The intellectual costs of metaphysical naturalism are rising rapidly.There's more at the link, but here's her point: If there's no truth to be found through a reasoned exchange of ideas, if indeed the very idea of objective truth is an anachronism, if one's truth is merely what one feels strongly, if truth is defined as whatever works to help one group achieve its goals and purposes, then rational debate is just a waste of time.
Traditional “modern science” naturalists viewed supernaturalism as the chief danger to science. To permanently exclude the supernatural, post-modern naturalists have gone well beyond their forebears. They have thrown away reason, which is problematic because reason points to a truth outside nature. They have reinvented reason as an evolved illusion rather than a guide to truth. And, in a cruel but inevitable irony, they liberated superstition from modern science’s jail.
For those who believe in it, reason has always provided a check on superstition. But post-modernists, who dismiss reason as a form of oppression and evidence as unnecessary to high science, cannot simply dismiss such fields as astrology and witchcraft. If everyone’s truth is as true as everyone else’s truth, scientists must lobby for their truths as an interest group in a frenzied market.
The populations most affected by post-modernism tend to be more superstitious than those that resist post-modernism. They are also much more likely to dismiss academic freedom. Contemporary science conflicts are beginning to reflect these shifts....
We hear that objectivity is “cultural discrimination” (or sexist), Newtonian physics is exploitative, mathematics is a “dehumanizing tool” (if not white privilege), and algebra creates hurdles for disadvantaged groups. And mavericks in science are a problem because they tend to be wealthy, white, and male....
We might have guessed blindly that post-modernism (anything goes!) would lead to more academic freedom. So why is it not working out that way? The problem is that post-modernism is not about freedom as such. It is the assertion that there is no truth to be sought, no facts to be found, that are true for everyone. Everyone is entitled to feel as they wish.
So is any recourse to objective evidence and facts to support one's claims. One side must simply impose its ideas on all others by dint of intimidation and the exercise of raw political power. Might makes right.
In the late Medieval period whoever ruled the land determined the religion his subjects would follow. That principle, stated in Latin as cuius regio, eius religio (Whose region, his religion) in the post-modern era could be stated as cuius regio, eius scientia.
In such an intellectual climate science is no longer about discovering truth about the world, rather it's little more than a species of ideological politics.
In an environment hostile to open-minded inquiry, an environment deeply contrary to that which nurtured science from the 17th century through most of the 20th, science cannot thrive. And if science withers so, too, will technological advance.
Unless we get over our post-modern aversion to objective truth we may well find that we're living during the high water mark of scientific discovery and progress, and the marvelous tide that has made our lives so much healthier and more comfortable than those lived by our ancestors may soon begin to drain away.
Matthew Arnold's famous poem Dover Beach described the ebb of religious faith, but what he says about religion in the modern age may be just as apt for "The sea of science" in the post-modern era:
The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
