Social advantages are of course not negligible: good income, travel, absorbing work, tenured job security, prestige in the community. Some of the sciences have survived the judgment of several centuries of history; others are frankly pseudo-sciences, like Freudian psychiatry and its derivatives, or not sciences at all, like Astrology. A permanent feature of the scientific discourse is the enduring presence of a number of sciences which had innocent or hopeful beginnings, yet which continue to linger, even robustly, in the scientific community long after their ineffectiveness or even absurdity have been revealed. Among these I would include String Theory, Deconstructionism and Chomsky's Transformational Linguistics. There are also what one might call programmes, which are either valuable or invidious as a function of the uses to which they are put. Among these I would include Structuralism and Bourbaki mathematics.
Lets take Deconstruction as our paradigm: On December 1st, 1987, an article appeared in the New York Times revealing that the founder of Deconstructionism in the United States, Paul de Man, had written 200 articles for the anti-Semitic collaborationist press in Belgium during the Nazi occupation in World War II. The infatuation with Deconstructionism, which had colonized the academies like a viral infection quickly evaporated.
What happens when it is discovered that Emperor never had any clothes? What can a deconstructionist without tenure in a Comparative Literature department do, when Deconstruction loses its market value? One anticipates that the same fate may soon await the zealots of String Theory. One can reasonably assume that the specialties in this field will discover that they are shackled by an arduous, now useless technical training and defunct vocabulary for which no job opportunities exist.
Contrast this situation with the consequences of the Indoctrination one receives in the pursuit of a religious career. Normally someone aspiring to be a minister, priest, rabbi, imam, whatever, undergoes a period of study in some seminary. It has been known to happen, that, even before graduating, he may recognize that he doesn't buy any of it: he doesn't believe that Christ was a god, he considers the Bible largely a work of imaginative fiction, or he regards the millennial quarrels of Shiites and Sunnis as futile. He neither believes that the pig is an unclean beast, nor that the cow is a holy one.
Yet there is a distinct possibility that he may reason as follows: "Once installed in a parish somewhere I will be well placed in a situation in which I can do a great deal of good for the community: educator, counselor to young and old, organizer of volunteer work for charities, manager of a homeless shelter or soup kitchen, prison visitor, bedside comforter of the sick, witness and officiator of births, marriages and burials, altogether a rich list of socially progressive activities normally associated with left-wing liberalism. As priest, rabbi or minister, I can direct the financial support and social protection of right-wing conservatives to the promotion of left-wing Socialism! Long live faith based initiatives!
With regard to the burdensome dogmas: Original Sin, Immaculate Conception, circumcision, kosher diet, questions of whether or not unbaptized children go to heaven or if suicides have the right to be buried in church cemeteries and all that silly rubbish, these are so incidental to the pastoral activities that are at the core of my daily work, that I will feel little compunction at giving lip service to them while I participate in the works of social reconstruction that gives meaning to my life!"
Then re-examine the pitiful plight of, say, a teacher of Comparative Literature who has been brainwashed by the philosophy and methods of Deconstructionism, who has written and published articles in the journals which make full use of the ridiculous deconstructionist vocabulary, who has filled the pages of these journals with absurd analyses of the greatest works of literature!
Once he concludes that itŐs all rubbish. What can he do? Can he get a job doing anything else? No. His training has handicapped him from doing so. Can he argue that hes doing useful work by further indoctrinating his students in the techniques of Critical Theory? No. He recognizes full well that he is training a whole new generation in a useless technical method that will be nothing but a handicap when the truth comes out, as it did with the damning exposé of Paul de Man in 1987.
When the bubble bursts his students' training will no longer be marketable. They will not even be able to point to some other kind of social benefit, such as soup kitchens or prison visiting , to allow him to justify, to himself, the continued the promulgation of absurd and fatuous thought!
It is claimed that the system of job tenure was designed to protect scholars against the fickle instability of scientific theories. Still, anyone with a grain of common sense or genuine love of literature would have realized, right from the beginning, that Deconstruction was rubbish.
With respect to psychoanalysis and other schools of psychiatry the situation is even worse. The psychiatrist whose eyes have been opened may suddenly realize that he has been doing, and must go on doing, an enormous amount of harm to his patients. It is difficult to imagine that he will be able to go to his patients and say: "Look! Everything Ive told you up to now is shit! This mental and moral poison will wreck your lives. Go home. Im sorry, but I cant do a thing for you!"
Briefly: the production and promotion of rubbish in science is of no benefit, neither to the practitioner nor to the consumer, whereas indoctrination in the rubbish of religion is co-joined with the possibility of doing some real good as a social activist in ones community.
ConclusionAnyone picking up the degrees he will need to become a string theorist is well advised to get at least one degree in rabbinical studies!