A lot of folks miss the Inquisition. It had a kind of kooky charm—all those medieval dungeons and fancy costumes and getting to travel all over the world (at least, anywhere you could find a good heretic). Even better, Inquisitors got the backing of the medieval power crowd, nobles and bishops and popes. They got to seize other people’s lands and property when they didn’t think the right way. They created earthquakes of fear anytime they walked into town and frowned. And they could have anyone who disagreed with them humiliated and destroyed. What profession these days has this kind of job satisfaction?

Oddly enough, science. Not real science, of course—today’s Inquisitors don’t get to do that. You have to settle for materialist, reductionist science. But you get to call yourself a scientist nonetheless. You can’t interact positively with real scientists, because most of them belong to the crowd you’re supposed to attack—the free-thinking crowd. But you get a bunch of Inquisitor-friends from other fields—religion (the Inquisition’s original haunt), philosophy, psychology, politics, sociology, economics—heck, it’s an upscale party!

What’s more, your field, science—really pseudo-science, but how many people will know the difference?—has an edge on others. It can revile an enemy (and doesn’t “revile” just sound medieval?) with greater authority than any other discipline. Just think how the word “unscientific” plays in the culture.

Science gets better pay and more titles than the others, too, especially if you get in an “applied” field, such as Inquisition medicine, Inquisition psychiatry, or Inquisition engineering. Science gets great media coverage. Who ever heard of a popular philosopher? But Carl Sagan?—you bet. Best of all, science has inherited power-structure support in the form of governments, the military, and corporations. Yep, if you’re looking for medieval rewards in the modern world, you just can’t beat materialist, reductionist science.

Now, we know that you would-be Inquisitors may be wondering, how much fun is Inquisitorial science really going to be? How much power will I have? How many people will I get to humiliate? How much misery will I spread around? And if I do all that, how much money will I amass? Let’s take these in reverse order.

Money. Inquisition scientists make big bucks—not counting speaking fees, if you happen to be good at keeping your mouth going. In addition to salaries, there are grants, especially if you’re hiding out in a university. Corporations want you, as a “scientist,” to push their products. As William Greider’s book, Who Will Tell the People? documents, “K Street” consultants in Washington D.C. pay hefty fees to scientists whose “research” supports Corporation X’s latest lethal offering to the public. There’s money to be made, no doubt about it.

Misery. You get to pick your field here. You can create toxic industrial chemicals that will destroy living conditions all over the world (see the Leading Edge website map under “Pollution Locations”). You can create poisons that some government or military agency will feed to the public in “tests” (see The Paradigm Conspiracy, pp. 50-51 and the Leading Edge Research website under “Biological Warfare” and “The Gulf War Syndrome”). You can make weapons from bombs to chemicals and count on the military to use them (even on civilians). And you can develop Manchurian-Candidate programs to help the military’s infantry folks take to killing like ducks take to water (see Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing).

You can develop pesticides that will pretty much leave the bugs alone but make humans sick as dogs. Speaking of dogs, you get to mutilate any one of the 20 million dogs, cats, chimps, and rabbits used in largely unnecessary experiments every year (especially military and cosmetic experiments). You can create food additives, drugs, and vaccines that the pharmaceutical industry will push for you, and you don’t even have to test them (see Peter Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry and the Leading Edge Research website under “Biological Warfare”).

You can even become a civil engineer and help design all those roads that are for-sure accident-makers—and speaking of that, doesn’t the auto industry engineering crowd have fun designing cars that are (to paraphrase Ralph Nader) unsafe at most speeds? Misery? Your options here can make a Dickens novel look like a cheery day in spring.

Power and humiliation potential. In the service of the Inquisitorial worldview—science as disparaging all but its own dogma, science uber alles—you can be an expert witness, a media expert, a government analyst, or an industry consultant. And there’s more:

If you opt for Inquisitor engineering, you get to humiliate everyone around you and call it maintaining the “professional hierarchy.” And by the way, the power hierarchy will support you, especially if you’re good at taking credit for other people’s work. If you choose university teaching, you get to humiliate would-be science students—intimidating them with your intention to “weed out the unworthy ones”—while stealing the work of grad students on the side. If you go in for medicine, you can harrass med students and interns, an added bonus being that you can tell patients exactly what to do and frown inquisitorially if they don’t follow your orders.

If anyone disagrees with you, you can take them to court and annihilate them. Consider how many times psychiatrist Peter Breggin has tried to prevent an Inquisitor psychiatrist from drugging students and lost. Yes, for power and humiliation potential, how about this: if you want to put a kid on Ritalin, you can get judges to override a real scientist like Peter Breggin, the kid’s parents, and the kid himself to force the little monster onto drugs, which will ruin everything from his motor functioning to his immune system (see Peter Breggin, Talking Back to Ritalin and Peter and Ginger Breggin, Talking Back to Prozac).

As a backside-covering extra, you can easily persuade Inquisitor historians to make real scientists who venture outside the Inquisition’s worldview disappear from the history-of-science landscape—Rudolf Steiner, Wilhelm Reich, and Nikola Tesla being just a few examples. Yes, in Inquisition science, the rewards are (if you’ll pardon the expression) legion. You just can’t beat the modern Inquisition for job satisfaction.

Of course, there is a price to pay, an apprenticeship you can call it. No big deal—again, it’s not as if you’re going to be a real scientist. First, you can’t think freely. You have to think exactly the way the experts, the Grand Inquisitors, think.

