The ancient War between reality and fantasy continues…
As James Lindsay points out, science is “by definition anti-Gnostic,” because – if practiced as intended – it seeks to describe nature as it is through empirical reason. That is, science observes evidence in the physical world, and only then bases its theoretical conclusions – its Knowledge – on those observations of reality. After which we can then use it to achieve some relative progress by “better according our lives with reality as it is and thus doing better in reality.”
In contrast, Lindsay identifies “the general madness of the world at the present” as resulting from the “parasitic bugbear” of Gnosticism, and specifically what he categorizes as “Scientific Gnosticism.” What makes Scientific Gnosticism different from science is that it inverts the above process: it puts the conclusions of Theory (its Gnosis) ahead of empirical observation of the world.…
…And if the world does not accord with Theory, then the world is wrong, and it “must seek to call truths things which are not.”
Source: The Reality War
