*!"Do You Believe in Science?"!*

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Ouinon, why do you venerate the writings of Gandy and Freke if you are so against being a follower? Do Gandy and Freke hold special authority over everyone else? IF so, please describe and elaaborate so that I may understand where you are.

It is incorrect to suppose that ignorance invalidates a critique of science. Science is subject to epistemology and has philosophical underpinnings which are quite vulnerable to an a priori attack. To suppose that it is not is to be ignorant of philosophy.


Considering how often I am accused of being "post modern" simply for not swallowing my conditioned intuitions, I do not view this statement as meaningful. One man's "post modern idiocy" is another's "examined life".


Do not conflate post-modernism and New Age.

Honestly, I'm going to propose a new informal fallacy in the spirit of the ad Hitlerum, and that is the ad postmodernism. Why bother arguing when you're opponent is obviously wrong? Everyone knows anything which doesn't accept unquestioningly "self evident" "obvious" truths is just being post modern It's just an excuse to not deal with the argument.

Ok then ounion, lets do an expirement. Go stand on a train track when a train is coming, keep telling yourself "the train is just imaginary", lets see what happens.

Being right and knowing you are right are two different things entirely.

Are you still replying to my 3 month old opening post?

I would definitely not stand in front of an oncoming train unless I wanted to die.

There is a difference between objective and subjective reality, [ ... huge debate immediately starts up in my head again... I shouldn't say things like that... ] , and i think we need/produce both of them.

I did wonder whether it was possible that in their creative efforts to escape the grip of Christianity scientists had gone too far in the other direction. "All that is not objective is irrelevant". That was my idea around page 5 I think.

Last edited by ouinon on 03 Jun 2008, 3:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

yeah, that is rather annoying too among the scientific crowd. Never mention the word "theory" around them, they don't wanna hear it. Even though all objective facts that are proven had to start off as a theory, and we'd have no facts save for the painfully obvious had not people come up with theories and tested them. But according to them, apparently theories are useless.
I believe in the basic axioms of scientific discovery though, I just don't trust governmental establishments and "experts", nor do I trust "human infallibility" that strongly.

They don't want to hear it because most people can't distinguish between a theory, a hypothesis, a conjecture, and stab in the dark guess.

Thinking about the objective-subjective distinction again.

As something that we "produce".

....... goes off babbbling....

i am by no means saying scientific method isn't reproachable.......

but it's just lame imho to b***h about conflicting results when the actual setup of the experiments of each side are not analyzed...

as if science is divined or something

i never hear compelling arguments.... just cries of "i don't buy it" and the like.

i'd hazard a guess that people don't even know what the publication process is in science (try checkin out the peer review list for scientists who don't find any global warming, lol, it's pretty short, versus their requested "do not have this person review my paper for publication" list).... let alone researching a field enough to understand the underlying hypothesis in an experiment and applied methods for testing.

no one ever has any suggestions there... just cries of "poppycocks!"

(I actually agree with you 100% that people shouldn't be crying fowl on topics they don't understand, but for arguments' sake...)

The problem with belief for the non-scientist is that they rely entirely on authority figures for knowledge. Therefore, their belief formation must necessarily be based upon reasoning about the reliability of the authority as any authority based argument must be based on this. Hence, even if the methods are out of reach for them to understand, they can at least try to reason through the possibility of different theories by something which actually trumps the prediction of the authority - the biases of the authority.

It is not so much a matter of being ignorant, so much as grasping at the only logical way for them to exercise any scrutiny beyond their intuition. This is not a scientific argument, but it is the method by which they must form beliefs. The conclusion pro/con is subjectively the best that they have, and consequently must form the maxim of any action related to it.

The individual who believes is no more justified or unjustified in their belief than the person who disbelieves, from the individual perspective; they prove themselves only to be more trusting of certain authorities and/or the scientific process or some-such-you know-what-I-mean-ness.

I'm getting some vague impression that I could make an argument by exploiting a priori attacks on the objectivity of the not-really-really-hard sciences, and then using that to strengthen the idea that biases is actually a decent way of gauging possible truth, but I'm not familiar enough with the arguments on that side to make one. Who wants to do it for me?

I didn't know it was a religion

This is a very interesting analysis of the problem that I find myself faced with as a mostly non-scientist. ( ie: a degree in bio and psych with statistics, aswell as some knowledge of maths, chemistry and physics, but no training in those since school).

It is essentially a question of faith/trust in authority, unless I want to put in the time to learn all/more about it. Actually it would always be a question of trust, because I could never learn all about it but at least I would ... know more about the authorities involved, and have a clearer... not sure. Isn't it almost always going to be a question of trust for anyone not working in the exact field itself, now that science has become so vast and profound a discipline?

Isn't that the trouble, that science has reached a point where most of it has to be taken on trust, even by scientists themselves?

Consequently it has become almost the same thing as choosing between religions for the vast majority of the population, ( and like living in Roman Catholic Europe in the middle ages; not much choice either) . How strange. It's like left and right wing politics; go far enough in either direction and you arrive on the other side. So objectivity taken to such extremes that most people can no longer know/test if things are true for themselves becomes a subjective matter. As religion took subjectivity to such an extreme that it became matter for objective debate.

Yin and yang, the little black hole in the heart of the white "fish" shape, and the little white hole in the heart of the black one.

it's not even so much as not understanding so much as not getting whole story... where people get their science is the issue. TV? journals such as NATURE and SCIENCE, which are infamous for publishing outrageous topics? There are definitely more and less reputable journals (not that those 2 aren't reputable, they're just... instigators, so to speak)... but i doubt people read the actual articles anyway. and a majority of decent articles can be found free online... so what's the excuse of not reading them before yapping?

i don't think the defense of ignorance gets you many places anywhere.

and besides...

the thing that is what really gets to me over all this is the observance that people would RATHER believe in things such as elaborate conspiracy theories by governments and scientists that (say) the atmosphere is too polluted and will have bad effects... versus actually admitting, "hey, maybe i can at least get my lazy ass to recycle some things and try to be more environmentally aware."

it just stupefies me.

i am by no means on top of all the fields of science... but i understand how the process works... and i know not to buy everything i hear on the news, from many sources, and even journal articles themselves. as well as some labs themselves that publish... like research saying smoking doesn't cause cancer and the likes... there are definitely some stooges out there, doing work for the all mighty $... again... look where they publish... where they get funding... look at their experimental design...

i applaud people questioning science... but until people actually start researching science versus just pointing fingers...

you're only ever gonna hear rebuttals on topics like: evolution, cloning, global warming and the likes... (most other scientific research, mysteriously makes its way over into the "fact" category at some point, lol)

topics that an automatic rejection gives many people an easy peace of mind (for many non-scientific reasons, interestingly)

which is why i stick by my initial statement for not caring whether these kinds of people bash science... it's not that i'm assuming any sort of infallibility... it's just irrelevant imho.