Science...Religion in disguise, flaws and all.

OK, fair enough. I have learned that there is more to existence than just the physical world around us that we can sense with our five accepted senses. Once again, as previously mentioned, I made no claim that what I have learned through experience is factual alone is factual and can be proven factual. Very little is truly factual, elements of subjectivity exist in practically everything. Do you even read my posts before replying?

First, yes I do read your post before I reply to them. Also, what exactly do you mean by there is more to the physical world, and what exactly have you personally experienced that would lead you to think this.

If the Christopher Columbus myth is not a belief of yours, why were you not certain of your view? Facts require no faith, yet you started with "It is my belief." Once again, as I've stated before, I agree that the acquirement of knowledge is important, but you seem to think the only way to attain knowledge is through science. I have been trying to turn the light on for you, but it seems you haven't paid your electricity bill. I am not in the dark, the sun is streaming through my front window.

I wasn't not certain of my views. I was wondering if this myth was still being taught in schools or if they were now teaching history as it really happened. I thought I was pretty clear on that. You've yet to show me something that can teach me more beyond what science has that is factual. You even stated that what you learn through "experience" can't be proved as factual. If it can't be proved as factual, then how can you be sure your senses aren't playing tricks on you?

As with many of the other points you have raised here, I have already covered them in previous posts. I see nothing new at the table that needs to be discussed, all of the answers you seek from me are in my previous posts.

I haven't had a chance to go through all the thread's by you or anyone else really. I did check out the one you linked me too, and the only reason I haven't replied is due to it not making much sense to me, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what your trying to get at and what your problem was in that thread.

ProtOn, you said : I'm just curious, what have you learned through experience that has taught you more about the world you live on and the universe at large?

What exactly have you learned through experience alone that is factual and can be proven to be factual? I've said nothing about method's used.


Right?

What is factual about experience is, if we ignore a problem it G-R-O-W-S.

The topic of this thread is, "Science, Religion in Disguise."

Since "social scientists" have used sophistry to combine science with ontology, the problem of "Science-As-Religion" has grown to the point, there is no accountability for what Scientists >DO< and the thought of being accountable to a Higher Power doesn't even occur to them.

Duh.

The only belief science requires is that the future will be the same as the past, or differently, that nature is uniform. If you accept these then science is really useful to help us understand the world. Religion has a different type of belief, a belief in the ineffable, a belief that something transcends the observable universe. Although religion can be rational, Occam's Razor takes it out every time.

Two points: ProtOn,
1. The church may have made a public appology for punishing Galileo but the appology was insincere. You probably know that Bruno, an intellectual contemporary of Galileo agreed publically that our dolar system was heliocentric. Bruno, a well known intellectual taught in several countries as a respected scholar. Eventually he was arrested by the church, tortured for six years in the Vatican cellars, (you know the place where the church keeps its loot from over the centuries), during which time the ignorant cowards in the church expected him to recant the facts which, by the way, the church has historically called heresy. When after six years of constant torture Bruno continued to refute the pathetic ignorance of the doctrine he was, in what, to the church, passed for a spontaneous upwelling of understand and tolerance duly burned at the state.
2. mytym, To equate god (a concept - popular or otherwise) with a theory is to publically admit that you have no concept what a therory actually is. Several in here have pretty much explained theory to you but with one very important omission. Along with all the requirements for a postulation to be consideredd and accepted as theory the new theory must make predictions based upon the explanation of the empirical evidence involved and these predictions must be, at some point, testable. Evolution, Plate techtonics, electromagnatism, relativity and quamtum mechanics have all satisfied this requirement. Religion can never satisfy this requirement and can therefore never be elevated to the position of theory. Believe, if your personality demands it but do not polute science with religious poppy-cock no matter how vague and outlandish the association may be.
sayswho (skep by any other name)

Originally posted by mytym
It's time for science to come out of the closet and admit, "Hi my name is science, and I am just another religion."

You are so wrong in so many ways. All you've done is illustrate your basic misunderstanding of what science and religion are.

I suppose the first and most fundamental difference between the two is that in science, nobody requires you to believe in anything without first showing you (or pointing you in the direction of) proof. That is, a logical sequence of questions and data about a particular subject that show a reasonable relationship. Of course, there are things like gravity, which has been tested for a long time, so the relationships dealing with it are generally accepted without a lot of question. However, if you want to duplicate Newton's gravity experiments and redo his equations, nobody is stopping you.

Try that with God. Try to come up with any theory that will help test an hypothesis and verify the existence or action of God. Actually, just try to come up with a good definition of "God." I personally have yet to hear one.

Science will tell you that "most of the time" "this thing here and that thing there" are related in "this particular way." That's all it's doing. If it doesn't find out something, it says, "I don't know."

Religion illogically puts a made-up concept called "God" in the place of "I don't know." That's why God is everywhere. Because there are so many things we don't know.

