"Can we talk" about

[pelmetman]

Those who understand science have an obligation to teach the public and to oppose ignorance.

I like ignorance .............It makes life so uncomplicated

Dave

[pelmetman]

Excuse me. pardon me, Pagan chaplain coming through, I would hope that religion & science will not bicker about the fundamental meaning of life as neither side has the answer just as much as we don't know why we are here,

I know why I'm here ................my parents had a bonk in 1957

[Zech]

Sorry, radical epistemic relativism gets right on my nerves.

I'm biting my tongue on the "everyone believes different things and that's just cool" discussion

[Zech]

Those who understand science have an obligation to teach the public and to oppose ignorance.

I'm trying!

[Zech]

Hence, the practice of science does have aspects associated with religions, including this: only an elite few have the means to establish the "truth" empirically and everyone else must take it on faith. This is not a bad or a good thing; it just is.

This is the point I was making, but I'm not sure I'm as sanguine about it as you. I do think it's a bad thing, I guess I was just pleading for a little more sympathy and understanding, rather than harsh judgement. That makes me sound like a really wet, liberal lefty, which is probably about right!

[oldjerry]

The advance of scientific knowledge has not necessarily been to the benefit of your personal empowerment but in many ways exactly the reverse.So maybe it HAS replaced religion.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Hence, the practice of science does have aspects associated with religions, including this: only an elite few have the means to establish the "truth" empirically and everyone else must take it on faith. This is not a bad or a good thing; it just is.

This is the point I was making, but I'm not sure I'm as sanguine about it as you. I do think it's a bad thing, I guess I was just pleading for a little more sympathy and understanding, rather than harsh judgement. That makes me sound like a really wet, liberal lefty, which is probably about right!

Little point in getting upset about something that cannot be changed, or in denying something that is evident because we don't like the implications (bending the facts to fit the theory, as it were), though we all manage that in one sphere or another.

[demi]

there is a big difference though, between new hypothesis which are currently being developed and tested, and established theory's like gravity, newtons laws, E=mc2 and to throw in a biological one, evolution. the latter of which are established facts and, besides evolution, you can do the maths and see for your self. and with evolution we have all the evidence we need, plus more, to conclude that this is a fact and not 'just a theory' .
it is not difficult to spend an hour on the trusty ol' internet to find out for yourself how they work these things out.
there is no need in todays world, where everyone has access to the internet, to be clueless about anything. even if your not good at maths and equations, there are many sites explaining things for the lay person.

as tim minchin says:

Does the idea that there might be truth
Frighten you?
Does the idea that one afternoon
On Wiki-f***ing-pedia might enlighten you
Frighten you?
Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural
So blow your hippy noodle
That you would rather just stand in the fog
Of your inability to Google?

[oldjerry]

Yeah,nice poem.....so all that stuff on the internet is the truth?????

[demi]

Yeah,nice poem.....so all that stuff on the internet is the truth?????

of course not all of the stuff on the internet it true, and nobody believes that. but if you type in a question like, for example, the one that was asked earlier ' how do they measure the distance to the stars' it going to give a whole load of scientific websites explaining how they calculate it.


i am a firm believer that anyone can learn anything if they want to. its not difficult.

[gregorach]

Sometimes, of course, we get a little bit carried away with the shear elegance of an hypothesis and start to treat it a bit too much like a fact and use it to build more hypothesis which is very naughty. This seems to happen quite a lot in the more difficult-to-explore regions of the scientific spectrum like particle physics and cosmology, but I speak only as an outsider looking in rather than as a participant.

Actually, particle physics in particular is probably the most cautious and carefully grounded field of science there is. While many sciences will accept 95% confidence as being pretty damn solid evidence of something, particle physicists generally don't even regard a result as interesting until it hits 99.995%. Those Higgs boson results everybody got a bit excited about a while back were (in combination) a 4 sigma deviation from what would be expected if it wasn't the Higgs. Show me any other field that looks at a 4 sigma result and thinks "Oh, that's quite interesting - but not really convincing. We really need another couple of hundred petabytes of data to be sure it's not just a statistical anomaly." The cosmologists perhaps aren't quite as careful, but compared to all the social sciences, or medicine, they're still on incredibly firm ground.

Now, psychology on the other hand... ;)

Hence, the practice of science does have aspects associated with religions, including this: only an elite few have the means to establish the "truth" empirically and everyone else must take it on faith. This is not a bad or a good thing; it just is.

Of course, the key difference is that in the case of religion, absolutely nobody has any means to establish the "truth", or even whether the entire field of enquiry has any basis at all. The ordinary man in the street may not be able to independently establish the distances to the stars, but he can at least see that they exist.

[Susie]

Of course, the key difference is that in the case of religion, absolutely nobody has any means to establish the "truth", or even whether the entire field of enquiry has any basis at all. The ordinary man in the street may not be able to independently establish the distances to the stars, but he can at least see that they exist.

Then why is anyone even engaging on a scientific basis when they could be engaging more profitably on a philosophical one?

[The Riff-Raff Element]

E=mc2

Go on then. Prove it in your kitchen!

Everyone knows it. Hell, lots of people can derive it, but very few people have the means to demonstrate it, which is the point: we accept it as being true (well, I do) even though we cannot ourselves test it. That is an act of faith on our part. Dear old Albert E understood that, which is possibly why he rejected atheism in favour of taking an agnostic view. A very humble man was Einstein, and I'd suggest he was the better scientist for it.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Of course, the key difference is that in the case of religion, absolutely nobody has any means to establish the "truth", or even whether the entire field of enquiry has any basis at all. The ordinary man in the street may not be able to independently establish the distances to the stars, but he can at least see that they exist.

I take your point about the five-sigma level of confidence, but nonetheless particle physics did build a lot on the Standard Model before proof of many elements of it were forthcoming. I can't say I blame the physicists because it is a quite beautiful thing, though, like I say, my understanding is that of chemist, so I'm easily impressed.

As to the other point, some people claim to have received the word of God, which is enough for some others to call "truth"; I stand by my parallel

[Zech]

Of course, the key difference is that in the case of religion, absolutely nobody has any means to establish the "truth", or even whether the entire field of enquiry has any basis at all. The ordinary man in the street may not be able to independently establish the distances to the stars, but he can at least see that they exist.

Then why is anyone even engaging on a scientific basis when they could be engaging more profitably on a philosophical one?

I know this wasn't addressed to me, but I don't understand your point - would you mind elaborating?

Thanks