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Certain people claimed that we could engineer away certain problems inherent to the human condition. Some of them were right on certain matters (e.g., certain diseases), and others were wrong (various utopians). Why is that such an indictment of materialism or the Enlightement or science or Science or whatever? I don't understand why you tar them all with the same brush.
The basic idea of the Enlightenment is that the scientific method is a reliable way to discover truths about material reality, and we can use those discoveries along with reason to try and improve our lives and solve problems. That seems straightforwardly obvious to me. I also don't think there's a bailey concealed under that anywhere. The fact that some people said "Hey, using my reason, and using what I think are some facts I think I learned from science, I believe I can engineer human nature to excise the nasty bits like greed and jealousy and perfect us" is no more an indictment of science/materialism than "Hey, I think these cardboard arm flaps will make me fly" is an indictment of aeronautics, or, for that matter, that, "Hey, I think the good Christian thing to do is burn witches and kill baby Native Americans so their innocent souls will go to Heaven before their society misleads them" is an indictment of Christianity.
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