hollywood invention). My personal favourite is that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers.

The media’s inability to responsibly cover global warming is in part due to the ideological prism through which it sees most global conflicts. While the rise of the electronic image and decontexualised information now appears to be norm, the media are not entirely to blame. They have abrogated their role of informants for producers of entertainment.

This moral and intellectual perversity can only be understood in the context of a far wider and profound retreat from reason throughout the west.

Across a broad range of issues, progressive intelligentsia and commentators have dumped the rules of evidence, objectivity and rationality in favour of fantasy, irrationality and up-side down thinking. This is nowhere more evident than in the attack on the climate sceptics by the pro-climate changers.

The belief that the planet is on course for carbon Armageddon is now embedded in Western politics much the same way as post modernist theory supplanted criticism in the humanities in the 1980s. What good is a fact when you’ve got a fantastic opinion? My opinion is as good as yours and I have the YouTube videos to support it. Really?

Such irrationality, intolerance and indeed, bigotry runs counter to the cardinal tenets of a free society based on reason and the toleration of dissent.

When Socrates explained that he was the wisest man in Athens because he knew he was ignorant, he pointed to a need for understanding that one’s ignorance was the point of departure for a rigorous search for the truth. It was not a conclusion or an end in itself.

A defining attitude of the sceptic is the suspension of judgment and in religion, this has acquired the meaning usually associated with heresy. Questioning perceived wisdom has a long history. The 15th century witch-hunters' manual Malleus Maleficarum claimed that those who denied the existence of witches were no less guilty of heresy than the practitioners of witchcraft.

The paradox of demonising scepticism in an age where science enjoys significant cultural status has not escaped some of the advocates of the UN Panel on Climate Change. Most of its supporters use the word scepticism in a way that exposes a tension between the aspiration of demonising the sceptic while appearing to uphold the convention of openness that is usually associated with scientific enquiry.

Sceptics are characterised as dishonest, malevolent and corrupt. Scepticism today, as in the past, has a bad name because for the dogmatic believer, any sign of doubt, hesitation, uncertainty, and questioning or even indifference is interpreted as disbelief.

These dominant ideas are all rooted in ideologies: environmentalism, anti-racism, anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism. As a person who has worked broadly on the left of politics, I have some sympathy for elements of these positions and most especially for what I have seen in the Middle East.

Yet unfortunately rather than going where the evidence leads, ideology wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. Not only is ideology inimical to reason, it sacrifices truth to power as it attacks those who try to uphold reality in the face of dogma.

This is because the progressive mindset believes it is synonymous with virtue itself. All opposition is therefore not just wrong but evil. Progressives also believe anyone who opposes them is a right-winger and a neo-conservative. In other words, these are not propositions to be debated in a rational way but are seen as self-evident truths with the infallibility of religious dogma.

This kind of thinking displays the religious motifs of sin, guilt and salvation. It also exhibits features of millenarianism: the religious belief in the perfectibility of life through the collective redemption of sin.

The greens believe they will save the planet. The left believe they will create a brotherhood of man. The atheists believe they will create the Garden of Reason.

There can be no freedom of thought without the right to be sceptical. Which is why the demonisation of the sceptic does not simply reflect a tendency towards polemical excess but an attack on human inquiry.