Why is science demonized in people's minds?

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Hence the Christian tradition of putting a coin on each eye, to keep them closed. Just in case.

Religion has more outs,

Science acts like it is right, the Canals on Mars, and never apoligises later.

Even when Science is right, 50/50 in my life, it says something can be done in fifty years, and that you, your pappy, his, are all dumb. Fifty years later it is science that was dumb, but everyone is dead.

Now we have been through the Science of Advertising, body oders, soap that is not just soap, but soap, with a wrapper.

Brighter whiter teeth! Than what? Well whiter! Whiter than people who do not brush their teeth? What about those who brush with baking powder?

Religion wisely avoided the Cola Wars taste test. Science has been Pimped by Marketing.

TV is loaded with lab coats, all pitchmen, where I have yet to see a Rabbi, Priest, or Shaman pitching any deoderant.

Science lacks order, they come across like a bunch of Aspies. Narrow focus, lack of social skills, and an inability to explain why I should care.

Few ever go into private practice, they are owned by some company that turns industrial wastes into food additives, and turn out hotdogs and twinkies that look the same after fifty years in a landfill.

Superfund Cleanup Sites? All Science. Love Canal, Lead in gas, paint, cloth dyes, and children's sleepwear that ignights with a single spark.

NASA with a 1 in 50 airline failure,

Electric Power too cheap to meter, flying cars, high paying tech jobs?

We paid for them, developed them, and they went to China.

Science does not like or need us, like politics, we just get in the way.

Science built half a super collider in Texas, then quit. Antimater would be clean energy too cheap to meter, so that got shut down, when they found out what it might do.

Science has no defense, is owned by Corporations, Universities, Governments, and is contained to not rock the boat of existing technology.

One thing I have learned from the study of Autism, A few wild guesses, made up most of the work in the field, and broad science was willing to believe anything. Mothers, Metals, Boys being Boys, and working their way through a warehouse of existing drugs, that might do something.

Any facts that get in the way are ignored. We do have a vauge idea how it works, big heads, dense brains, patterns of behavior, which then are seen as something to change. Starting with the children.

If there was a Scientific Method, first you would learn everything about the full nature of the condition from beginning to end. Then about events that shape that path, and based on a lot of feedback, how to work within that system.

Here with one thing, Science has failed to overrule Marketing. We are being Marketed to raise money, Someone is selling Scientific Brighter Whiter Autism.

I do not buy the claims, and I do favor Science. Most I think have discounted Science, as just a Marketing tool.

From the views expressed by the autistic, only the Markrams have any idea, and then they want to change it. Nothing has worked in that direction, so why not develop it as it is, and see what full blown Applied Autism looks like, before ripping out random wires under the hood?

Religion but then again, it's not so much science that is demonized but the arrogance of the scientists.

oh compared to the arrogance of dictating behavior and "morals" based on nothing but hearsay is right okay, yes??

Scientists who are willing to subject their dearest held theories to the verdict of Nature are hardly arrogant. In fact the willingness to abide by Nature is the ultimate form of humility.

ruveyn

If arrogance were a crime, then the prisons would be filled with religious leaders and their followers.

That might have something to do with it. Perhaps.

I don't know, might come in handy.

Scientists discovered the principle, but it was politicians that decided to make it into a weapon and use it.

Blaming science for the use of nuclear warfare is like blaming firearms manufacturers for the use of guns in committing murder.

I was not blaming scientists for it, merely pointing out something that, for many people, contributes to their distrust/dislike/demonization of science and scientists. I certainly don't blame scientists for it, but you can't pretend for a moment that they didn't know it could be used for massive destruction. Also, guns are not quite the best thing to compare with nuclear weapons. I'm just saying, science cranked out this thing, and it takes science to improve them.

I suppose it's a bad habit of mine to play devil's advocate. Arguing against what you stand behind makes you better at arguing for it, though.

No ... science can not solve political issues like war and poverty.


That's what they taught us in Debate 101 - you can not effectively argue one side without knowing and understanding the opposing side.

Another lesson is that to understand an opposing point of view does not automatically mean that you approve of it, or that you even think that it is valid.

Indeed. I actually was on the debate team throughout high school, and also frequently participate in debate events at my university. Outside of debate circles, it seems most people assume you support the side you are arguing. I enjoy arguing for a side whether I approve of it or not.

'Religionists' and 'Scientismists' demonise each other all over the western world; in the Orient and in other places where the traditional religions are non-abrahamic, the arguments (and often this whole situation) will differ as the popular beliefs and other related cultural 'memes' differ.

To understand it from all angles, not only the logical one, should lead to the further understanding that it is atleast justified in the minds of those who hold that point of view - It becomes 'valid' without necessarily being true; no longer dissapproved of without necessarily being approved. For example, in the case of belief in God, we can point to the psychological hangover from childhood that Freud hinted at, i.e. the imagined overarching presence of parent-figures, as well as other factors that can lead to unsupported belief if left unexamined.