Second, you can’t be open to any idea that the Grand Inquisitors are closed to. You’re not allowed in any field that the Inquisition has declared off-limits. And that goes for anyone else’s scientific work. If, for instance, someone like real scientist Rupert Sheldrake writes a book (A New Science of Life) about morphogenetic fields in biology, you have to go along with the Grand Inquisitor—in this case, the editor of a prestigious science magazine—who suggests that the book be burned. On the other hand, if any darling of the Grand Inquisitor babbles vacuously for several hundred pages, you must praise the book to the skies.

Keep in mind that this is science-as-religion (what some critics call scientism). While all those idiots are calling for change, growth, or development, your job is to stop real science dead in its tracks. And don’t be awed by someone like Max Planck babbling about science being a journey (in Where is Science Going?) It’s a destination, and you’ve arrived! All you have to do is salute the Grand Inquisitors and think everything they think. Oh, praise them, too. Every Grand Inquisitor loves that.

Of course, your problem here is sincerity. Most of you aspiring Inquisitors won’t fake it very well initially. Don’t panic: there’s a four-step solution, and here it is. First, subject yourself to Inquisition brainwashing as early as possible. Second, give up logic as soon as you can, but refer to every casual opinion you have as “logical” until even you believe it. Third, close down your emotions. Don’t even use the word “sensitive” unless you’re trying to get a date. Fourth and finally, stonewall any idea or person who thinks outside your categories.

In fact, a good skill for an apprentice Inquisitor is formulating your own ideas while someone else is talking (unless it’s a Grand Inquisitor, of course). This sounds perilously close to real thinking, but it’s not. All you have to do is stay wrapped up in your opinions, blocking out what the other guy is saying. If he realizes he’s being ignored, just ignore that too. Notice that we didn’t say “he or she,” because it goes without saying that you use sexist attitudes to treat all women as inferior to you—eliminating a whole class of people at a stroke.

As a matter of fact, inferiority is a key Inquisition ingredient. You must, under all circumstances, treat everyone as inferior to you. Naturally, this is harder if the person is in your field. But don’t be daunted, especially if the issues you want to blast the other guy on are philosophical ideas that you have no training in: the public, also untrained in philosophy, will never notice your illogical pronouncements. Just go after the turkey. The Inquisition will protect you and help you nail the strayer from the straight and narrow.

As for those who didn’t get your degree, treat them as less than human. Did we mention that all Inquisitors need a degree? Yes, you have to be certified. Though this may require actual intellectual work, don’t fret. Most degree programs just present Inquisition dogma. All you need is a good memory and groveling skills for your advisor.

If, however, you have the bad luck to end up in a degree program where you actually have to think, keep in mind the justification. Once you have that degree, no one will attack your incompetence. Or if someone does, you can dismiss the whole thing with an Inquisitorial wave of the magic word. With that degree, you can officially call anyone who disagrees with you “unscientific.”

Okay, now you’ve got the skills, you’ve got the degree, and you know the power structures are behind you. Get out there and persecute someone. It really doesn’t matter who. For practice, start with your children. When, for instance, they discover alternative realities through their imaginations, squelch ‘em. After all, they’re small and impressionable, and they may be good Inquisitors to carry on your name when you’re dead.

Speaking of death, this is a good place to start. The modern materialist Inquisition takes it as an article of faith that death is an absolute end to life. So make sure your kids get that one early on. Tell them that “science” has “proven” this, even if you can’t figure out how someone would go about proving an absolute end to anything.

A second Inquisition tenet you’ll want to pass on is that the mind is no more than the brain. In fact, this reductionism is a key to Inquisition science, so use it widely:

Reduce all thoughts to chemical activities in the brain (try to sneer when you announce this to friends and family). Reduce all human emotions to chemical interactions in the body (look condescending when you announce this one). Reduce all free will to biological drives to get pleasure and avoid pain (look serious here—keep in mind that you’re challenging philosophers and theologians, who are conceived of as serious types). Reduce all paranormal activity to trickery or some Inquisition-defined “normal” event, so that off-planet beings become test dummies, UFOs become swamp gas, near-death experiences become chemically induced hallucinations, and every psychic in the universe becomes a charlatan or a magician in disguise.

This is reductionism, and isn’t it a blast? You make the world so small that you’re the biggest fish in it.

Wherever you choose to lord it over others, though, always remember your dual Inquisition purpose: (1) to keep your own mind closed tight, and (2) to seek out and destroy anyone who wanders outside Inquisitorial dogma. Helping you keep the dual purpose in mind will be the Inquisitor’s Creed: all thinking about ideas is dangerous unless they’re Inquisition ideas.

And that’s all there is to it—except to keep your persecution methods sharp, “proof” being your biggest and best weapon here. No, you novices, you don’t have to prove anything. Proof like beauty is in the mind of the beholder. Anything can be proven or disproven, so don’t worry about that part.

But talk about proof all the time. Constantly remind people that such-and-such has either been proven or disproven, whether it’s true or not. And if you can’t find a favorite subject from the Inquisition’s hate list—real scientific advances, metaphysics, religion, parapsychology—make pronouncements in other fields (there’s always politics).

Oh, one annoying thing. Some people will consider you heartless, boorish, and close-minded. Since most of them will be the heretics whose ideas you’re eliminating, they don’t count. Some, though, will be neutral types, even in your own family or among your own friends. They may go so far as to suggest that you have to—banish the thought—change.