Originally posted by mark ten
seriously, to those who claim that science is all knowing from both sides of the argument i always offer the example of Alfred Wegener whose career was nearly destroyed for proposing the theory of plate tectonics - something that is ingrained in our current view of the world.
He proposed this around 1912 but it was not accepted into the scientific mainstream until the late 1950s...but i bet you cant imagine it not to be 'true'.

Nobody said science was quick to change. But you have proven the point that science will test and retest and if a better theory is proven, it will change. Exactly another clear difference between science and religion. In less than 50 years, it completely reversed its opinion on a very complex matter. A beautiful example of the flexibility of science.

Let's see the Catholic church come out and say, "Oh, you know that Jesus guy we've been so hot on all these years? Well, we've looked into it some more, and it turns out he wasn't the Son of God after all. Sorry about the confusion."

Like that would ever happen.

Since we already KNOW that this planet has undergone successive Ice Ages, continent upheavals and submergences, there's no question that "status quo" is simply incorrect.

I'm certain there are physical TIMES/aeons on this planet when Life is very scarce, indeed.

If that were not the case, since this planet is 3.5 billion years old, humanity would have flooded and outstripped the planet's capacity to support life, many times over by now. It only took --HOW LONG-- to get to the point where we are consuming more of the world's resources than we put back?

How many times could a planetary population reaching technology-stage go through boom and bust, in 3.5 billion years? Thirty five hundred, figuring a million years for each boom-bust cycle?

Think about it. Presuming stasis and stability is CRAZY--not just unsound reasoning. It's wish-full pretending! And this is the primary assumption from which Science asserts its knowledge of earth?

That's silly.

science= testable and re-testable

religion=mostly untestable (saying mostly just to cover my butt in case of something that can be testable)

so religion requires complete faith, science you can test (if you have the resources to do so).

Not true.

God tests me; I test God.

We are in relationship, and that relationship is just as real as the gravity that holds my feet on the ground.

You guys who have never met God can keep on saying, there is no way to prove God; but that's like saying, it's impossible to learn to swim.

If you haven't done it, of course it's impossible.

If you have done it, it's no problem at all.

Isn't this thread in the wrong forum?

'Website-Related Discussion" is a forum for linking On-line Files of interest. This thread seems to be about the whole ID/Evolution argument.

Unless there's a link of interest that was deleted from the original post or something else I'm missing?

ProtOn:
Let's get one thing straight, I didn't say more TO the physical world, I said more THAN just the physical world. You may not think this is significant but there is a difference. I mean that there is other dimensions that exist other than the physical 3-dimensional world we are so familiar with. I have experienced some of these other non-physical dimensions through lucid dreaming, semi OOB's, concurrent awareness and spontaneous externally generated moments of clarity. This is nothing compared to what many other people have experienced, but I am constantly learning and developing in this area.

I'm growing tired of repeating myself, but once more here it is. I never said that my experiences were truly factual, just that much of what science has is not factual. I can't be sure my senses are not playing tricks on me just as you can't be sure they are not playing tricks on you, but it doesn't stop me from learning from them, factual or not.

In relation to the points you raise on THIS thread the only posts of mine you need to concern yourself with to find the answers I have provided you with, are those I have posted on THIS thread. If you wish to discuss another thread of mine, I will be happy to discuss it with you in THAT thread.

byhiniur:
I agree with your comments in some respects, science can be very useful to understand how things work, however in order to obtain this understanding one must believe that the assumptions made are accurate. Nature being uniform is an example of an assumption that science believe is accurate. True, many other religions have different types of beliefs that are assumed to be accurate, but like science this belief enables one to explain why certain things are the way they are. Occam's Razor is a principle that can be both a hinderence(sp.)and an aid in different circumstances.

sayswho:
Equating is a poor choice of word. To make my point relevant, there is no need for God and theories to be the same thing, to entertain you, isn't God a theory too? From my understanding a theory is simply an assumption used in the absence of fact. Do you think I have the concept right? Being able to test a theory simply aids it's credibility and it's acceptance as accurate, it doesn't determine whether a theory exists or not. To entertain your notion once again, let's take the theory that God exists as an example. To test this, we can ask to keep us safe for another day. In a days time, if we are safe we can attribute this to God fulfilling our request. It was predicted and it occurred, it was tested and it passed. It may not be true, but it can be assumed to be true, thus satisfies your requirements. Religions are not all the same, thus there is no need for other religions to satisfy all of the same requirements science does. Other religions don't satisfy all of eachothers requirements either. If they did there would be only one. All that is required is that they all satisfy the definition of a religion, which is the point I am making.

By the way, it's admirable, if not a common occurrance, that you are able to share the name of you former ATS reincarnation with the rest of us. I applaud you for that.

