The Primacy of Common Sense
Are scientists becoming the modern day Sophosists

Adapted from Daniel O'Connor's book "Only Man Bears his Image" with permission

Both Socrates and Plato criticized the Sophists, who were ancient Greek self-proclaimed “wise men” who presented themselves as teachers of “virtue.”

I. The Sophist in Plato is the master of the art of illusion; the charlatan, the foreigner, the prince of esprits-faux, the hireling who is not a teacher, and who, from whatever point of view he is regarded, is the opposite of the true teacher. 
SOPHIST By Plato

Socrates realized that the demise of human souls, even amid worldly success, followed inevitably from the advice from “the experts”.

Modern scientists and sophosists

This is the same fatal error made by modern men who seek out physicists (or other scientists) to answer questions that are fundamentally religious, philosophical, or even commonsensical in nature. Just as the Sophists of old paraded their extensive travels and encyclopedic knowledge as supposed proofs that they alone had the answers to all matters, so the scientists of today too often parade their own (very pigeon-holed) expertise about hypothetical subatomic particles and forces (or other empirical phenomena) as if this were a reason to give credence to their pseudo-religious propositions.

The tragedy, however, is not that experts overestimate the value of their own expertise. That much should be expected in this fallen world. The tragedy—today as in those ancient times—is that common folk, desiring an easy solution to their problems, deceive themselves into capitulating to these neo-Sophists.

Socrates was not opposed to heeding the advice of experts. As he notes in the quote above, it is obvious that if, for example, one wanted to improve a horse, he would be well advised to seek out the help of a farmer. That is a particular and pragmatic need for which soliciting expert advice is unproblematic.

Likewise, today, Socrates would endorse seeking out a scientist to design a computer, determine a cancer treatment regimen, calculate the next solar eclipse, or ascertain with greater accuracy the gravitational constant. But Socrates would condemn emphatically—and justly—our contemporary tendency to consult the scientists to answer those questions that are within the domain of common sense, philosophy, or religion.

Indeed, one has only committed an act of supreme folly (and surreptitiously assumed the—false—answer to his own question) who seeks out a scientist to determine if:

• Can “AI” have sentience or reason?
• Is “time travel” is possible?
• Do animals have personhood?
• Is immortality technologically achievable?
• Do “other dimensions” exist in the universe
• Do “other universes” exist?
• Can man “evolve” into some other type of being?
• etc.

Common sense resoundingly answers all these questions with certainty: No!

Good philosophy and true religion also give us a nice clear ... No.

Openess is not a virtue when it overrides common sense

Whoever insists upon even remaining open to an answer of “yes”— upon heeding “the input of science” — has, in that very openness, rejected the truth.

He has “wandered into myths.” and has refused to “tolerate sound teaching.” (2 Timothy 4:4) This rejection of the truth may not (immediately and obviously) involve formal heresy or explicit apostasy. But that is the eventual inevitable result of following that same path long enough.

Foundational and culpable errors about reality itself cannot be neatly contained within one compartment of life. They are like malignant cancers. One who gives “science” the right to contradict faith, reason, or common sense, has unchained a demon. And this demon will not keep the promises it made when it begged to be unleashed.