A flowchart of ignorance

If there's anything that illustrates why I think fundamentalist empirical atheism is really in trouble, this is it. It's not that I mind the caricature (I don't really), it's the lack of comprehension that it unintentionally displays. I really don't see how a movement that prides itself on what are frankly primary school-level arguments intends to ever be taken seriously. A better picture would be a far more byzantine one on the left with entries for "politics", "consensus building" and "obtain funding" and other, you know, realities of the scientific community (rather than the fairy story of logic shown above), and on the right, just a big question mark and the sentence "We have no idea what these people do" on the other side.

See, here's what's actually going on: hero building. Lots of the empiricals (I really can't bothered to type "fundamentalist empirical atheists" any more, so "empiricals" it is) are of the opinion that they need a cool story. Every other faith has one, they think, so they need one too. So the story they have is that of a big bang and evolution universe, the facts of which are pretty clear and well understood and mostly provable to at least a consensus level. But the image of how it's presented, with the noble Buddha-like scientist serenely following a path of reason and evidence without a trace of ego through the riddles of the cosmos....

Well that part is just bollox really, and we know it. Plenty of scientists are belligerent, political, passionate kooks, just like everybody else. Many of them are introverts, many of them are all too human in the face of large pay-cheques, many of them are actually half mad and some of them are addicts. Einstein was a great man and a supposed ADHD case, Newton believed in magic, and Turing topped himself. Just like the rest of the world.

So can we please stop with the romanticising of scientists into priests?
It'll only lead to no good.