To do better science, admit that you’re not objective
Wokeness has basically become a religion.<p>Wokeness begins, just like many religions, with an original, unforgivable sin. That ultimate trespass becomes the lens through which all of modern life is viewed, no matter how remote it sits in the past. Like a religion, wokeness can&#x27;t help but try to insert its core values of humility and service of the Higher Purpose into everything, no matter how inappropriate. Its adherents are pushy about how they want you to think, and what they want you to value, because they believe there is a higher truth that pervades any worldly endeavor. It has certain non-negotiable tenets, which it refuses to compromise on despite the massive cognitive dissonance required to achieve such a stance amidst the avalanche of evidence against them. If scientific or practical empiricism seems to conflict with these pre-commitments, they will muddy the water and move the goalposts. And of course, woke disciples reserve the right to be massively offended if you blaspheme against one of these core principles. Wokeness is perfectly eager to put its hand out to the state to get a leg up on its authoritarian, missionary purpose. But they do this because, like any other religion, they know that this will be best for all of us in the end. And just like other religions, I imagine it finds comparisons of this sort to be absurd; of course all of _those_ religions are evil, they&#x27;re the wrong ones!<p>Wokeness, just like a religion, gathered a following based on some fundamentally decent ideas that lie near its center. But they come packaged with a one-size-fits-all worldview that tries to bite off far, far more than it can chew. Just like a religion, it doesn&#x27;t necessarily reflect overmuch about its practitioners that they have converted. That fact indicates at most a slight inclination towards credulity and collectivism, as opposed to individualism and free thinking. But just like religion, it could just as easily represent the bad luck of growing up in the wrong area, or with the wrong parents, or perhaps just bad enough circumstances to need that kind of structure and externally-sourced meaning.<p>It seems that the agenda to put the whole world off of religion has not been as successful as the average coastal intellectual might have thought. I can&#x27;t help but wonder whether we will be subject to the same ebb and flow of authoritarianism that generations of Judeo-Christian and Islamic constituencies exercised in the past. The church bumping against truth is a story as old as time, but it seems like it&#x27;s harder than we thought to really learn that lesson.<p>Here we have a classic piece of Woken apologia trying to square classic Woken ideals with the reality that there are groupings of genes amongst people. It wants to smuggle faulty, incomplete understanding of genetics to avoid the evidence written on the wall. It&#x27;s not doing this for a nefarious purpose - the Woken believe that all men and women should be treated equally, which is a noble ideal. But the reason they think this is derived from a deeper truth, which is that all men and women are fundamentally born as the same creature, and then shaped purely by experience. They believe that because It Is Written. Because that is True, things get tricky when they try to square the Truth with the reality that there are non-trivial separations of historical development in the human genome, and those genetic lines end up looking different because of the forces that shaped them along their unique genetic history. Of course this is common sense - anybody can tell that there are distinct groupings of slightly-phenotypically-different people in the world, and the science confirms this intuitive fact. So the Woken need to muddy the water by reminding us the limits of our knowledge. What really counts as a race - can you count me all the races? What are the motivations of these so-called scientists trying to prop up the &quot;theory&quot; of race, a theory that need I remind you became intimately linked to the Nazis?<p>When you read something like this, try to picture a Creationist with the same general motives. The Creationist&#x27;s letter wants to smuggle a faulty, incomplete understanding of biology to avoid the evidence written on the wall that evolution is real. It&#x27;s not doing this for a nefarious purpose - Creationists believe that we should all love and respect our fellow man. But the reason they think this is derived from a deeper truth, which is that men and women are God&#x27;s people, made in God&#x27;s image, as documented in the Bible. They believe that because It Is Written. Because that is True, things get tricky when they try to square the Truth with the reality that the evidence for the nature of evolutionary history is written everywhere, and the fossil record plainly confirms this. Of course, this is common sense - anybody can see the inevitability of evolution once it&#x27;s explained to them. So the Creationists need to muddy the water by reminding us of the limits of our knowledge. How many of these connecting fossils have we really found? What are the motivations of these so-called scientists trying to prop up the &quot;theory&quot; of evolution, a theory that need I remind you, was intimately linked with Social Darwinism?