In response to something @AllanGSteele said:

The Cult of Science!™

Some time ago God died...

(meaning that the move to rationality killed the ability to attribute meaning to an external source)

however, we got Science!™ as a replacement.

Lose faith, gain knowing.

This is the OG Faustian bargain, of course, but the Faust story still operates in God’s framework.

The real Faust (re: us) just realized tht the bargain’s reward was a one-way ticket out of Eden.

The angel with the flaming sword is the reminder of the pain of dead faith.

Once eaten of the fruit, twice shy, or something like that. I’m belaboring the metaphor, apologies.

Thus, Man is cast out into the cold, dead, material world of the Enlightenment.

Unlike leaving Eden, we thought this would be cool.

However, here we are drowning in banal consumerism and lacking wholly in meaning, feeling like fools.

We’re the children of pure reason, with the exception that reason is never pure.

More accurately, we’re the children of denial.

Science!™ isn’t the same thing as science, mind you.

Real science (from the Latin scientia, “to know”) is the pursuit of knowledge, it’s the child of philosophy (Greek philo-sophia, love of wisdom).

Science!™ is nothing like that.

Science!™ is also known as scientism (similarly dumb but not to be confused with Scientology, which at least mostly admits to being a religion),

and it’s what happens when you replace some ineffable divinity with the scientific institutions.

Notice I didn’t say “replace with science.”

Here’s the thing:

Much like how Jesus said, and I’ll paraphrase,

“God’s in you, pray in the closet and don’t go to church,”

science (the scientific method) is something everyone can do.

However, just like the Pharisees had their rigid orthodxy that was about authority and dogma,

most people don’t like science, they like Science!™,

the product of Scientists!™,

priests who have the sole authority to say what is and is not real.

History rhymes.

I lost my faith in Science!™ when I looked into the last hundred years or so of nutritional Science!™,

which coincidentally runs parallel to both consumerism and, believe it or not,

lots of really unhealthy people with terrible diets.

Frankly, anyone who calls themself a Scientist!™ and tells you meat is bad for you or that seed oils are good should go to prison or otherwise take responsibility for the lives they destroyed with awful nutritional advice.

@SBakerMD suffered greatIy for fighting the orthodoxy.

But that’s beside the point.

Just like a priest alone can’t give you God, a Scientist!™ alone is not the sole arbiter of truth.

Science is something we can all do, it is a serious discipline that requires study, work, and most of all, intellectual honesty.

Most have little.

Think I’m wrong?

If you followed the advice of the WHO recently, you could have enjoyed a last minute trip to China with no mask.

Oh, yeah, they’re Scientists!™ though so don’t question them, heathen.

Anyone who says “don’t question” is not a scientist at all, by the way.

So, to summarize:

You are responsible for the information you guide your life with, not people who you outsource that responsibility to.

Thought is your job, and you’re as able to make a discovery as anyone else, but you have to be honest, serious, and committed.

Seek Truth.