There’s all kinds of ignorance. That’s why some people make really good engineers or physicists, but really lousy salesmen or CEOs.
Sometimes, ignorance is born of circumstance. A person simply doesn’t have the environment or resources necessary to get the facts. I think most of us will agree that these people are excused, at least until we find out whether, given the information they couldn’t previously obtain, they intend to remain ignorant.
Sometimes, ignorance is born of laziness or apathy. Most of us, except for the most hopeless bleeding hearts, won’t cut these people any slack. If they deliberately choose to be ignorant, then fuck them.
Ignorance can be born from lots of conditions: narrow-mindedness, timidity, negligence, brain-washing, illness, stubborness, and on and on… But the scariest ignorance of all, to me, is the ignorance that’s born of arrogance. It causes so many of the other conditions. The person who is ignorant due to arrogance, I call a bigot. The arrogant bigot becomes narrow-minded, lazy, and negligent.
He isn’t necessarily a liar. Often, there is at least a grain of truth in what he preaches. Sometimes, everything he says is true. But what he does, because of his arrogance, is miss the whole point of any truths he does espouse. Now there are ignorant bigots in every discipline. No one field holds exclusive claim to the arrogant bastards. They are found in religion, in politics, in business, in the arts, and yes, in science, too.
Naivity is ignorance’s cousin. And the naivity of some scientists is so legendary that it has become a popular caricature: the white-coated nerd with Coke bottle bottom glasses who busily frets over the equation on his note pad while his shoes are on fire. Too many scientists think that the kind of stuff they prove is the only kind of stuff that matters. It isn’t. Too many scientists think that the scientific method is the only legitimate way to verify truth. It isn’t. Too many scientists think science is the opposite of ignorance. It isn’t.
It’s all well and good that science discovered how to split the atom. Unfortunately, it did not discover a way to stop mad politicians from making nuclear bombs. It’s good that science has figured out what foods make us healthy, and what vitamin deficiencies make us sick. But it hasn’t showed us how to love each other enough to end starvation. It’s fine that science has mapped out the human genome. But I can guarantee you that you cannot yet even imagine the evil purposes toward which that knowledge will be used eventually. The track record is way too clear.
The present generation of scientific bigots is not exceptional. For thousands of years, men have declared their pitiful knowledge at the time to be the end of the road. “So and so can’t happen because of so-and-so.” Or “so-and-so is true because of so-and-so.” And there are scientists, even in this day and age, who declare that believers in God or magick or anything that hasn’t been through the scientific method’s sieve is somehow foolhardy.
The fact is that they themselves, those scientists who lash out at people of faith, are among the greatest fools of all. In their ignorance, they have used their own misinterpretation of Ockham’s Razor to crucify and ridicule people like the good Pagans here, only to have the futility of their own efforts exposed by Godel. But has Godel extinguished their arrogance? Hardly.
What sort of ignorant bastard doesn’t know that a factoid is a worthless piece of information, contextually naked, and could potentially be his own perdition? What sort of moron cannot comprehend that his puny knowledge is of a local environment at a local time in a universe that is nearly boundless? What sort of imbecile is so ignorant of human relations that he cannot get along with his neighbor who doesn’t think the damn atoms are all that important?
The arrogant — and ignorant — scientist. That’s who.