One of the jobs of a writer is to add nuance and ambiguity to that straight line that people often draw to very specific kinds of heroism. Most of us don't get to be Snooki. For most of us heroism has to be in our everyday lives.
Far from being demeaning to human spiritual values, scientific rationalism is the crowning glory of the human spirit. Of course you can use the products of science to do bad things, but you can use them to do good things too.