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Having thought about this a bit more - I might have been as robust as I have been here, due, in part to a feeling of personal insult. (Now I'm being completely personal and candid here.)
I felt offended that nanotech had dared to appropriate my personal belief system (scientific thought) and tried to subvert it in order to support his own. I found that really hard to deal with.
How would a person of any given religion feel if I started using their religion to justify my statements? Especially if I were to twist the words of that religion in the process to say things that were blatantly not true?
"Jesus lived and died to show us that trees are evil and should all be demolished."
"Mohammed tells us that the earth is flat."
If I seriously tried suggesting things along these lines, wouldn't it be reasonable for me to expect a little controversy?
Then why is it considered reasonable for people to try to say that 'Science' tells us this, or that, or the other? Science is a belief system, just like any other, but it's <b>my</b> belief system and I don't like it when people try to subvert it, or make out that it is something that it's not - specifically, in an attempt to use it as an authority on the truth.
Science is not an authority - it does not 'tell' us things. It is instead a process, a way of thinking - It is a philosophy. What it is not, is a set of stone tablets that tells us an incontrovertible list of facts. Science can never prove something - it can only disprove, and even then, only in limited circumstances.
I find it upsetting when people fail to realise this in the same way (to use another absurdist example) a Muslim might likely feel upset if someone were to suggest that Islam is all about blowing things up.
Is it reasonable for me to feel like this when someone violates, warps and twists something to their own ends discrediting it in the process? A particular something I happen to feel passionate about? You're damn right it is.
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