Blue Collar Scientist

Here is an excellent example of how the antiscience movement harms people and stands in the way of their happiness. This video is from the IEEE Spectrum Online, and it is about a prosthetic arm currently under development. A really amazing, very cool prosthetic arm, so please watch.

The best bit is toward the end:

Amputee: I’ve been able to do stuff with this that I haven’t, seriously, I haven’t been able to do in 26 years.

Interviewer: Like what?

Amputee: Pick up a banana. Peel a banana and eat it, without it squishing….

A few seconds after that, he mentions something else he could do with the prosthesis that he hasn’t done in 26 years….

What would have happened here if the engineers and amputees that are working on this prosthesis had taken an antiscience approach to their work? Simple: They wouldn’t even have tried to build this thing. There’s way too much mysterious technology at work here - footpad input systems, sensory feedback devices, multiple parallel processing, closed loop positioning systems¹…. It all comes from science, and you can’t hate science and have anything to do with developing something like this.

An antievolutionist, applying the logic of their worldview to this problem, would have said “we don’t know how to make an artificial arm like this, so it can’t be done.” And they might well have said “If someone loses an arm, God meant it to happen, for his own mysterious reasons.” Or perhaps they would blame the victim: “if only the amputee had enough faith they would be healed.” This isn’t wild, unfair conjecture on my part, Christians actually say stuff like this.

Such as Exhibit A:

This guy says that amputees would be healed if only Christians had enough faith, and if good spiritual leaders would arise. Amputations wouldn’t be a problem, see, if we just all agreed about god, and were all holy and spiritual. If that happened, then we wouldn’t need those pesky engineers who are working to give people their arms back right now. If only we were better Christians, amputees could have their arms back, you know, whenever we might get around to being good enough Christians and all that….

This next guy says that amputees do heal. What he means is that they don’t bleed to death; that the blood clots, scar tissue forms, the wound heals over, and they don’t die. Apparently not dying is considered just as good as “getting your limb back.”

He also says people who disagree with him are ignorant of science and are in “violation of the philosophy of science.” Whatever that means. Why should I even listen to it, or think about his point at all? There’s a really simple fact in place here. Engineers who embrace what science tells them about materials and energy have actually created a really outstanding artificial limb, and the kid broadcasting from his bedroom is nattering on and on about how the rest of us misunderstand science. Well, I think I’m going to go out on a limb here, and embrace my alleged stupidity, because I think the engineers are doing a good and creditable thing, whilst the antiscience folks are just bellyaching into webcams² from their bedroom.

If we leave it up to these antiscience people, the amputees will be sitting outside the city gates dressed in rags begging for coins while we all try to join the perfect church and raise up some kind of ideal spiritual leader who will make everything better. This has never worked before. These are terrible, terrible people, with a crass and uncaring attitude toward their neighbors.

Who do I like better? Duh. The person who looks around and says, “holy crap, that guy doesn’t have an arm, let’s figure out how to make him one,” and then goes to work building it. Those are the people who have chosen to join us in civilization, those are the people who have exhibited a grasp of and commitment to morality, and those are the people who are actually helping their fellow man. Let’s hope the antiscience people get a clue and join us in this endeavor.

1. Ok, that’s not mysterious at all - that’s part of my stock in trade. But much of the rest seems daunting. [↩]
2. The irony, that webcams come from science, is not lost on me [↩]