TIL: Today I Learned
- Thread starter Gilgamesh
- Start date
So far it's about animals and they are all silly rhymes. One is about a goose who rides on a moose.
Do not confuse "haha idiots you believe in a magical sky fairy" dipshits with honest atheists, let alone agnostics. Like new converts to a religion, many atheists raised in a religious situation are zealous bordering on fanatical in "defending" their faith and attacking others to feel more sure about their choice(s).
I know some of the most popular atheists are very well known scientists. Still, atheism is a faith and full of hybris. Agnosticism is the only truly scientific point of view in my opinion. You can be convinced there's not divine being, presence, or purpose; you cannot be 100% sure. Of course, this being some sort of old-guy-on-a-cloud who rains down thunderbolts and Smites the Infidels, Zeus-style, is preposterous; many who are/become atheists are so because they can't see far enough to realize that it's possible for something to be there even if we don't have any possible means of knowing about it or seeing it or being influenced by it.
You're confusing the words belief and faith. Atheism most definitely is not a faith. It's a belief, yes, but not a faith. Beliefs can be changed, faith, by it's very definition cannot.
figmentPez
Staff member
You and I have different definitions of faith. My definition is not belief in absence of facts (and certainly not in opposition to facts), but belief based on the testimony of reliable sources. This is the same type of faith most people have in science, since they do not do the experiments themselves, and to an extent this is the type of faith that all scientists have, since the fundamental assumption of the scientific method (namely, that the scientific method is an effective method of learning the truth about existence) is unprovable by the scientific method.
I realize that many other people say that "faith is believing without seeing" or "faith is just knowing what's true" and other statements, but those are not the only definitions of faith used by those who believe in religion.
You also seem to have a profound misunderstanding of the scientific method. We don't take a scientist's word for it. They have to account for everything they do and their experiments need to be repeatable and stand up to peer review.Mirriam Webster said:
figmentPez
Staff member
We don't have totake a scientists word for it, but most do. Even taking into account peer review, most scientists don't directly repeat all other scientific experiments. They take the testimony of other people. You can argue all day about what level of reliability is required to make the testimony of a witness reliable, but in the end most of what we know based on the scientific method is based on believing what others have told us, but we have not seen for ourselves. More people have seen the results of these scientific tests, and more attest to their acccuracy, than what most people believe in religiously, but it is still not based on direct knowledge. Furthermore, you still have the issue that everyone who uses the scientific method still holds to the unprovable, and yet perfectly rational, belief that the universe is a reasonably organized place that is subject to study via the scientific method.
You are unwilling to see the scientific community as anything but a bunch of regimented fools who are no better than the religious zealots one sees on tv. for that, I feel nothing but pity for you sir. Science is about trying to make sense from chaos, to try to put the cosmic-universal puzzle together. the idea of god is left out of this equation because it is an untestable variable. The method exists from a thousand years of inquiry to make our work more than magic and superstition. However the entire point of good research and eventually strong law and theory in science is based on that people CAN replicate your experiments, and DO. When you publish with a journal(s) your results come under scrutiny from other people in your field who WILL replicate your experiment. If many people get different results then your research was flawed. The method is not about proving your ideas right, its about proving them WRONG. nobody can prove the theory of evolution right, only give more support for it. However, someone can produce research and publish to undermine it. I say this to everyone who calls long standing science bunk.
on a personal level, my thesis was on urban storm water pollution loading and its effects on the local watershed and river. The first part of my research was proving that the results I was getting from all up and down the main river were correct, which I did by comparing with major government and industrial sources. we found our results were within range of each other from the same approximate sampling zones. Next I looked at how we could reduce those loads by using different biological and mechanical barriers that had been studied by other folks in my field. We developed a plan from all those others research and put it in to place along a stretch of the river, I then returned and took samples from above, along the experiment zone, and below it and compared my results to each other and to my unprotected results of the previous year. I found that their claims were substantiated and by taking all of their ideas together and refining them into a cohesive system we wiped a chunk of thermal and pollution load out of a nationally protected river. I defended my work against a board of professors and experts and shared my results with my colleagues in other disciplines to try to better refine my work. I have not published anything yet only because I don't feel like the work has actual standing yet. I am hoping someday when I have time and grant money to look into the issue more. I will say that my work has had positive potential for folks in many other fields related to my own, and without their serious input I would not have had the kind of results I wanted. We all worked together to build something that had beautiful results and might someday have an actual impact on society in the way we build roads, cities, and use waterways.