Enkidu:
You are not bringing anything new to the table. How can a data showing a reasonable relationship ALWAYS constitue proof? Proof is undeniable, a reasonable relationship is circumstancial(sp) evidence. There is a difference. See my hypothesis above in regards to God. Other religions tell you how things are related too, much of the time. This characteristic doesn't verify their factuality. Science hasn't found the "missing link" yet I am yet to hear them admit that they don't know if Man evolved from Apes. As I mentioned earlier different religions, including science, have different characteristics, or else there would be only one, wouldn't there?

You say if a better theory is proven science will change and adopt it. This proves that the original theory was not a fact, as facts do not get disproven or become obsolete. Who's to say in another 50 years that science won't completely reverse it's opinion again, thus proving that what it currently holds to be true is completely wrong?

madnessinmysoul:
Both religion and science require a significant degree of faith. Something is either a fact or it is believed to be accurate.

Jadette:
Website-related discussion is a forum for general website-related posts that don't fit a particular forum topic. This thread has nothing to do with the whole ID/Evolution argument, it has to do with science disguising assumptions as facts and it's credentials to qualify as a religion.

Here's a link to a recent article that may be of interest to those posting on this thread regarding scientific theories. It concerns the scientific 'comet theory'.
www.rense.com...

I agree to a certain extent. Though science and religion should be able to coexist, as science typically disregards issues of faith such as synergy, moral conduct, and the afterlife. Religion has to admit that it was obviously wrong about some things (like the christian view on the age of the earth), but science has to recognize that it is always wrong, and will just continue to get more informed as time goes on. People once thought you were nuts for thinking that the world was round. Scientists are often wrong about things, just a little less wrong than they were in the past.

cience typically disregards issues of faith such as synergy, moral conduct, and the afterlife.

Wha? Moral conduct? Your kidding right? You can't possibly seriously think science disregards moral conduct, that's just .. way too out there lmao.

Religion has to admit that it was obviously wrong about some things (like the christian view on the age of the earth)

What if religion is wrong about the whole ordeal? It was a primitive assumption after all, before any real scientific progress was made in understanding where we came from.

but science has to recognize that it is always wrong, and will just continue to get more informed as time goes on.

I don't know how to break it to you ... but, science does this already.

People once thought you were nuts for thinking that the world was round.

Yep, those silly religous people sure didn't like that idea to much. Scientist's sure did show them!

Scientists are often wrong about things, just a little less wrong than they were in the past.

A little less wrong, and getting less and less with more and more discoveries. Interesting concept. I agree whole heartedly with you on that one.

Here's a link to a recent article that may be of interest to those posting on this thread regarding scientific theories. It concerns the scientific 'comet theory'.
www.rense.com...

Hey, it was a good read, but is there anything else beside rense? Rense is notorious for false information, I wouldn't trust that site if my life depended on it.

Originally posted by intrepid
That's too broad a brush to paint with imo. Mathematical science, physics and geometry, are proven. They are fact. Historical sciences and others like evolution require some belief.

Pi is a number. It is approximately equal to 3.1416 , but that is not
its exact value.

So how is math exact again?

point:
That's a very interesting article. I don't really understand all the complexities of what they are talking about and why this discovery is so significant and contrary to current teachings, but they sure seem to.

Despite my lack of understanding, I'm in no way surprised that discoveries are being made such as this, which supposedly contradict current teachings, as that is one of the dangers assumptions of best fit must contend with.

Prot0n:
I'm confused. You indicate that science already demonstrate that they are always wrong, yet you claim to know so much factual information as a result of the teachings of science. How can something that is always wrong teach you anything factual?

Originally posted by mytym
Prot0n:
I'm confused. You indicate that science already demonstrate that they are always wrong, yet you claim to know so much factual information as a result of the teachings of science. How can something that is always wrong teach you anything factual?

I don't recall claiming that, but ok lol. I have said numerous time's that science isn't always right or has all the answer's. But there are many thing's about science that I personally believe SHOULD be considered fact's due to the amount of evidence in support of certain theories, but that's just my personal opinion.

Well, perhaps I'm mistaken, but when I see you mention the word "know", I immediately think fact. When I see you linking learning and knowledge together, I immediately think you are indicating that you have gained knowledge through learning. When I see you link science and learning together, I immediately think you are indicating that you are learning through science. From this I immediately think you are indicating there is factual information you have knowledge of that you have acquired through learning from science. The frequency of occasions that you mention these things immediately makes me think that it is directly related to the amount of factual knowledge you possess. Of Course, just as science does, I am making an assumption of best fit, and as such, it can be proven wrong.

Prot0n:
By the way, I did some research and found plenty of sources backing up the Hot comet theory mentioned in the Rense article. Do a google search and you'll see. One such source is national geographic below:

news.nationalgeographic.com...

Would you trust this site if your life depended on it?