You smell bad!

The X Files presents us with a view of the world in which aliens exist and supernatural phenomena occur. Scully's application of standard scientific method as an attempt to explain the often strange events they encounter, while occasionally sufficient, ultimately falls short of full explanatory power. Not necessarily so, however.

Science is a voluntarily narrow-minded view of the world in which we live. Science deliberately restricts itself to explaining not what ‘humanly' is, rather only what ‘materially’ is. With its sense of divine right, Science bestows upon itself the authority to decide the ‘material’ trumps the ‘human'. What is material will be studied, what is not will be ridiculed as 'radical outliers', hence the loquacious Richard Dawkins famously denounced the X Files for its promotion of pseudoscience. 

This is not to deride Science. It is, after all, one of the pinnacles of human achievement.

There is a sense, however, that Science falls short of explaining the very real human condition, our situatedness in a world that may be entirely physical but often appears supernatural. Bambi Berenbaum may wax lyrical about the perfection of cockroaches - “So beautiful, and so honest…Eat, sleep…defecate, procreate. That’s all they do. That’s all we do, but at least insects don't kid themselves that it's anything more than that.” - but for most normal human beings they are ugly, evil creatures that crawl out of the sewer. The very method that makes Science so successful is the very reason it proves so unsatisfying as a human explanation. Scully, in ‘War of the Coprophages’, provides rational explanations for the spate of deaths occurring in Miller’s Grove - there is even scientific evidence found to support her claims - yet there is no humanly satisfying explanation of what is happening overall and how it is humanly perceived. 

Not untypically for scientists, Scully initially is uninvolved with the real situation, phoning in her explanations from home. By the time she arrives, it is too late, the fear that has been building has exploded and the people are in full panic mode. Scully does her level best to stem the looting, but, as the cold, rational observer, outside the reality of what she strives to explain, she has little effect. It isn't that she’s wrong, she just doesn’t have the emotional involvement in what is happening. She, and Dawkings, and Science generally, can rationalise to their hearts content - and, no doubt, they are perfectly correct! - there just is no satisfying explanatory power to their rationalisations. 

Towards the end of Season Two, the episode ‘Soft Light’ posits a man with a black hole for a shadow, due to some accident in one of those very sciencey looking rooms that pop up every now and then in the X Files. Apparently, the science in this episode is somewhat wonky, all that talk of "dark matter, quantum particles, neutrinos, gluons, mesons, quarks …” is little more than gobbledegook. Thing is, it doesn’t matter. Who the heck knows that stuff, anyway? It sounds impressive and works within the fictional world of the X Files. 

This is likely the very attitude that frightens Richard Dawkins. But Dawkins is nothing if not a little disingenuous. The X Files doesn’t just encourage us to favour a supernatural answer to the events of each show, it also makes us wonder just what kind of science is being done beyond the public gaze. 

On August 6, 1945, America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Prior to its deployment, The Manhattan Project was a science project done entirely in secret:

What made the Manhattan Project unlike other companies performing similar functions was that, because of the necessity of moving quickly, it invested hundreds of millions of dollars in unproven and hitherto unknown processes and did so entirely in secret.

This secrecy was, it seems, a ‘blessing in disguise’:

Although it dictated remote site locations, required subterfuge in obtaining labor and supplies, and served as a constant irritant to the academic scientists on the project, it had one overwhelming advantage: Secrecy made it possible to make decisions with little regard for normal peacetime political considerations. (cf. atomicarchive.com) My emphasis

Not for a moment would I suggest that every wacky conspiracy theory should be taken seriously. But the reason why there are such theories is that they offer explanations of what it feels like to live in a world over which ordinary people have little to no control. Anti-conspiracy theorists can bemoan human gullibility, but the truth of the matter is that there are things being done which are deliberately kept from public awareness. The great irony is that the suposed god of materialism, science, is as complicit in these secret activities as any President or global syndicate.

There is no reason to think that Richard Dawkins is anything but sincere in his protestations against religion and the supernatural. It is just that in doing so he does little but demonstrate his own ignornance. Somewhat ironic in that he admits:

I do sometimes accuse people of ignorance, but that is not intended to be an insult. I'm ignorant of lots of things. Ignorance is something that can be remedied by education.
(Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/richarddaw626732.html)

One example:

I love romantic poetry.
(Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/richarddaw447457.html)

Maybe he really means he enjoys poetry written for Mills & Boon. But let’s assume he means Romantic poetry.

Romanticism was a movement in the arts which flourished from the late-1700s through to the middle of the 1800s. The great British Romantics are generally seen as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. The last name, that of John Keats, (1795-1821) reaped the whirlwind of Dawkins' wrath for his poem Lamia (1819), specifically for these lines:

Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,

Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,

Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine -

Unweave the rainbow...

Anyone who knows Dawkins’ writing will recognise that last line as the inspiration for the title of one of his books, ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’ (1998).

Now, John Keats died at the age of 25 in 1821 from tuberculosis. But, in his short life and career, he produced Odes which are acclaimed "among the greatest achievements of Romantic art.” (cf. Poetry Foundation) Yet Dawkins’ dismisses this poetic genius as nothing but a “very young man”, implying immaturity and lack of wisdom. (cf.  Prospect, Science and the X Files, 1997). Dawkins’ may love Romantic poetry but he clearly has no idea of what he is speaking.

Despite Dawkins’ efforts and those of others, there is absolutely no reason to take the word of a scientist as gospel just because he/she is a scientist. 

It often feels like Dawkins’ attack on religion, for instance, is akin to the Syndicate’s constant efforts to “deceive, inveigle [and] obfuscate” (cf. Teliko). Even Mulder is made to think he has been chasing shadows all these years:

I've held a torch in the darkness to glance upon a truth unknown….A belief which I now know to be false... and uninformed... in the extreme. My folly revealed by facts which illuminate both my arrogance and self-deception. (cf. Redux)

‘War of the Coprophages’ appears to support Scully’s scientific view of the world, there does appear to be a rational explanation for all that has happened. But, along the way, Mulder discovers a secretive Government science project - "You expect us to advertise that we've intentionally infested a house in their neighborhood with thousands of cockroaches?” asks the scientist, Bambi Berenbaum, upon Mulder asking, “Why all the secrecy about your research?” And it is the irrational act of a scientist that leave Mulder and Scully covered in dung at the end of the episode, occasioning that classic line of Mulder’s, "You know, I never thought I'd say this to you, Scully... but you smell bad."

Absolutely, one should take with a pinch of salt whatever one hears on the History Channel’s 'Ancient Aliens’. If assistance is required in recognizing baloney when one encounters it no better guide can be found than Carl Sagan’s ‘The Demon Haunted World’. (For an insight into Sagan’s wisdom regarding spirituality and science visit ‘Carl Sagan on Science and Spirituality’ at brainpickings.org)

Baloney detection should be wielded as a double-edged sword.