figmentPez
Staff member
I never said that. There are orders of magnitude difference between the accountability in proving what is reliable testimony in the scientific community and what is reliable testimony to the average person believing in religion. There is a huge difference between the faith that people place in religion, and the faith that people put in the testimony of scientists, but there are fundamental simliarities, and it is understanding why we can trust the testimony of scientists, even when we haven't performed the experiments ourselves, far more easily, and with more reliably, than we trust the testimony of prophets, even though we did not see the miracles or meet ancient religious figures, is an important part of understanding why science works. There is nothing wrong with being honest about the fact that most people just have to trust that the system is functioning as intended, because it has been tried and tested. I'm not saying that these things are on par, I'm just saying that not every person who believes in something does so in complete and abject rejection of all facts and with no logical basis.
you said, "you still have the issue that everyone who uses the scientific method still holds to the unprovable, and yet perfectly rational, belief that the universe is a reasonably organized place that is subject to study via the scientific method."
which caused me to say what i did.
which caused me to say what i did.
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figmentPez
Staff member
Well, it's true, isn't it? We can't prove that the universe is actually consistent and subject to study via the scientific method. All those times when "people get different results" can you absolutely prove that the "research was flawed" or does there remain the possibility that the laws of the universe were actually different at that time and place? That seems highly unlikely, and I'm sure there's some physicists or mathematician who has at least pondered the odds of what it would take for the universe to appear consistent, but not actuallly be consistent. In fact, this view that the universe is ordered and can be studied was once such a radical thought that it took religious men, those who believed in a single, all-powerful God (a Muslim to start with, then by Christians as well) to put forth the idea that, since God is orderly, then his creation is orderly as well. The very idea of the scientific method is founded on the radical notion that the universe is consistent enough to be studied, and there is nothing in the scientific method that can test to see if the scientific method actually works. The very idea of peer review is based on the assumption that any difference in results means some sort of error, either in method or theory, and there's no way I can think, or have ever heard of, to account for the possibility of a universe that is arbitrary and not ordered.
I'll grant that this fundamental assumption is very practical, it would be kind of silly to believe that science doesn't work, because we have a lot of evidence that it does. It would be outside the realm of rationality to make plans for the universe to stop functioning the way it has been observed to. What we have seen and recorded shows us that the most likely answer is that the scientific method works, but in the end that is a huge long stack of correlation that we cannot prove causation on. The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the scientific method being a reliable way of gaining accurate knowledge, but there's no way to test to see if the universe is random and we just live in a statistical anomaly.
wait so your argument is we tested a theory over and over and get the same result every time. but when we get a different result is that the rules we derived were suddenly not in play? doesn't that just spit in the face of occum's razor?
edit: "but in the end that is a huge long stack of correlation that we cannot prove causation on." what are they?
edit 2: wait are you arguing philosophy of how do we know what we are seeing is real and not just some anomaly in the scheme of things? if so, I'm out. this kind of metaphysical study was never my strong suit nor do I have the background to discuss it at a significantly academic level.
edit: "but in the end that is a huge long stack of correlation that we cannot prove causation on." what are they?
edit 2: wait are you arguing philosophy of how do we know what we are seeing is real and not just some anomaly in the scheme of things? if so, I'm out. this kind of metaphysical study was never my strong suit nor do I have the background to discuss it at a significantly academic level.
First off, your second edit is pretty much my take on it. I'm strongly pro-science (I'm not anti-religion, though I'm anti-abuse of religion for worldly/political goals - there's a difference).
Secondly though - Occam's Razor, while very useful to whittle down hypotheses and determine sensible theories, can never lead to the truth on its own. OR states to, in case of conflicting possible theories, go with the less involved/more easily explained/most logical one. It does not indicate this one is, of necessity, the true or right one.
That there is no personal God-man sitting on a cloud we've pretty much disproven. That there is no uninvasive, all-encompassing pantheistic will (aka "the Force") or some sort of as-yet undetectable (radiation was around in the time of the Dino's, even if no-one could measure it or see it in any way) presence, or a type of energy/being/otherdimensional McGuffin is very probable, it's certainly suggested by Occam's Razor, but there's simply no scientific way of proving it.