Let's put this to the test from the point of view of another potential opposing side that your understanding may not have been complete enough to have anticipated. I hope others will permit me to bring them in:



Nature, those of us who are not out-and-out pantheists can agree, is not a conscious entity, and is thereby immune to 'irrefutable' truths' such as mathematical principles.

Suppose I see ten sheep infront of me (dunno why I chose sheep; maybe I just see a lot of auties making up for their inability to conform by signing up to already-established political and philosophical views_) - There may indeed be ten of the phenomenon 'nexus of sentience' (if you want to pare down to a literal description of phenomena), but from the point of view of the universe, the number 'ten' is a concept that belongs solely in the mind-brains of mammals, the reality being an ocean of constantly transmuting energy configurations. Even more so for the truths of physics, everything is open to a range of interpretations, such that it's the verdict of the human neocortex rather than of 'Nature' that we should be talking about.

Take Gravity for example. Everyone, including religious people, have always observed that everything falls to the ground, whether or not they care why. Saying "Goddidit" says no more nor less than "It's a Force", because the terms "God's action" and "Physical Force" haven't been defined, especially given the very strange things I've read about Gravity that imply it's something rooted in the basic nature of Reality rather than a more straightforward force like electricity. Fundamentally, the question "what is it" hasn't been answered, and the only thing we know is that we are observing a physical phenomenon, which has never been less self-evident.



Again, 'red' and (perhaps to a lesser extent) 'apple' are human concepts, based on a partial perception of reality which is itself encoded (rather than presented raw) into consciousness by the brain (even if it's an autistic brain!), so I'm cautious about giving ultimate status to 'Fact', the very word implying an abstraction from reality. "Delicious" and "sour" are just as factual as long as we accept the caveats "delicious/sour in my mind and others'" along with "some apples more than others"_



Well I noticed an earlier comment about the laws of nature - Reading cosmology we hear tales about 'parallel universes' which may or may not be true on the basis of 'if x, then y' - with the emphasis on the 'if'. On the other hand, there are also pronouncements along the lines of 'the universe had to be this way in order to last' - as well as 'the universe didn't have to be this way in order to last'_ _

I guess the 'empirical' universe has to be logical in order to work, but beyond that, nothing has been proven as far as I know, right up to whether or not the laws of physics are mutable within the four dimensions of this universe.



Two points - We all have our own facts; they're called experiences. Also, Homeopathy may often work on the basis of the placebo effect, an interesting phenomenon for philosophers of science if ever there was one_ _



What about opinions about science, or inspired by science? The most obvious examples would be a) what you just said, and b) that old chestnut '"Science demonstrates that God doesn't exist and that any kind of soul or afterlife can't exist". Scientific knowledge merely points towards the probablilty of some broader truths being true, and away from others being true, but if life as an aspie has taught me anything, it's to expect the unexpected.

Nature is physical reality. The way things really are as opposed to the way we wish things to be.

Nature is existence itself. It is not a person or a deity to be worshipped. It is what we live in and what we must know about to survive.

ruveyn

I fear you assume the way we wish things to be is automatically the opposite to the way things really are.

I have no real feelings one way or another as to whether 'ten' is an absolute reality. Also, the rich and powerful are far more likely to quite like the way things are, thank you very much, and not wish them to be otherwise, since in a sense they *are* Nature/the way things are - being in harmony with the thrust of evolution. What's more, we're all created within and by Nature, and so should have no automatic reason to make the assumption I mentioned.

Thinking about science might lead to a kind of completion of its open-ended process. -I used to get top marks (well atleast my top marks) for physics and chemistry at school, but they still bored me to tears, as the concluding stage of working out what it all meant - i.e. using the results to investigate what Nature is and what it means for us - fell apart and got 'wishy-washy'. {Besides, at pre-17 level, everything was too basic or else too broad-brush to mean much.}-

Trouble is, science doesn't really involve anything beyond the results as far as I understand, so scientists are usually out of their depth when trying to come up with uses for their work, or broader conclusions along the lines of explaining why things are the way the are (as opposed to describing how things are). Some of this is probably down to the inevitable incompleteness of scientific knowledge that you (I think) clarified earlier.

If you 'get me', witness Richard Dawkins' feeble attempts at philosophising, or the throwaway line that goes "anything we haven't found an explanation for (especially if we aren't likely to in the foreseeable future - even something as central as me being me rather than someone else) is just down to chance". -If there's a "God of the Gaps", there's a "Sloppy Science of the Gaps" to match.-

P.s. You described 'Nature' as both 'physical reality' and 'existence itself'

Can you show that consciousness is part of 'physical reality' (rather than 'supervenient on it' or some such) or else NOT part of 'existence itself' and therefore not part of 'physical reality' either-?

Consciousness is what our brains do to and for us. Consciousness apart from any physical action a person or other biological entity might exert on the external world has no effect whatsoever on what happens outside a person's skin. Without external actions our wants, desires, wishes, hopes and such like have no effect on the world about us.

ruveyn