I wasn't talking about science, Bill. I was talking about human nature. Scientists, like other people, ARE human, and they are subject to the same foibles and weaknesses AS other people, regardless of the basic rationality and objectivity of the scientific method.

These general statements I make are generally about the subject that interests me most...human nature. The annals of science are full of the history of a science community mostly holding stubbornly to an old idea...and scoffing at some maverick scientist with a new and radical idea, in some cases even ostracizing such a scientist and basically shutting him or her out....and yet in time it turns out that the maverick was right and the mainstream wrong. It has happened again and again.

That's not because there's anything wrong with science. Or with the scientific method. It's solely because of the more negative aspects of human nature. It's because of human stubbornness, arrogance, pride, a sense of entitlement, self-absorption, unwillingness to change, protection of the status quo, intolerance to new ideas, etc.....human nature! Scientists are just like the rest of us in that sense, they can easily fall prey to all the same pitfalls of human nature that the rest of us do, and that was what I was alluding to. I was NOT criticizing science.

Nor do I criticize religion. I criticize the abuse OF religion due to the same pitfalls of human nature that I have listed above.

It's always the negative side of human nature that is the problem, as far as I'm concerned...not the particular area of inquiry or the discipline.

Wisdom is based upon simplicity, Bill. ;-) Artifice and needless, convoluted arguments are based upon complexity.