Science is, by definition, ever evolving and ever searching for the truth. I'm not saying we should go and try to disprove God - it's ontologically impossible to do so. We do, however, have to be open to the possibility that modern day science is still getting some basic facts totally wrong. Not in a "turns out the Sun does spin around the Earth! Oops!" sort of way, of course. Modern scientists claiming we have "definite" proof of, say, what caused the Big Bang, or that we have "all the answers" or "can explain everything" are either lying or deluding themselves because they need a firm stick in the mud to compare everything to - falling for the same fallacy so many religious people do.
To restate: say I find an egg, under a nest, in my yard. I can conceive of three possibilities: A) it fell out of the nest above it; B) Jupiter came down from the Heavens and willed it into being; C) my father found it on a walk in the forest, picked it up and put it in our yard to confuse me.
Now, OR pretty clearly indicates option A. Option B seems the most far-fetched. It's perfectly OK to assume A. It's scientifically sensible to go and test A somehow - either by proving A, or by disproving B and C. Let's assume I go talk to my dad, and find out he didn't put that egg there. That disproves C - thus further giving credence to A....and to B.
This brings us to Popper's position to consider non-falsifiability (is that a word? I think not) a basis for whether or not something can be a scientific statement - if you can't falsify it, it isn't science. This is the basis for many scientists to disregard religious statements (because it's, as I said, impossible to prove "there is no divinity"). I'm not sure I agree with him on this point (I generally agree with him though - he's an agnostic for the same reason I am though he approaches it from the other side)... but I do agree with him it's best for each to stick to their own "turf". Science has fairly little to say about ethics (even though it sometimes tries); religion has fairly little to say about facts (even though it often tries).
figmentPez
Staff member
Occam's Razor is part of the the reason why we believe in an ordered universe. An ordered universe is the simpler explanation. However, the simplest explanation is not always the truth. I'm not arguing that we live in a chaotic universe, I'm saying that the possibility exists and it is impossible to test using the scientific method. Normally we test the simplest explanation using the scientific method, and then move on to the next least complex solution. However, the fundamental assumption of the scientific method is untestable, so we just believe it because it works.
The long stack of correlations that we cannot prove causation on are every single scientific experiment ever. We can't prove the cause of science appearing to work is the result of an ordered and rational universe that can be studied via the scientific method, because we have no way to test to see if the universe is unordered and random.
Yes, this is philosophy. This is the discussion on how we know what is true. The definition of "faith" is what sparked this argument.
all I am trying to get across is to me if I do a test and get a hugely strange result compared to the line of significance, my first assumption is not is it the universe suddenly out of wack? I wonder, "shit did I clean the glassware good enough?" so I clean my glassware and restart again, get the same result, "shit is something off about the reagents?" and so forth and so on into increasingly large reasons behind a repeating result. if I get the same result multiple times(3-5) I ask one of my colleagues to try and see if they can get the same result. they dont? ID-10-T error over here. this shit about are the results im getting even real is way to metaphysical to me. I am legit out.
TIL boys do not need pajamas according to some retailers. I went to 3 stores before I found pjs for my son. In each store there was a huge selection of sleepwear for girls.
TIL: Some little boys actually wear pajamas! Next thing you'll tell me he actually wears under wear to bed as well!
...I fear that Jet may be a nudist.
He does! If I ever suggested that he regularly sleep in his underwear or nude I think he would cry. The only time he slept in his underwear alone was when our ac went out and it was 80 in here at 10pm.
TDBYIL: One of my local theaters has almost sneak proofed itself. None of the theaters show what movie their playing, and the only way of knowing what film is playing is by asking the teller. They also CLAIM to have security cameras, but really all you need is the sign to bring on the paranoia. And the two long bathroom hallways that kids would wait in until the movie they were going to see- now maintenance hall ways with "Special access" closets where the bathrooms used to be. My inner theater hopper is both annoyed, and impressed.
This has nothing important to do with your post, but out of curiosity which theatre is that?
The Cross Keys Regal in Turnersville, big white building. And now that I think of it I may be mixing up the bathroom halls with the United Artist in Turnersville, memories actually a little fuzzy on whether their long exits halls both had bathrooms in to the side of them.
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